#Spectrum 2021 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

Text

Tesla's Dieselgate

Elon Musk lies a lot. He lies about being a “utopian socialist.” He lies about being a “free speech absolutist.” He lies about which companies he founded:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2 He lies about being the “chief engineer” of those companies:

https://www.quora.com/Was-Elon-Musk-the-actual-engineer-behind-SpaceX-and-Tesla

He lies about really stupid stuff, like claiming that comsats that share the same spectrum will deliver steady broadband speeds as they add more users who each get a narrower slice of that spectrum:

https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband

The fundamental laws of physics don’t care about this bullshit, but people do. The comsat lie convinced a bunch of people that pulling fiber to all our homes is literally impossible — as though the electrical and phone lines that come to our homes now were installed by an ancient, lost civilization. Pulling new cabling isn’t a mysterious art, like embalming pharaohs. We do it all the time. One of the poorest places in America installed universal fiber with a mule named “Ole Bub”:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Previous tech barons had “reality distortion fields,” but Musk just blithely contradicts himself and pretends he isn’t doing so, like a budget Steve Jobs. There’s an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk’s public lies:

https://elonmusk.today/

But while Musk lacks the charm of earlier Silicon Valley grifters, he’s much better than they ever were at running a long con. For years, he’s been promising “full self driving…next year.”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

He’s hasn’t delivered, but he keeps claiming he has, making Teslas some of the deadliest cars on the road:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn’t its cars, it’s Tesla’s business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

Once you start unpacking Tesla’s balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

But even with all those financial shenanigans, Tesla’s got an absurdly high valuation, soaring at times to 1600x its profitability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoover-calling/#intangibles

That valuation represents a bet on Tesla’s ability to extract ever-higher rents from its customers. Take Tesla’s batteries: you pay for the battery when you buy your car, but you don’t own that battery. You have to rent the right to use its full capacity, with Tesla reserving the right to reduce how far you go on a charge based on your willingness to pay:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/10/teslas-demon-haunted-cars-in-irmas-path-get-a-temporary-battery-life-boost/

That’s just one of the many rent-a-features that Tesla drivers have to shell out for. You don’t own your car at all: when you sell it as a used vehicle, Tesla strips out these features you paid for and makes the next driver pay again, reducing the value of your used car and transfering it to Tesla’s shareholders:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update

To maintain this rent-extraction racket, Tesla uses DRM that makes it a felony to alter your own car’s software without Tesla’s permission. This is the root of all autoenshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is technofeudalism. Whereas capitalists seek profits (income from selling things), feudalists seek rents (income from owning the things other people use). If Telsa were a capitalist enterprise, then entrepreneurs could enter the market and sell mods that let you unlock the functionality in your own car:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/11/1-in-3/#boost-50

But because Tesla is a feudal enterprise, capitalists must first secure permission from the fief, Elon Musk, who decides which companies are allowed to compete with him, and how.

Once a company owns the right to decide which software you can run, there’s no limit to the ways it can extract rent from you. Blocking you from changing your device’s software lets a company run overt scams on you. For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.

But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legitimate purposes. That means that your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how that surveillance works, the manufacturer can be incredibly sloppy with all the personal info they gather:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html

All kinds of hidden anti-features can lurk in your DRM-locked car, protected from discovery, analysis and criticism by the illegality of bypassing the DRM. For example, Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away if you have a dispute about a late payment:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

DRM is a gun on the mantlepiece in Act I, and by Act III, it goes off, revealing some kind of ugly and often dangerous scam. Remember Dieselgate? Volkswagen created a line of demon-haunted cars: if they thought they were being scrutinized (by regulators measuring their emissions), they switched into a mode that traded performance for low emissions. But when they believed themselves to be unobserved, they reversed this, emitting deadly levels of NOX but delivering superior mileage.

