the-reasonable-rowan

[the-reasonable-rowan]

i hate the idea - that even right wing account will parrot - that most people outgrow sex dysphoria which is why medical transitioning is bad, as if its suddenly okay if you DON'T outgrow it. Literally just get over it and move on. You want to lop off body parts? that the Devil talking, end of story.

[the-reasonable-rowan]

i’ve said it before n i’ll say it again. gender ideology does nothing to further individual people or society as a whole; it only reinforces harmful gender stereotypes and roles that nobody should care about.

being a woman does not mean that you like celebrity gossip and shopping and are good at cooking; it means you have female genitalia and genetics. being a man does not mean you like sports and grilling and hate the color pink; it means you have male genitalia and genetics. it’s not that hard to understand, people

[the-reasonable-rowan]

i hate hate hate hate hate hate being called an "assigned female at birth" i wasn't assigned a female I AM one

the doctor didn't decide i looked female enough to call me one when i was born, i am a female since the moment of conception

[the-reasonable-rowan]

I gotta be real. It sucks so much how telling someone not to get their genitals cut up by opportunistic doctors is considered bigotry. telling someone not to get a double mastectomy typically only done for cancer patients is bigotry. telling someone not to take hormones, which will increase their likelihood of getting cancer and osteoporosis and a myriad of other health problems just for cosmetic changes is bigotry.

This is not normal.

[the-reasonable-rowan]

[the-reasonable-rowan]

I am Sage's mother, better known as Nana. I adopted Sage after my son died when she was still a baby. She's been through six foster homes by then, but we loved her and she blossomed into a joyful, lively girl who made music and art.

Puberty began and COVID hit, and she was treated for depression and anxiety, at times very severe. Her teachers shared any concerns with me so her treatment could be adapted.

The transparency ended in August of 2021 when Sage started high school. She started a public high school and she told me that all the girls there were bi, trans, lesbian, emo and she wanted to wear boy's clothes and be emo. Because I saw it as just a phase, it was fine with me.

But at school, she told them something different: she was now a boy named Draco with male pronouns. Sage asked the school not to tell me, and they did not tell me even though I informed them of her mental health history and medication. If I had known, this would be a much different story.

She was terribly bullied. No one told me. But boys followed her, touched her, threatened violence and rape. Something happened in the boy's bathroom but for two days, the school told me nothing. They kept meeting with Sage alone and she became so distraught they called me to pick her up.

That evening, I found a hallpass labeled 'Draco' and Sage told me she was identifying as a boy, and that her counselor said she could use the boy's bathroom. She'd been jacked up against the wall by a group of boys. She was crying, terrified. I said just stay home, we'll figure it out. That was my last conversation with Sage for five months.

The night she ran, she thought, to a young friend she'd met online, she left a note saying she was scared of what would happen if she stayed. The sheriff, FBI, search dogs were called in. I dropped to my knees in prayer. Nine days later the FBI found her in Baltimore. My baby had been lured online, sex trafficked by DC then Maryland. She was locked in a room, drugged, gang raped and brutalized by countless men. It was night. The FBI told us to pick her up in Maryland the next morning.

We packed our cars with blankets and stuffed animals and arrived by 8 am, but we were told we couldn't see her, and were summoned before Judge Robert Kershaw late that afternoon. They didn't even tell Sage that we came for her. We finally entered the courtroom and Sage appears on a huge Zoom screen from a prison cell. She looks tiny and broken, and I cry out 'I love you Sage.' Sage responds 'I love you too, Nana.' But attorney Anisa Khan rebukes us. She is a 'he' and his name is 'Draco' not Sage. We were floored.

Khan accuses us of emotional and physical abuse, that we are misgendering her, even though we just learned she claims to be trans and we're willing to use any name and pronouns to bring her home. My husband was so tearful he kept forgetting the new pronouns, so the judge had the bailiff remove him from the courtroom. I was pleading for my child to be returned and treated for her unspeakable trauma. Judge Kershaw told me, if I use the word 'trauma' again, he would throw me out too.

