I asked the furry con if they’d let me host a Ryanair Furs meetup, but they were only willing to schedule it at 4:45am in a village hall 40 miles away from the main hotel 🙁
on cis allyship, definitely Boost this one please :3
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I write a lot about my ongoing discovery of just how good cis women are to trans girls when they have not been preemptively made to fear us.
I write about how easy it is to get accepted as a trans woman, because I think a lot of transfems really have this fear of imposing. Because we have impostor syndrome for womanhood as social performance.
It is something that newly transitioning women need to hear. Our struggle and hangups and fears are parallel and often the same as those of cis women's.
They do not always understand the specifics of our circumstances, but the underlying struggle? They know.
And that's an important message.
But there's another angle I'm realising.
Cis women don't know that we don't know they know.
I'll give you a second to parse that one.
I think cis women do not fully understand our fear. They are welcoming, but I've seen them react to me gushing about how welcome I feel with slight surprise and minimising the things they said and did to make me feel welcome.
The reason is that they do not fully understand how fucking STARVED I've been of this stuff all my life.
A few years ago, here on Fedi, I read something that stayed with me. About how people who've been in an abusive relationship can burst out crying and have a huge outpour of loud gratitude after something absurdly trivial like their new partner offering them a glass of water or something. They act like nobody ever did something like that for them, to the bafflement of the other person. It's just a glass of water.
The reason being, of course, that in some sense they never DID receive this kind of small kindness.
A person that's been abused has a completely broken barometer of what is "normal". Treating people with basic kindness is the baseline, but to a person that's been victimised it feels like extreme, saintly goodness, at least initially. Because it's hard to realise that no, the horrors were not how people normally interact.
Same has been written about people leaving cults, abusive families, abusive communities.
Why am I mentioning this? Because trans people in general, and trans women in the specific, are kind of a demographic-wide example of that.
Like any abuser, a transphobe will make it seem like there's nowhere and no one to run to. Like they are the best we can get. Heck, some transphobic rhetoric will pose as the 'phobes doing us a kindness.
Here's the thing. Cis women do not necessarily fully realise that we never had a normal girlhood or, for many of us, any interactions with women in women-dominated settings, AS women.
I mean, sometimes they know, but they don't KNOW, know.
Yesterday I wrote about a nice time spent with a few girls that I am only getting to know. And I was gushing, both here on Fedi and to the girl that invited me to the thing. And I thought about that and I am realising that she probably doesn't understand how big a deal this is, *even* when I say how big a deal it is.
Because she, presumably, had a relatively normal time being a woman. So she doesn't understand why women interacting in a friendly and casual way is blowing my mind.
Because it's hard to convey that all my life I was primed to think cis women would reject me and treat me like not just a man, but a predatory, dishonest man pretending to be a woman. I know it's not true, but I've not *experienced* it being untrue.
Transphobes badly need to convince us (and themselves) that all, or most, cis women do not want us to live as women.
Most cis women don't *know* these words are being put in their mouths.
re: on cis allyship, definitely Boost this one please :3
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This is one reason why I talk so much about being trans, both to cis and trans people.
(I mean, other than the fact that I'm an attention whore /hj )
People are not mind readers. They will only know your experience - be it one particular to you or shared with one group of people or another - if you tell them how it is for you.
I didn't know how much I had in common with other trans women before I started having conversations with trans women about their experiences and mine.
And that helped me realise I'm a woman.
And later, I didn't know (and maybe still don't know) how much I have in common with cis women, too. And that knowledge is making me more bold, happier and I think a better person to others.
So I know super well that this kind of sharing can be a game changer for a lot of people. Some people figure things out looking at others, but some do need to share, or to hear someone share, before they realise "oh! So that's how it is. So that's how I am the same/similar/different to that other person".
The best way to defeat "divide and conquer" tactics by evil people is to communicate. As taught by every shitty TV sitcom from the 80s and 90s.
It makes me very happy to hear that my fellow cis women are treating you well, Alicja! There are a lot of paths to womanhood, none of them easy, and we should support each other when we can. 🫂
It’s obviously different, but as a cis woman I empathise deeply with this.
I was diagnosed autistic in my late 40s and spent most of my life feeling like an alien, especially among women - not like I wanted to be a man, but like I lacked whatever quality made womanhood come naturally to others. I never felt like I fit in, or was interesting to be around, and I was genuinely astonished, if a woman wanted to know me.
@GoingDownWithSundial Im AMAB and trans and autistic and if i remember my childhood correctly, i always felt alienated and cast out from my peers due to being autistic (and their ableism) so the expectation on my part wasnt even there to fit in in a gender way or a sexuality way. So what you are saying makes sense to me, being autistic can make you feel alien to your peers in similar ways that being trans can.
on cis allyship, definitely Boost this one please :3
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yes, In my experience, my interactions with cis women were some of the most positive ones amongst cis people in general, which surprised me at first too! I've maybe only had like 1 or 2 bad actors from their side, otherwise the reaction was always an overwhelming support :o
Despite attending an all-girls school, I mostly had groups of guy friends as a child and teenager. Only since my mid-30's / early 40s have I begun to deliberately cultivate groups of women friends. The love and acceptance that I find in these groups is nothing like I experienced in my childhood. I know that it can't compare to not having a girl childhood, but I also find it wonderful and precious to be accepted in groups of women. ❤️
on cis allyship, definitely Boost this one please :3
I made quite similar experiences actually.
Most clueless cis people I met sure weren't very sensible about word choices and reading the room ("so i was wondering, ehh, are you a boy or a girl??"), but once you gave them an answer to whatever they were wondering, they just would shrug, accept it and move on with our activity at hand.
They'd then include me in gendered activities and spaces without any awkwardness or second thoughts at all, they'd be super relaxed about it, they'd clearly just take my gender as truth, and they'd get irate on my behalf if people misgendered or excluded me because they were genuinely baffled why people would mistreat me that way. It was as natural to them as anything else that I was a woman, it didn't even occur to them that it could be "wrong".
It took my middle-aged, cranky, Yugoslavian coworker who never heard of trans people exactly two days to completely understand my womanhood. When I eventually talked to her about the whole thing, she was surprised I brought it up, but said something that stuck to me ever since:
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I made quite similar experiences actually.
Most clueless cis people I met sure weren't very sensible about word choices and reading the room ("so i was wondering, ehh, are you a boy or a girl??"), but once you gave them an answer to whatever they were wondering, they just would shrug, accept it and move on with our activity at hand.
They'd then include me in gendered activities and spaces without any awkwardness or second thoughts at all, they'd be super relaxed about it, they'd clearly just take my gender as truth, and they'd get irate on my behalf if people misgendered or excluded me because they were genuinely baffled why people would mistreat me that way. It was as natural to them as anything else that I was a woman, it didn't even occur to them that it could be "wrong".
It took my middle-aged, cranky, Yugoslavian coworker who never heard of trans people exactly two days to completely understand my womanhood. When I eventually talked to her about the whole thing, she was surprised I brought it up, but said something that stuck to me ever since:
That she met a lot of unique and surprising people in her life, and that you learn things about the world and other people every day. And that it was just an interesting medical fun fact about me. And that's all. She said that to her, it was no different than when she met a black guy in our village and then found out he and his family are actually natively German. She compared me to her grandma, who apparently had a lot of facial hair, which ran in her family. It was just a fun fact about me that I'm trans, nothing more.
The validity of my womanhood was never in question to her, just whether I was a woman at all. That's the main thing really.
You really hit the nail on the head: transphobes really, really want to make us think that we're alone. That everyone naturally sees us as freaks by default, except those we have successfully 'convinced of our ideology'.
It's actually the same mechanic at play as with conspiracy types, crazy conservatives or elderly people refusing to go with the times.
They want to use "common sense" as a backup to try to convince you that their irrational fears are actually normal and how everyone else thinks. They're super afraid of having to change their world view, of being wrong about something. They want to make us feel like we have no support, not necessarily to hurt us directly, but because they themselves secretly feel ashamed and insecure about the world moving past them or judging them for something they don't understand. (Ideological transphobes who know what they're doing nonwithstanding, they're doing it on purpose).
That's also why allies can sometimes be insidiously worse than clueless folks. Allies might just as well have the same thought patterns as transphobes, but end the thought process on "...but it would be mean to misgender them, I should be nice and supportive."
They still fundamentally think we're freaks, they just think it's ethically good to be nice to freaks.
Before my coworker experience, I always felt that even if cis people accept us, they at best mentally create a third category: women, men and "trans". Or that they'd always see me as a guy who wants to be a woman and who they needed to be respectful of not to hurt their feelings. But that isn't the case. They just see me as a woman with a medical history.
Transphobes are the only ones questioning people's genders' validity. Normal people don't even have that thought process, because validity isn't an idea they associate with gender.
This instance, atomicpoet.org, is itself a social experiment:
What will happen if I exit a mainstream social media platform, fly free of corporate and institutional overseers, and just say whatever the hell I want on my own damn platform?
What I find amusing is that BIPOC, LGBT+, and women are often accused of trying to de-platform whatever isn't in their favour. But at least for me, that hasn't been the case.
The biggest snowflakes have been cis white hetero men who really can't stand it when I say anything remotely political and demand that I start using CWs to censor myself.
And it's not as though I've never had a disagreement with someone from a marginalized community. But they've definitely been more civil.
The only time I—a white cis gender hetero man—was ever called a “colonizer” at a university was when a white cis gender hetero woman disapproved of me dating a woman of colour.