The conversion of the VW diesel fleet into mobile gas-chambers wouldn’t have been possible without DRM. DRM adds a layer of serious criminal jeopardy to anyone attempting to reverse-engineer and study any device, from a phone to a car. DRM let Apple claim to be a champion of its users’ privacy even as it spied on them from asshole to appetite:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/

The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can’t attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded.

But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you’d immediately figure something was up. So your Telsa tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles.

But again, if the car continued to tell you it has 203 miles of range when it was about to run out of charge, you’d figure something was up pretty quick — like, the first time your car ran out of battery while the dashboard cheerily informed you that you had 203 miles of range left.

So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren’t getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue.

But there’s a new problem: drivers whose cars are rated for 353 miles but can’t go anything like that far on a full charge naturally assume that something is wrong with their cars, so they start calling Tesla service and asking to have the car checked over.

This creates a problem for Tesla: those service calls can cost the company $1,000, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s performing exactly as designed. So Tesla created its boldest fraud yet: a boiler-room full of anti-salespeople charged with convincing people that their cars weren’t broken.

This new unit — the “diversion team” — was headquartered in a Nevada satellite office, which was equipped with a metal xylophone that would be rung in triumph every time a Tesla owner was successfully conned into thinking that their car wasn’t defrauding them.

When a Tesla owner called this boiler room, the diverter would run remote diagnostics on their car, then pronounce it fine, and chide the driver for having energy-hungry driving habits (shades of Steve Jobs’s “You’re holding it wrong”):

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

The drivers who called the Diversion Team weren’t just lied to, they were also punished. The Tesla app was silently altered so that anyone who filed a complaint about their car’s range was no longer able to book a service appointment for any reason. If their car malfunctioned, they’d have to request a callback, which could take several days.

Meanwhile, the diverters on the diversion team were instructed not to inform drivers if the remote diagnostics they performed detected any other defects in the cars.

The diversion team had a 750 complaint/week quota: to juke this stat, diverters would close the case for any driver who failed to answer the phone when they were eventually called back. The center received 2,000+ calls every week. Diverters were ordered to keep calls to five minutes or less.

Eventually, diverters were ordered to cease performing any remote diagnostics on drivers’ cars: a source told Reuters that “Thousands of customers were told there is nothing wrong with their car” without any diagnostics being performed.

Predicting EV range is an inexact science as many factors can affect battery life, notably whether a journey is uphill or downhill. Every EV automaker has to come up with a figure that represents some kind of best guess under a mix of conditions. But while other manufacturers err on the side of caution, Tesla has the most inaccurate mileage estimates in the industry, double the industry average.

Other countries’ regulators have taken note. In Korea, Tesla was fined millions and Elon Musk was personally required to state that he had deceived Tesla buyers. The Korean regulator found that the true range of Teslas under normal winter conditions was less than half of the claimed range.

Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively — think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn’t merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being — but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren’t just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed — they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

Image ID [A scene out of an 11th century tome on demon-summoning called 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.' It depicts a demon tormenting two unlucky would-be demon-summoners who have dug up a grave in a graveyard. One summoner is held aloft by his hair, screaming; the other screams from inside the grave he is digging up. The scene has been altered to remove the demon's prominent, urinating penis, to add in a Tesla supercharger, and a red Tesla Model S nosing into the scene.]

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

8K notes · View notes

joeypetter · 1 year

Text

Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapeutics Market Opportunities, Revenue Analysis, Market Growth, Trends, Service and Forecast 2022 to 2030| By R&I

The report is titled as ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapeutics Market: Opportunity Analysis and Future Assessment 2020-2028’. An overview of conceptual frameworks, analytical approaches of the autism spectrum disorder therapeutics market is the main objective of the report, which further consists the market opportunity and insights of the data involved in the making of the respective market. Autism spectrum disorder therapeutics market is expected to grow with significant rate in the near future.

The global autism spectrum disorder therapeutics market in 2020 is estimated for more than US$ 2,757.8 Mn and expected to reach a value of US$ 6,345.8 Mn by 2028 with a significant CAGR of 11.0%.