For over two months, he withheld custody. He housed Sage in the male quarters of a children's home. Sage told me she was the only girl and repeatedly assaulted. She was given street drugs by the other kids and Khan told her she didn't care. She just wanted to win the case and all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Khan tried to prove abuse, but we were eventually cleared by both states of all charges.

Sage later told me Khan had told her to lie that we hit her. Khan even had Sage's school counselors testify against us, though they barely knew Sage and they didn't know us at all. Khan told my precious child I didn't want her anymore. I found out Sage never received any of the letters I sent her.

Sage ran from the Children's Home and disappeared for months. They told me she might already be gone forever, but I couldn't give up and I finally found a tip on her social media that led the marshals to her in Texas. She had been drugged, raped, beaten and exploited. This time I was able to be with her for the traumatic rape exam, and to bring her home.

Back in Virginia, she entered the mental health facility that Judge Kershaw had ordered, as it would affirm her as a male. The therapist began pressuring her to have her healthy breasts removed. Sage was too scared to protest, but she asked me to secretly buy her girl's clothes because she wanted to be a girl, but keep them in the car. It took a kind lawyer, Josh Hetzler to secure her discharge.

After almost a year. Sage was finally home. Safe. Alive. Sage is receiving professional trauma care. The first trafficker has already been convicted. Sage has nightmares, panic attacks, rape-related medical issues, but there's hope. I tell her she's not broken she's just scarred. And part of that hope is that in courageously sharing her story, others will be saved.

Sage said she doesn't know who she was back then. She wasn't a boy, she just wanted to have friends. But her school, the judge, the attorney and the doctor were all blinded by their ideology. The consequences for Sage were unspeakable.

Please don't let ideology harm another child. Let parents do our jobs. We know our children best and we love them a million times more.

Thank you.

==

Jesus Christ. This girl was exploited by everybody, except for her parents, who were villainized for literally nothing. It's opposite world.

And the fact that everybody with authority prioritized stupid shit like pronouns and trying to coax her further down into a fake identity, even against her will, and other ideological bullshit over her actual wellbeing is disgraceful.

The judge and attorney need to be disbarred, the therapist stripped of their license, and everyone who conspired to separate Sage from her parents fired.

[the-reasonable-rowan]

Hi. I’m an Israeli seventeen-year-old living through an unimaginable generational trauma.

I’m writing this here because there are a lot of people living comfortably outside of the warzone and have absolutely no idea about the hell that is this conflict, and are spreading misinformation and narratives that are harmful for Israelis and Palestinians alike. I want people to know what it's like as a person who is living through this hell.

On October 7th when I woke up to missile alarm sirens, and when the news started flooding in of the massacres in Otef Aza, and when the number of those slaughtered began rising and didn't stop, and when the reality of what was going on began to sink in, I realized that I have no future.

I have no future when 1,400 people are brutally slaughtered in their homes. I have no future when murderers enter villages, behead babies, rape, murder and mutilate women, and burn whole families alive. I have no future when horrors like that happen and the world looks on and says nothing.

In the days that followed, when I saw the footage of airstrikes in Gaza, and when I saw the number of Palestinians killed, and when I heard of the hospital where refugees were hiding, I knew they - the Palestinian women, men, elderly, and children - have no future.

They have no future when the terorrist group Hamas forfeits them to death. They have no future when Hamas hides its bases among civilians so that they might serve as human shields. They have no future when they are killed for crimes they didn’t commit, because Hamas ordained them to do so.

This is not a war of Israel and Palestine. This is not a war of Jews and Arabs. This is not a war of oppressor and oppressed. This is a war about whether civilians - on either side of the Gaza border - can and should and must die so Hamas get what they want. This is a war about whether the world can stand aside and watch while Hamas slaughters thousands and then uses thousands more as human shields, and take the right side. This is a war about whether one thousand four hundred people being butchered is a reality that must be accepted. And this is a war about whether we ever let that ever happen again.