The only time I—a white cis gender hetero man—was ever called a “colonizer” at a university was when a white cis gender hetero woman disapproved of me dating a woman of colour.
This instance, atomicpoet.org, is itself a social experiment:
What will happen if I exit a mainstream social media platform, fly free of corporate and institutional overseers, and just say whatever the hell I want on my own damn platform?
What I find amusing is that BIPOC, LGBT+, and women are often accused of trying to de-platform whatever isn't in their favour. But at least for me, that hasn't been the case.
The biggest snowflakes have been cis white hetero men who really can't stand it when I say anything remotely political and demand that I start using CWs to censor myself.
And it's not as though I've never had a disagreement with someone from a marginalized community. But they've definitely been more civil.
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Seen near Holborn Station, on the route of the Unite the Kingdom rally. By the artist Frank Riot.
The poster says it better than most speeches:
When the scapegoats are gone, the borders are fortified, and the hatred has done its damage, the cost of living will still rise, the NHS will still be dying, and corporate vultures will still be picking our lives apart.
Who will they blame then?
What will they have gained?
A badge for barbarism against a backdrop of decay.
When you've got rid off all the mosques but the costs of life still rise and you've built your fortressed borders but the NHS still dies and the muslims are all gone and your town's a wall of white but corporate vultures are still pillaging every facet of our lives who will you blame then? what will you have gained? a badge for barbarism against a backdrop of decay.
Obviously, if things do not improve there must be Internal enemies sabotaging the project and a purge is needed (repeat ad nauseam) (based on previous similar occurrences)
never heard anybody blaming mosques for economic problems. Maybe, massive immigration forcing wages down, but that is not limited to one group of people.
If anything, it's all about colonizing and replacing the British culture by one that is completely different and adversarial to the western values.
people want to feel like they are doing something, idiots get bored, can't find a way to participate so they invent problems and then realize they can't solve them even the slightest and they're going to be interesting at last
Billionaires fear a 99% that wakes up to the fact that blameshifting bigotry solves nothing real in their lives.
Bigotry is distraction.
It doesn't provide affordable housing. It doesn't create jobs. It doesn't fund public services. It doesn't lower prices for gas or groceries. It doesn't stop fascism in government. It doesn't stop wars. It doesn't stop public corruption in business. It doesn't educate the young or support seniors.
this is filled with partial truths. The professional display is certainly not “street”. Whether it’s actual art is at the viewer’s discretion, but doesn’t meet most criteria. Post it elsewhere, please; perhaps on a “public screed utopia” account.
I hope in the near future people will understand that the only reason which makes corporation/right wing do their thing is that millions of people keep using their products, therefor financially supporting them to make the next lobbying advertisement.
choosing local shops will get rid of this. That's why we've build a worldwide map to easily find those places, while corporate and chains are noted with a grey dot and no information appart from 'we don't support this place'.
In the middle of it all a woman in a scuba mask is submerged in a tank connected to two portaloos. Go on, go in and do your business. Your urine is filtered and fed back into the tank. She is swimming in your processed piss, and she stays in there for hours.
That moment when you’re wondering whether you’re reading a story written by @mindpersephone or an actual review of a serious art installation. I hope they didn’t have trouble finding volunteers for this.
The theme of earth’s biggest art extravaganza – spiritual rest – felt wildly wrong for our crisis-hit planet. Thank goodness for the pavilions, from fake babies to hi-tech sperm banks to a chocolate Russell Crowe
Seeing Cloudflare do a 20% layoff doesn't bode well for the tech industry which already has a problem of too many overqualified people looking for too few jobs.
@uvok And then the same industry is crying that it's falling apart. Seriously, the "leadership" people are the kind who empties their car tank before driving off and then wonder why the hell the car doesn't want to start
@soatok, they are shooting themselves in the foot. AI can automate processes, but if you don't have qualified people behind it, it can lead to many security breaches. We will see over time how their product evolves and whether they end up rehiring the same folks. IMHO The reality is that AI, by itself, is not efficient; it is not AI. Needs a lot of context, and people are the ones who provide it.
@pastorinni Exactly. And for a company like CloudFlare which is such a load-bearing fixture of how the internet works right now, that is... harrowing. Not exactly unprecedented though, given recent history for both AWS and Github.
I think we're on the tipping point of something parallel to the sovereignty movement away from US tech companies, where people understand that the theoretical risk of massive central services just became a practical one. And I think "smolnet" is part of that movement, but maybe not the full scope of it. I dunno, guess we'll see.
@soatok@furry.engineer Nope. It was bad enough when I was laid off at the start of 2025. Pretty glad I decided to exit instead of keep trying to fight for a job.
working in academia is looking better and better these days. The pay sucks, but the quality of life is excellent! Tragically, there are so few of these positions available.
@baka Probably quite well. You fire 1000 highly qualified and therefore well paid engineers and replace them with 1111 unqualified, therefore lowly paid prompt monkeys. C suite bonuses go up.
@ck "C suite" should mean "the place where you stick the C programmers, and nobody ever goes there unless the tower of pizza boxes really needs to be cleared out" @baka @soatok
It seems absurd that I even need to say this, but there are only two cases where I will ever submit to an authority: 1) to prevent me from causing harm to someone else 2) to ensure everyone's basic needs are met (e.g. taxes)
That's it. Everyone else can fuck off, ESPECIALLY about porn.
I don't care if you're left, right, center, up, down, or sideways, the only moral authority anyone can ever hold over another sentient being is to either prevent causing harm to someone else (not themselves, ONLY someone else), or uphold a social contract to ensure everyone in a particular society has their basic needs met.
If I EVER hear someone bitching about someone else's "problematic fantasies", at this point I'm just going to assume they're a cop, even if they call themselves a leftist, or a progressive, or whatever.
I'm so fucking tired of cops.
This entry was edited (Wednesday 6 May 2026, 22:21)
the issue with saying to have e.g. a nation-state is okay as long as it only serves to uphold these two points is that they’re up to subjective interpretation. “harm” and “basic needs” are up to a lot of interpretation and reinterpretation until you’ve got a value system that’s cruel and detached from reality; and that’s practically inevitable with centralized governance, democratic processes while a good thing can only do so much to offset it. the solution is to decentralize so that decision-making happens on a personal scale, without a detached single person or class making decisions on behalf of a whole population
my point is that there is no that good a reason to “scale” a government; for projects that have to involve several local communities, all you need is a temporary separate organization, not a permanent massive hiearchical nation-state that will inevitably rot and betray everyone then explode and bury everyone in shit as they tend to do
it is quite unfortunate that when another big state creates a shit-explosion most people hurt but learn nothing, opting to follow yet another grand authority instead of maybe not structuring society in such a self-destructive manner
no matter how long the project takes, the point is that a given organization does not aim to persist indefinitely, nor consolidate more influence than it strictly requires, and that people know better than to attempt that
you are fallaciously assuming society’s mindset towards authority cannot change. it can. the mindset change of recognizing and rejecting any attempt at wide-reaching control is possible and nessesary, people would know better than to try or tolerate that
statism is not an inherent and inevitable trait of humanity
mind you there doesnt have to be a time limit, some projects are geniunely indefinite, the emphasis is on recognizing and firmly rejecting attempts at building up anything resembling the kind of generalized authority nation-states practice
gotta be trying to miss so badly no no no a local community is no more than a couple hundred, ideally less. there is then no need for representatives because it is viable for every member to directly participate in coordinating decisions. if you need a “representative” system, you’ve already failed to some degree
“If it’s purely a “mindset” difference then that’s just another kind of representative government” feels like it has a massive logical leap in the middle that my comprehension is unable to intuit
btw statism means advocacy for a wide-spanning centralized state with borders cops prisons and a military that operates via coercion and monopolizing violence
that’s literally fiction, and not that of anything practical at that. by the point technology advances enough for that to be possible and worth considering over making better use of the space on Earth and planetary colonies, we’ll have significantly more physical automation at our disposal
the research and organizational work can be done by a few thousand individuals at the very most, and i doubt oh so much manual labor would be nessesary. take a less pessimistic estimate of 1 million, divide it by 1000 segments, bam, 1000 people per segment. build the segments separately with a loose oversight committee ensuring they’re all compatible, then put them together
then again, this is very impractical as compared to just building 1000 self-sufficent stations. you don’t need a single station equivalent to a whole planet in population capacity to have real estate in space
@hsza i love how any means of structuring society that isn't hierarchical just magically 'doesnt work' for some reason (but of course having hierarchies 'works' .. .. except it doesn't;)
also lol wtf you mean decentralization scales really well, centralized environments scale terribly and result in a single points of failure that when they break down or are overloaded or whatever, causes everything to break down, decentralized systems are also more resistant to authoritarian control and such;
not one that aims to regulate people’s entire lives and desperately cling on to power for as long as it can
and anyhow only really nessesary for a very impractical edge case scenario. easier and better not to attempt building such a single massive structure. and of course chances are a better world would not serve as a breeding ground for elons and zucks who’d push for it regardless
I never implied that I supported a government that aims to regulate people’s lives, only that I believed the concept of representative governance is necessary.
you do appear to be in support of regulating people’s lives if the two points in the OP are used as justification for it
maintaining a large colony either on the moon
keyword large. why large
even if just to coordinate trade between smaller sub-sections.
why does trade between moon colonies have to work any different to trade on earth
This entry was edited (Thursday 7 May 2026, 13:14)
@Li @hsza The problem is we are conditioned and experienced to only see the world through a hierarchical lens. Until we can see and accept the idea of human solidarity we will struggle to imagine a better future.
