DrivebyHaiku

"Biological (insert gender here)" serves as a dogwhistle for a lot of organizations that actively push trans bigotry. It gives a fake impression of a scientific take on sex that really hasn't been embraced by the scientific community for about 50 years at this point.

They aren't telling you what to think here, they are alerting you to a tool that organized bigotry is using and giving potential tools to subvert it. Once you see "Biological man/woman" for what it actually is (non-scientfic false categorization) it really can't be unseen.

Also - Can we stop with the calls that people are trying to control what people think? It's pretty lame. There's nothing about this interaction that is trying to force you. All that's happening is you've denied that a certain school of thought is valid. You have stated your reasons why you think it's invalid and now people who have taken upthat school of thought are defending their position. That's just normal discourse.

Give you a hint. When people tell you "they are trying to control what people think" that's actually doing more to control people - because it's asking someone to take it on someone else's faith that there's nothing to be listened to rather than engaging with the arguement yourself.

Trans masc person checking in. Might be my bias or community or something but I get way less misgendering by guys under 30 than basically any other demographic. They seem to pick it up faster and be really chill about it in ways that a lot of the women in my life really don't seem to get as comfortable with.

But there is definitely a part of my brain that sees men as being of my tribe in ways that women are not. Like not to say that I don't have incredible women in my life whom I have incredibly close bonds with... But there's definitely some kind of cognitive distance that has always kind of been there.

I think trans femmes might experience a similar situation with feeling accepted by women ( Or maybe not because TERFs tend to look at them as a threat) but to answer your question about if the bros are alright... Yeah, they good.

We know we aren't flashy. The world kind of forgets about us sometimes because we are next to the loudest kid in the class. We are proud generally of the co-operation we have with other places and groups. Our medical advances raise waters that lift all ships , we have a space program that primarily assists other nations space exploration. We have a military but we are primarily devoted to UN peacekeeping.

The Canadians were a pivotal force tasked with the Italian Campaign in WWII which had some of the most brutal on the ground city fighting of the war. My Grandfather was there from the beginning to the end of the Campaign... Yet I have heard Americans on here ask "Did Canada storm the beaches of Normandy?" as some kind of "gotcha" to shame us because they don't know that we had our own beach operation but all they know is that Americans were there because Hollywood only shows American battles.

We are used to being kind of forgotten but we can be proud of ourselves for a job well done.

A complete absence of funding isn't the same as saying it isn't an issue. At a government level there's always more problems than money and manpower to solve them. Approaching it from that perspective is not a particularly healthy way to approach these situations. Realistically when you look at the the two cohorts you see very different behaviours. Funding for all shelters is currently massively declining across the board in Canada and no one pilots a new program when existing ones are failing.

Think of it like this. If you do not fear for your life but are escaping from an abusive relationship with child in tow what sounds like a better option : seeking help by going to a friend's or relative's place where there's familiarity and seeking help from an authority for assistance OR going blindly into a shelter system with a lot of unknowns? While it's true that men do need support seeking help from a formal shelter system is not a popular option.

The reason why women don't tend to rely on their existing support systems is because it's the first place abusive partners stalk if they intend a violent attack, not just an abusive encounter but an actual physical assult that puts other family members and friends lives at risk.

Hotel voucher programs and reserved open spots in pre-existing shelter systems do a similar solve to contemporary shelter programs but the reason mens shelters close isn't always funding related. In part it's because men don't often choose that route because a restraining order is usually more than enough to deter a female abuser and it is more comfortable relying on people you know. In the cases of DV homicide women are way more likely to be killed if they leave, men tend to be killed if they stay. It's not a matter of just dry DV stats. It's in the nitty gritty details of how these scenarios play out by gender divide that cause these initiatives to fail... which means it needs dedicated grassroots support which by and large isn't happening not because people won't donate but because while straight men love to complain that there's no mens shelters they are not coordinating dedicating their free time to make it happen. Queer specific initiatives are generally more successful because the organization structures are dedicated and they often do not rely on government but community support. What straight guys need to imbibe is you do not need a government stamp to start stuff.

I am not arguing for Gender specifc shelters what I am saying is that it's not a matter of how many reports of DV, the motivating factor in funding is how often each statistical group end in a homicide. It's a stumbling block which means that the priority often overshadows services for men that do exist when doing a casual search even online.

The main needs of men escaping DV are mental health support and police assisted extraction, temporary housing and childcare assistance. The first two are decently prioritized depending on Province. Here in BC there's decent resources directly through Coastal Health and less great coverage the Fraser Health Authority but childcare assistance is across the board spotty and really 99. 9% of the time the elements of making someone physically untraceable are not nessisary if the offender is a woman which means that if we were to look into hotel voucher programs and relocation services instead of permanent brick and mortar shelters for those cases you could likely provide options that fill the requirements for communities in smaller towns with a quarter of the funding of a shelter. Straight men generally do not have to skip town so they can often rely on their previously made support structures more so the time spent in temporary housing is often stays of less than a week.

What a lot of advocates in the space keep pushing for is a replication of the system because of the idea that it's not fair to give men a "lesser service" but the needs of the cohort are completely different and we should structure care to fit the needs based on an evidence based model instead of pointing to something else that is designed for a group with completly different needs.

