man, i go back and forth about how i feel about a certain kind of rhetorical move—I feel like the easiest immediate example I have is when someone points out that gender-nonconforming women are impacted by bathroom bills, and that it's going to be deeply weird to have trans men with full facial hair forced to use the women's room, you know? and on one hand i agree with people who are like "we should make sure to still center trans people in this and it's annoying to make it about cis people/men/etc" (or whoever the relevant parties of whatever argument happen to be) but also it's a useful reframing for people who just haven't thought that hard about it. and i find that there are more people than one might expect out there who haven't actually thought that hard about things that don't touch their life a lot.

though also i think the ability to reframe these things also does reveal something that maybe should be wielded more explicitly more often. that something is that, well—yes, for exmaple, bathroom bills do affect anyone who falls too far outside of a tidy traditional gender categorization.¹ the reason for this is that at the root, it's about attacking anything that threatens the reactionary political project of local nationalism.

nationalism is very frequently preoccupied with natalism and birth rates and wellness, because it perpetuates the myth of a continuous, superior national "people" who "belong" here. this, however, requires control of the means of (re)production, which is to say control of women's lives. if women and trans men are required to present traditionally feminine and not challenge their assigned role in order to exist in public, then they're incentivized to take up that presentation more often. if women of color (or overt ethnicity generally) who are frequently degendered and cast as "mannish" are discouraged from being in those spaces, then they don't threaten the sanctity of the race. if trans and otherwise gnc folks are hidden or camouflaged from the public, the Children (tm) can't get any ideas about avoiding the role they've been given. and if children are kept under control, they can continue to serve as tools for the agenda, (rather than being influenced by the wealthy coastal elite cabal. it also always goes back to antisemitism) which is why we STILL haven't ratified children's rights in this g-dforsaken country.

i'm sure it's also not an accident that this most frequently happens in "nice" places and halls of power. like the whole thing over who's allowed in the congress bathrooms; yeah, if you can't use the toilet, maybe you're not going to run for congress and change anything! g-d forbid!!! it's one horrifying gordian knot and this is why this is all part of the conservative party line package under project 2025. the oppression olympics is over and it's all a tie. we all lose.

idk. all this is to say that i just feel like it should be pointed out more often that the collateral damage of these things isn't necessarily accidental or incidental, but welcome and planned: you can see that transphobia is having a chilling effect on girls' sports for all girls, for example. They don't care about girls' sports and never have and under normal circumstances they fucking hate Title IX. They don't care about children and want to be able to control them! g-d it's so annoying. it's worse than annoying but [don't get love4eva subpoena'd] [joke]

[1] i should get a gold star for all the bad faith arguments i've not gotten into in my lifetime. this isn't about any particular one of those, to be clear, just kind of thinking. honestly it's so frustrating to run into people with bad takes online because there are so many of said takes that are so outright nothingburger if you think about them. e.g., what does anyone think goes on in women's bathrooms on a day to day basis? no one is going pussy out! everyone goes in their little cubicle and doesn't make eye contact and no one gets carded. maybe someone does their makeup. anyone making the argument that women's bathrooms are presently dangerous knows they're saying absolute bullshit or should maybe get therapy for their paranoia issues.