I think the UK trans debate has teased out the sticking points for feminists, and it might be useful to lay them out given that the battle in the US, with a very different legislative environment, is just starting.

The GRA of 2004 gave trans people the ability to change legal sex via a GRC, but only if they had a psychiatric diagnosis of dysphoria and only after having lived in role for 2 years. The spousal veto gave spouses a chance to annul or obtain a favourable divorce.
While this ultimately created the loophole in women's rights that we've been fighting against in the last few years, it catered for a tiny number of dysphoric transsexuals and so did not have an enormous impact.
Discussions with trans friends and allies make it clear that, although surgery wasn't a requirement for a GRC, the diagnostic procedures were expected to trap and exclude males who did not want surgery, thereby preventing fetishists and opportunists from exploiting a GRC.
The Equality Act of 2010 defined the various protected characteristics, including both sex and 'gender reassignment', and provided for sex-based exemptions, under the auspices of which it is legal to exclude trans people from some single-sex spaces and services.
The campaign to reform the GRA to remove medical gatekeeping and make changing gender a matter of self-id was where women put our foot down. The GRA gave a very limited group of MtF transsexuals access to our spaces. Self-id would have made this any man who said he was a woman.
In addition, transactivists were demanding the removal of sex-based exemptions from the Equality Act. This would have left women with no ability to exclude males from any space on any basis, thereby removing every protection gained in the last century of feminism.
This is the effect of self-identified 'gender identity' (the ideological concept on which this rides) combined with the deliberate conflation of gender identity with sex. There is no possible point at which women can draw a line.
Our resistance to this campaign was successful; I think most people recognise that it isn't reasonable to allow any male to identify into women's spaces on his say-so. It was, however, self-id which was rejected, leaving women's rights open to further attacks.
Transactivists claim that the current process for obtaining a GRC is invasive and onerous, and continue to push for a reform they claim is 'merely administrative' (this doesn't gel with the attacks on the Eq2010 sex-based exemptions, though: https://t.co/MpxjXv5IoL)
They use the struggles of dysphoric people as a weapon, and by pushing back against self-id we replicate this. Personally I think the best place to attack the ideology is on the conflation of gender identity with sex: https://t.co/zN0ziAZzyM.
This means that we say yes to all the demands of transactivists *except* the one which conflates TW with W, which effectively forces the declaration of a third (and possibly fourth) gender and the provision of facilities for them.
It means we're onboard with self-id, access to medical care, non-discrimination, ability to serve in the military etc, which of course we should be in any case. We do NOT want to get gaslit into a kneejerk rejection of anything trans, which makes us sound like rightwingers.
BUT it also means we insist on a positive, sex-based definition of woman, and force TRAs to show their hand. We know perfectly well what we're dealing with here; we want to force them to demonstrate to the public that their agenda is access to women's spaces, not trans rights.
This worked like a bomb when the UK govt provided a trans prison wing so they could remove MtFs from the female estate. The squawking and wailing about being 'othered' and 'caged' was epic, and Joe Public went "Yeah, right."
Basically it's a position which says: you're free to have a gender identity. You're not free to tell me *I* have a gender identity. And you are definitely not free to tell me that your gender identity is in any way comparable to my sex.

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We finally have the U.S. Citizenship Act Bill Text! I'm going to go through some portions of the bill right now and highlight some of the major changes and improvements that it would make to our immigration system.

Thread:


First the Bill makes a series of promises changes to the way we talk about immigrants and immigration law.

Gone would be the term "alien" and in its place is "noncitizen."

Also gone would be the term "alienage," replaced with "noncitizenship."


Now we get to the "earned path to citizenship" for all undocumented immigrants present in the United States on January 1, 2021.

Under this bill, anyone who satisfies the eligibility criteria for a new "lawful prospective immigrant status" can come out of the shadows.


So, what are the eligibility criteria for becoming a "lawful prospective immigrant status"? Those are in a new INA 245G and include:

- Payment of the appropriate fees
- Continuous presence after January 1, 2021
- Not having certain criminal record (but there's a waiver)


After a person has been in "lawful prospective immigrant status" for at least 5 years, they can apply for a green card, so long as they still pass background checks and have paid back any taxes they are required to do so by law.

However! Some groups don't have to wait 5 years.

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I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.


I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.

In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.

So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.

Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
First thread of the year because I have time during MCO. As requested, a thread on the gods and spirits of Malay folk religion. Some are indigenous, some are of Indian origin, some have Islamic


Before I begin, it might be worth explaining the Malay conception of the spirit world. At its deepest level, Malay religious belief is animist. All living beings and even certain objects are said to have a soul. Natural phenomena are either controlled by or personified as spirits

Although these beings had to be respected, not all of them were powerful enough to be considered gods. Offerings would be made to the spirits that had greater influence on human life. Spells and incantations would invoke their


Two known examples of such elemental spirits that had god-like status are Raja Angin (king of the wind) and Mambang Tali Arus (spirit of river currents). There were undoubtedly many more which have been lost to time

Contact with ancient India brought the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism to SEA. What we now call Hinduism similarly developed in India out of native animism and the more formal Vedic tradition. This can be seen in the multitude of sacred animals and location-specific Hindu gods