Transgendered people and correct pronouns.

There was a story recently about a young transgender girl, who committed suicide at least in part thanks to her parents lack of acceptance. As is always the case, comment threads about this story found people crawling out of the woodwork to demonstrate their lack of compassion by "correcting" people's use of gender pronouns, viz. "HE, the person was a HE". In a rare moment of levelheadedness, I decided that rather than balling out one such commenter for the asshole he is, I decided to take a gentle approach and reach out to whatever scrap of humanity still resides within him.

This is what I wrote:

I get that you're confused about biological sex and gender identity not being the same thing, I even understand that you might not agree that it is. That's fine; it's your right to believe that.

But...
If using a particular gender pronoun to describe someone is going to upset them, but using the other one isn't, why not use their preferred one? What possible effect does it have on your life to use the pronoun that will save another human being pain?
You'd have to be a really lousy person to insist on using a pronoun you think is right, knowing that it causes pain.

I'm assuming you identify as a follower of Christ, but does your insistence on pronoun usage really come from a place of love? Or is it pride that you get to think yourself 'right'?

Your choice is to act out of love, or act out of pride... WWJD?

Wivanny

This one isn't really too long, as such, but I felt it deserved a better archiving than Facebook has to offer...

I was listening to a pod-cast of the Dave Gorman Show and a listener had written into the show with a story I feel I must share. 

This listener's dad was a claims investigator for an insurance company. At some point he had to go to a woman's house to discuss her accident. The woman introduced herself as (and I'm doing this phonetically )"Wivanny". 

He commented that Wivanny was an unusual name, and asked where it came from, Wivanny explained that while her mum was pregnant, she had read a novel, and that Wivanny had been the name of the heroin. 

When he came to write her details, he asked how "Wivanny" was spelled, and she replied...

(highlight to read)

"Y.V.O.N.N.E. "

Best. Story. Ever.

Time to leave the Westborough Baptist Church to its own devices.

Over the years I've shared many a story or opinion about the Wesborough Baptist Church; this will be the last one. 

For those who don't recognise the name, you may know them as the "God Hates Fags"[1] people; the asshats who protest the funerals of everyone from soldiers to school-shooting victims, spreading their own version of hate-based Christianity, claiming that God allows (or even causes) such deaths in order to punish innocent people for the crimes of being in an army that also allows homosexuals to serve, or attending a pre-school which upholds the constitutional principles surrounding the separation of church and state. 

In it's heyday, the church had only a couple of dozen members, nowadays it has fewer, yet we report on their activities as though they have some kind of relevance to the world. I put it to you that in doing so, we give them one. 

They hold these protests, in the most upsetting places possible, in order to gain attention for their cause; when we give them the attention, we make it worth their while. In condemning them, we give them exactly what they want, and make it more likely that they'll do it again. 

So please, if you see a story about them in future, ignore it, rather than sharing it; even by mocking them, you help keep them going. 

[1] As an asside, one has to wonder if the mainstream media would be as quick to share unedited quotes and images of their vile placards if the group were primarily racist rather than homophobic... Somehow I can't see any of the major news sites referring to the "God Hates Niggers" Church; if the media must continue to feed these evil little trolls, I wish they would do so with a little more courtesy to our brothers and sisters in the LGBT community. 

Yes, I really do think you should fact check!

A couple of posts ago, I told people how to fact check an image before sharing it on facebook.

While it was mostly well received, someone has recently referred to it (during a much wider explanation of my character flaws down to 10 decimal places) as me arrogantly telling people to do a lot of work, before posting something which is, after all, for my benefit.

I want to address this here.

First of all, unless said image is posted on my wall, it isn't "For my benefit" - It's for the "benefit" of your entire list - looking quickly down my freinds, that means 100-500 people... let's say 300 people for arguments sake.

Secondly, I don't think that misinformation (especially scary misinformation) benefits anyone.

My detractors original point, I believe, is basically

"Someone is trying to help you - fact check it yourself instead of expecting them to do it, you arrogant sod."

Now I disagree with this, but can kind-of see their point... if  the image had been sent only to me; but as I've pointed out it's been sent to hundreds of people.so now thier objection becomes

"Do you seriously expect one person to fact check before hitting 'send' when 300 people could so easily fact check it for themselves when they recieve it? How arrogant!".

So yes, I do expect one person to spend 60 seconds on a simple task, rather than see 300 people perform the exact same task... but I'm not sure that's arrogant. To the contrary, I think expecting 300 people to do what you could not be bothered to do yourself is pretty much the dictionary definition of arrogant!

Now, sometimes you'll drop the ball on this, I know I do... sometimes confirmation bias is too tempting, or a story too much fun, and we get carried away; I'm not about to pretend this will never happen, or even that I will never do it myself - but I don't think that's an excuse to not at least try to remember.

And there are exceptions; sometimes its a warning that seems important, and we aren't in a position to check right now (maybe using your phone for instance) - maybe a good policy there would be to mention that it's un-checked when posting it?

Just a though.

Hang on, is that ??? Have they really??? They have!

I was chatting to a friend who owns a joke / fancy dress shop today, (in her shop) when an odd couple walked in; when I say 'odd' I mean that, even without everything else I'm about to describe, they would still have been... 'Off' somehow. 

He walked around the shop, slowly and carefully photographing EVERYTHING. 

Their huge, gorgeous but smelly, dog (and I love dogs, I'm not one of those people who thinks dogs are always smelly - this one STUNK) came to me for a fuss, then, when I stopped, started barking. I resumed fussing, but no... He was barking now.  Eventually he did stop (after about 5 minutes of absolutely no prompting from his people) and went to lie down in the middle of the shop. 

It's worth pointing out that through all of this, the couple walked around the shop, photographing things and being disproportionately amused by plastic biscuits, seemingly without noticing the dog... They just walked around the shop holding his extendable lead, which thankfully was extendable enough that they could explore without the dog having to get up. 

You know those cardboard masks that are photographs of celebrities? Well they named and laughed at EVERY SINGLE ONE of them, then then woman loudly shouted "Thank you" and left. 

There was something else about them though... What was it?...

Oh yeah, the pushchair. 

It was the pushchair that prompted us to mouth the conversation I've used as the title of this post. 

They had a bright pink pushchair with them. 

Our attention (the friends and my own) kept flicking from the pushchair, then to each other, then back to the pushchair, then back to each other, then to whatever random thing these people were pointing at and guffawing at that moment... Then back to the pushchair. 

The pushchair was a slightly odd shape, and where you would expect it to be open, it had a fine black mesh covering. 

To be fair, the pushchair really did need the mesh. 

If the pushchair had not had the mesh... The cat would probably have escaped. 

Yeah....

Before sharing an image on Facebook

This one is a combination of "too long" and "I can see myself referring to it again"...

When you see an image on facebook that's either incredible (like an amazing occurrence or unusually sized animal) or distressing ("Help find these people doing this horrible thing") BEFORE you share it, this is what you are going to do:

Pleasing the customers with extra value; how NOT to do it.

As a non-HD adopter, I'm getting slightly miffed at the way the studios are trying to get us to switch.