Archives negatively in the news !

[Paolo]

All right, now that I’ve cooled off and have time to get back to this thread, here goes.

First of all, I should have handled this better than I did. I apologize for that.

Next, I am not taking sides on this issue. Both posters make valid points. As the old song says: “You can’t always get what you want.” What we got is a hell of a lot better than we had, though. Does it fit everyone perfectly? About as well as those “one size fits all” articles of clothing you see sometimes. So the answer to that is “no”. But – it does fit some, maybe even most.

Having done most of the proofing and even some editing of the documents that went into the making of the SOC V-8, I am familiar with it. Do I agree with all of it? No. But I do agree with most of it.

The very fact of “eunuch” being recognized as a modern-day and valid gender identity is something that should be celebrated, and not something causing in-fighting and mud-slinging.

LT mentions derision and lack of respect, even. I can appreciate that. A lot.

Which leads me to my next point.

Folks, in the race down the information superhighway, The Archive here is a rusty old VW Beetle. But it’s running. It’s smoking and rattling and leaking, but it’s running. Attempts have been made to repair it, and even upgrade it, or even create an entirely new site using the existing database.

It didn’t work.

As for restoration of the post counts and missing forums, that’s also a no-go. What’s lost is, unfortunately, lost. I helped build this damn thing back in 1999-2000 or whenever it was, and the parts that I need won’t let me (or anyone else, for that matter) in now! Yes, it’s an antiquated version of Vbulletin. But it is what it is.

There have been issues lately with registrations, bans, registrations of members using this board (and not just the Fiction Archive) simply vanishing. I have NO idea what’s going on there.

This has also led to misunderstandings, some of which have been brought to my attention via email, and that I am trying to field.

Now, I am not saying: “Hold on, this is the end.”

It’s not.

But with the way this rolling wreck is heading down the highway, the proverbial deer could jump out in front of us at any moment, and it’s not going to pretty. The signs along the highway, to paraphrase Meat Loaf, might someday all read: “404 Error.”

Just so you know.

Now back to the problem at hand.

The SOC V-8 isn’t a magic wand that the Castration Fairy is coming to wave around and magically validate the whole gender issue/medical care problem. THAT’S going to take time. Sad to say, but the truth hurts – the term “eunuch” carries a great deal of stigma due to history, and the lack of understanding of history by the masses. For so long, it’s been a case of “Look at the freak show!”

Sadly, that’s not likely to change soon.

The whole topic carries with it a good deal of horror for most people, too, I’d wager. Especially males. It’s been a joke for so long that it’s going to take a lot more to get over this next hurdle.

But we have already overcome a big one.

A lot of people put themselves out there at personal risk to achieve what’s been achieved. A bit of respect might just be deserved in that area.

Recently, Indiana passed laws concerning the banning of any sort of transgender care for minors. We’re not delving into that one on this thread, so just get that idea out of your heads right now!

It has, however, caused more a degree of hysteria over that topic. There is a local talk radio station here which I won’t name, but the hosts of it (for the past week or so) have been going over the deep end on the whole set of trans-issues. It’s as if you can actually take your minor-aged AMAB XY-genetic child (read: boy) down to the corner clinic and have him “altered” as easily as getting a flu shot.

As WE ALL know, this is NOT the case.

But the public seems to have this mindset.

It’s another hurdle to get over.

And while we’re running that track and field event, we don’t need to be squabbling with one another. We need to appreciate what we have, and how far we’ve come.

Yes, there are always going to be fantasy players. And that’s fine, too. So long as the fantasy aspect is stated up front.

I realize The Archive is not the most flexible place, and to be honest, I do not feel that is “a friendly place” as the introduction page states.

I really don’t.

There, that’s off my chest.

Yeah, I said it.

I just went there.

And that needs to change, while we still have time, and while the rusty old VW here is still running.

Yes, there are other forums out there now. That was, after all, inevitable. We’re not here to argue who runs what, or who says what. But valid information needs to be out there.