Request a Sample Copy of this Report @: https://reportsandinsights.com/sample-request/1264

Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapeutics Introduction

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurological condition that disturbs the way a person behaves, communicates, and interacts with others, and learns. The developmental disorder emerges at the initial stage in childhood and lasts through the whole person's lifetime.

The autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is also commonly known as pervasive developmental disorders and Asperger syndrome. Noticeably, the spectrum word in the autism spectrum disorder denotes a wide range of signs and symptoms of people suffering from ASD.

The most common signs and symptoms observed in people with autism spectrum disorder are problems while communicating and interacting with others or they might face problems making eye-contact with someone, or they may also have repetitive behaviors and constricted interests.

Additionally, the causes of the neurological condition are not yet established although as per research, environmental or gene are considered the two factors that may cause the disorder. Along with that, there is no specific treatment approach for the autism spectrum disorder and various kinds of approaches such as dietary approach, behavioral approaches, early intervention, medication, and many more are likely to be appropriate therapeutics for the disorder.

Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapeutics Market Dynamics

The growing prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among the population all across the world is one of the major factors that is projected to accelerate the growth of the global autism spectrum disorder therapeutics market in the forthcoming future.

According to the estimates of CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, about 1 in 54 children has been recognized with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Along with that, the several organizations and government across the world is sponsoring awareness programs as well as offering abundant funding for the further research and development activities and enhancements of medical treatments that is positively contributing to the surging awareness among the population, specifically in developing areas around the globe. Attributing to which, the global autism spectrum disorder therapeutics market during the forecast timeframe.

In addition to that, the enormous research and development activities have resulted in numerous generic pharmaceutical products with regard to the neurological disorder treatment and pipeline drugs that are also projected to give a positive push to the growth of the global autism spectrum disorder therapeutics market in the coming years.

However, the inadequate skilled medical specialists and researchers, no standard treatment for ASD, and lack of awareness in few specific regions may hamper the growth of the global autism spectrum disorder therapeutics market in the near future.

MMC Overview on Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapeutics Market Report

The non-identical approach of Reports and Insights stands with conceptual methods backed up with the data analysis. The novel market understanding approach makes up the standard of the assessment results that give better opportunity for the customers to put their effort.

A research report on the Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapeutics market by Reports and Insights is an in-depth and extensive study of the market based on the necessary data crunching and statistical analysis. It provides a brief view of the dynamics flowing through the market, which includes the factors that supports market and the factors that are acting as impedance for the growth of the market.

Furthermore, the report includes the various trends and opportunities in the respective market in different regions for a better understanding of readers that helps to analyze the potential of the market.

Wish to Know More About the Study? Click here to get a Report Description: https://reportsandinsights.com/report/global-autism-spectrum-disorder-therapeutics-market

Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapeutics Market Segmentation

The autism spectrum disorder therapeutics market is segmented on the basis of drug type, age group, distribution channel, and region.

On Basis of Drug Type

Aripiprazole

Risperidone

Melatonin

CM-AT

Bumetanide

Balovaptan

By Age Group

Child

Adult

By Distribution Channel

Hospital Pharmacies

Retail Pharmacies

Online Purchase

By Region

North America

Latin America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East

Africa

Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapeutics Market Key Players

Some of the key participating players in autism spectrum disorder therapeutics market are

F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG

Neurim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Yamo Pharmaceuticals LLC

Servier Laboratories Ltd.

Otsuka Holdings Co. Ltd.

Curemark LLC

Oryzon Genomics S.A.

GW Pharmaceuticals Plc.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.

Zynerba Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Stalicla SA.

Novartis AG

Pfizer, Inc.

To view Top Players, Segmentation and other Statistics of Autism Spectrum Disorder Therapeutics Industry, Get Sample Report @: https://reportsandinsights.com/sample-request/1264

About Reports and Insights:

Reports and Insights is one of the leading market research companies which offers syndicate and consulting research around the globe. At Reports and Insights, we adhere to the client needs and regularly ponder to bring out more valuable and real outcomes for our customers. We are equipped with strategically enhanced group of researchers and analysts that redefines and stabilizes the business polarity in different categorical dimensions of the market.

