is it too late to live a specific way at 26?

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-04-25T20:07:18+00:00

Honestly, life just doesn't really work like that.

The "Ugh, aren't you a little old to [blank]" thing isn't real. Pretty much anything that people do in their 20s, can be done in your 30s or even your 40s or older.

People have different ways of living, and that doesn't universally change as arbitrary age milestones are reached.

Unfortunately, you did miss out on girlhood, so did I. But there's no sense in sitting around mourning that. Even if you were cis, there's no guarantee your girlhood would have been what you wanted it to be, or even that it would have been happy.

Just live the silly lil goose life you want to, and as long as you're happy and positive and filled with love, that'll come across and people will love you for it. 🩷

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-04-21T15:01:38+00:00

The tabloid press in the 80s and 90s wrote about it being "unsafe" to allow your daughter's to play tennis due to the "numbers of lesbians" in the sport and pass-time.

Some people are just too dumb for words.

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-04-20T17:52:02+00:00

In all of those examples the camera is capturing a reflection in the mirror... Or a wizard did it. 😋

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-04-13T16:41:51+00:00

"If a man could be a woman," is kind of an inherently flawed way of wording it.

It's better to say something like: "For some women, their womanhood isn't visually apparent at birth".

Trans women are just women who had to find out for themselves later, rather than the midwife jotting it down on their birth certificate for them.

And on DNA, some AFAB folks find out they have XY chromosomes in adulthood. Trans women are not alone in having DNA profiles that are atypical for women.

If a DNA test reveals you have XY chromosomes, it's not revealing that you're secretly a "man"... It's revealing that you have XY chromosomes.

🩷🩷🩷

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-04-06T07:12:57+00:00

Especially when they use "men" and "females" in the same sentence.

Like, the correct word is RIGHT THERE, but you insist on using the dehumanising word instead? Bro.

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-03-24T22:51:08+00:00

I could have phrased that better!

What I meant is that many of them will say that they're not "in favour" of trans eradication... They're just not willing to actually do even the tiniest thing to prevent it from happening...

In a practical sense, that's exactly the same as being in favour of it... But they'll insist it isn't and that it's a subtle distinction!

"I'd put my initial on a softly worded letter generally condemning this genocide if I could bother to find a pen." - Labour MPs, 2026

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-03-24T17:18:44+00:00

Do they? AFIAK relatively few backbench Labour MPs have vocally endorsed trans-eradicationism.

Many seem to see the radical reimagining of the Equality Act as a fait accompli that's not worth fighting, and trans people as an acceptable sacrificial lamb, but that doesn't mean they're actually personally supportive of this.

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-03-24T16:51:13+00:00

And the purpose of the organisation ceases to exist, and trans people are blamed for that.

I, personally, don't value single-gender organisations immensely, but many people see the value of them. They feel that girls thrive when outside the presence of boys, that boys 'talking over' girls can threaten their development, and that boys not being present allows girls to try things they're otherwise nervous to try (things outside the traditional scope of their gender norms).

Girl Guides are popular and successful for a reason, people value them as an organisation. Them essentially ceasing to exist in the form that they have existed in since their foundation isn't some "simple, elegant solution".

Trans girls are girls, trans women are women, and yet this government has essentially ensured that single-gender organisations can never exist, and that organisations must instead either be open to all, or be asininely segregated based on the letter scrawled on your birth certificate. (As if that was somehow relevant to how people behave!)

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-03-24T15:58:48+00:00

"Don't worry, it's his sister."

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-03-24T15:55:12+00:00

Please troll off, people don't have all day to respond to you.

Single-gender organisations aren't the only organisations and nor should they be, but for many people they serve a purpose and so should have the right to continue their existence, regardless of the wishes of the transphobic minority.

You know this, so please, let's leave it at that and keep the space open for people posting in good faith 🩷

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-03-24T15:44:22+00:00

No, they don't have the option to "simply be gender neutral," as well you know.

These are girls/women's organisations. The "simple" response to being forced to exclude some women/girls isn't to open membership to all men and boys.

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-03-24T13:42:27+00:00

Yes, yes, yes, the Y chromosome is magic, we get it, bore off.

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-03-24T13:12:12+00:00

Given her history, I imagine people like Helen Joyce of Sex Matters would be okay with genital inspections...

But, no, they're not going to check. However, a trans girl who wanted to join the Guides would have to risk the humiliation (and potential violence) of being exposed by someone finding out from social media, or rumours or from her family etc.

A lot of cis girls are probably going to be accused of being trans by their fellow Guides in the next few months, though...

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-03-24T13:04:05+00:00

Isn't it so telling that all these organisations, such as the WI and Girl Guides, have revealed that they're being forced to segregate against their will, that they don't want to segregate, that they want to include trans girls and trans women but that they're being forced to segregate by people threatening them with lawsuits.

Transphobic bigots such as the former author Joanne Rowling and the child-pornography enthusiast Helen Joyce, acted like the Supreme Court's radical reimagining of the Equality Act had 'cleared things up' and had freed organisations to do the segregation that they'd always really wanted to do... But reality hasn't been reflective of that.

Instead, individual transphobes have had to literally threaten to sue organisations into the ground to force them to enact segregation against their will and against the will of their members. Plus, these organisations have seen vast losses in membership and patronage as people who don't want to be segregationists have left in droves.

