UGLY ALGORITHMS: ANOTHER THING BEING TINA TAUGHT ME

Tina gets her own phone.

This week, Tina got her own phone. She has her own socials and her algorithm is entirely dedicated to the cause.  

What with JJ’s rapid reptile acquisition (which Tina admittedly aids and abets, because Tina continually hangs from the grim cliff of knowing that trans kids get depressed, and she thinks that letting your kid keeps snakes, lizards, and frogs will – hopefully – stave off adolescent depression, obsessions, deviances, and/or vices) . . . there’s been a lot going on. The current tally: 3 tree frogs, 1 crested gecko, 1 snake.

But Tina now realizes she’s exaggerating: JJ is only getting one new snake. And this snake is a baby. It’s very small.

“Like a shoelace!” JJ exclaims, madly in love with the little black and white snake they met at the pet store at which they volunteer on Sundays.

Tina has been preoccupied. More accurately, she is overwhelmed. There are at least five things a day coming up in the news that affect trans people, rising like some kind of seepage from out of the ground that threatens to ruin her shoes. These are all things Tina wants to write about but she does not have time because she has some grading to do. Or, at least, I do.

Tina gets her own phone because she accidentally posted a sympathetic response to an ill colleague of mine who does not know who Tina is. Tina had to delete that comment.

Tina and I both realized at once that switching between social media accounts on one phone is a fool’s errand, at least for those of us old enough to fondly remember when phones were attached the wall, along with those wonderful years during which we Gen Xers luxuriated in the technology offered by the beta max and VHS machines (which technology would triumph?).  

You don’t know what Tina and I are talking about? Google it.

Tina’s algorithm, completely different from mine (which got thrown for a loop after I bought a wet-dry vacuum) reveals to her that there are many trans folks out there being seriously righteous and happy. That there are also many mothers like Tina feeling the same way Tina does. That there is CLOTHING designed for her trans nonbinary child. Really and truly!

Given that JJ has a habit of purchasing a LOT of clothes  . . .

Wait, given that Tina has purchased a lot of clothes because JJ has convinced her that THESE PARTICULAR CLOTHES are the clothes that will solve everything, and then these clothes end up god knows where, maybe in a closet, and JJ will later apologize profusely, explaining that they didn’t know those pants didn’t fit quite right, Tina is excited about the clothes that show up in her algorithm that are designed very specifically for nonbinary bodies.

JJ will be gifted a pair of jeans from said website for Xmas, and JJ will, of course, complain – after removing the tags – that they don’t fit.

But the new algorithm is everything. It’s a complete world, purple and shiny, sparkly, righteous.

But it’s also terrifying in that Tina reads about many trans young people who have been murdered.

I leave Tina behind on her phone. She can stay over there, an arm’s length away on the coffee table. If I need to see into her thread, all I have to do is pick her up. I got her a pink and red case at Five Below. Tina does not get a nice phone. Just an SE. That’s all she needs. She doesn’t complain. She knows we’re on a budget.

And because I’ve been trying, as a literature professor, to really dig in to the real work of finding trans voices, as opposed to relying on an anthology, I’m becoming a little obsessed with the work of scholar and poet Cameron Awkward Rich.

Let me explain: I suspect that when I read work by trans folk and it does not appeal to my aesthetics, that my aesthetics are being challenged, and I realize that this lack of connection (between me and the text) is more revealing of my deficits than those of the trans author I am reading.

I teach Awkward Rich’s poem “Walking Lake Calhoun” to my class. There is a moment when the poem speaks to me so fully— I will share this poem tomorrow, as it is not online— I see myself and all my past selves, and I really wonder if this poet lived in Minneapolis.

Because that’s where Lake Calhoun is.

And I lived there, too, long ago, and walked around that lake.

So I start to go down a research rabbit-hole when all I initially wanted to find out was whether or not Awkward Rich did his undergraduate work in Minneapolis-St.Paul.

It’s then that I land on a website called “Professor Watchlist,” which apparently “reports” professors who discuss or teach Critical Race Theory, Feminism, Queer and LGBTQ+ focused stuff, because, as you know, these extreme right folks have refashioned themselves as the victims of an extremist regime in which the left are apparently (because we don’t have anything better to do) trying to indoctrinate them. This is narcissism on steroids.

Before I know it, my algorithm is fucked.

I’m getting adverts from a website that claims some douche-bag kid has been discriminated against because he had the courage to wear a t-shirt saying “THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS” to his school and was reprimanded. I’m suddenly discovering a whole bunch of “foundations” that purport to fight inequality, and their pages display a veritable smorgasbord of “diverse” faces— some looking serious, some smiling, and all looking very clean—by which I mean not one of these people wears handmade jewelry or has natural hair – and my eyes are squinting as I click further and further, finding my way into the plastic soul of one of these many organizations’ webpages that appear to duplicate themselves across the internet, indecipherable from one another, an invasive species of thought that strikes me as similar to the towering tangles of multiflora rose I’ve been fighting in my backyard for the past several years.

Multiflora Rose sucks on so many levels. But the worst part, aside from the fact it only has thorns and lacks flowers, it invades everything, wrapping itself up the trunks of apples trees, killing them.

Years ago I would have deemed the following statement melodramatic. Now I consider it an observation. Here it is: Evil can be incredibly banal. It would be very easy to glance at one of these websites and think they are supporting your values. Because they are PRETENDING to. It’s like reps from Catholic orphanages showing up at abortion clinics to counsel pregnant teens.

My point is that we must be on the lookout. I know it seems dumb: these Republican / Right-Wing douches attempting to appear sympathetic, masking themselves as victimized. I know it’s sad.  It would be embarrassing if they didn’t actually know what they were doing.

Don’t for a second think they don’t know what they’re doing.

Don’t for a second assume they are dumb.

They know exactly what they are doing.

The Nazis were quite aware of what they were doing.

That was only 80 years ago.

Now, take a deep breath and head over to the Trans Data Library curated by journalist Evan Urquhart to identify individuals and entities that promote trans-hate in ways deceptive, nefarious and objectionable. These organizations, often presenting themselves in name as, for one example, “against intolerance and racism,” hate a lot of other people too. They are opposed to abortion right, critical race theory, you name it.

Making yourself aware of these deceptive practices and then pointing them out to others is the first step toward not having to raise your prozac dosage.

I wish I could call Tina at her number and ask her to make all of this go away.

But if I did call her, I would be answering myself.