Neil Jonathan

1820 Avenue M, Brooklyn

NY 11230, United States

+1-(718) 312-8686

Find Us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/report-and-insights/

View Latest Market Updates At: https://marketsresearchanalytics.com

0 notes

riding-the-sunset-bird · 3 months

Text

A character reference based on all four Steps of Our Life! It's only "sort of" a height reference as well since obviously they're not 100% accurate (the devs don't have specific heights for everyone to my knowledge).

I did dig into the code to try and get characters at their "normal" heights but there are other matters at play too (example: Nicolas is obviously "taller" than he should be because he needs to be pushed upwards to be visible enough above the game's text box; likewise with other very short characters).

Still, this should serve as either a nice reference guide for every character or a "height reference" in the sense of getting an idea of which characters are shorter/taller than others.

I'm also going to detail some extra notes below the break, including posts from GB Patch's Tumblr that reference any defined heights (with Cove being the obvious one) or general height things, as well as some more stuff about the MC's height in comparison to the three love interests depending on what you pick.

Cove's height is listed on GB Patch's FAQ as 4' 1" in Step 1 (also stated as "mostly average, perhaps a bit on the short side"), 5' 4" in Step 2 (in-game this is defined as "very tall" on the MC's potential height spectrum, as that is the only option considered on par with Cove's height), 6' 0" in Step 3, and 6' 4" in Step 4. A fun fact is that Cove's final height was originally 6' 3" (191cm) instead.

Derek in Step 2 is under five feet tall (this post also lists Cove as "around 5 and a half feet tall" which you could take as either close enough to 5' 4" as stated above or a potential original height he had that got changed). In-game, he's "short" but not "very short", as having your MC be "very short" will prompt narration telling you that you're shorter than Derek, whereas "short" only has you relate to him in smolness generally.

Step 4 Derek is "mostly average." He wouldn't be considered tall nor would he be considered short. His youngest brother Nicolas will "probably end up as a similar height to him" once he's more grown up.

Step 4 Baxter is "taller than average, but not especially tall."

I've been informed that, on the Our Life Patreon Discord, Step 4 Derek's height is listed as 5' 9" (175cm) whereas Step 4 Baxter's is listed as 5' 11" (180cm), so those are their defined heights. Before that, both of their heights had jumped around somewhat. A post from 2019 said that Derek was 5' 11", but a post from June 2021 said that Baxter was 5' 11" and Derek was 5' 9" (so consistent with the Discord). Then there's also another post from July 2021 (you'll have to scroll down for this one) that listed Baxter at around 5' 10" while Derek was 5' 8"/5' 9". If you're insane enough to try and use the character reference too, then Baxter would actually be around 6'1" at minimum since he's taller than Step 3 Cove (though you could also make the same argument that this means the mom trio of Pamela, Noelani, and Kyra must be decently tall as well since they're so close to Cove on the character reference).

I don't have any experience with GB Patch's other game, XOXO Droplets, so I don't know what ages the characters are in it, but since both Shiloh and Jeremy are characters seen visibly in Our Life, I thought I'd also mention that they're listed as 5' 10" and 5' 5" (or 5' 5 1/2") respectively in XOXO Droplets. Jeremy also apparently grows to 5' 8" in his 20s and he's 22 in the Our Life Cove Wedding DLC (I don't think this is spoken of in the game specifically but he's labeled as 22 in the code).

As for the MC and how their height plays into things, "tall" and "very tall" as well as "short" and "very short" tend to be considered the same for the most part in the game's code. It's not that there isn't a difference at all (I would say it's still notable), it's just that sometimes the game may be more vague about height differences. My post about Errands references this where you don't need more athletic points due to being "very short" instead of "short" to give Cove a piggyback ride.