@hsza you could setup a anarchist communes on the moon or mars; where everyone goes and does stuff that actually works for them instead of trying to force them all to live under the same system for some reason; you could also just have a flat system where no one explicitly has power over anyone can can do things how they want,
also i dont think you can go on about 'social contracts' that i never signed and 'enforcement & policing' of them; and not have it 'regulate peoples lives' but sure ..
what i think is funny is that hierachical social structures literally decentralize in order to stay even remotely afloat; otherwise thered be one single hospital, one single food store, and one single library, we decentralize everything; they largely operate independantly from all the others too; but when it comes to structuring people and de(structuring) power, now suddenly it cant possibly work --
meanwhile in centralization land you get half the internet going down whenever google/amazon/etc's servers break;
decentralization scales; the people in power just want to stay in power-
@Li social contracts is a very very broad term, another way of saying it is basically like social expectations, which will exist to some extent if any culture exists, but they can be oppressive just the same as a state’s laws. and if there’s enforcement then thats simply just a law lol
those social expectations can also be a good thing however, its part of how anarchism can be robust, as ive brought up upthread a society would need to know better than to allow itself to be contained by anything like a state
tho theres a good chance im not using those words quite right
@Li @hsza I don’t fundamentally disagree with this at all. Decentralization is survivable. But even in decentralization, hierarchies currently exist (see root servers). From a social/state point of view, we have to be able to imagine a non-hobbesian world in which humans are not focused on garnering land and resources from one another. This is the ultimate challenge, as fish has no awareness of water, most have no awareness of of the breadth of systemic hierarchies.
@hsza i disagree their the same thing, a 'contract' implies a "consentual agreement" which doesn't exist, (this is also considering that 'contracts' are generally a tool for manufacturing consent to do coercion)
and if its the exact same thing just called something else then i would reject them for the same reason;
i reject the state and all authority for the same reasons too,
(i also somewhat disagree that they would always exist to some extent (though if not having them is desirable is another topic some other time-)
its like saying the only possible way to scale anything is by building hierarchy lol
but also- tbh id be more likely to help people by choice, if you try to force me im likely to try avoid doing it, likewise if you try force me to not hurt im more likely too hurt you
instead of appealing to ableism to excuse prisons- and trying to force me to work; you could just, have a culture of actually understanding and working on things;
@steff @hsza i mean i think im maybe a bit less kind to this kind of thing;
and just consider alot of "anarchism cant work" rethoric as just dismissing anything that isn't hierachical power structures, and to itself be just another way to enforce such power structures
(especially when you say its "either just creating a mini-state or that" implies you've heard ppl explain how you'd it and just gone 'no' and decided to reject it as "unattainable"-- or whatever, like what even constitutes 'working' in this case ???)
it reminds me of a lot of 'capitalism is the only system that works' level shit;
(also tbh; DNS is i think a poor example mainly in part because its run by a few 'regististars' who have to have 'iCANN' permission;
its a mildly decentralized thing but power is still centralized; which was kind of my point, it does scale, (heck centralized powers do not scale well at all xS-) .. they just want to stay in control-)
@Li @hsza Again, I don’t disagree with you. DNS is a good example, because it was/is meant to be distributed, but still hierarchical; however, the greater social structures created a centralized authority management because they couldn’t imagine anything else. Contrast this with the of RFC system in which working groups designed and specified services and protocols for the Internet without a central authority. Again, I believe a significant portion of the problem lies in imagining anything beyond the capitalist or per-capitalist hierarchies we are all immersed and rationalized into from birth.
and people do not harm other people at random for no reason. people are naturally inclined to help one another and to do the opposite there’s always some sort of external motivation. and capitalism is pretty much the primary driver there. without the ever hostile enviroment of capitalism driving people into desperation there would be much less theft and violence going on
LMFAO youre calling a fucking electrocution stick “non-violent”??? how much copaganda is there dancing around in your brain at the moment this is ridiculous
assume someone in that community starts randomly beating the shit out of someone else for no apparent reason. How does the society deal with this?
THAT IS NOT A REAL THING THAT CAN HAPPEN lmaooooo what the hell are you talking about im sorry youre grasping at really really silly straws now my reading comprehension is marking the entirety of this last reply as silly nonsense
cant help but think some of this notion is coming from an inability to imagine a better world
sadistic sociopaths do not appear out of thin air as such. as any person they get made into what they are by society. if society gets better - and especially if systems of abuse and coercion like compulsory schooling and cops/borders/prisons are abolished - i doubt there’ll be people developing these sorts of values
@Li @steff Steffie already pointed this out, but when I say you need at least some kind of hierarchy, this does not imply centralization, and I'm not entirely sure why you think it does. It's simply a consequence of needing to keep group size to several hundred members in order for them to be able to discuss things sensibly, which always implies some form of representative governance. It can still be distributed.
@Li @steff hierarchy here is to solve the problem of having 50000 members of a single decision making body because it's impossible for the 50000 members of that body to come to any decisions directly, so it breaks into inevitable subgroups with representatives that debate things at the highest level, and then confer with their representatives when necessary. Large groups already display this behavior naturally because having layers of decision making is the only way to scale things. It doesn't imply centralization.
@Li @steff this keeps happening, I keep saying "what if you need a bunch of people to decide something" and the response is "why would you want to do that"
there are plenty of reasons! Even a small city of 50000 people has to decide whether or not to invest in a recycling center for plastics or whatever. Many actions inherently require the cooperation of lots of people and potentially require making many decisions that will affect everyone, like the size of the standardized recycling bins so that the recycling machine can come pick it up.
@steff (i am mainly saying this as a plural system, whoever ends up in front for awhile ends up practically making decisions for stuff; sometimes they try to ask the others what they want about stuff (uh, i do this(?)) but we also sometimes just kinda go do our own thing at a time-
anyway none of us really holds power over anyone, so its not really a hierarchy its kinda just we do things when they come up,
perhaps you could have some luck talking to polyfragmented plural systems here-)
but to an extent i think this might be an issue with trying to have 50,000 people trying to make a single decision making body for them; in general-
like why are you making decisions for 50,000 people? that is itself a kind of power structure to begin with
like just let them make their own decisions??
i think the issue might be that your trying to scale what is basically a hierachy to begin with which like; why are you trying to control what they do- exactly? -- the real issue i think
hm,you could have anyone person make decisions in any given moment, like i dont know just whoever ends up having an answer first or just whoever actually goes and does the thing or .. something ends up deciding that way there is no implicit power structures are not a given,
.. also dont think we naturally do this,; but ig that'd come down to what counts as natural and that isn't something im too interested in discussing tbh, as it wouldn't be too useful-
@steff why are you talking about a city of people as if its just one people though .. ? why are you conflating organizing with hierachy and control those are different things;
people who want to build a recycling center can go build a recycling center the people who do not want to build one can not do that; and cooperation without any given power structures behind them happens all the time;
the size of the thing is just whatever largest number someone says, since larger will inevitably fit everyone elses usecase in this situation anyway (or better yet, actually have some tolerances on the machine so you can go off standard a bit- if needed ;)
also last i checked recycling is largely a scam by plastics companies and ends up not really solving alot- it ends up using more resources than it actually saves,
we should just build things that are meant to be disposable out of bio-degradable materials
anyways
as usual; if it cant be done consentually, then it shouldn't be done-
@steff (also at what point are you just describing 'authority of the bootmaker' -- (i.e the person who makes boots, gets to decide how the boots are made-)
which tbh i have always thought it just a bit of wordplay because i kinda feel like these are different concepts (its like comparing say, cops,to a directory tree on a computer, which is technically 'hierachical'; in the sense that there is an 'upper' tree and a 'lower' part of the tree,
but .. no folder is treated as 'greater' or 'more important' than the other folders, i.e there is no 'power' to any of them-)
(like e.g; i could always build my own boots, or i could not wear boots, as there is no real enforcement of it-- and if there isn't really enforcement then )
@Li @steff Again, I think the problem here is what's implied by the word "government" or what people think a "government" is. Like, some people might consider "the current collection of community leaders" a "government". The fact that a government can be *anything* makes discussions difficult when people project their own definitions of what they think a "government" involves onto the word.
@steff tbh my issue is more with power and control over people than it is with organizing, im fine with people willingly organizing and making things that they think will benefit the community as a whole, and i think it makes sense to get community input on such projects,
.. we dont need government for that though .. you'd just need to (in that example you gave-) ask around what ppl think of it, and find some people who'd be willing to to try create such a thing, and then make it that way,
i just don't (really) consider that hierarchical too much, or otherwise i think your using the word in a kind of different way;
unless you try force compliance with whatever it is,
this also isn't at all what your originally said in this thread at all, but i digress,
Earlier today @gsuberland reminded me of the Darwinia soundtrack and the fact that I had an unfinished remix of Visitors from Dreams. My wrist won't let me type much today so instead I finished it: soundcloud.com/erik_mcclure/vi…
Ho, ho, hold the fuck up, I understand hierarchies and their uses, I just don't see what you fuckmuppet with the skills and spine of a wet sponge do all the way up there, and the people working their asses off knowing their shit are doing down there.
I also don't see why the person responsible with their decisions isn't the one taking the consequences for their decisions if they're bad - like, isn't that 95% of your fucking job description, carrying the risk and responsibility?
i understand hierarchies perfectly clear, i'm just calling them bullshit
i see them as much a systemic tool as other things, and i will (ab)use it to get things done
("you" = generic you) if you care that much about the hierarchy, explain to me why it exists in its current form, why that's important, and why i should care
if not, or if you don't want to, then i will take it upon myself to see if it stands the test of time, and/or if it should even exist or not
one of the most interesting things to me is that, while working in a company that essentially has flat structure, i start to see the need for hierarchy, or at least the motes for it, and why it exists conventionally
learning hierarchies from first principles, how they are supposed to function, and most crucially; how they can become gears that crush people between them
i want to make sure that if i ever am in charge of making something like that, i inject as much humanity in it, because while hierarchies increase efficiency, they systemically lose sight of certain things, if not built into their design, or if/when removed, and so you can VERY easily fuck that up, and blind yourself institutionally
and also; hierarchies are a guiding tool, not an iron mould. if someone breaks them, for a good reason, then be open and receptive.
a hierarchy that people need to rage against is one that is not legitimate, and needs to be reconstructed.
I'm sometimes wondering if this boils down to trust.
And that many autistic people developed an absence of trust (not mistrust) due to systematic oppression and spend more time thinking about if a system makes sense or not and therefore find flaws in almost every hierarchical structure.
Where NT people simply "trust" and move forward with whatever they find and don't bother thinking about it.
I thought about this just today, but what I thought was that we have no "instinctive" understanding of human pack hierarchy. Heck, it was only recently I figured out normally people care about things like feeling socially dominant, to a degree where people actually feel someone high in a corporate hierarchy deserve more benefits and less responsibility solely on the merit of their rank. If you don't feel that way but stop and think about it it's seen as not understanding it.
We not only understand the hierarchy, we also understand how the organizational structure is being abused in a way that those who are doing the abuse would prefer not to be scrutinized or explained. We understand how to repair the intentional brokenness of the hierarchy that would--coincidentally, I'm sure--reduce the hierarchal influence of the person saying we don't understand. We also understand unfounded smear rumors used to discredit opposition.
More condescending & hopelessly wrong bullshit about #autistic people! I'm fed up with it! Who are these idiots who claim we "don't understand hierarchies"?
idm that much about hierarchies, tho a lot of times hierarchies are very bloated (sometimes with a reason, because "too big company at the point where higher ups should probably be replaced by athenisian election lottery")
i have more issues with bureaucracy, even tho i underatand why it exists, just really annoys me really
I would very much like to know what threat intel their assertion that this is needed is based on. I was rather of the understanding that phishing in all it's forms was working just fine these days.
That's a really niche threat model. If it works at all and isn't just snake oil.
Now not only do I know which are the terminals best selected to monitor HDMI on but I know what to make my device look like so it blends in (and it's a decent size box too).
Watching Tom Scott's latest video on Nebula, about realistic patient mannequins. This training centre has the world's only FtM mannequin and they say they wanted to get a MtF one too but the company that made them was taken over by a US company and... they didn't want to make them anymore.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 21 April 2026, 20:07)
Hmm... I haven't been seeing these. I came by to check in, because I hadn't seen anything from you in a while. Probably just timing though, I've been busy off the network lately.
@Nuki idk I've been keeping up my tuesday and friday streams pretty faithfully so I've been around, and the tuesday vods are up on my website for patreon donors and promo squad members if you wanted to watch them, they go up free a month later for everyone else if you wanted to wait until then too 😀
Internet Protocol Version 8 (IPv8) is a managed network protocol
suite that transforms how networks of every scale -- from home
networks to the global internet -- are operated, secured, and
monitored.
my partner works for prpl foundation, so I've heard (bad things) about WiFi 6, and she skipped over 7, but told me that there's rumours of WiFi 8 already.
I didn't realise that there's a whole rat's tail of other midlife crisis sounding stuff attached to it
"Devices communicate only with their designated service gateway. The service gateway communicates only with the designated cloud service. Lateral movement between devices or zones is architecturally prevented by the absence of any permitted route to any other destination." WTF
Now livestreaming at joystick.tv/u/toplesstopics and through our discord server at toplesstopics.org/chat ! Gonna discuss the intersection between feminism and naturism, then edit some more "artistic newed photos" for sale to pay for video hosting etc!
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People sometimes think of a #kink dynamic only in terms of power exchange. It's more like a trust exchange. One party may choose to trust another to provide safety, tranquility, comfort, etc. That gift of trust is what is infused with power. The offering should be made with an appropriate expression of limits and bounds. The entity to which the offer is made is often, but not always a practitioner of the arts. They etch and line the boundaries, ideally capturing the intent of the supplicant. Once sealed, the ritual begins, and can manifest in many forms.
Within the circle, there is safety, accompanied by an outpouring of vulnerability, droplets of which harbor the essence of the devotee. These are cared for and woven into the ritual. The threads can undo a person altogether as the essence is drawn out into the aether. A mind set free to wander the void, leaving the consciousness intact within its vessel. It's a vulnerable state, and it leaves the beings highly suggestible, sometimes devoid of purpose, and easily put to good use.
The entity in control, the weaver, the witch, the queen of the hive; they have discretion as to what choices to make. As you are allowed to peek out of your enclosure after quite a rest, you see a snippet of such a ritual in action... Continued in the #AltText
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Drone 9382 is pre-bundled with a photography module, and I'd say the editing task ran on these images is pretty nice
I intend to write up an educational piece building off my existing ones to explore the aspects involving de-identification. I feel like it's one of the many things that are not well understood about kink spaces. But ego dissolution as a whole is difficult for some folks to grasp so I'm not sure how well it'll work.
In the meantime I finally broke the seal on posting the backlog of latex+rope pics I've been collecting. I'm looking forward to getting some shoots in with a vacbed and rope sometime in the near to medium future.
I’ll be very interested to read this! Recently I started heavily getting into pet play, and realising that absolute trust of my Handler is key to getting into the right headspace. I was never able to just go blank like that before…
the UK has had some new legislation enacted which improves renters' rights [edit: initially with England; housing is a devolved matter] [edit2: apparently England is lagging behind here] by a lot:
there are no more fixed rental contracts; everything is done on a rolling basis with a generous multiple-month notice
no-fault evictions are gone
after an eviction without reason landlords couldn't re-list it as a rental property for a year
rent can be increased once a year with a 2-month notice
rent increases can be challenged by a tenant
"rental bidding" where you try to give the landlord a higher price than other tenants is made illegal (this was the single biggest WTF moment i had arriving to the UK)
pets must be accepted by default, unless there is a good reason not to ("I don't want to" is not a good reason)
hell yeah.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 14 April 2026, 16:08)
Most of these sound like EU-wide rules in general (or at least in effect in most EU-countries) but one stood out:
"rental bidding" where you try to give the landlord a higher price than other tenants is made illegal (this was the single biggest WTF moment i had arriving to the UK)
What the fuck is this and who in their right might thought that this was a good idea
@exec rent bidding has started becoming the norm here in Australia ;_;
wanted to ask about UK/EU stuff tho, how many months notice for landlords ending a rolling contract?
here fixed term is standard and we (tenants) preferred it because it at least gave you 12-24 months of stability at same rent rather than them giving 2-month notice to end so they could relist it at a price higher than they could increase your rent by
Order a copy of our magazine Too Long: https://toolong.news/collections/tl007With the new Renters Rights Act coming into effect in just under a months time, ...
the bidding thing feels like a recent development, we encountered it for the first time in 2023. every time I moved before this, you made an offer and the landlord said yes/no. after, it was your bid got put in a big pot, you had to write a grovelling personal statement, etc
very glad that it's stopped, it made moving impossible. that year and the year after our landlord put rent up over 10% each year so I'd like to know what effect these laws actually end up having on rent rises
@jcoglan it's completely normal in Australia - some places have rules against the real estate agent asking if you'd like to pay more than someone else, but as far as I know it's still legal for you to make and for them to accept a higher-than-advertised price
Yesterday i had to do something really fucking stupid.
I wanted to try out a new desktop fedi client, but the windows version is only released in the microsoft store. so i go to download it from the MS Store only for it and all the other store exclusive apps i use. to fail to download/update. it kept giving an error, so i google that error and all the results for it are related to the windows firewall not working.
So i check the windows firewall and its related services and theyre all working fine. my next guess its probably something fucky with the microsoft store. so i clear out the cache and it doesnt fix it. i check the microsoft store services and theyre still working, restarting them doesnt help. so i think maybe the store itself is broken so i open power shell and uninstall it. as im going to reinstall the microsoft store it keeps failing saying it cannot find the files, even as i explicitly point to them or try to redownload from microsofts servers. i cant even re-download it from winget because it uses the store as a repo for that. oh and microsoft removed the
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Yesterday i had to do something really fucking stupid.
I wanted to try out a new desktop fedi client, but the windows version is only released in the microsoft store. so i go to download it from the MS Store only for it and all the other store exclusive apps i use. to fail to download/update. it kept giving an error, so i google that error and all the results for it are related to the windows firewall not working.
So i check the windows firewall and its related services and theyre all working fine. my next guess its probably something fucky with the microsoft store. so i clear out the cache and it doesnt fix it. i check the microsoft store services and theyre still working, restarting them doesnt help. so i think maybe the store itself is broken so i open power shell and uninstall it. as im going to reinstall the microsoft store it keeps failing saying it cannot find the files, even as i explicitly point to them or try to redownload from microsofts servers. i cant even re-download it from winget because it uses the store as a repo for that. oh and microsoft removed the MSI installer to manualy install the store, you can only get it from the store or windows update. AND WINDOWS UPDATE IS NOW BROKEN TOO!!!
So at this point im thinking i need to do the usual SFC/DISM fixes in powershell, except when it goes to repair things it still cannot find the repositorys. maybe i can try the offline fix method? so i download a W11 25H2 iso, mount it, point DISM to it, and it STILL cannot find it.
Now at this point im kinda livid. this windows 11 install has survived 6 years of updates, across 3 different machines, and even the jump up from windows 10. I have kept this frankenwindows install running for so long i get a sick perverse pleasure from keeping it alive. I really do not want to have to nuke this drive. so i go for broke and do an in-place reset of 25H2. AND IT STILL DIDNT FIX IT.
But the in place reset did do something! after that i was able to use powershell to reinstall and reset the store. and when i finally open the store im greeted with "WinAppRuntime.Main.1.8 Updated Today"
So you're telling me that the runtime environment necessary for the microsoft store and related apps to update and function, updates through the store? and if it breaks it cant update itself to unbreak? is there not a way to manually install this? well apparently not that i can fucking find. you need to do an inplace windows reset because apparently nothing short of that will fix how badly it fubars the repositorys and app database.
doing linux levels of repair effort to windows isnt my favorite passtime because of how annoying it is, but it is entertaining to see what breaks and why.
@DjBRINE1 it is, but spending time building windows applications is not something i really enjoy doing. at least the linux version is released in a sane way.
Tons of people inside microsoft had been complaining how bad windows update was for years when I started working there... 10 years ago. The team I was on actually broke windows update over the weekend once because we pushed too many internal OS images into their pipeline, after they explicitly told us we could do that without causing a problem, which also took out the entire windows store, which included all of xbox!
When I went back 5 years ago they had to patch the Windows Store just to support Halo Infinite having two possible executables, and there was also a bug where every time you installed the game the icon would get 1 pixel smaller. We had multiple issues with the Halo Infinite install on the windows store. Everyone hated it (and we didn't have any issues with Steam). The entire windows ecosystem is a catastrophe, microsoft employees don't even like it, and eventually the inertia the company thinks it can ride on forever will run out, very abruptly.
@cloudhop my uncle worked on drivers at ms during the win7 era and he fucking hated it back then too. ive never heard good things from ex ms employees about the state of windows.
PS: if you tell me to use linux instead of windows for this machine, which for various reasons i wont get into i cannot do, they will never find your body.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 14 April 2026, 09:22)
Today, someone on the Fediverse told me, “Your free speech is not important to me.”
Ironic—because my free speech bothered them enough to send me a message about it.
But I don’t say things because they’re important to you. I say things because they’re important to me.
So important that I pay for the privilege of owning and managing atomicpoet.org. Which means my free speech doesn’t depend on the whims of someone else—or whatever their mood is at the moment. It’s based upon my own personal integrity.
My personal integrity says, “Speak the truth even when others are bothered by it”—which they are.
Specifically, the truth is that Trumpism is a religious cult. It’s a cult—talking about that shouldn’t be isolated to a #uspol hashtag because it’s actually #worldpol.
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Today, someone on the Fediverse told me, “Your free speech is not important to me.”
Ironic—because my free speech bothered them enough to send me a message about it.
But I don’t say things because they’re important to you. I say things because they’re important to me.
So important that I pay for the privilege of owning and managing atomicpoet.org. Which means my free speech doesn’t depend on the whims of someone else—or whatever their mood is at the moment. It’s based upon my own personal integrity.
My personal integrity says, “Speak the truth even when others are bothered by it”—which they are.
Specifically, the truth is that Trumpism is a religious cult. It’s a cult—talking about that shouldn’t be isolated to a #uspol hashtag because it’s actually #worldpol.
And this isn’t merely politics anymore. It’s religion. Trump comparing himself to Jesus Christ is beyond political propaganda—it’s religious proselytism in a literal sense.
Everyone should know this. I make no apologies for saying it in the most public way possible.
There’s just something poetic about white colonizers who believe they should dominate online spaces they don’t control because they’re simply used to getting what they want.
Is it just me, or do the bulk of “no Trump” complainers on the Fediverse happen to be white dudes from Australia—living literally on the other side of the world from the USA? It just seems pretty ...
These days, nude = sex. So I have sex watching TV, I have sex making a sandwich and I often have sex doing my job. Wow... I knew I was too sexy for my shirt. - P.Z. Walker
This TDOV I am very grateful to have trans friends. I have never met a trans person who was unhappy about transition and achieving their chosen gender identity.
I am also continuing to question my own gender. A lot of the things associated with masculinity make me deeply uncomfortable.
I'm a naturist at heart,' she says, 'I love being on beaches where everyone is naked. Ugly young people, beautiful old people, whatever. It's so unsexual and so liberating' - Dame Helen Mirren.
@Eetschrijver dat klopt. Het zou in heel veel opzichten goed zijn als de 1960er jaren weer terugkwamen. Toen was ook niet alles rozegeur en maneschijn maar terugkijkend...
Mastodon is the kind of place where if I made a shitpost like:
You can tell the difference between leaded and lead-free solder by tasting it
So many of you would get mad as hell and probably report me and even consider making a fediblock post, but you wouldn’t do the sensible thing and quote tweet it because you’re too cowardly to have that kind of callout culture
Figures that meta(Facebook) are behind a lot of the age verification stuff going aroind. They have a functionally complete set of products. Facebook, Intagram, what's app, all have been basically feature complete for a decade at this point. They've not added new user facing features in a while, at least not obvious enough that I remember them.
If you can't compete on features you've got to compete by making it harder for the opposition. Adding something to support a new regulation is trivial for them. But a dozen slightly different rules in different parts of the world make it really really hard to bring up a new Facebook competitor.
With the amount of regulations and paperwork from osa (which I've long said was designed to prevent an English Facebook competitor) it would be a wild amount of work for a new social media company that wants to be focusing on features but now need to get a legal team too.
The other advantage to Facebook of age verification is that they don't need tracking cookies and other hacks to know what you're doing online. They'll have your fucking driving license, passport, or gov ID. For them it's a massive bonus
I think someone is following me around and making a documentary. But I can't be sure.#vr #vtuber #furry🟧WATCH LIVE 5 NIGHTS A WEEK!🟧https://www.twitch.tv/c...
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
What the title says. Well intentioned, often other "neurodivergent" people look at your life, your autism, and say: "you should mask harder."
For example, I accidentally said something that offended a friend. Won't go into detail, but it was me unintentionally coming off as arrogant, not something bad like a slur or hate speech.
I asked for advice (elsewhere) and the advice was universally, "you see, NT avoid this topic at all costs. Going forwards, know it is best to avoid this topic."
But isn't this just saying "mask harder and be more palatable for everyone else"?
Every piece of "autism advice" I see even in "neurodivergent friendly" communities is basically "how to be less autistic."
Well, NT people mask too. I thought the goal of these communities was "ND dont need to mask 24/7! Accept who you are!" and then I hear "But limit your personality in public, it makes others uncomfortable."
People (including other autistic people) treat my autism as a liability and a nuisance. Thanks! I knew that!
I think there are situations where consciously choosing to follow a social convention against one's "natural" inclination (which I think is a type of masking) is a good idea. For example, if someone has recently experienced a death in their family, I might think twice about making death-related jokes, or even bringing up the subject of death at all. I don't think these rules are inviolable; with the right context I think humor can help with grief. But I think it requires a level of intimacy with the person grieving and their relationship with the deceased, and thoughtlessly saying any thing that comes to mind can cause fresh hurts for someone already hurting a lot. That's a rule that I consciously try to follow and think very carefully before I break it.
There are other rules that I will willingly and gleefully break because I think they're harmful, e.g. "It's [unpatriotic / blasphemous / rude] to criticize [the government / church leaders / authorities]". That rule is bad and exists to reinforce the power of people who already have power, so I deliberately try to break it,
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I think there are situations where consciously choosing to follow a social convention against one's "natural" inclination (which I think is a type of masking) is a good idea. For example, if someone has recently experienced a death in their family, I might think twice about making death-related jokes, or even bringing up the subject of death at all. I don't think these rules are inviolable; with the right context I think humor can help with grief. But I think it requires a level of intimacy with the person grieving and their relationship with the deceased, and thoughtlessly saying any thing that comes to mind can cause fresh hurts for someone already hurting a lot. That's a rule that I consciously try to follow and think very carefully before I break it.
There are other rules that I will willingly and gleefully break because I think they're harmful, e.g. "It's [unpatriotic / blasphemous / rude] to criticize [the government / church leaders / authorities]". That rule is bad and exists to reinforce the power of people who already have power, so I deliberately try to break it, and I try to catch myself when I find myself unintentionally following it.
I think a lot of "just mask harder" advice comes down to people's (well-founded or otherwise) belief that a certain rule should be followed, sometimes without question (I often find this axiomatic take explained with some variant of "that's just the rule"). I like learning about the rule even if I take the implicit recommendation of following the rule with a grain of salt, but I do find the implication that rules have to be followed because they're rules tiring.
Don't call your mother fat, don't push the person standing at the crosswalk in front of a bus, don't cut someone's hair when sitting behind them because it bothers you... Socially unaccepted actions, why, because they are. In another universe they all may be acceptable. Our cultures calls them rude, murder, and possibly assault or maybe just impolite. Why. Because stuff and things. Mostly, it'll hurt someone's feelings.
Really I think it is, our freedom ends where anothers begins. Thus, we are free to do what we wish, but if your happiness impeeds on anothers happiness, then there is an issue.
Edit*. When the law doesn't match that, then I feeo government has failed
This entry was edited (Tuesday 10 March 2026, 04:48)
I don't think the reasoning behind unspoken customs is unknowable or arbitrary. I think part of being a good person is analyzing the rules that are handed down by our elders and deciding which are good to follow and which are good to leave behind. Circumstances change, new information comes to light that our parents weren't privy to. Or, maybe they just made convenient or selfish choices when deciding which rules were important. Sometimes those convenient or selfish choices get codified into law, and when they do, it's up to us to fix them. I dunno if that's government failing so much as it's just how government works.
New information coming to light is 90% propaganda, 10% truth. If we got rid of all borders and made all insurance companies illegal while saying denying a person care in terms of health would put your organization in prison. It would fix nationalism immediately, drag health costs down, and fix many issues people struggle with. The person who works for their family isn't an issue, the government that doesn't let them is. It doesn't matter where or who they are, they were segregated due to old rules, mainly the British decision to segregate to isolate and isolate and divide to rule. Did wars happen before then, yes. But the way to end all wars isn't through segregation, but rather assimilation throughly so all are accepted without question.
All is well. I also find the problem overwhelming when I try to think about it all at once, all the cruelty we inflict on each other because we were taught to, or because it feels easier to keep rules that afford us the barest of privilege over our neighbors. It's a lot.
Makes sense, thank you for your response. I am often unsure how to make sure people know that I am being sarcastic or sincere. So thank you for your input. Appreciated
It's a skill that we find harder to master than others. That's all.
Some are naturally gifted at math. Some can learn a new language effortlessly. Others have to practice and pay attention carefully or they make an error.
It took me 30 years. My personality is now permanently different. It's no longer a mask just like learning a language and culture eventually becomes normal.
Learning how to pick up social cues in a rote way instead of an imitative way, essentially, is a treatment. I mean, I know it’s hard to pick up on norms and mores naturalistically with autism, and we should all be graceful and respectful of that as well. Just you know, if someone says something is rude or hurtful, that’s not an attack on your inability to judge that social situation by default…it is information. Even NT do impose expectations on other NT behavior across settings that is sometimes incomprehensible.
There is no objective line, but if your actions result in your friends getting hurt that is sad, and if your friends decide not to hang out with you because of the chances you'll hurt them again that is a fair choice. You may choose not to put effort into understanding other people's perspectives but this means most people with healthy boundaries will either get hurt at some point and leave, or recognize that is bound to happen and leave pre-emptively. So if you want friends that treat you right or a partner who isn't miserable, then you will have to put effort into understanding other people's perspectives.
Your friend was offended for a reason. People assume you care why or how to avoid it because that is a necessary part of any healthy friendship. If you do not care, then I hope your friend finds friends that do care so they, at least, can be happy. I also hope that you have friends and you are happy, but an unhealthy friendship does not make you happy and it barely counts as friendship anyway.
The situation really wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. I was just talking about how I was doing in a course and my friend got jealous because I am doing much better. I didn’t brag, just like “Oh I did great on the exam”
But apparently GPA and pay are two things you can never discuss with anyone….for some reason.
I asked for advice (elsewhere) and the advice was universally, “you see, NT avoid this topic at all costs. Going forwards, know it is best to avoid this topic.”
I don't think of that as masking actually. NTs run into the "said something they shouldn't have" error quite a lot... i think of that as just learning new social nuance. If social interactions are like kayaking in ooen water, this is the equivalent of bumping (gently) into a wall that was already there, but being given instructions to mask more is like them putting down barriers to reduce the amount of water you have available to maneuver in.
But I do think in your example that the best course would be for NTs to just be more aware of and accepting of ND saying things they consider weird. Would be the most efficient course of action and is more of a solution than "Add this to the mental list of things you can't talk about!"
I think a lot of advice tends to be an explanation of a social rule, with the implication that following the rule (or "masking better") is preferred. Sometimes the insistence that rules must be followed is more explicit, which I find aggravating because I don't think social rules have to be followed, and there are many times where they should be broken. I think they're similar to literary or grammatical rules in that it's better to be aware of them and have a nuanced understanding of how people use them, so I can follow or break them more intentionally in conversation as my preferences dictate. For my money I'd rather people take the time to explain the rules they adhere to no matter how silly or damaging they are. At least then I can engage with the rule more tactically rather than being caught unaware when I accidentally break it.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 10 March 2026, 00:20)
I don't think this is a NT vs Autism thing. There are topics that, depending on the environment, are taboo and not to be discussed. Figuring out these rules is confusing (or at least, not automatic) for Autistic peeps, but actually following the rules is something both NT and autistic people must do. Whether or not you call it masking, it's still something that both groups are subjected to.
They’re only taboo subjects because society (primarily NTs) decided they were taboo.
Autistic people have to follow the rules set by NTs, not the other way around.
I'm 50/50 on this.
People running a social scene (generally NTs) set the cadence, yes.
Thoughts/questions/ponderings:
Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
Are there not rules that both autistic peeps and NTs have in common?
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
When a NT person upsets an autistic person because they broke a norm they weren't familiar with, wouldn't they also feel bad and try to remember not to do that in the future?
Some taboos exist for good reason and apply across the board. We don't greet strangers by asking them how their genitals are feeling, for example (although that would be hilarious).
Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
Autistic people generally have either far fewer than allistics or if they have some kind of social obsession potentially they have a whole world of rules of their own that even allistics will struggle with.
But yeah generally, in my own case: 1) Don't be irrationally or sadistically mean.
That's basically it. You can be irrational/strange around me and at most I'll be surprised due it being unexpected and my "mask software" wont have a response to load and I'll freeze up for a bit. You can even be mean if there is sufficient justification for it. Maybe I fucked up bad.
Now, "being mean" a fairly broad category and I have specific obsessive silos of topics I don't want broken, but that's on the basis of a "info hazard". Mainly: discussions of poop or story spoilers. But if someone ends up breaking those "Rules" I don't hold it against them because they could not have known that I have a severe aversion to both of those things
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Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
Autistic people generally have either far fewer than allistics or if they have some kind of social obsession potentially they have a whole world of rules of their own that even allistics will struggle with.
But yeah generally, in my own case: 1) Don't be irrationally or sadistically mean.
That's basically it. You can be irrational/strange around me and at most I'll be surprised due it being unexpected and my "mask software" wont have a response to load and I'll freeze up for a bit. You can even be mean if there is sufficient justification for it. Maybe I fucked up bad.
Now, "being mean" a fairly broad category and I have specific obsessive silos of topics I don't want broken, but that's on the basis of a "info hazard". Mainly: discussions of poop or story spoilers. But if someone ends up breaking those "Rules" I don't hold it against them because they could not have known that I have a severe aversion to both of those things, I just warn them and move on.
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
Yes but they'd probably be documented, FAQ'd, etc. Autistic people would tell rule violators to RTFM.
When a NT person upsets an autistic person because they broke a norm they weren’t familiar with, wouldn’t they also feel bad and try to remember not to do that in the future?
If the autistic person got upset at the person for breaking a norm the allistic was unfamiliar with they'd be being unfair assuming there was no good reason for them to have known in the first place.
Some taboos exist for good reason and apply across the board. We don’t greet strangers by asking them how their genitals are feeling, for example (although that would be hilarious).
I unironically would be pretty comfortable in a society that did that. At worst I'd probably be confused by why this was the thing people asked about but if I encountered a society that did such and I learned that as a common greeting I'd settle in fine.
Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
I'm sure most do, but it's far more likely for their rules to be ignored/overridden if they don't fit in with society's idea of normal.
For example, an autistic person who does not like being touched is more likely to be seen as the "problem" than someone who tries to shake their hand or give them a hug. People who are close to them will probably learn to respect to that individual's personal rules, but NTs seem to less adaptable to social change, particularly if it's inconvenient to them.
Are there not rules that both autistic peeps and NTs have in common?
Definitely, but a lot of them exist for good reasons. I suppose I'm talking more about the seemingly arbitrary rules here.
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
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Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
I'm sure most do, but it's far more likely for their rules to be ignored/overridden if they don't fit in with society's idea of normal.
For example, an autistic person who does not like being touched is more likely to be seen as the "problem" than someone who tries to shake their hand or give them a hug. People who are close to them will probably learn to respect to that individual's personal rules, but NTs seem to less adaptable to social change, particularly if it's inconvenient to them.
Are there not rules that both autistic peeps and NTs have in common?
Definitely, but a lot of them exist for good reasons. I suppose I'm talking more about the seemingly arbitrary rules here.
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
In my experience there just generally seem to be fewer "global" rules, but when rules are broken people get over it more quickly.
When a NT person upsets an autistic person because they broke a norm they weren't familiar with, wouldn't they also feel bad and try to remember not to do that in the future?
I guess this depends on the person, but that applies to everyone, not just NTs.
Rules are easy for my autistic self, it's when the rules are pointless, never explained, and enforced purely on vibe. For instance, as a rule you should always rinse and brush away as much of the gunk on dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. This isn't hard to understand or follow for me, it makes perfect sense. Now if the rule is to "read the room" ok, cool that's not specific, it has no clear goal, it's entirely vague. But it's also against reading the room to ask about reading the room and when asked NT people can't generally explain the structure to the rule.
“Read the room” is not a rule. “Read the room” is a skill of knowing how the people in the room are feeling.
The rule that skill serves is, “don’t say things that people in the room can’t handle hearing right now”
Obvious example: avoid chattering happily about your recent raise in front of people who are miserable they just got laid off.
Usually, people dismissively saying “read the room” mean, “I know that you are capable of feeling and understanding other people’s emotions, would you please fucking pay attention to that skill right now?” (This is plenty common even for not-autistic people) But of course for autistic people that assumption is just incorrect. People saying that to autistic people need to read the room.
I'm sorry but I completely disagree, read the room is entirely a rule. If you think social expectations are merely skills and not rules then idk where to really take this because society, socializing, it's all rules of which skill can allow you to bend and sometimes break. For instance it's against the rules to be happy at a funeral, even if you're happy but if you're socially skilled you can manage it.
I think you're getting stuck on people saying "read the room" not all the unspoken rules that ND people have to navigate simply because not doing it is rude. If I get asked "how are you" and I reply "I don't know why I'm alive anymore" I am considered an asshole not the person asking questions they don't want answers to. I have to follow the unspoken rules that they don't really give a fuck about me, they don't care how I'm doing, and that I need to lie even if I'm uncomfortable with it because they forced me to.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 10 March 2026, 18:45)
I would argue that it's moreso that there are many more specific and clear social rules, but most people don't know how to explain them, so when asked, they just say "read the room". As another person said, it might also be a reminder or shorthand of something that you are assumed to already know intuitively.
I think part of the skill is tone, which is kinda dumb since the truth you communicate is basically the same. Even so, something like "I don't know why I'm alive anymore" might be considered rude while something like "eh" or "not great" or "same as usual" (hopefully that's not your usual) or even something like "well, I've been a bit overwhelmed by current events recently" would generally not be seen as rude. You can still say something that's true; you just have to soften things. It would be easier if the softening was not necessary, but as people have gotten at earlier, you have more power to change yourself that to change how the rest of the world reacts to things.
I'm not diagnosed autistic or any other form of neurodivergent. To the day if someone asks "how are you?" I might give a real answer. "Not good, my cat is sick and I'm worried he might be dying" was one I gave last year, to a food service worker. He gave me a discount that day, acknowledged that that doesn't make it better but he did something to show he saw me and we have been a lot more friendly since then.
I don't dump on him every time I see him, because I genuinely have good days, but he lights up when he sees me, and that makes me happy too.
No you shouldn't rinse and brush as much off as possible, it undermines the environmental benefits of using the dishwasher to save water. The dishes and dishwasher will be fine.
Well intentioned, often other "neurodivergent" people look at your life, your autism, and say: "you should mask harder."
Yeah pretty much, right? But is any other advice possible?
"Here's how to appear less autistic" is really the only usable piece of info when the problem is "I'm autistic and that's never going to change but it sometimes causes problems".
"Learn how to politely say Fuck you deal with it it's definitely going to happen again" is the only other realistic option but that strategy is only effective in limited contexts.
I see it more like "those poor NTs can't help it, here's how you deal with them" in the sense of, they're not smart enough to understand you, so you have to understand them. If I run into a problem where a child doesn't understand me, I don't expect the child to understand me better, I expect to explain it better.
If literal aliens visited the Earth, I would try to understand them, and at the same time I hope they'd try to understand me, but I can only control my own understanding, not "make them understand me".
It's not so much about "what you're doing is wrong" more about "you can control yourself but not them, so you can do better". At the same time, if you notice they're not even making an effort, and they should know better, you're in your right to point that out. If you talk with someone reasonable, they'll understand.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 10 March 2026, 01:43)
because our behaviors and personalities are seen as a burden. having to be mindful about somebody's limitations requires some amount of work and people don't want to be bothered.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 10 March 2026, 15:01)
Which is a shame, because it means more of the effort falls onto us. We have to be extra careful of what upsets NTs, but NTs aren't instructed (nor expected) to be careful of what upsets us. To be fair, what that is can differ strongly from person to person.
It just sucks when you run into a spot where either side needs to give - like when your energy is low and somebody complains about your vocal tone. On your side, you're already extending as much energy as possible and falling short. On the NT's side, they don't necessarily know that the reason for the change in tone is because of something you can't control, and it has nothing to do with your feelings toward others. I ran into this issue recently and it basically meant I had to entrust someone else to explain to the other person what the issue was, because I didn't have the spoons to explain why tone is a lifelong issue and why mentioning it triggers me. Thankfully, my workplace is understanding, but I've been in countless more situations where I'd be expected to somehow give more of myself just to appease the NTs who do
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Which is a shame, because it means more of the effort falls onto us. We have to be extra careful of what upsets NTs, but NTs aren't instructed (nor expected) to be careful of what upsets us. To be fair, what that is can differ strongly from person to person.
It just sucks when you run into a spot where either side needs to give - like when your energy is low and somebody complains about your vocal tone. On your side, you're already extending as much energy as possible and falling short. On the NT's side, they don't necessarily know that the reason for the change in tone is because of something you can't control, and it has nothing to do with your feelings toward others. I ran into this issue recently and it basically meant I had to entrust someone else to explain to the other person what the issue was, because I didn't have the spoons to explain why tone is a lifelong issue and why mentioning it triggers me. Thankfully, my workplace is understanding, but I've been in countless more situations where I'd be expected to somehow give more of myself just to appease the NTs who don't consider what their words mean to me (even though I've been made acutely aware through life of what my words can mean to others.) These situations usually fall 100% onto us to resolve, even when we aren't capable of it in any given moment. Which sucks so hard.
I wish there was more public understanding of our struggles. I wish masking so well didn't result in harsher social punishments when our masks inevitably slip. It would be a fairer world if NTs were taught and expected to respect our sides, instead of just us being expected to navigate the minefield of NT socialization. Alas, we're not there yet. But, the more we talk about our sides, the more NTs may come to understand us. Hopefully.
i share in your experiences and frustrations. i've had similar moments throughout my life when i felt the responsibility was entirely on me to make sure the social interaction went smoothly. i have tried to explain to people how i find certain social expectations exhausting and draining but that isn't really understood and often forgotten by the next time it happens.
Yes, and I'm afraid that I (LSN, self-Dx with high certainty, awaiting formal Dx since early 2023) been guilty of giving this advice until some time last year, when a user on this very platform informed me that what I was suggesting was masking.
One major factor in this problem, I believe, is that a lot of the "raising awareness" stuff I've seen over the years tends to focus on just one part of our demographic (namely young, medium support needs boys), which is quite counter-productive. This is likely the main reason why none of my teachers ever thought to have me tested, and why I was 17 before I thought "Hmm, I can't shut up about Linux, I have a bunch of autistic friends, and I just watched three solid hours of old PSAs. I wonder if there's a reason for all that?"
There are times when masking is a good idea, this potentially being one of them (I do not know the context); but on the whole, it really isn't fair to do it all the time just to placate neurotypicals when they are more than capable of dealing with it without long-term psychological harm.
Sometimes the advice isn't centered around interactions with other people.
Like - wearing sunglasses can help with feelings of overstimulation during the daytime.
running a fan at night for constant white noise can help you sleep
Liquid electrical tape is a great way to cover up those little LED lights on everything
10-20 seconds of cold shower can help your body with thermoregulation
My problem is that so much of discussion about autism is centered around social interaction, that people begin to think autism is just a problem of fitting in, and if only other people could be more receptive everything would be better... well it wouldn't make the sun any less bright!
Yep, that's why I only choose to hang out with other neurodivergent people or people who are willing to treat ND people's needs as at least as important as their more toxic social norms.
Public interactions you have to conform to survive, but personal connections are your choice.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 10 March 2026, 03:24)
What is not toxic to you: - A person has a disability which makes task x difficult to perform. - Everyone agrees that this person has this disability and that this disability makes it hard to perform task x - If they try to perform task x they may not understand they are doing it incorrectly, again because of the disability that everyone agrees is real and this person has. - no one is expected to create an environment where task x is made easier - when this person fails at task x, it is treated as a moral failing - inability to perform task x puts access to fundamental needs at risk
What is toxic: - being told that you do not understand the experience that someone is trying to express
Is this accurate?
This entry was edited (Tuesday 10 March 2026, 10:05)
The problem is that the rules for being "polite" and "tactful" are seemingly arbitrary and impossible to understand.
I know there are facial expressions you are supposed to make in certain situations to make your words work as polite, but I cannot consistently figure out how to do it.
"You need to learn to say no, because you are working well beyond your capacity and you need to take care of yourself"
Literally every time I say no it's seen as the beginning of a negotiation. I'm not being vague either. "Here is some data. I don't have time to review it with you today. Have a look and we'll discuss next week." Somehow that is interpreted as "Waltz into my office right now and ask about the data"
Or "I am not looking after that, go speak to (other engineer)" becomes 'Potato is handling it"
And like, these people are peers at best. They aren't trying to politely tell me I'm not doing my job or something.
