Mystery Babylon @erosdiscordia@hackers.town

Now is the time.

Please get a passport.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports.html

You need:
The Passport application form
Evidence of US citizenship (such as a birth certificate)
ID (such as a driver's license)
A qualifying photo (drugstores do them)
Fees

The cost (only checks and money orders):
~ Passport renewal: $130
~ First Passport: $130 + $35 execution fee
(optional) Expedited service: $60
(optional) 1-2 Day Delivery: $18.32

If you need to change your name, gender marker, or replace a lost passport, there's a few extra forms, that you can download online.

You have to apply in person if this is your first US passport, or if your last one was issued more than 15 years ago.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/apply-in-person.html

You can renew your passport online, if you already have one, less than 15 years old:

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/have-passport/renew.html

Here's the Passport application form:

https://pptform.state.gov/?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

If you're pressed for money, it can be worth getting a Passport Card asap, and then applying for an additional Passport Book later.

The cards are accepted for travel by land or sea to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda or the Caribbean. They are much cheaper, only $30 plus the $35 execution fee (though you can't get the 1-2 Day Delivery option). These will NOT be accepted for international air travel.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html

If you are a trans person with a complicated identity document situation, National Center for Transgender Equality has a resource by state to help look for requirements.

https://transequality.org/documents

Passport turnaround times are better than the mid-pandemic delays, but they are still longer than they should be. Which means applying NOW will get the thing to your mailbox probably by summer 2022.

Good luck.

I have a few reflections and advice on the 5-year anniversary of coming out as transgender:

1. The best piece of advice I got: "Your transition belongs to you." There are no true rules in this. You don't even have to transition, and you certainly don't have to transition to anything established, or understandable to anyone else.

There are no objective body schedules or social milestones. You are free to make up WHATEVER you want. And you are free to push for your standards to be respected and assisted. Transition belongs to you.

Outside of hard-and-fast medical numbers and safety guidelines (real physical safety, not gatekeeping bullshit), you'll encounter invisible rails attempting to direct your experience. It's alright to oppose this, and to call them out. But the core of your experience is your own, and that can't be taken away.

1/?

(boosts of this thread are ok)

For any trans people who need to hear this:

Your body is beautiful. You're worthy of being desired, if that's something you want.

Whether you choose to transition (and in whatever direction you want), and wherever you are in that process -- you're seen, you are believed, and I'm proud to be your sibling.

When you look in the mirror, you deserve to hear, "Hey, Beautiful." If you don't hear it in your voice, hear it in mine.

Your strength is incredible. You come from a long tradition of transgender people, stretching back to the earliest days of humanity.

Let the haters shout into the void. You don't need to. The Void already loves you. ✨​

(cis people please boost)

Sometimes I wonder whether people will get tired of me posting "Mo Dao Zu Shi / Untamed" fan wanking on main.

But how could you really mind?

"Christian fascism is right here, right now: After Roe, can we finally see it?"

By Chris Hedges

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/28/christian-fascism-is-right-here-right-now-after-roe-can-we-finally-see-it/

The Supreme Court -- judging by their recent decisions -- are practically telegraphing what they will rule on Moore v. Harper.

It draws on arguments that were used to award Bush II the Presidency in 2000, despite Gore having won the popular vote.

Clarence Thomas, now the senior associate justice of the Court, helped write that 2000 decision. Think his mind has changed?

If I were a paranoid man, I'd say the recent ICBM-level decisions the court has handed down have acted as planned cover for this news.

The court comes back in October, and will likely rule on the case next June.

Still plenty of time to get a passport.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-apply.html

Essentially, the holes and weak points of Trump's 2020 coup have had a year and a half to be addressed by billionaires (and the legislators and judges they've bought), and they are already mostly filled-in now.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/06/justices-will-hear-case-that-tests-power-of-state-legislatures-to-set-rules-for-federal-elections/

This is a chilling thread by Thom Hartmann detailing exactly how the 2024 presidential election will be stolen:

https://twitter.com/Thom_Hartmann/status/1543079225254559744

It's basically 1/2 the plots that didn't quite work for Trump in 2020, and 1/2 an upcoming decision by a captured, rogue Supreme Court.

Boosts appreciated.

Also, it'll be DeSantis, and he is far worse than Trump.

Narcissexual: when a person doesn't care what gender thy sleep with, as long as it gives them narc fuel.

Often seen with their wingman, a person who acts as a Cringe Lightning Rod.

The second half of his memoir dwells a lot on the ways that the Nazi system deliberately manufactured a sense of guilty complicitness in the average unwilling German person.

The system the party was building took national psychology well into account, including the particular psychology of those it knew would have been dissenters.