A guesstimate I'd make is that about 5% of the time, the game will take note of whether you're "very tall" instead of "tall" or "very short" instead of "short." Otherwise, you're either "generally tall," "average," or "generally short." There are also other instances (usually with Cove) where the game might just check if you're either generally tall (around Cove's height) or not generally tall (i.e: definitely shorter than him).

This is actually relevant to the heights because, following all above information, one would assume that Step 4 Derek is average, Step 4 Baxter is tall, and Step 4 Cove is very tall going off the MC's potential "height spectrum" of very short, short, average, tall, and very tall, but it's not entirely the case.

A "tall" MC (generally tall) will look "down" at Step 4 Baxter just as he will look "up" at them or they'll look directly at each other if the MC is "average," same as Step 3 Baxter, but--

when the game has any instance of differentiating between "tall" and "very tall" (they never do this for Step 3 Baxter so the base assumption would have to be that he's just average height), things change.

During Baxter's apology in the wedding of his Step 4, Baxter dips his chin to look at the MC if they're "short"/"very short," levels his chin to look at the MC if they're "average"/"tall," and then lifts his chin to look at the MC if they're "very tall." A generally tall MC still has to lean down to kiss him if they choose to do so though.

Also, during the intimacy scene with Baxter (either in his office or his living room), if the MC is "very short," "short," or "average," it states that Baxter is taller than them. If they're "very tall," then Baxter is shorter than them, but a "tall" MC is "almost the exact same height" as him.

This is all a really long-winded way of saying that GB Patch referring to Step 4 Baxter being "taller than average but not especially tall" might mean that he's some infuriating middle ground between average and tall where he's not quite one but not quite the other either (which honestly is very Baxter of him so I can't even be mad).

#type: helpful #type: cracking the cove #our life #olba #our life: beginnings & always #((If you line up the images yourself then make sure the height of the original images are all the same))#((I don't know if Tumblr squished any.))#((Let me know if I'm missing anyone!))#((I know there's Step 3 Jeremy and someone named Cala in Derek's Step 4 (haven't gotten there yet)))#((but you only see those two on the phone so there is no ''default'' position/size for them.))#((Also I was worried that Tumblr would eat the quality if I uploaded such long images))#((so I separated Steps 2 and 3 and 4 into multiple images.))#((Hopefully that's fine; if you line them up side-by-side it still works out.))#((Me feeling so exposed because now how I design my Coves is here for everyone to see.))#((Feel free to judge my bias towards the color blue.))

607 notes · View notes

adventuringblind · 6 months

Note

Hey! I really like your work with the blind reader and was hoping to request another in which she is Charles's sister and he introduces her to some of the grid for the first time. Thanks!

Love is Blind

Lando Norris x Reader Charles Leclerc x Sister Reader

Summary: Charles brings his sister to the grid, and Lando takes an interest

Warnings: fan hate to Lando, reader is born blind

Notes: Remeber that blindness is a spectrum!!

Masterlist

It's not that she doesn't love her brother and his sport. It's just overwhelming sometimes to get questions from fans.

She's been blind her entire life. Lived by sound and feel as guiding tools. It's something she's come to learn to use and make a life regardless.

She lives in Monaco with her mother. Often going out to Charles' apartment to visit and spend time with him.

When he started his 2019 season, he wanted her to come with his to races. Charles just wanted his baby sister around something she enjoys. Plus, the smell of petrol and the sound of engines has always been her favorite.

Charles takes her to her first GP away from home later that year. Monaco is the only one she's been to, and even then, she simply stays away from the garages.

It was overwhelming like she thought it would be. The fans took her to her nicely over social media's. But it's much different having them trying to get near her in the open world.

She slowly made small appearances and began meeting a few of the other drivers on the grid.

However, it wasn't until 2021 that she met Lando norris. The beginning of that season, when she was allowed to come with Charles again, was chaotic, to say the least. She couldn't read lips because of the masks, and it was entirely too difficult to see. The circumstances which led to their meeting.