Because to be clear - this war can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t end until Hamas is totally and fundamentally destroyed, and its military and political influence eliminated. That's non-negotiable. Hamas committed unspeakable atrocities on October 7th, and they will pay. Not with Palestinian lives - because civilian lives are not currency to be paid, and Hamas don't care about them - but with their existence. At the end of this war, Hamas will not exist in any form with influence.

I’ll reblog this post with more information about Hamas, the war and where we can keep on from here.

[the-reasonable-rowan]

why does it feel like one morning I woke up and it turned out 87% of the entire population of the earth had a sleeper antisemite agent and it got activated for all of them at once. what the fuck is happening.

[the-reasonable-rowan]

In case you don't follow wastewater collection or covid testing blogs, I'm letting you know we're in the throes of a new surge. Coupled with the news of China & France dealing with a new strain of childhood pneumonia, I think it's safe to say... I told you so.

Covid isn't over.

Wear a mask.

Get your boosters.

Get your flu shot.

Stay home unless you absolutely have to go out.

[the-reasonable-rowan]

#sent me into a coughing fit 😭😭💀💀💀

[the-reasonable-rowan]

i hope that every night for the rest of your life you see the faces of the mothers and children that you’re desperately and pathetically trying to justify the mass killings of. but the fact that you already don’t care means you’re too far gone.

Y'all really want to paint anyone not siding with a terrorist group as bloodthirsty monsters, huh? All while y'all complain no one's nuked Israel into non-existence yet instead of expecting Hamas, the one who attacked first, to fucking give back their hostages.

I am not the one who doesn't care innocent lives when y'all keep villainizing Israel, despite the only reason this is happening, and continuing to happen, is Hamas' refusal to let Jewish people exist.

[the-reasonable-rowan]

Pro-aborts are so obsessed with getting pro-lifers to say there’s at least one time abortion is ok (rape, save the mother’s life, etc) but none of them will name a time where abortion isn’t ok.

[the-reasonable-rowan]

Breastfeeding is breastfeeding. I will not call it “chestfeeding.”

A female who has had a child is not a “birther.” She is a mother.

A vagina is a vagina. It is a complex and marvelous female organ. I will not call it a “front hole.”

Anyone who is pregnant is a woman. I will not call her a “pregnant person.”

I am a woman. We are women. You can try and take away the language we use to describe ourselves - but you can never take womanhood, no matter how hard you try. A fight against womanhood is a fight against biology itself, and that’s not a fight you will win.

[the-reasonable-rowan]

And he looked at the slain, recalling their names. Then suddenly he beheld his sister Éowyn as she lay, and he knew her. He stood a moment as a man who is pierced in the midst of a cry by an arrow through the heart; and then his face went deathly white; and a cold fury rose in him, so that all speech failed him for a while. A fey mood took him.

‘Éowyn, Éowyn!’ he cried at last: ‘Éowyn, how come you here? What madness or devilry is this? Death, death, death! Death take us all!’ . The Return of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien.

#lord of the rings

[the-reasonable-rowan]

Boss's wife upon hearing I'm a medieval scholar: Isn't it crazy all the things medieval people thought would stop the plague?

Me: *Fighting all my devils & angels not to bring up that she drank horse antiparasitic last year.*

#was the cheap clout worth looking stupid to everyone who actually knows what they're talking about op

[the-reasonable-rowan]

Actually, no, we should know what a woman is. If you’re going to challenge a term, you have to come up with a new definition. If we are going to have a rational conversation, all terms must be defined.

If woman doesn’t mean adult female human, what does it mean? If you’re getting defensive reading this, that’s a problem. You should be able to know what you’re arguing for. You should be able to tell people what you’re arguing for. Otherwise, what the fuck are you even doing? Why are you arguing about something that, if undefined, logically does not exist?

I would love for everyone to be happy. Delusion is not happiness. I need to know whether this is delusion or not.

[the-reasonable-rowan]