tathrin:

queeranarchism:

astockdoveisacompactpigeon:

queeranarchism:

astockdoveisacompactpigeon:

queeranarchism:

In 2009 I was sterilized against my will. 

And it didn’t happen the way I expected. I wasn’t strapped to a bed or dragged screaming into an operating room. If that had been the case, at least I would have had an easier time understanding what happened to me. 

Instead it was the slow mounting of circumstances. I was told that without proof of sterilization, I couldn’t change the gender marker on my passport. I learned that without that change I couldn’t find a job. I couldn’t go to a bank, hospital or dentist without being publically humiliated as I was forced to explain the discrepancy on my passport. I couldn’t get through passport control to leave my country. I couldn’t safely go to a bar at night. And since I didn’t get sterilized, doctors doubted my ‘commitment’ to being transgender and refused access to further transition related care. 

Eventually I gave in. I needed to get on with my life. I was done screaming, crying, fighting. I made my appointment, packed up my own bag for a 3 day stay at the hospital and checked myself in for my own sterilization. The one I really did not want. 

When I made my appointment, when I checked myself in, when I went through preparation for surgery, I must have signed over half a dozen consent forms. It seemed that at every turn there was a new form for me to sign saying that I did in fact want this. That I was giving my full informed consent to the procedure. I’ve had other surgeries that did not involve this pile of paper work and looking back, I’m sure all that extra attention to consent was there precisely because I was being forced into this position. I was being sterilized against my will, but I had to put on a performance of consent so the agents within the system could never be held accountable. I do not know if the nurse who handed me my 5th consent form and prepped my for my surgery knew that I really wanted to run out of that hospital. I don’t know if she knew that I felt broken, defeated, hopeless. Sometimes I feel guilty about allowing her to be an unknowing participant in my violation. 

I hated the consent forms more than anything. 

I had the surgery and I went on, as I did before, to campaign against sterilization as a requirement for legal gender recognition. And in 2014 sterilization ceased to be a requirement for legal gender recognition in the Netherlands, where I live. I celebrated that day. I am really happy that the next generation of transgender people will not have to go through the same thing. 

But I never forgot what had happened to me or considered it a finished chapter. I never forgot that consent can be a performance, enforced to cover up a great coercion. I never forgot that the participants in a consent violation, doctors and nurses in my case, may not even be aware of their role because they did not witness the coercion taking place. They did not see how my options were limited until I got to this point. Consent can be a choice made because all the other roads you would choose are blocked. Consent can be the mask violation wears. And I am very skeptical when I see consent hailed as the highest standard for ethical conduct. So there is a ‘yes’, maybe even an eager, informed ‘yes’. But what’s the rest of the story? Where there are those with power and those without it, consent is not a good measure for whether abuse occurs.

I am sure others are at this very moment signing consent forms or saying ‘yes’ to things they really do not want.

why do they make people do this?

Because they believe we can’t be good parents. 

Because they want us to suffer to prove the validity of our identity. 

Because they believe who we are is wrong and they hope to eradicate us.

Thanks for replying. What fake reasons do they give for it? Or do they just straight up and blatantly argue that trans people shouldn’t have children?

Fake reasons doctors give:

• These hormones will give you cancer if you keep your testes / ovaries (even though there is zero proof that the risk of cancer is higher than in cis people who produce their own hormones)
• If you were really trans, you’d want to get rid of this part of your body. 
• This is necessary for the other surgery you want. (often blatantly untrue!)

Truthful reasons doctors give:

• Hormone therapy for trans women is much more intense and unhealthy if their body is still making testosterone too. (but they often tell that without going into the option of freezing sperm)
• Hormone therapy for trans men is slightly healthier and slightly more effective after sterilisation. 
• You won’t get your passport changed if you don’t go through with this surgery. (really, doctors don’t even have to lie, this right here is cruel and dangerous enough to make many trans people go through with the surgery.)

Truthful things doctors don’t tell you:

• Once you get sterilized, you’ll be dependent on medical hormones to survive. Natural retransition won’t be an option and if at any time the hormone supplies run low (which actually happens, because pharmaceutical companies don’t prioritize that stuff) you’ll run immediate health risks.
• The (minor) long term health risks that I’ve told you about don’t mean you have to get sterilized now. You could have children within the next decade and then get that sterilization to have a healthier old age. 

Fake reasons politicians use to uphold the law:

• Pregnant fathers and sperm-providing mothers will upset our entire legal system and will be super confusing for children! Trans existence is too scary for our vulnerable youth and lawyers.

I never forgot that consent can be a performance, enforced to cover up a great coercion…. Consent can be a choice made because all the other roads you would choose are blocked. Consent can be the mask violation wears.

roachpatrol:

Here’s a story about changelings: 

Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch. 

She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage.

Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings. 

“Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child. 

Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin.

“I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.”

“I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.”

“Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.”

Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine.

“We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…”

“Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.”

Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has.

“Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.”

Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project.

She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still.

“Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once.

Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.”

Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.  

They all live happily ever after.

*

Here’s another story: 

Keep reading

randomrozez:

florence welch: forest goddess, queen of the fae

hozier: florence’s son with a mortal woodcutter, trapped between the mortal realm and the fae realm

lorde: dark entity summoned by victorian occultists

lady gaga: diva possessed by the spirit of a modern art exhibit

beyonce and solange: the sun and the moon

kanye west: protagonist of an epic greek tragedy

lana del rey: met the devil at the crossroads and sucked his dick

carly rae jepsen: a mortal, but we don’t deserve her

phasered:

i am a grown ass woman, an academic, a published researcher, a criminologist, i even pay taxes and have a lease on a comfortable but reasonably priced sedan, but the second i see the number “69″ in any context its like i’m being possessed by the spirit of every 13 year old boy worldwide simultaneously. the lizard brain frantically slams the shutdown button on my reasonable mental processes with manic glee and the word ‘nice’ is out of my mouth quicker than a wildfire during a drought 

howyougetthegorl:

once i fix the chemical imbalances in my brain making me prone to severe procrastination and depression, lose all my body fat and replace it with muscle, get my phd, pay off my student loans, and get new clothes it’s over for you hoes

mikeyjamesk:

mikeyjamesk: