I’m a trans woman. Before I transitioned, I wasn’t feminine. I never experimented with family members makeup or borrowed their clothing. Even now, 8 years after coming out and transitioning, I’m still not feminine. No one looked at me after I came out and said “Oh, it all makes sense now”. I don’t wear makeup, I don’t have my ears pierced, I’m loud, argumentative and competitive. I ride an illegally overpowered fat tyred monster bike, and I’m happiest in a tshirt and jeans.

Yet I’m still very much a woman and very much trans.

Of course, many trans folk do embrace gender stereotypes, but you need to understand, that is “after the fact”. For some folk, it’s simply a matter of protection and ensuring that their gender doesn’t get denied them by society. For others, it’s a source of joy, being able to embrace something that they were not able to explore earlier in their lives. And for others, it is inherently tied to how they experience their gender.

But for all of us, it is not our gender, even if it is strongly connected.

Yeah, no, that’s not how being trans works.

I don’t believe that gender relates to stereotypes.

I’m a trans woman. I don’t “get” femininity, and to me, when I perform it, it feels like a performance. It has zero to do with my understanding of my own gender.

I’m still very much trans.

We are not discussing the strategies used by the far right to demonize trans folk (or anyone else). We are discussing something completely different that has no bearing on the strategies used by the far right.

Yes we are. The only reason these discussions come up in the first place is because of that.

You thinking that this has nothing to do with the far right doesn’t make it so. Normalising the idea that sex is black and white, and conversations about that only occur in a wide spread way because there is political reward in presenting things that way. 10 years ago you weren’t having these discussions. Today, you are, because the politics of transphobia has made it happen.

You are the one who claimed that I was diverting in to irrelevancy. I bring up the political context, because it’s not irrelevant.

This whole conversation, the thread you are talking in, exists, because a transphobe was using the same talking points you are arguing for, to normalise transphobia. You doing it, also normalises transphobia, whether that is your intent or not.

You want a sex binary to exist. It doesn’t, unless you smooth away the edges and ignore some of the data and the lived realities of people. Evolutionary biologists don’t share your perspective. Geneticists don’t share your perspective. This whole conversation exists for political reasons, designed to push exclusion. In a topic about a person using these exact talking points to push for exclusion, you have arrived, repeated the talking points, and then tried to argue that actually, it’s ok, because your perspective is correct, so long as we ignore some of the details.

Which is exactly what the next transphobe will do too.

Even if you don’t agree with me, and to you, this is all about the purity of ideas, your choice of getting involved in this discussion, in this context, isn’t removed from reality. It’s not detached. It’s actively empowering the exclusionary voices by talking over and fighting with the people pushing back against that exclusion. That’s a choice you made that has nothing to do with the truth of your idea

Changes in legal or morphological sex is not relevant. This is not what we are discussing.

Of course they’re relevant. Sex being immutable, easy to define and binary is at the core of the tactics that transphobes use to exclude and legislate against trans folk.

So the fact that it’s not easy to define, has multiple definitions in different contexts, and has no single definition that works in all instances is very relevant.

You talked about “genetic bio-chemical reproduction” earlier. There are women who have literally given birth, who have XY chromosomes. Similarly, there are XX men with SRY genes. Using your “genetic sex is the truth” approach, they are both folks with a different genetic sex to their physical and legal sex. A transphobe would catch those people and throw them under the bus too whilst they target trans people.

The bio-chemistry of terrestrial life is built upon a binary sex framework

Yep. I’ll agree with that. But the framework it is built on is not the end result. There is no meaning or intent behind the framework. There is nothing about it that is more “real”.

The real part isn’t the genetic plan that was used to create someone. The real part is the body they’re actually walking around in.

To you, this is all an interesting argument. You’re arguing about things in black and white, because none of it actually matters to you. So you can argue for how you think things should work.

The very same arguments you are using are being weaponised and turned against gender diverse folk and intersex folk. Your re-use of them, arguing about some sort of ideal that exists only in your head isn’t harmless. The fact that sex is nuanced, that gender is nuanced, that they both have multiple, contradicting definitions, and neither have a single definition that is more true than the others is incredibly important, because the only reason to ignore that is either to hurt people, or because you’re so far removed from the reality of what’s happening, that you place a higher priority on things being neat and tidy than on the people that false belief hurts.

I admitted there are edge cases.

Then it’s not binary.

When you flip a coin, there is a chance that it will land on the side, yet we still use a coin flip for a 50:50 probability scenario because it is close enough.

Absolutely. For day to day life, “there are two outcomes” is safe way to describe coin flips. But given that a coin landing on its side can happen, it’s not a binary system. It only becomes binary when we ignore the edge cases. Just like sex…

And that’s before we get to the point that there isn’t even a single definition of sex that accounts for all scenarios. People can change their legal sex, people can change their morphological sex, “genetic sex” isn’t foolproof, as it doesn’t always correlate with morphological sexual characteristics, or even gamete production.

