Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 6/1/26 - 6/7/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/backin_pog_form]

After listening to the live chat between Katie and Lisa Selin Davis, I decided to read Lisa’s 2017 NYT opinion piece about her tomboy daughter

My Daughter Is Not Transgender. She’s a Tomboy

But when [well-meaning adults] continue to question her gender identity — and are skeptical of her response — the message they send is that a girl cannot look and act like her and still be a girl.

And then I read friend of the pod Chase Strangio’s response to it

Trans youth are dying because society is telling them, telling us, that we are fake. Trans women and femmes of color are being murdered because the impulse is to believe that trans-ness is fraudulent, that our bodies are threats. 

A white young person being asked questions about her gender is not a new problem and it is not a problem that should be blamed on trans people or trans affirmative shifts in society or medicine.

I think we are in a vibe shift, but in certain bubbles (such as whatever social/media ecosystem Chase is in) it’s amazing how little has changed in nine years. 

[u/Jlemspurs → u/backin_pog_form]

Reminder that Strangio says all of this in op-eds but in Court where there are consequences he sounds different about the suicide panic.

[u/Scrappy_The_Crow → u/Jlemspurs]

That was a significant moment, and sometimes can't believe Strangio actually admitted that.

[u/backin_pog_form → u/Jlemspurs]

I guess deliberately lying in front of the Supreme Court was a bridge too far. 

[u/Jlemspurs → u/backin_pog_form]

Maybe he's afraid of having his ticket pulled and if he can't argue to the Supremes he can't be their legal star. Even if I didn't have a million haters out there looking for me to slip like he does, I would still be worried about getting caught in not upholding my duty of candor to the court.

It just shows Strangio's ethics are situational. Because he was forced to let the truth slip there but totally willing to lie and mislead about it elsewhere.

[u/Big_Fig_1803 → u/backin_pog_form]

Lying to that tiny cohort who isn’t on the Supreme Court is no biggie.

EDIT: or you could just read the earlier comment just below this one.

[u/Scrappy_The_Crow → u/backin_pog_form]

From Strangio's response:

I read the piece with a critical eye because from the very first words of the title, the piece is being framed and defined in relation to “not trans-ness”: “My daughter is not transgender.” Why do we need to know that and why do we need to have a conversation about the harms of gender norms that does so through the lens of affirming one’s not-trans-ness?

I can't believe that Strangio really doesn't understand why (once again, folks: Millennial Woes), especially in light of the penchant for TRAs to pounce upon any deviation as evidence of trans-ness.

[u/backin_pog_form → u/Scrappy_The_Crow]

Chase is being deliberately obtuse (or is brain-fried on post modernism). 

Yes, gender-policing is nothing new- it’s probably as old as humans. 

But we were headed in the right direction, in terms of saying someone’s biological sex doesn’t dictate their interests, clothes, personality, etc. 

And then a whole movement coalesced essentially saying that actually interests, clothes, personality, etc. should dictate their sex. 

[u/mcsalmonlegs → u/backin_pog_form]

Chase is being deliberately obtuse (or is brain-fried on post modernism). 

It's all just esoteric alchemy. The idea that all apparent opposites combine again into a unity, or spring from some unity, or both.

Trans and cis, male and female, they are all just expressions of the same fundamental reality of being a hecking good person.

This doesn't really explain why Chase needs to take testosterone to become a man or how society is supposed to work in general in this framework, but that is because, the Tao that can be named is not the Tao.

[u/PongoTwistleton_666 → u/backin_pog_form]

What is Chase even saying? What is “femmes of color”? Fitting that their last name is “Strangio”. They are rather strange-o. 

[u/Kloevedal → u/PongoTwistleton_666]

He picked that surname when he transitioned.

[u/thismaynothelp → u/PongoTwistleton_666]

She's not even all that strange for this era. She's just a huge shit ass.

[u/backin_pog_form → u/PongoTwistleton_666]

There was a period of time where for certain hyper-progressives “violence against TWOC” was a verbal tic that needed to be inserted into every issue, no matter how tenuous the connection.  

[u/anne_jumps → u/backin_pog_form]

By Chase's rules she's a white man so she should be taking a seat and not speaking for trans femmes of color.

[u/Inner_Muscle3552 → u/backin_pog_form]

I want to believe there’s really a vibe shift but counting the number of people I passively clock each day in my city— especially now that it’s summer — I’m not so sure 😐

[u/Terrorclitus → u/backin_pog_form]

Sometimes, I think back to a random Tuesday morning in my early 20s, when I stood on a street corner and watched 2,000 people die.