MundaneBlog

June 1, 2025

Thinking on June 1st

Filed under: Gender,Trans — Tags: — DrMundane @ 8:32 pm

Standing in Mont Alto State Park

by the river having lunch. i am reminded of early in my transition (relatively speaking), when i was still coming to terms with being trans (or wanting to be) and what all that means. 

My best days were the ones spent going to State Parks and on hikes. I wrote in my diary time after time how wonderful it felt, Because i could exist outside. It felt like it was the only place i could exist.

i didn’t have to be anything or present as anything or even worry about who i was being or presenting. 

i remember driving to my triple state park adventure. An empty highway with just me, cruising at 65. i imagined myself as trans for the first time, used those words to describe myself, imagined others understanding me as that. For the first time it wasn’t a fearful thing, for a few minutes. For the first time there was happiness in being trans, i didn’t have the feeling that being trans meant i had to do one thing or another. i didn’t have to be anything.

On that same trip i spent a lot of time wanting to be queer. Sitting by another river thinking about all the things i felt, all the things i wanted, all the things it felt like i wasn’t able to have. i wrote at length as i sat and thought as i drove.  

i remember feeling sublime joy, euphoria, as i trekked through Black Moshannon and imagined myself as nonbinary. 

i’ve always felt freest out here, in the forest. In nature.

in the dead of winter the forest promises life. in the heat of the summer it gives cool relief.

the outdoors is a promise, one we all are entitled to by virtue of existing, that life continues and will always continue. there is no set path. there is nothing else for you to do but to be as you are.

the warm sun greets you. the cool breezes reward you. all around are things built for others. pavilions, benches, trails. all without charge, emerging from a spirit of human decency. it’s hard to not have hope out here.

i wrote this, of course, on a hike. June 1, 2025.

Happy Pride.

– – – – – – – – – –

Postscript, as i wait for dinner (meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and bread. All cooking now):

i recall last year, around this time, being at my lowest point. Being faced with a lot of questions and a lot of anxiety. More than anything feeling unlovable. To quote myself, writing this day last year:

“I don’t feel soft or pretty or wonderful or smart or insightful or witty or funny. Just sad suddenly. A terrible negativity. 

I think I’ve quite moved beyond gender and am just talking about life suddenly. Which is fine, as I suppose it all ties together. We can only feel certain in ourselves with all of our needs met. I would bet. Or at least it helps.“

Time makes a difference, but so does taking that step. Trying to open up, if only to one person. If only to oneself.

Perhaps we are called, as the religious are called to fast in anticipation of the feast, to open up in June. We are called to do the hard work of opening to ourselves and others, so as to prove our existence. So as to share in the existence of others. 

April 4, 2025

Quick Thoughts 2025-4-3

Filed under: Trans — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 12:56 am

Reading an article in Dame Magazine this morning, “The Government Is Coming for Female Personhood“, I was of course struck rather early on that such a change to documentation requirements for voting would certainly act to disenfranchise trans people as well. But I usually like to have something to point to, not just the general well known fact that of course getting a complete set of matching documents poses great trouble for many people.

Although I do suppose my word ought to be good enough in light of how obvious this fact appears to me. As I was waiting on some negatives to scan, I thought I’d catch up with the stories over at Assigned Media. I was handed the perfect article to make my point: Texas Resorts to ‘Old Playbook’ to Institutionalize Bigotry and Sow Fear

To quote the important point, regarding proposed law in Texas:

Texas lawmakers pushed a bill to bar trans people from amending the gender on their birth certificates, a measure that could have harmful ripple effects on other forms of legal identification. 

And now, a quote from the Dame story on the proposed federal ID requirements:

In order to vote under Roy’s proposed guidelines, Americans would need to have the exact same name on both their birth certificate and their current ID

The two dovetail quite perfectly, yes?

Now a person in Texas under both proposed laws would be stuck with the option of either coming up with all identification that matches their identity or to relent to the dictates of the state as to how they should identify.

This of course doesn’t even account for those who, even if they have some ID that matches their identity, may not be able to change their birth certificate simply from an inability to navigate the system or put in the time. It of course acts as a barrier to voting all the same. Whether it is the law forbidding you from having documents that align with your gender or the no time to change every government record, such a system of course disenfranchises people all the same.

Even if perhaps your documents all match and you are willing to do what it takes to go vote (even going under some name forced upon you), there will be some worry in anyones mind as to being called out as not “matching” your ID. The act of being forced to stand out , to be marked, is disenfranchising. Taking the risk that you will be targeted for your presentation, for who you are, for having the audacity to vote while trans.

This is, of course, the point. The underclass must be preserved and put in their place. It is a resurrection of patriarchy as law and government, what they would call the “natural order”.