She was attempting to manage her way through the paddock when she ran into him. He recognized her while she was left to struggle with his identity.

Turns out for two clumsy gigly people, life seems to move by with ease when their around each other. Charles was certainly happy to see she had made a friend. Especially one that he knew would take care around her.

It wasn't long until Lando asked her out. Their first date was close to home and quiet. And it was perfect for them. They didn't need the glamor of the world; simply each other.

Unfortunately, the world always deems it neccecary to weigh in with their opinions. For her and Lando, they deemed it wrong. That Lando couldn't be good for her due to his distracted nature.

Charles becomes the couples saving grace. He may not be assertive with his team, but he'll sure as hell be assertive when it comes to his sister.

They'd been together an entire year, and the fans were still not relenting. She could tell it was taking a toll on the Brit. She simply wanted to make the fans stop saying he wasn't good for her.

On a particularly hard day during fan meetings during a race weekend, Lando seemed to be in the middle of a storm. He couldn't get away from it. So Charles had to do something.

He made it a point to walk with the two and yell obnoxiously over every comment. Not a sound was able to make it through when he was continually interrupting the people talking shit.

Needless to say that Charles became their biggest fan and protector.

465 notes · View notes

xxlovelynovaxx · 1 month

Text

This is gonna wait a bit to come out of drafts, but I'm actually spitting mad at that exchange between me and another user about the distinction between assigned sex and assigned gender. Despite bending over backwards to avoid upsetting them or making them defensive, as an intersex person, I felt like they downplayed the significance of how assigned sex at birth is weaponized as a form of violence against both intersex and trans people.

So I'm going to state now. AGAB and ASAB are treated as the same thing much of the time, but will be used however works to enforce both sex and gender conformity. Even if perisex trans people - and typically those who have a dyadic-passing body - only experience the weaponization of assigned gender most of the time, intersex people experience both regularly. "Male" and "female" may frequently be used as adjectives meaning "man" and "woman" to be transphobic, but they are used entirely differently to enforce intersexism and altersexism, and some other forms of exorsexism.

As much as I hope someday that perisex male and perisex female will be treated as just areas within the spectrum of sex, they currently ARE different from intersex variations. I don't even disagree that bodies shouldn't be sexed OR gendered, and we should just refer to specific body parts, outside of contexts of intersex oppression.

How hard is it to listen to an intersex person who is saying "actually, people are assigned a sex at birth, it's just that if you're not intersex, you don't face violence about it and in fact benefit from it and hold privilege over intersex people"?!

How hard is it, when someone extremely gently says "okay actually, ASAB as a concept does exist and is important; but you're right that ASAB and AGAB are conflated, that sex itself is gendered because of the conflation of the two, and that both are used to uphold intersexism AND transphobia"?

How freaking hard is it, when I say "yes, but", when I'm AGREEING that AGAB is a thing, a thing that does massive harm - that "but I'm referring to your physical sex" is a bunch of bullshit - that yes in usage male and female are often used to refer to gender rather than sex, to acknowledge that assigned sex can ALSO be a problem?

How hard is it to acknowledge that assigned sex is a form of (colonial, often racist, intersexist, often transphobic, exorsexist) violence, that is as harmful and at least as prevalent as that of assigned gender?

How hard is it to let go of the idea that assigned gender is the only thing that exists or matters, just because you've universalized your own experiences?

If they are intersex, I am not aware of it, and would still like to point out that intersex people too have a wide variety of experiences. I, for example, have only experienced coercive hormonal suppression of my intersex variation, at ages 9-12 and 18-23 (if I have said before that it was only in adulthood, it's because most of us don't have access to pre-2021 memories due to trauma). I have not, to my knowledge, experienced nonconsensual surgery - it's still possible that I did especially given my infant (specific type of related) trauma, but given my early life history I am unlikely to EVER be able to find record of such.