It’s important.

It saves lives.

It’s been doing so, I think, since at least 1998. Maybe earlier. This site has been running in one incarnation or another since 1996. For a dedicated website, that’s ancient.

Just try and keep that in mind.

And also try to keep in mind that “one size” does not fit all.

But if it’s cold enough outside, to extend the metaphor, you’ll wear what you can get.

[Losethem (imported)]

And for what it's worth, I'll take my lumps for responding the way I did as well. I offer my apologies.

But guys, seriously, the people who run any website regardless of subject material have a difficult time with herding the cats, so to speak. No matter what you do, some will be fine, others won't be. A website moderator cannot be everything to everyone.

Here's the dilemma we're in. We keep the child stuff off of here, as is appropriate, we get called censors. If we don't keep it off of here, the person who wrote the article quoted at the beginning of this thread has an opening to come after us.

Unfortunately, these are the choices we face here. It's often like a "Sophie's Choice." For you yung'uns here, that is a 1982 movie where a mother had to make an impossible choice of which of her children to send to death in a WW2 concentration camp, lest both her children be executed by the Nazi's if she didn't make that choice. Basically a damned if you do, damned if you don't, choice.

Just because the SOC doesn't help all situations doesn't mean it's invalid. I'd like to think I'm compassionate, and, for what it's worth, I'm sympathetic to those who have legitimate problems like Magusuk89. It shouldn't be difficult for folks like him. I admire he's working on issues of bodily autonomy in his country, and meeting with MP's and others to address the issue. That's important work. I just hope people understand the the work on the SOC was equally important.

[Lenkusov (imported)]

If there's one major gripe I have with version 8, it's that most of it was already in the process of being written when version 7 came out over a decade earlier and if they'd released it in, say, 2015 when the anti-trans panic didn't really exist, even if they released a nerfed version that didn't have as much actual substance in it, it would've been fine. For us at least, Chapter 9 was almost fully formed by version 7's release - all the material cited was pretty much exclusively written by Dr Wassersug in the 2000s. The main problem with v8 as I see it is the timing.

Like, the improvements to the standards are great, they're not AS great as they should be, but they dropped it at the absolute HEIGHT of the anti-trans panic that went from fringe into the mainstream over lockdown and as a consequence, if you live outside North America you probably won't have a healthcare system that recognizes it. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health really looked at the rapidly-backsliding trans care networks and the massive moral panic and said "y'know what would fix this? If we dropped this extremely controversial document we've been sitting on for like 10 years RIGHT NOW." In the mid 2010's things weren't that bad, people made dumb jokes with us as the punchline but that's about it, nobody actually KNEW any trans people, and the public was rapidly reaching acceptance on queer issues so that would've been the perfect time to release it.

Either that, or hear me out, they could've done the sensible and reasonable thing that they kinda-sorta-almost did with the informed-consent HRT update and made it a living document with iterative improvements as stuff panned out. That's what a lot of other medical standards are, since medical care is constantly evolving as new research comes to light and doctors complain that the standards are wrong, but nope, they just said "yea whatever, let's drop this version and then disappear for a decade for our complete re-write of every little thing in the document to turn the world upside down for everyone involved."

IDK it just seems like WPATH as an organization has a lot of problems, but given the fact that the eunuch chapter was pretty much the only chapter that was written BY SOMEONE OF THE MINORITY THEY'RE GATEKEEPING it's no surprise that's the least-bad chapter in there. I'd even say it's pretty good, if for no other reason than the fact you can rules-lawyer and lie your way to getting trans healthcare WITHOUT the massive amount of wait time all the other chapters call for, although I have yet to find anyone who's succeeded at this. The board of WPATH also has a lot of bad apples, discredited professionals, etc. on it that really shouldn't be there, which is why some of the more controversial chapters are either a completely uninterpretable dumpster fire or are actively WORSE than version 7 in the eyes of a lotta trans people.

But really, the timing is by far the biggest error.

