Not to nitpick, but the article posits that his new best friend is Kim Jong Un and that China is unhappy with this development.

Fascists do not see trans people as human beings. It’s not a matter of thinking. They literally view trans kids as subhuman and want to implement a state apparatus to forcefully abuse them with conversion therapy.

You might know someone who has, I sure don’t. I’ve been in rehab, I’ve been in women’s shelters. I’ve been in homeless shelters. I’ve met a lot of people who have been victims of violence. Loads who have gone to the police for help too. I cannot name a single person for whom the police did literally anything beneficial whatsoever. There are a lucky few. Mostly white mostly middle class people.

But that’s all besides the point. And you’re choosing to continue to ignore that this is not the purpose of the police. A side action that they are occasionally asked to perform, and which they very rarely do anything beneficial towards. More often than not police are themselves perpetrators of physical and sexual abuse (their daily job is literally commiting acts of violence and using the threat of violence, it’s not surprising). The primary purpose of their job has nothing to do with violent crime or with violent crime prevention.

My point being getting rid of them isn’t going to change all that much if they don’t actually do all that much anyway. Women get raped every day. Sexual violence is essentially a given for the majority of women in our society. The number of victims is staggering, especially when you poll people indirectly. Police do nothing about this. It’s literally not their job. I know a girl who was sexually assaulted at 15 by a man in his mid 20s. Not only did the police fail to do anything, but the justice system actually supported the man and absolved him of all wrong doing just because. She was harassed by members of law enforcement who were friends with the man and local members of her community to the point that her family literally fled out of the country out of fear for her safety. Hers is just one story in a mile high pile.

There are millions of women who have been victimized again when trying to report crimes that happened against them. Being a woman or a minority immediately dispels any fucking notion that the police are there to protect you. That’s not the point of their job. It literally isn’t that is literally not why police were conceived of nor is it what they spend their time doing. I don’t have to come up with a system that ends all violence. No such system presently exists.

If I’m being asked to replace the police then I’m sorry your question doesn’t actually make sense. I’m an abolitionist, I don’t believe that the police should exist at all. I’m also an egalitarian who believes every hierarchy is coercive and we should dismantle all of them. I think that dismantling patriarchy as a concept and giving women and non-binary people equal power and respect within every realm of society would do many times more to prevent sexual violence than any amount of coked up gun toting militaristic assholes with shiny badges will. When it comes down to individual instances of violence, I believe how it is handled should be decided by those in the community in question, those directly impacted. I believe that violent crime warrants some kind of response but it shouldn’t be up to some uninvolved unempathetic judicial system to decide how.

How do we deal with them now? Is dealing with serial killers the day to day of the police? Is that their primary function? Do they even really do anything about it without constant prompting from victims and the community?

I’ve been a victim of physical and sexual violence. Nearly every woman I know has been at some point. None of us have ever had any positive experience with the police. At most they hand wave us away, at worst we are accused of being liars and of wasting their time. Police don’t prevent anything. They don’t solve anything. They don’t address anything. They are only occasionally turned towards a specific person who has done something wrong and used a means of state violence against that person. That is an exceptionally rare occurrence. They are the perpetrators of violence many times more than they are the defenders of victims.

Essentially, what is being currently done about the john Wayne Gaceys of the world? What is currently being done about the Bill Cosby’s, about rapists and pedophiles? What are the police currently doing that actually prevents those things from happening? Nothing. They only do anything after something has already happened. And they don’t do anything to prevent those things happening again. Their daily job has literally nothing to do with the John Wayne Gaceys of the world. It is in the things I listed in another comment. In rent enforcement and eviction, in enforcing private property and means of production, in collecting menial tax from the impoverished, in defending the interests of the rich and of the state, and in harassing minorities while enforcing hierarchies of gender race and class.

No, I’m an anarchist and a police abolitionist.

I mean, it’s not a slur, but an insult? Sure. Liberals are not allies to leftists, and actively support the same systems we seek to dismantle.