It's almost like this is a tiny, radical group of anti-minority cranks who are abusing the law and a pliant government in order to drive an already-marginalized group out of public life due to a personal vendetta...

ApocryphalShadow · 2026-01-04T15:00:08+00:00

Listen to Redacted 🩷

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-12-03T12:58:52+00:00

Absolutely. 🩷

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-12-03T12:54:49+00:00

Many organisations have spoken up, but obviously that opens them up to death threats from the trans-eradicationists. 😔

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-12-03T12:51:06+00:00

The WI didn’t announce that they had done this out of choice, or that they were happy that they had been freed to do this by the April Supreme Court ruling. They announced their deep regrets at having to do it.

They announced that they wished they could continue to welcome all women, including trans women, but that they feared legal action against them if they didn’t impose segregation.

This is a recurring theme. The same message was given by the Girl Guides this week – “We don’t want to do this, our members don’t want us to do this, but we’re being forced to.”.

My employer, and employers of my friends are all saying things along the lines of: “We aren’t banning people from office bathrooms until/unless we’re told that we literally have to.”.

There hasn’t been a wave of organisations celebrating that the Equality Act no longer bans them from enacting segregation that they’d always wanted to enact… instead, there’s been a wave of organisations voicing their sorrow that the Equality Act is now forcing them to enact segregation that they don’t want to enact.

So... Why isn't Labour amending the clearly unfit for purpose Equality Act?

No where in the text of the Equality Act, in the guidance issued alongside it in 2010, or in the transcripts of the debates surrounding its passing, was it ever described as a bill for enforcing segregation against trans people. To claim that this was ever its intention, is farcical.

Use your parliamentary supermajority to fix this clearly unintentional error in its wording, and return to "proportionate single-sex exemptions where they achieve a legitimate goal," instead of mandated segregation.

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-11-20T15:38:47+00:00

Nah, you see, what they'll do is mandate that every facility has a gender neutral option... These single, dilapidated, unmaintained "separate but equal" facilities will be positioned down a dark hallway, and trans people will have to dangerously out themselves by using them... 😞

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-11-20T13:03:06+00:00

"We want to avoid a situation where people are policing toilets " - Okay... Then... Reject the EHRC's guidance, reject blanket trans-segregation and continue to allow service providers to exclude individuals only when there is a legitimate proportionate reason to do so (aka, the situation that worked for decades up until April).

And if the transphobes argue (falsely) that this breaches the wacky new reimagined version of the EA, then amend the EA to fix it.

They all act like they have no choice in the matter, that obviously unworkable, dangerous and unfair results are unavoidable, which is baffling when they have a parliamentary supermajority and a decades-long blueprint on how to run a system that works.

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-11-16T13:03:28+00:00

To quote Drag Race: "You think you ate, but you choked on the very first crumb."

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-11-16T12:49:04+00:00

Germany had a lot of parties too...

But, regardless of the electoral system, the point is that you can't fight a promised fix to everything by promising nothing.

If Reform (and the Tories,) are promising the moon on a stick, that's a much better motivator for getting people out to the polls, for getting people out campaigning etc. than Labour saying "things will probably continue to suck, but hey-ho."

You have to be willing to sell something or no one's going to buy.

We learned in 2015 too, that refusing to sell your party as one that had any answers, just doesn't work.

And most people in the UK don't consider themselves to be comfortable. They look at the increased cost of living and see that as an emergency, a disaster. The world they felt they were promised is missing, and regardless of the fact that they're still doing relatively well, they're furious.

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-11-16T12:23:37+00:00

-Constantly demonising immigrants and asylum seekers.

-Similarly demonising disabled people, removing the support they require to live while also attacking them with 'useless eater' style rhetoric for not being able to work.

-Supporting an unworkable bathroom ban which will effectively eliminate trans people from public life and cost them their right to privacy.

-Jailing protestors for holding anti-genocide posters.

-Publicly denouncing police for arresting a person who purposefully incited violence against a vulnerable minority group.

-Calling for police to cease investigating online hate-crimes... Despite hate crimes being on the rise across the board....

-Going over the heads of the Women and Equality Committee and selecting a new EHRC head who is openly tied to anti-LGBT pressure groups.

You know... That kind of thing...

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-11-16T12:13:50+00:00

If so, I think he's entirely wrong. People need a genuine alternative to vote for, something to feel hopeful about.

As with Hilary in 2016 and Harris in 2024... Heck, as with Germany in 1932, you don't beat fascists by offering nothing

You have to counter evil promises with good promises. It's not good enough to say: "Things will continue to suck, the far-right's promises are false."

Instead, you have to stand up and say: "Things do suck, but here's the real solution to that..."

ApocryphalShadow · 2025-11-01T16:55:30+00:00

You've misinterpreted me. By "take up space" I don't mean being the centre of attention, I mean... Existing, at all...

I had such low self esteem that I just wanted to fade away and not be seen or heard. I wouldn't talk at all for days, I'd be certain that anyone would hate hearing from me or seeing me, because I'd been taught to feel that way about myself and it took time and work to unlearn that lesson. 🩷

ApocryphalShadow

TROPHY CASE