Trying to get my blogging muscles going again, so I will leave this here.

-DrMundane

January 19, 2025

AI and Gender – Heteronormativity?

Filed under: AI,Gender,Technology — Tags: , — DrMundane @ 2:33 pm

I came across a newsletter by Joanna Stern, wherein she reports that Apple Intelligence often adds a “husband” when it is summarizing her wife’s messages.

When asked about this, she reports Apple responded that

  • Apple’s AI tools were built with responsible AI principles to avoid perpetuating stereotypes and systemic biases.
  • Apple’s addressing these issues through updates to its AI tools and is improving the accuracy of its models.
  • The company is encouraging people to report these issues while these AI tools are still in beta.

Now all that is well and good, but I am of the belief that owing to the nature of this “AI” and the way I expect it is implemented, as generative artificial intellegence, that it will never be able to ‘outrun’ the bias inherent in its training material. That is to say that because the “AI” must be trained on a corpus of material prior to being able to generate the summaries (in my assumption of how it works) and because that corpus does not contain context that statistically will ever reflect the marginalized, queer, etc., then the “AI” will always be unable to “react” as a human would.

I have written previously about the intersection of gender and AI, see Gender Classifier and on Facial Recognition , and to be honest this post is mostly a marker of one more datapoint to add to my argument. I make it mostly so I will be able to track back to here once needed.

If the “AI” can not be trained and guide-railed enough to figure out a contact named “Wife” is someone’s wife, then it strikes me that the potential here is… limited. And I have no interest in submitting my work to become grist for this particular mill, even if it were to increase the quality.

This being my first post in a month, I will leave it here. Thanks much,

-DrMundane

December 8, 2024

Further Signs of What’s to Come

Filed under: Gender — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 3:51 am

I have written before that I expected the Republican agenda to be one of trans genocide if they win. 

I (am considerably enriched by some Laphroaig Quarter Cask) suddenly feel the urge to write on this once more, now that the decision has been rendered and we are in for the whole cruel agenda. 

Perhaps it is because the agenda is now stated explicitly. Perhaps the Supreme Court in United States v. Skrmetti will deliver to the states the ability to deny care and thereby commit these murders. 

But new from Punchbowl News comes this story. No less than a commissioner of the FTC (The fucking ftc!) aiming to be the chair intends to engage in fighting against gender care. I think it is clear that this anti-trans genocide agenda will extend throughout every agency in the Trump government. 

They make it clear that this agenda does not just include youths but adults as well. To quote the apparent pitch:

“Fight back against the trans agenda. Investigate the doctors, therapists, hospitals, and others who deceptively pushed gender confusion, puberty blockers, hormone replacement, and sex-change surgeries on children and adults while failing to disclose strong evidence that such interventions are not helpful and carry enormous risks.”

I would be remiss if I did not state that these are all objectionable lies. Beyond that, it must be repeated. They state in black and white that their agenda extends to adults.

P.S.

found another great article that you must read

Yours,

DrMundane

November 24, 2024

ChatGPT in the classroom – one thought experiment

Filed under: AI,Technology — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 2:08 pm

Reading Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000 this morning, on ChatGPT having no place in the classroom, and I tried out a little thought experiment. It goes something like this:

Let us assume we are in, say, an AP Literature class. I imagine the hardest part of grading such a class in reading and scoring several essays for each student over the year. I know for sure my terrible longhand cursive was a painful thing to read for my poor teacher. But what about an AI? Can the AI (unable to come to any factual conclusion or reason, just statistically generate) be used to speed this up?

I think the major problem is the inability to actually understand the students writing, but let us take for granted that improvements to large language models will somehow be able to overcome this fact with sufficient data and computation. That seems to be the claim of Altman and the others, but to be clear, they will not.

We know that currently these LLMs scrape data from the public internet, so can safely assume that they do have a robust source of information on AP Literature questions, books, themes, etc., from forums and other sources seeking to help students. Much of the writing will be done by students themselves, so another bonus is that it is writing representative of the population. So far that seems reasonable.

But there is already one problem. The writing is not representative of the whole population of AP Literature students, only those with access to these online resources and/or willingness to engage with them. I was a student who would never workshop their ideas or practice their writing online. I was simply too private for that sort of thing. The dataset certainly would never include my writing.

I would therefore argue that any such LLM grading students work would be inherently biased against students whose writing does not line up with the LLMs source material. It knows which essays deserve a 5 and which deserve a 1 based on it’s dataset. Based on statistics. It does not understand the rubric or intent, and therefore is unable to rate new (to it) but correct writing in a fair manner. You will therefore teach students to write like the corpus of text ingested by the model, not to find their voice and style. You teach them to look at the prompt and come up with the ‘correct’ answer, not an answer that necessarily comes from their own experience and understanding of the literature in question.