ACAB as an acronym began in the early 20th century by workers who were striking in the UK. It is a term with a long, complex history behind it. Cops are the institution, so I’m not sure what you mean by individuals. Every member of the police force, from the top down, is a bastard. Every single one. There’s no exceptions to this. The very nature of law enforcement is being a bastard. It is a term that is meant literally. Law enforcement functions as a means to break strikes, to enforce private property and ownership of the means of production, to enforce rent and evictions, to terrorize the impoverished and the marginalized, to collect menial tax from the impoverished who cannot fight back against them, and above all else to act as the legal arm of state violence against working class people.

Individual cops may have done good actions. I’m sure there’s a cop out there who’s volunteered at a soup kitchen, sure. But that has nothing to do with him being a cop. That has nothing to do with the actual role he fulfills in day to day life, with the violence he enacts, with the system he supports.

The idea that police are holding back some tidal wave of horrifying crime is and has always been propaganda. Nearly every single woman I know has been a victim of sexual harassment or violence at some time in their lives, including myself. A lot of them have gone to police before. I don’t know a single person for whom that did literally anything good for them. I know 1 woman who was harassed literally across the country by people including police officers who said she was lying. The police don’t prevent murder. They don’t prevent violence of any kind that’s literally not their job. More often than not they are the ones committing acts of violence for which there are no repercussions.

I love how every acab post inevitably brings out a bunch of uninformed libs in the comments talking about how pigs are only bad in America (as though the term ACAB was invented in America…) or how a society without them is completely inconceivable. As though badges grow on trees, like police are just a natural thing that sprung out of the ground.

The primary function of the police is to protect private property and enforce eviction. They’re state agents who are allowed to use violence against working class people, and do so to prevent us from overthrowing the ruling class and redistributing wealth and the means of production. They protect class hierarchy. They attack protestors. They use state violence against the disenfranchised and the marginalized. The “just doing their job” of the police is to protect and preserve the unequal distribution of power in society. They do so by using violence against the working class. The rest of anything else they do is a small fraction of their job and entirely secondary to their primary functions.

Yeah, you’re in a community for women and feminine people.

Yeah, it’s gonna be that way for a while. My sleep was a mess for the first couple weeks. You will need help during all of this, and I’m glad that you have your mom there to help out. Try and walk for like 10 minutes a day at first, even just around your home. Get your mom to help if you need her. Circulation issues prolong healing and also make sleeping harder. Make sure that your recovery area and your dilating area are calming environments, keep the area tidy as best you can and leave the windows and blinds open to keep light and air coming in. You also need to seperate your day into light time hours and dark time hours, it will help your circadian rhythm keep up with the changes in time and promote better sleep. Practice some destressing/anti anxiety techniques like meditation. Remember to look down from your phone and look at something distant for a couple minutes every so often. Eye fatigue becomes really frustrating when you’re already feeling meh in other ways.

Also, idk I’d you’ve stopped taking any opioid painkilles yet but be prepared for your stomach to be upset when you do. Wean off as best you can, increasing time between doses, staying very hydrated. Important to try and mitigate any stomach problems.

One thing that’s helpful to bear in mind is that it’s actually pretty hard to permanently lose depth after initial healing phase has passed. Like once the tissue has healed depth loss is usually not permanent. I’ve had reduced depth at points where I’ve messed up and not dilated for several days even. I made sure to dilate for longer than normal and more frequently and I’ve regained that lost depth. Do your best but it is inevitable that you’ll miss a dilation here or there over time and it’s okay!

My dilating schedule for the first 3 months was set by alarms and timers. For the first month, I dilated: when I woke up, before I ate lunch, mid afternoon, and in the evening. After the first month it went to: when I woke up, after lunch, and before bed. After 3 months, though, I stopped using alarms and timers as I went back to work, and my schedule was far less consistent. I just dilated once in the morning, however long before my shift started, and once in the evening/night after my shift ended.