It doesn't excuse anyone, and the author knows this. He doesn't spend much time at all trying to explain himself as an individual -- only to show how the Nazi's social tactics worked.

I think one of the most interesting things about his memoir, is that he psychologically catalogued so many of the different ways non-activist people coped, as the rising social pressure of Nazism pushed them here or there.

You really get the sense that a ton of 1930s Germans weren't into it at all, but didn't quite know what to do.

They were like us.

In a lot of ways, I think the map on the left -- the lighter one -- is the story a lot of us have been telling ourselves about this society with regards to many social aspects, not just abortion care.

Especially for people who live in the "lighter" areas. It's easy to fall into the habit of believing that just because the USA is a "purple" country politically, that it would continue to operate like one, on the local level.

It never really did.

Now it sure as fuck won't. I think we're already in a phase where "Red", "Blue", "Purple" don't matter. That's over.

There is "free" and "trapped", that's about it.This is a hostile invasion from within the country.

Also understand that map on the right effectually looks MUCH redder now for:

• poor women

• women of color

• disabled women

• ill women

• trans men & non-binary people

• people in abusive relationships

• others without access to a car, money to travel, childcare, and time off work.

You know...a lot of the demographics that might seek an abortion, for those very reasons...

Take some time to digest this map, and sit with the reality that "red" will likely very soon NOT just stand for "difficult to get an abortion".

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/24/abortion-laws-by-state-map-clinics

Boosts appreciated.

It isn't public domain, but it should be:

Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner

It isn't about what people did back then to fight -- there are amazing books for that, too.

This one is a memoir about how it felt to see what was being lost, and also what was coming.

Free PDF:

https://ufile.io/f8yqqbh0

I've said for years that trans care (medical, social, political) is a canary in the coal mine of bodily autonomy and privacy rights -- which are themselves a bellwether of fascism's rise.

Too often, they get treated as an add-on, easy come easy go, nice-to-have sort of social justice goal.

Trans care and rights are about as close to the axle of freedom as you can get.

Do we own ourselves, and if not, who does?

Do we contain intrinsic potential -- and therefore rights -- or are we blank slates, to be stuffed into a cannon or a capitalist death-machine, depending on era?

Bless your heart if you don't feel, in your bones, that what happens to trans people and to women now won't determine the course of your life, too, from here on out.

Also also:

Beware of any liberal or "leftist" ally using things like "pronouns", "public bathrooms", or "girls sports" as bywords for "distractions from the real issue", even if that real issue is abortion rights.

It's misguided at best, an unquestioned transphobic psy-ops more likely.

It's part of a concerted effort to keep trans care in the "frivolous-luxury" column in most people's minds. And to make trans people look like we have bad judgment on priorities, therefore deserving of marginalization.

Call it out when you see it, even if you like the speaker.

Also, trans care is next.

There are a ton of trans guys in the deepest parts of the South.

They might look like girls.

They have to.

Please let them know you remember them, and that your offers to help can center them when needed.

Gentle reminder that abortion access is DEFINITELY an LGBTQ+ issue. This moment has a lot of cis-het female voices, and it should, but the immediate ramifications are going to hit anyone with a uterus -- lesbian and bi cis women, trans men, nonbinary people.

It's also going to affect all femme people, with and without uteruses. It will change the way they are treated and looked at by others, consciously or subconsciously.

That is part of the point of this judicial regression.

Include the concerns of all trans and nonbinary people in your activism for abortion rights, please. Especially those of pre-transition trans men. This group needs to be vocally and specifically included in calls for activism.

Forcing those guys to go through with pregnancies isn't just cruel, it's going to be an actual suicide trigger for some. Believe me.

They are more at risk from this legislation than the average person is. And they will have exponentially fewer resources, and exponentially fewer people to help them -- as usual.

Boosts appreciated.

Reddit's Childfree sub has a user-compiled list of sterilization-friendly doctors in the US, with reviews, organized by state and city.

There's also an International section.

https://www.reddit.com/r/childfree/wiki/doctors

Boosts welcome.

If you have some extra $$$, Planned Parenthood is probably going to need it even more.

https://www.weareplannedparenthood.org/onlineactions/cOJVhOyrzkq4uBcxVekXFA2

They work extremely closely with Planned Parenthood, in a slightly different niche.

National Abortion Federation provides abortion training to doctors and nurses, including midwives.

They also have a hotline to help individuals access funding for abortions.

They're actively working on being trans-inclusive, training clinic escorts and security, and getting shuttered clinics re-opened.

They have some information for Central and South America clinics, too.

https://prochoice.org

I worked there while in DC. They're an amazing group, even if my boss was a terror. :)

Boosts ok.