That is a space that is more generally lacking. A lot of spaces prioritize women in part because there's a real issue with abusive men hunting down and killing their partners when they try to leave so women require a spy-like bugout infrastructure to safely leave. Historically this trend motivated womens groups and queer centric undergrounds to go above and beyond and was reinforced later by government grant because establishing support while victims are still alive is cheaper than the apparatus of investigation for their murder. It's a balance sheet game.

This hunting behaviour is something highly statistically unlikely for women to do which tends to mean support for straight men could look a lot different and be effective but also the monetary government incentive to provide it is not as lucrative for governments who are always triaging spending in sectors that don't somehow save them money.

It's absolutely correct that these resources should exist but it is going to take a much greater grassroots effort to maintain and structurally speaking expecting it to look exactly like the model in place for women is probably in part the enemy of progress because those models are prohibitively expensive.

.... Are you talking like a men's specific clinic?Here in BC there's all gender options which include men through the Fraser Health Forensic Nursing program which is available through emergency rooms. Or the SVPRO Program at UBC (https://svpro.ubc.ca/) or the AMS Sexual Assault Support Center.

A lot of the services on the West Coast are available to all genders and a lot of effort is being made to make services unilaterally available but you won't find a lot of services strictly for men. There's a push to make care more diverse which accounts for different cultural groups including men.

It's definitely true that some options are confusing. The BC Women's Hospital doesn't have boundaries for whom they treat for sexual assault and rape related care. You could go there, but they don't do the greatest job of creating an environment automatically comfortable for men. There's also a lot of outside care groups that specialize on specific populations with special needs such as trans, indigenous and non-neurotypical people and people with disabilities that don't specifically list men (though provide services for men who are part of the group) because they are focused on folks who have very particular hurdles to accessing care so they aren't put in a position to educate their caregivers on their basic needs while in distress. Those groups are usually funded and created by advocates specifically from those communities.

If you look at the history of the word "man" from it's origin it was originally a gender neutral term. You had to append a modifier (were or wif) on it to specify gender. Over time this eroded and people stopped using "wereman" to mean masculine people and just started using the default phrase that meant everybody but sorta kept "wifman" and changed the pronunciation.

So if you peel back the history women are indeed 100% man because everyone is a man.

Also in the category of gender neutral once : "Girl" used to just meant "child" and "boy" meant something along the line of "young ruffian".

Everyone is blaming the Dems for being everything. For pandering to the left or to the middle or to their courting of Republican voters... It's worthless effort. The Democrat playbook has been to play by the rules which systemically support the crony capitalism status quo. The only benefit of them is that they play by the rules which means if you pressure them enough to change the rules they can be manipulated.

Realistically speaking voting them in was one point on a checklist of multiple things that needed to happen to progress and as long as the rest of the checklist is happening then it's an ethical win. It's not a matter of "debasing one's morals" so long as you are doing the other things on the list. This idea of cooing over people's reluctance to hold one's nose and swallow the nasty pill is one I truly believe people need to get over. People should learn from their mistakes so they don't repeat them and the pat on the head with the "You only did what you thought was right" routine is in the end not a kindness. People need to learn how the levers of power work and what is effective tactics and what are the traps that the system baits to stop people from effectively participating.

Hands need to get dirty to make change happen and not every step is a feelgood exercise in feeling righteous. It's a boring slog of a group project. That feeling of refusal to compromise on values for any reason is the easiest thing in the world to exploit and divide people and we collectively should up the social cost of that action and teach that collectivism has it's costs. No effective movement in the history of mankind has checked every box for every member who propelled it to success. We can all afford to swallow a few nasty pills and bank on the delayed gratification of setting up a future win because the alternative is violence which doesn't have historically great outcomes... And yes that sometimes means somebody you don't like gets some kickback out of it.

Inaction by deadlock of a bunch of actors refusing to properly collaborate unless their demands are met are enemies of making change. It's just really hard to chisel past he messaging that they are not actually a noble group because so often we're taught that absolute rigidity of every stage of praxis is the virtue by which change is made. The people who sowed that narrative were knowingly or not imparting weakness. We don't need paragons or heroes we need people who can take tactical advantage of the natural cupidity of the powers that be and be willing to shake with one hand and hold a knife in the other.

I can understand their feelings of powerlessness in a two party system where both parties suck. Here in Canada the concept of strategic voting has been the norm for at least the past 20 years because people are aware of how shit the first past the post system is and how it forces us into a two party race we don't want but need to compromise on to make progress. We've spent that time trying to make viable third parties and that has worked to pressure the Canadian version of the Democrats to court more leftist politicians for support and minority governments with three parties have caused a steady march towards a better chance at fixing the underlying issue.

But unfortunately that's bred a backlash from people who think very much like Republicans. It was very rough watching Americans fall into a trap we Canadians have been stepping strategically around for so long.

I find this an issue when I hear people discuss this point. In the previous US election you had two candidates who were effectively capable of taking the spot. Both of them were Pro-Israel because US interests abroad have always been genocide apathetic in the face of economic gains. So you were not voting for Israel / Palistine. You were voting for which regime you would have an easier time to pressure into Palistinian support and which one could be compelled to do the least amount of damage in the meantime.

If you chose abstention then yeah, people are gunna be angry because we're all fucking scared.

Abstention from voting as a protest measure has never worked but besides all that - It is too late now. Now instead of having space to fight against genocide abroad there's not much space because now Americans have to direct their energies to stopping everything else from going to shit. You won't be able to fight at all if this regime gets its way. It is time to move on and deal with the problems American's collective choices have wrought not defend the good intentions that got us here.