The absolute worst is "I'm going to need to sit with the info you gave me before I can respond" becomes them just repeating themselves or trying to tell me what my response might be. Or when I say "I actually can't remember, but I can look it up" becomes them guessing. Not only have they completely ignored what I said to them, I'm now 100% checked out and every last drop of executive function is gone.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 10 March 2026, 03:44)
I basically made masking a hyperfixation for a while, until I had a good enough grasp of NT social interaction that I could drop the mask more and more. Then I just came across as cool, confident, and interesting when I was doing my own thing. It's kind of a "Learn the rules so you can break them" situation. NT conventions aren't really all that complicated if you devote a bit of time to study. If you can steer your fixations at all, it's worth the investment so you can get on with your life with fewer interruptions.
Unfortunately the world isn’t made for us and doesn’t understand — or want to understand — us. The only thing we have the ability to change is ourselves. It’s tiring and overwhelming and stupid, but using logic to cater to others emotional irrationality is just something we have to do to survive.
Yes, “mask harder” is a bad suggestion, but it’s the only one we have the power to do anything about. 😞
This should hopefully demonstrate that masking comes with serious costs, including misleading people who will come to think your mask is who you really are and possibly even come to love that fake person.
This entry was edited (Wednesday 11 March 2026, 12:18)
It turned out we could only live together when we were both masking and medicated. When she went off her meds to get pregnant, it fell apart fast. Still hurts, but it was the right decision.
I know you're not asking, but since you bring it up, I'd like to mention that I'm opposed to human reproduction. I hope everyone here considering creating humans will give equal consideration to adopting them.
I'm pretty sure I've annoyed allistics (NT or ND) friends and acquaintances by bringing up philosophy, sex, politics, religion, etc much more readily than normally "appropriate".
I'll continue to otherwise be friendly with them but on this they can get fucked. The only time I'm enduring "safe" small talk is when I'm at work.
The key here is to accept that not everyone needs to be your friend... unless you live in the middle of nowhere or in rural bumfuck (or as mentioned before you are at work). Then because the number of friends you'll potentially have will always be countable on 1-2 hands and you wont be able to afford losing one.
The actual good advice is: move to highly populated areas, accept that you'll alienate a large portion of people, and settle on the percentage of cool ones.
Unfortunately, moving to a populated place is expensive. So first get a job, and save up for the move.
This entry was edited (Tuesday 10 March 2026, 18:45)
As a non autistic person, we too are thought to fit in since childhood and do learn to wear social masks. It's not something exclusive to autistic people, but I guess you guys have a harder time learning to do it.
Moderate your behavior in public and respect other people is a conscious effort until it becomes "natural".
Just remember respect is a two way street, and everybody usually is trying to play their role.
Yes and no. The advice you received in particular is just as valid for neurotypical people. Knowing what is okay to talk about in different contexts is a learned behavior, not something that comes naturally to everyone.
However it is also true that a lot of advice is just 'mask harder' because... It's really the only thing you can do. You can't control other people and institutional change is slow, so the only option is to affect what you can affect and that will be yourself.
The difference is on WHY you're doing things. Masking is toxic if you're doing it to please other people or because it feels unsafe otherwise.
But adopting different ways of communicating depending on the context is not masking, it's how language works. Nobody speaks to their boyfriend the same way they speak to their Christian grandmother or the same way they talk in Xbox Live .
There is one from Brandy Bryant where she goes: "People accuse trans women of transitioning so they can beat up women, but if that's what we wanted to do we wouldn't have transitioned, we'd have just become cops"
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roleplaying with people with OP ass OCs is funny because it's like... "I'm a universe-bending princess alicorn!" and meanwhile my OCs are like... farmer, office worker, carpenter, contractor, janitor and such
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![[FWGS]DjBRINE1](photo/contact/80/176819?ts=1738218875)
Alicja
in reply to Alicja • • •Sensitive content
This is one reason why I talk so much about being trans, both to cis and trans people.
(I mean, other than the fact that I'm an attention whore /hj )
People are not mind readers. They will only know your experience - be it one particular to you or shared with one group of people or another - if you tell them how it is for you.
I didn't know how much I had in common with other trans women before I started having conversations with trans women about their experiences and mine.
And that helped me realise I'm a woman.
And later, I didn't know (and maybe still don't know) how much I have in common with cis women, too. And that knowledge is making me more bold, happier and I think a better person to others.
So I know super well that this kind of sharing can be a game changer for a lot of people. Some people figure things out looking at others, but some do need to share, or to hear someone share, before they realise "oh! So that's how it is. So that's how I am the same/similar/different to that other person".
The best way to defeat "divide and conquer" tactics by evil people is to communicate. As taught by every shitty TV sitcom from the 80s and 90s.
May 🌸 ~美~ 🌸
in reply to Alicja • • •Sensitive content
honk if you want to honk
in reply to Alicja • • •Sensitive content
spiegelmama
in reply to Alicja • • •Sensitive content
Sundial
in reply to Alicja • • •It’s obviously different, but as a cis woman I empathise deeply with this.
I was diagnosed autistic in my late 40s and spent most of my life feeling like an alien, especially among women - not like I wanted to be a man, but like I lacked whatever quality made womanhood come naturally to others. I never felt like I fit in, or was interesting to be around, and I was genuinely astonished, if a woman wanted to know me.
Your post is powerful, really thought-provoking.
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EinsPossum, Hass-Ära 2.0
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Alicja
in reply to Sundial • • •@GoingDownWithSundial
Thank you! And thank you for sharing ❤
Сара Кварц
in reply to Alicja • • •Sensitive content
Nora, of the E-gemony
in reply to Alicja • • •Gin Kangaroo
in reply to Alicja • • •Only since my mid-30's / early 40s have I begun to deliberately cultivate groups of women friends.
The love and acceptance that I find in these groups is nothing like I experienced in my childhood. I know that it can't compare to not having a girl childhood, but I also find it wonderful and precious to be accepted in groups of women. ❤️
Alicja
in reply to Gin Kangaroo • • •@GinevraCat
Thank you for your comment ❤
Yeah, children and teens, girls included, can be vicious little beasts. I hear the support and sisterhood part can be somewhat hit and miss for many.
Irina
in reply to Alicja • • •Sensitive content
lia
in reply to Alicja • • •I made quite similar experiences actually.
Most clueless cis people I met sure weren't very sensible about word choices and reading the room ("so i was wondering, ehh, are you a boy or a girl??"), but once you gave them an answer to whatever they were wondering, they just would shrug, accept it and move on with our activity at hand.
They'd then include me in gendered activities and spaces without any awkwardness or second thoughts at all, they'd be super relaxed about it, they'd clearly just take my gender as truth, and they'd get irate on my behalf if people misgendered or excluded me because they were genuinely baffled why people would mistreat me that way. It was as natural to them as anything else that I was a woman, it didn't even occur to them that it could be "wrong".
It took my middle-aged, cranky, Yugoslavian coworker who never heard of trans people exactly two days to completely understand my womanhood. When I eventually talked to her about the whole thing, she was surprised I brought it up, but said something that stuck to me ever since:
... Show more...I made quite similar experiences actually.
Most clueless cis people I met sure weren't very sensible about word choices and reading the room ("so i was wondering, ehh, are you a boy or a girl??"), but once you gave them an answer to whatever they were wondering, they just would shrug, accept it and move on with our activity at hand.
They'd then include me in gendered activities and spaces without any awkwardness or second thoughts at all, they'd be super relaxed about it, they'd clearly just take my gender as truth, and they'd get irate on my behalf if people misgendered or excluded me because they were genuinely baffled why people would mistreat me that way. It was as natural to them as anything else that I was a woman, it didn't even occur to them that it could be "wrong".
It took my middle-aged, cranky, Yugoslavian coworker who never heard of trans people exactly two days to completely understand my womanhood. When I eventually talked to her about the whole thing, she was surprised I brought it up, but said something that stuck to me ever since:
That she met a lot of unique and surprising people in her life, and that you learn things about the world and other people every day. And that it was just an interesting medical fun fact about me. And that's all. She said that to her, it was no different than when she met a black guy in our village and then found out he and his family are actually natively German. She compared me to her grandma, who apparently had a lot of facial hair, which ran in her family. It was just a fun fact about me that I'm trans, nothing more.
The validity of my womanhood was never in question to her, just whether I was a woman at all. That's the main thing really.
You really hit the nail on the head: transphobes really, really want to make us think that we're alone. That everyone naturally sees us as freaks by default, except those we have successfully 'convinced of our ideology'.
It's actually the same mechanic at play as with conspiracy types, crazy conservatives or elderly people refusing to go with the times.
They want to use "common sense" as a backup to try to convince you that their irrational fears are actually normal and how everyone else thinks. They're super afraid of having to change their world view, of being wrong about something. They want to make us feel like we have no support, not necessarily to hurt us directly, but because they themselves secretly feel ashamed and insecure about the world moving past them or judging them for something they don't understand. (Ideological transphobes who know what they're doing nonwithstanding, they're doing it on purpose).
That's also why allies can sometimes be insidiously worse than clueless folks. Allies might just as well have the same thought patterns as transphobes, but end the thought process on "...but it would be mean to misgender them, I should be nice and supportive."
They still fundamentally think we're freaks, they just think it's ethically good to be nice to freaks.
Before my coworker experience, I always felt that even if cis people accept us, they at best mentally create a third category: women, men and "trans". Or that they'd always see me as a guy who wants to be a woman and who they needed to be respectful of not to hurt their feelings. But that isn't the case. They just see me as a woman with a medical history.
Transphobes are the only ones questioning people's genders' validity. Normal people don't even have that thought process, because validity isn't an idea they associate with gender.