Calling sex binary is either a generalisation, or something you want to be true. At no point is it reality of the situation though…

It is a binary with some edge cases

So in other words, not a binary? What you’re describing is more accurately described as a bimodal distribution.

Broadly speaking, you can regain what you’ve lost in the previous 7 years or so. It takes years though. And it’s not guaranteed. Most people regain some hair on HRT, but like all things genetic, it’s a dice roll

Her comment was meant as black and white. To use your analogy, she would be arguing that 6 wheeled cars don’t exist, and insisting that all vehicles have two or four wheels, and that’s how we distinguish them

Games with cyber psychosis tend not to have androids, as they blunt the impact of exploring the stories of people who replace more and more of themselves with cyberware and lose their humanity as they do it.

So the androids that have existed in the various version of cyberpunk over the years have all been some variant of replacing your body with chrome, whilst leaving at least some part of your original brain behind to drive it.

So, my typical process looks like this

• Exposure I normally leave as is, preferring to use other modules to fix exposure issues. There are exceptions, but generally, I leave this module alone on its “scene referred” default
• I apply haze removal, chromatic aberration, lens correction, denoise (profiled) and raw chromatic aberration without modification, though I will sometimes leave out haze removal if the image is high contrast straight out of the camera
• Tone equalizer, I tend to set to “contrast tone curve: soft”, but again, this one will get adjusted as needed.
• Local contrast. I always use this, mostly on “clarity” , but I will use HDR tone mapping if it’s a backlit subject or the like
• Sharpen. I rarely use it, as most of my photos are done with pro glass these days, but if I’ve used a tele converter or the like, I’ll sometimes use this modeule
• Colour Balance RGB. This is where I do most of my work. Up until now, I’ve use presets, but here, I use either “standard” or “vivid” as my starting point, before tinkering. For all of my adjustments here, I use the “RGB parade” panel (rather than a histogram) to watch the exposure and colour balance. I typically start on the 4 way tab, and adjust “power” and “shadows lift”. Then on the master tab, I’ll adjust the perceptual brilliance grading. This is where I correct any remaining exposure issues, and to some extent, contrast issues. Then, I’ll play with vibrance and contrast a little, just to tweak the final result.
• If I am really struggling with a poorly lit subject, or a contrasty background with a non contrasty subject, I’ll create a second (and sometimes even a third) Colour Balance RGB module, and use “drawn and parametric masks” to selectively adjust the areas I need. The killer secret to make this work is after you’ve selected your area, increase the feathering to smooth it out and blur it, and then increase the mask contrast, to make it respect borders. I find that tweaking these is best done with the mask preview turned off.
• Finally, if I’m not happy with the temperature/colour cast, I’ll use the “colour correction” module. This one is display referred rather than scene referred, so I always leave it until last. There are other options for adjusting this, but I find the ease of moving the offset point around the colour map too efficient to pass up. I can quickly move through a lot of options and find the value that looks best.

I think I’m the only darktable user to not use filmic rgb :)

@wolfinthewoods@lemmy.ml @chetradley@lemm.ee

This is going to look great in my memoir. A plastic robot on all fours, mooning me as it clambers to get up. My, covered in half a rubbish truck full of shit and vomit, and the bird guy, hanging upside down, attacked by birds.

And what kind of super power is that anyway? The ability to get attacked by birds? But hey, who am I to talk? I can be attacked by dust bunnies on demand!

Ok Sparkie, stay focused! New plan! Get this shit off me, and help the bird guy. This is why I always carry empty batters with me!

I gather a handful of batteries, and dump all of my excess charge in to them, and chuck them at the robots butt

If this were a movie, the batteries would explode or something, but in reality the best I can hope for is some of the shit comes off of me and sticks to the batteries, letting me get free! If this were a super hero comedy, the battery, covered in shit, would get stuck in the robots butt! Lifes a joke right? Can this be a super hero comdey?

Action: I dump my excess charge in to a handful of batteries and throw them at the robots butt, hoping to plug it with gunk, free myself of some of the gunk at the same time, before trying to run towards bird guy!

Reasons it will succeed: I am carrying empty batteries for just this moment. The robot is on all fours on the ground, and I’m right behind it!

Roll: 4 before modifiers

I don’t understand how Kaliya’s statements can be controversial or classed as transphobia

That’s because it’s mostly dog whistles and wedge tactics. It’s a rehashing of common transphobic talking points, but with the edges brushed off. It’s the way transphobia is portrayed to appear reasonable at first glance.

The dog whistles are easy to miss if you aren’t familiar with them, but the sheer volume of them from her shows that they were absolutely intended. This isn’t accidentally repeating something, this is an active relisting of transphobic talking points predominantly utilised by transphobic groups.

Sex isn’t a “gender orientation” it is really simple biology.

There are unspoken parts to this. What she really means here, even though she doesn’t explicitly say it, is that sex is real, and thus gender isn’t, and because of that, sex is more important than gender. It’s the way transphobic folk often phrase things so they can have a facade of acceptance, whilst still being transphobic. "I’m not questioning your gender, but you’re still male and should be denied space

Sex and gender might be distinct, but they’re related, often conflated and neither are inherently static, binary or immutable. Any attempt to draw a hard line between them, or to point at a dictionary definition is normally always said with the goal of validating exclusion, and that’s what is happening here.