I think this alone makes the use of AI impossible in the classroom, owning to the discriminatory potential.

Another example that springs to mind: what about queer analysis? What about LGBTQ+ students? Will their viewpoints and experiences be reflected in the corpus? I doubt this highly. This means any such student may be able to write a brilliant analysis of a book through a queer lens and it will matter not, because statistically it doesn’t match what a ‘5’ is to look like. It uses all sorts of words that probably aren’t associated with ‘5’ essays. The LLM may even deem them ‘profane’. It therefore is not a ‘5’, in the view of the LLM.

I think these two thought experiments illustrate why I believe, beyond all the technical problems and overselling, that even a GPT that lives up to the hype and can be made factually correct will never be suitable for any evaluative work. Used to such an end, the AI encourages normative expression and discourages breaking boundaries. It truly discourages real feeling and art.

November 21, 2024

Links you should read – 2024-11-20

Filed under: Daily Links — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 1:35 am

I don’t know why I love starting my morning with garbage, but it stirs me to write so…

NYT (archive) piece on Democrats and their approach to transgender rights moving forward.

The ‘politics’ of it all does not stir me, I think it’s obvious they must try and show some real humanity. They must speak clearly in favor of and make the case for transgender rights.

The part that got me to write was the following:

“Roughly 55 percent of voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far, according to AP VoteCast. More than 60 percent of adults say transgender women and girls should not be allowed to compete in sports with other women and girls, a Washington Post-KFF poll found. And strong majorities oppose minors’ using medications or hormone treatments, according to the Post-KFF poll.

At the same time, more than 60 percent of Americans support protecting transgender people from discrimination, according to the Pew Research Center. Most also oppose the government banning gender-affirming care for minors, including medication and surgery, Gallup found.”

I will leave the sports issue for a later time, what gets me is the poll numbers from the Post-KFF poll. I started to dig into that, but the righteous anger at that piece from me is a whole post in itself. I don’t give a damn what polls say on the matter of human rights. No amount of context makes horse race “65% of German people polled in 1941 think we need a solution to the Jewish Question” writing on these issues better.

I don’t think such reporting will serve to educate the American public any more on these issues. I don’t know what my point is, I just get wound up and this is the outlet. It’s my blog after all so ha!

I do need to pull one quote from the Post-KFF poll though: (photo caption and article text)

Valarie Johnson of LaBelle, Fla., is clear on her stance when it comes to discussing LGBTQ issues in the classroom. “Why would you introduce that subject to children when it has no life skills?” she said. (Saul Martinez for The Washington Post )

Valarie Johnson, 67, of LaBelle, Fla., said there’s no place in school for these sort of discussions. “Is that going to help these young people get a good job or a good spouse?” she asked. “Why would you introduce that subject to children when it has no life skills?”

I think a real education on gender, what it actually means and how sex and gender and sexuality are not linked would benefit everyone in having good relationships. Furthermore, for any trans youth or youth with any gender or sexuality that is not straight ahead heteronormative, the power of hearing that you, as you exist, are not bad or wrong is tremendous. How will you ever find a good spouse if you think you are essentially bad or wrong? How can one get a good job when you suffer the stress of presenting the ‘right’ kind of person based on what others perceive you ‘should’ be?

It is easy to cast stones at the theory and teaching of gender when your gender is set up by the world as the ‘correct’ interpretation (cisgendered and passing). Gender seems to not exist because yours (and the binary other) is allowable to it and privileged.

A quick NYT rip again “Speaker Mike Johnson Says He Will Ban Transgender Women From Capitol Bathrooms”

Never be fooled into thinking their ‘concerns’ (hate) stops with children. Children are being used as a tool. Once they have power they intend to target every trans person.

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say,” Ms. Mace told reporters on Monday. “I mean, this is a biological man.” Ms. McBride, she added, “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms — period, full stop.”

Straight out of the TERF playbook. The casual cruelty of these people shocks me (I am far too hopeful it seems).

Next, a neat? series of photos (and a link to a book with more) by the Stasi.

Finally, a positive read from my archives. A very interesting blog about trauma surgery and what not: Doc Bastard

I meant to write more on tech, but got to the end of the day without getting the chance and needed to wrap up.

November 17, 2024

Links you should read 2024-11-16

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — DrMundane @ 12:02 am

Staring at 404media.co, with Becky Ferreira writing this weeks edition of ‘the Abstract’. The portion that really stirs my mind is the story on AI poetry, and how in one test readers preferred the AI generated poems. Why? To quote the article quoting the research

“Non-expert poetry readers expect to like human-authored poems more than they like AI-generated poems,” said authors Brian Porter and Edouard Machery of the University of Pittsburgh. “But in fact, they find the AI-generated poems easier to interpret; they can more easily understand images, themes, and emotions in the AI-generated poetry than they can in the more complex poetry of human poets. They therefore prefer these poems, and misinterpret their own preference as evidence of human authorship.”  