[magusuk89 (imported)]

And for what it's worth, I'll take my lumps for responding the way I did as well. I offer my apologies.

But guys, seriously, the people who run any website regardless of subject material have a difficult time with herding the cats, so to speak. No matter what you do, some will be fine, others won't be. A website moderator cannot be everything to everyone.

Here's the dilemma we're in. We keep the child stuff off of here, as is appropriate, we get called censors. If we don't keep it off of here, the person who wrote the article quoted at the beginning of this thread has an opening to come after us.

Unfortunately, these are the choices we face here. It's often like a "Sophie's Choice." For you yung'uns here, that is a 1982 movie where a mother had to make an impossible choice of which of her children to send to death in a WW2 concentration camp, lest both her children be executed by the Nazi's if she didn't make that choice. Basically a damned if you do, damned if you don't, choice.

Just because the SOC doesn't help all situations doesn't mean it's invalid. I'd like to think I'm compassionate, and, for what it's worth, I'm sympathetic to those who have legitimate problems like Magusuk89. It shouldn't be difficult for folks like him. I admire he's working on issues of bodily autonomy in his country, and meeting with MP's and others to address the issue. That's important work. I just hope people understand the the work on the SOC was equally important.

Thanks, LT.

My apologies for writing in an intemperate way...

The way I personally strategise the fight that I'm in, is that the anti-diversity brigade made an error coming after physical-pathology cases like mine, and that this presents a landscape in which I can and will use public appearances to stress that the prejudices that affect vols persecute non-vols, who could be any man at any time. In other words, it is in everybody's interests to eliminate stigma and abolish the social sense of "game over". Having established that, vols go from "wanting something dreadful" to "having a preference over something uncontroversial and incontestable". ... My community memory in terms of being gay, is of clinical control over the power to define and name homosexuality being a bad thing, that is rightly now self-ID in clinical and legal rights spaces as well as social ones. I won't rest till people's freedom/agency is independent of the dominion of professionals (however benign they may be). I accept that my bias in this affects my evaluation of what WPATH has meant structurally... and I hope you may forgive my earnest frustration that we are not yet at a position in the world where people find acceptance of the diversity of souls and bodies to feel as natural as it does in my outlook, where the non-trivial nature of the gender community within eunuchry in general feels self evident.

[Losethem (imported)]

If there's one major gripe I have with version 8, it's that most of it was already in the process of being written when version 7 came out over a decade earlier and if they'd released it in, say, 2015 when the anti-trans panic didn't really exist, even if they released a nerfed version that didn't have as much actual substance in it, it would've been fine. For us at least, Chapter 9 was almost fully formed by version 7's release - all the material cited was pretty much exclusively written by Dr Wassersug in the 2000s. The main problem with v8 as I see it is the timing.

several paragraphs left out for brevity of quotation

But really, the timing is by far the biggest error.

Lenkusov, here we are trying to turn the temperature in here down, and here you are lighting a new fire. *ugh* Please, just don't.

Side note: After reading everything below, I want to make it clear I'm not yelling, simply making statements. Now onto the rest...

If everyone at WPATH had a crystal ball to determine "timing", I doubt they'd be there. Instead, they'd be on some tropical island somewhere enjoying all the money they have from listening to the crystal ball, and making well timed investment decisions.

Unless you were involved, you probably don't know just how difficult the process was, and timing was likely the least of the concerns. Those who were there know, those who were not and make these kinds of comments are arm chair quarterbacking at best. That doesn't help keep the progress which was made, progress which WILL be lost if others don't pick this up and protect it, instead of hemming and hawing about irrelevant topics such as timing. These are also the things I talked about when I said people who worked on it often times feel punched in the face by others making these sorts of comments. They had nothing to do with the timing, and were more focused on ensuring the chapter got in at all.

There was a person very close to the top in WPATH who nearly KILLED Chapter 9 of SOC8. So while a lot of people don't like it, some concessions had to be made to get it included at all, and these other concerns had to be saved for another day, and for future revisions of the SOC.