Gamete size – its really simple.

This is a regular talking point used by transphobic groups. It is said precisely for the reasons I mentioned above. It’s an attempt to make a black and white, one sized fits all definition. And the reason that TERFs use it, is because to them, it’s a “gotcha” definition that allows them to exclude trans folk from spaces. And those reasons are there, but unspoken when Kaliya wrote that.

Stop confusing young autistic vulnerable people.

This is also a straight up transphobic talking point. It comes from transphobic literature that paints transgender identity as a form of social contagion, whilst also implying that autistic folk are more vulnerable to this social contagion. The specific context in which it is normally used by these transphobic groups is when talking about young trans men, by portraying them instead as vulnerable young girls.

You think it IS moral to have male-bodied people who identify as trans women playing in elite comparative sport for female-bodied people?

This is more dog whistle transphobia. The big give away here is that she can’t even give trans women the validity of their own identity. She defines trans women first as “male bodied” and secondly as “identitying as trans women”. There is a transphobic term “TIM”, that transphobes use as a slur against trans women. It means “trans identified male”. Transphobes like it, because it is a masculine name, and because it defines their identity as being male, whilst implying that the trans part is less real. The word “identified” here implies it is a phase, or a deceit.

This comment from Kaliya is using that exact concept, but just skipping the acronym.

Gender can be socially-constructed.

Sure. Parts of it can be, and are socially constructed. But what she is really saying here is that gender isn’t as real as sex.

There are only two sexes.

See my earlier comment. When you try and make things black and white, and use strict definitions, generally, the reason for doing so is to validate a push for exclusion, which is exactly what this is.

Telling male children who have feminine tights they must be female is what is happening and it is hurting boys.

Once more, portraying trans identity as social contagion.

culture has gone competely bonkers confusing sex and gender.

Explicitly transphobic. Portrays trans folk as “bonkers”.

Which is a lot of words to say, she’s a transphobe, and she is rehashing transphobic talking points, but framing them in such a way that the transphobia isn’t immediately obvious to folks who aren’t familiar with trans and gender diverse folk.

You can add another mod, and then step down to transfer ownership. If you want to still be a mod after that, the new owner will have to add you, or the admin of the instance the community is hosted on

As long as you’re not trying for leaderboards, the only thing that matters is what it means for your own training

I’ll generate a new one. We put a limit on how many times they can be used so we don’t get spam bot waves

kind of how AOSP is for Android)

https://9to5google.com/2025/03/28/google-android-aosp-changes-announcement/

You don’t “confirm” it. It’s an attempt to describe a system/outcome. It’s a model of a system, not the system itself and no model is perfect, because all models are our attempt to understand and describe things, and there is no such thing as perfect understanding.

However, it’s a highly accurate model, that explains things very well. So, either we will find that one day, we make a brand new, better model (this seems unlikely given the accuracy of the current model, but possible). Or, more likely, we continue to come to a better understanding of the system, and improve the model we use to describe it.

Are you mounting a FAT32 disk by any chance?

When we’re done here, I hope no one needs me again for at least a week, because it’s going to take at least that long in the shower to get clean! Maybe more!

But wait, was that the bird guy? Maybe he can help! But it sounds like he can only speak bird! Hopefully he understands though, because I have an idea!

“Hey bird man” I yell, between brief moments of air as the robots thighs give me a chance to talk! But finally, it stops moving, and I fall free, with half of the city still attached to me. Taking the chance, I yell “Bird guy, I have an idea. Why don’t we…” I shout to his disappearing back, as he jumps off of the end of the pier. And then it hits me, a huge blast of squeaky air.

I’ve got no chance to avoid it, and no chance to think, but you know what I do have! Mad pinball skills! (Ok, I don’t really, but leave that part out of my memoir please). I shrink myself as small as possible, hiding deep in the ball of vomit, lint and hosiery as it lifts in to the air on the wave of sound and air! Now, if I can time this right, and use some of those smashed streetlights and cars, maybe I can use that momentum he’s given me, but turn it around right back at him! Surely this ball of gunk will stuff his squeeker up if I can aim it right!

Of course, it would help if I wasn’t starting off at high speed in exactly the wrong direction, with little to no experience at pinball.

Action: Try and use the charged ball of lint that I’m wrapped in, and bounce off of lights, cars, and whatever else I can charge to come right back at him!

Reasons I’ll succeed: 1) I’m in a super charged ball of lint. 2) The robot has destroyed so many things, there are broken cars, water and downed lamp posts everywhere, giving me plenty of things to bounce off! 3) I REALLY REALLY want this shit off of me. Ok, that’s not a real reason I’ll succeed, but I really do want it off me!

Raw roll: 3

Kaity has just done her magic and we’re a green tick now!