I must say I am disheartened by this result. Not particularly surprised. As far as I am concerned much of the joy of poetry is in chewing on it. I have had great conversations on the poems I send out on my Christmas cards, and I feel this only because both of us had really thought on the poem (A burdock clawed my gown, not burdocks blame, but mine…) and then weeks later had a chance to discuss what it means to us. Luckily poetry will live on, I have no fear of that. We may just have to sing its praises louder.

On the politics front, Orac at Respectful Insolence describes why exactly RFK Jr. is bad news as HHS secretary. I can’t help but agree with him that the media has done a fine job of making RFK Jr. seem far more palatable than he is, and I expect that trend to continue. They will cover this administration ‘as usual’, so they can maintain their access.

In a surprising turn of events, I agree with Bill Clinton. Per the NYT:

President-elect Donald J. Trump made Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for transgender rights a core part of his argument that she was outside the political mainstream. His campaign used video of Ms. Harris expressing support for taxpayer-funded transition surgeries for transgender inmates in a torrent of ads that declared: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

The Harris campaign largely did not answer those ads, but, internally, the Democratic Party was roiled by them. Former President Bill Clinton was said to have urged the Harris campaign to respond to them, and to have been told that they were not making an obvious dent in the race.

I had certainly felt (and have not written it… argh) that the Democratic Party had really failed in any messaging defending trans people, and this to me sounds exactly like how I expected them to talk about it. Running right down the middle and not standing for anything. Take it for granted that you will get their votes. Such an approach is not up to the seriousness of this moment. Token resistance will not be enough. Words will not be enough. Definite action will be needed. Will they be willing to pay the political cost? I doubt it.

I’m sorry. Perhaps I am too negative.

To end on a positive note, more from my archive.

November 13, 2024

Links You Should Read – 2024-11-12

Filed under: Daily Links,Gender,Surveillance,Technology — Tags: , , , , , — DrMundane @ 12:59 am

Starting out with one from Wired, on facial recognition. Never forget that the terrain has changed for protest and online. I would certainly recommend anyone take steps to protect themselves moving forward. I am interested in the intersection of ‘dazzle makeup’, gender classification, and facial recognition in general. Genderfuck = AI protection? One can only hope.

Bonus link? The dazzle makeup one above. That machine-vision.no website seems neat, looking at how we conceptualize AI and machine vision etc. in media can tell us a lot about our worries and fears as a society. Back on course a little, dazzle makeup is one of those things I really wish were more true than it is. You can trick the AI, sure, but any human will pick out your face and track you that way. You become a person of interest real quick when you hide in that way. You need to blend, I think. Still, a person can dream.

Next up, one on pornography from techdirt. In a project 2025, Christian nationalist country, ‘pornography’ will not be limited to actual materials for sexual pleasure. It will be used as a label to restrict and remove LGBTQ+ material. It is literally the Moms for Liberty playbook, now coming to a federal government near you.

Wrapping up my links, read and subscribe to Aftermath!

November 9, 2024

Links you should read – 2024-11-8

Filed under: Daily Links — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 3:02 am

https://www.popehat.com/p/and-yet-it-moves

Most especially the section “Fuck Civility”

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-1280/316471/20240708144004496_23-1280%20Parents%20Protecting%20Our%20Children%20v%20Eau%20Claire%20Area%20School%20District%20-%20Amicus%20Brief%20of%20Virginia%20and%2015%20Other%20States.pdf

Amicus Brief in Parents Protecting Our Children, UA v. Eau Claire Area School District joined by 16 states. “Parents Rights” (to be transphobic, or to control their children). I may write more on this.

https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-social-media-tells-you-who-you-are-what-if-its-totally-wrong/

see also: gender classifier. I can report from experience how the algorithms they develop seem to lean into pushing content once they have decided you are a {thing} that gets engagement. I can also report that it’s uncomfortable when they get it wrong and keep pushing.

As Goode says:

“…In both cases, I’m supposed to tell the algorithms who I am. I’m supposed to do the work. I’m supposed to swipe more. I’ll be so much better off if I do. And so will they.”

We loose when we don’t let the algorithms know who we are, but we sure as shit also loose when we do. A double bind, right?

https://www.usermag.co/p/why-democrats-wont-build-their-own

November 6, 2024

The 2024 Election – First Reaction

Filed under: Notes — Tags: , , — DrMundane @ 12:43 pm

I can’t write.

My thoughts are too scattered.

I hope to start coming up with something soon.

I wish truly, for everyone, as much comfort and safety as is possible for today.

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