(Being honest, I've suspected it more and more lately, but I still will not consider myself an authority on the subject or that specific kind of survivor without at least more evidence of such.)

Anyway, point being, even as an intersex person, it is possible to have assigned sex weaponized to various extents, and not consistently, either. Some people may have very visible intersex traits and have been lucky in not facing too much intersexism, while others may have more covert variations and faces extremely violent intersexism.

But is it really that hard to say "huh, I hadn't considered that viewpoint, if people of the [oppressed sex group] are saying that assigned sex is a thing and even that it also affects the people of [oppressed gender group] and how assigned gender is used to hurt us, maybe I should listen"?!

I just... just talking about how it's used in the context of assigned gender when responding to someone talking about other uses, and even asserting that the assigned gender type is the "primary" usage? Estimated numbers when including medically debated but community-accepted intersex variations put us at potentially ten percent or more of the population, so is that really the road you want to go down? because your claim might be revealed very simply as anecdotal bias.

I mean.

"we aren't assigned sexes. we are assigned genders based on our sexes, unless our sex is "too ambiguous"."

To start with, intersex variations are more than sex being "too ambiguous", and in fact precisely because so many intersex people have seemingly dyadic sex organs at birth, even those who don't undergo coercive infant surgery are often wrongfully assigned a dyadic sex at birth, and then forced to conform to that sex if their intersex variation at any point becomes apparent in any way. Often, if the intersex variation is not apparent in specific gendered ways, things like genetic results will be hidden from people by doctors so that they won't find out they're intersex.

And.

"just because society tried constructing sex and gender as the same thing doesn't mean that a group that is harmed by that idea has to promote it, you know."

Yeah, the solution to that is not "actually all terms used to refer to sex are basically only used for gender. It's harmful to conflate sex with gender so I'm going to pretend that everyone does it and talk about how assigned sex and sex terms are actually just assigned gender and gender terms. Well, primarily, since I have to acknowledge someone whose experiences directly contradict that, but they're an outlier and don't need to be counted. I'm not conflating sex and gender, I'm just saying that sex isn't a category that really exists in any meaningful way and is so heavily gendered that sex is really just gender.

Okay, maybe the outlier part is too snarky and not entirely accurate, but that's what it feels like.

I mean, the worst part is, I agree with most of what they're saying. I think "perisex" is a more important distinction from intersex than "male and female". I agree that bodies shouldn't be arbitrarily genderwd OR sexed and that ideas like "male and female hormones" are not only extremely reductive but are so to the point of often being actively incorrect, even within the context of the purely prescriptivist medical usage of male and female for sex specifically!

I even like the idea of using wolffian and mullerian to make it clear that they're simply two areas within a wider spectrum. I agree that sex terms are heavily gendered, though crucially one of the things I mentioned is knowing plenty of people who don't use them that way!

"Actually I know plenty of people who don't conflate sex and gender, and use sex as a descriptivist identity separate from gender."

"Okay but most people use male and female to mean man and woman".

Even if that's true, you're missing all of my whole points!

I just... am tired of feeling pushed aside as an intersex person, even when attempting to pander to presumed perisex egos. Is it really that hard just to make an individual who is of an identity that in my personal experience is more erased than my own, trans, nonbinary, and aspec identities collectively feel listened to?

We blocked them, which honestly I feel bad for. We were triggered and a protector did it and I don't feel comfortable undoing it, because of how badly triggered we were and how deeply unable we felt to express our own upset without them reacting emotionally in a hurtful way.

That could be the trauma speaking, but as we told our partner, "if you put up a hand to be like 'whoa hey wait a second' and someone pushes back lightly in response, it's pretty rare that escalating and saying 'hey! that's not okay!' will get them to back off and apologize. There's cases where it can make someone realize that you're serious about something important to you, but usually those cases require them already knowing you well enough to both recognize that and care."

Idk, it's not like they did anything so terrible. Like I said, I agree with them for the most part. Maybe I'm as angry at myself for not being able to be more firm and assertive about something that's critical to the oppression I face. I dunno, y'know?