For the first month, I dilated 4 times a day. The whole process takes about at least an hour but more often a bit longer. Each step takes time especially with moving around taking longer than normal. Youve got cleaning your dilators, prepping your bed/couch where you will be dilating, actually dilating, cleaning up after, rinsing, douching, then cleaning your dilators again after. All together, dilating was easily 6 hours a day, often 8. On top of that my energy was pretty low, so my daytime hours were around 12 hours early on. You also won’t be able to stand for long periods of time early on, and sitting will also be a pretty infrequent and often uncomfortable thing. I could ideally sit for around an hour a day for the first 2 months. Sometimes a bit longer if I was feeling good, sometimes less. So you spend a lot of time laying down, often the same place you actually do your dilation.

All those factors together and yeah no dilating was literally my life. It wasn’t until 6 months after that I was down to once a day where it actually became manageable. After a month I was down to 3, which was a bit easier, and after 3 months I went down to 2 times a day. I just got past a year last month, and am in the process of winding down to once a week. But yeah that first 6 months dilating definitely felt like my whole life.

It’s good that you’re normally very physically active! Definitely helps. Be patient with yourself too though. Your body does need lots of rest fo heal properly. Extra strain can actually have very real consequences. So take things very slow early on.

Welcome to your daily life for the next year, by which I mean dilating 🙃 It does definitely hurt at first, but it will get easier over time. I also remember getting the packing taken out. Pretty wild moment lol. The first month/two months are the hardest. Keep your chin up, keep focused on the day to day, and make sure to drink lots of water and eat well. Nutrition and hydration are very important in the earliest stages of recovery. Stick to the routine your surgeon advises you to. And as time goes on you’ll want to keep regularly mobile. By week 3 I started going on daily walks with my partner. Shorter ones at first, longer ones as time went on. Important to keep circulation up. Happy to hear that you’re feeling better ❤️

Trans women are not fucking testosterone brutes. We’re women. I have literally 0 blood testosterone. I am post op and do not produce literally any testosterone.

I mean where else would you want them to compete? Are there trans men out there demanding to compete in women’s sports? If sports is sex or gender segregated than yeah they should compete with men.

A baby. Are it’s genitals relevant somehow?

Trans women are not male.

The bar for entry is and has always been several years of sustained hormone therapy with normal estrogen and testosterone levels. And even that is far too restrictive.

What about groups of cisgender women who are above the physical average for women as a whole? Why is the proposal to ban transgender women and not other groups/classes of women based on them being on par above average? I mean is it fair for women from South Korea to compete against women from the Netherlands? Should women from the Netherlands be banned from competition? They have an average advantage, so it’s unfair to the rest of the women that they’re allowed at all.

Your essential argument has to be that transgender women are not women. There is no other argument for excluding trans women that adequately explains why it’s necessary for trans women to be excluded and not anyone else.

True! Yes trans men should be allowed to compete in men’s categories. I think they are strictly speaking so long as their T levels aren’t abnormally high (same as all men).

So yeah it isn’t fair, so we can stop saying that excluding trans women is about fairness then.

Most of the trans community absolutely does not agree that trans women should be excluded from women’s sports, no clue where you’re getting that from.

And trans women are women, excluding us from women’s sports is literally not fair. We are not men, nor are we male. So we are not going to compete in men sports or male categories.

And if we don’t make sports fair for everyone then why are you talking about fairness?? If it’s not fair already then what materially is lost by trans women competing?

Say a transgender woman wins at a competition in women’s sports, what materially has been lost here? A woman won a women’s sporting event. What is happening that is unfair?? She’s female, she’s a woman, so how can you assert that she shouldn’t be able to participate in women’s sports? To what end? What is lost by letting the half a dozen trans female athletes in the world compete?

The literal only justification for it is a fundamental belief that trans women are not female or are not women. Any other attempt at justifying it falls apart at the seams because there are more outlier women physically than there are transgender women at all, so banning transgender women but allowing outlier women to compete is literally just banning us cause we’re trans.