But I just... I can't stand it. And as a brief aside, I feel like I'm living in a funhouse mirror upside-down world. I just got into an argument and blocked someone for saying that gender isn't actually a real intrinsic identity and that it's simply a social construct typically expressed through changing the actual concrete identity of sex, and now this, a discussion of how assigned sex isn't actually a real identity and that it's just the social construct of assigned gender and just.

SEX AND GENDER ARE BOTH SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS AND INNATE INTRINSIC IDENTITIES THAT ARE THEMSELVES DESCRIPTIVIST AND THEREFORE CANNOT BE PRESCRIPTIVELY APPLIED BASED ON ANY OUTWARD TRAITS OF BODY OR PRESENTATION!

You can basically identify as any gender or any sex for any reason. You can identify as male or female or other as a trans man, woman, or nonbinary person. You can pursue sex nonconformity but identify as male or female, or you can conform to a dyadic sex but not identify as either (such as identifying as altersex) for various reasons.

Someday, if we achieve true transhumanism, we might even be able to change any aspect of sex at any time, from the microscopic to macroscopic level.

Right now, we're stuck with a bunch of bullshit of people trying to shove two massive roughly bimodal distributions into two binaries that they don't fit into at all, and the resulting violence at people who defy and resist being shoved.

The trans community has as much a problem with intersexism as any other community, so maybe that's just why I have an expectation that especially when a fucking trans intersex person says "hey actually assigned sex does exist and it's intersexist and transphobic", that the bare minimum response should not be "but actually people mostly use male and female to mean man and woman so assigned gender is more of a thing and more harmful and actually sex is so gendered that most people don't actually mean assigned sex when talking about it".

Because I'm telling you that plenty DO actually mean sex, and that it's harmful, and the gendering of sex disproportionately affects intersex people. I think expecting someone to listen and not to essentially go "well okay but, I'm right about it just mainly being assigned gender" - to not argue however politely and speak over intersex voices... well, it's not fucking unreasonable!

I know that was not their intent, and honestly, that makes it worse. Because not being able to take criticism from intersex people when being intersexist, quite honestly, means you have the same impact as purposely intersexist people and makes you just as unwilling to change, but you get "credit" from other perisex people for "trying" despite not really doing so at all.

The fact that it's so subtle, and so "polite", the fact that if I assertively and vocally disagree I know to expect the majority of people to get angry and cruel and more overt with their intersexism, the fact that it's deflection and a lack of acknowledgement more than outright denial... well, I guess the closest word would be "microaggressions".

Used to make minorities look and feel "crazy" for being upset since oppression first existed. (Fucking reclaimed, btw. Don't @ me).

I dunno. I'm not eloquent. I'm a seething intersex person who doesn't have nice little words to appease people about this. It doesn't matter anyway. This is literally about how people didn't listen when I was nice about it, so who is gonna stop listening just because I'm mad about it?

Honestly, I think I'm most mad that - not once did they actually even say the word intersexism. Not once did they respond in a way that even acknowledged what I was saying about that, or my identity as an intersex person even. Not once did they even say "okay yeah I don't have experience with (this kind of) intersexism, my experience is of it being primarily used this way". Not once did they not only not express that their experience might not be universal, but that intersex people even face oppression for their sex. There was a token mention of intersex people at the beginning that didn't even include most intersex people, based on a misconception of what being intersex is.

At every opportunity, they redirected it back to the gendering of sex and using sex terms as gendered terms and even the idea that bodies shouldn't be gendered at all... all while never addressing the actual thing I was saying.

All while ignoring assigned sex as it pertains to intersexism and continuing to insist that only assigned gender was a thing, while not actually taking intersex experiences into account.

It's just... I don't fucking know. Just fucking listen to intersex people. Whatever.

#intersexism #exorsexism #gender #AGAB #ASAB #intersex

199 notes · View notes