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LGBTQI - We're here, we're...you know the rest of it


karaddin

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So, I’ve taken some time off from the thread and, as I said I would (after karaddin posted an excerpt) downloaded and finished Julia Serano’s “Whipping Girl.” It was much less memoir than I thought it would be from reading the excerpt Karaddin posted, and much more of a cogently argued manifesto on gender, particularly femininity, and the failures of both mainstream culture and feminism to come to grips with each and the damage this failure has caused to a lot of people – especially people with exceptional gender expressions that lean towards the feminine. Although I’m obviously exposing my ignorance here, I’d suggest that if someone wanted an “easy to read” primer on where modern feminism should be heading – reading Serano (I’ve already downloaded “Excluded” – her other book that’s explicitly on this topic) should almost be considered a prerequisite for meaningful engagement with the topic.



I was forced to really critically grapple with some things that I haven’t really grappled with since I left an academic environment seven or eight years ago, and the conclusions that I came to about some of my personally held beliefs – they weren’t pretty. Watching some of my views on gender constructivism placed within the wider context of a strain of feminism that had some really, really ugly views on femininity and transgendered women – well, that sucked. It sucked even more because when I was coming to grips with my own sexuality and my own ‘exceptional’ gender expression, I got some really good things from Judith Butler and Andrea Dworkin (who I loved even more because of her abrasive personality and the fits of rage she often inspired in men). But while I got some very good stuff from both of them (well, more so Butler than Dworkin), the scope of relevant knowledge about sex and gender has moved on (for some people), and I need to move on with it.



Despite everyone in the other thread telling me otherwise, I liked to believe that, as a genuine self-described feminist and queer person myself, we were “on the same side” – I was just more correct about things than some others. What I came to understand reading “Whipping Girl” is that, in fact, I really wasn’t on the same side as everyone else in the thread, particularly those identifying as transgender. In fact, I was on the other side – the wrong side. And I was going about discussing these issues (putting my obvious ignorance aside for a minute) in a really shitty, really obnoxious way. And it wasn’t even in a unique, shitty, and obnoxious way – but in a really clichéd shitty and obnoxious way that I shared with a lot of other supposedly enlightened people who thought they were “on the same side” as transgendered people, and just more right.



It’s one thing to be wrong. It’s another thing to be wrong in such a way that you can clearly identify yourself as a part of a social movement making life worse, in some cases really fucking terrible, for a lot of other people. And for that, I am really, honestly, truly sorry. I was a fucking asshole.



I’m not what I would consider to be a masculine queer. Despite being bisexual, and married, with children, if I’m out in the world on my own, my voice and mannerisms sometimes lead people to identify me as gay. But at the same time, I’ve always rejected the more effeminate gays. I believed, like Janice Raymond, that femininity itself is an artificial byproduct of a patriarchical society, and looked down on effeminate gays, really effeminate women, male to female cross-dressers and transgendered women as “performing” an objectionable gender role. If you buy that gender is entirely socially constructed, then it’s possible to look down on “femininity” without being a misogynist. But, if you accept that some people – in fact, a hell of a lot of people (including, if you ask anyone that has ever known me, ever – ME) sometimes or always act in a “feminine” matter naturally, and that it’s just part of the natural range of human gender expression (the same with some extreme expressions of masculinity), well, then I don’t think you can quite so easily escape the conclusion that what you’re expressing IS a form of misogyny. And believe me when I say, that is the last thing I ever wanted, and is not how I’ve ever viewed myself in the world. Plus, it never pays to be self-hating.



So obviously I’ve got some issues to work on, and I fully intend to do that. And I hope that I’ll be able to contribute in this thread in a more open, more positive, and less judgmental manner. And I really want to thank some regulars here – emberling, karaddin (I’ve always admired your willingness to just tell me to fuck off the most), Robin, and Lazarova – for continuing to talk about your experiences and be open, even when shitheads like me are trying to piss all over the thread. Thanks.


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I think bi people should resist the temptation to extrapolate from their experience and posit that everyone is really bi on some level.

Though I do think there is more malleability to sexuality than most people admit... [snip]

important to remember that sexual orientation is not equivalent to sexual practice. two people who have no sexual attraction to one another can have sex. it can be an enjoyable act. it can be a culturally meaningful act. it can be an act of closeness and friendship and trust. traditional sexual attraction is not required for these things. so e.g. cultures where m/m sex is a culturally important celebration or rite of passage do not tell us anything particularly about orientation/attraction. if it tells us anything, it is to debunk the universality of the revulsion which current normative male heterosexuality projects onto m/m sex.

I have at least one friend that almost certainly would have been denied by that gate keeping

hi

There are some sexual urges that are much stronger now I've had surgery and I'd like to explore certain activities, and ruling out cis men basically means my only avenue for that is a trans woman who hasn't had surgery, still has functionality with her bits and is on board with using them. I'm certainly attracted to women like that, but there aren't that many of them and I'm very much concerned about the possibility of them feeling that I'm fetishising them, and I absolutely do not want to do that.

you can fetishize me anytime :leer:

:blush: :blush: :blush:

:leaving:

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^ I love this thead :)

Nestor - That's probably as open an apology as I've ever seen on this forum. That takes a lot.

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OMG brook. Both her parents were in their bedroom and the bath was inbetween. We had to pull some Harriet the Spy shit to get there.

I missed your edit, so I just wanted to add that I'm very glad I missed those "helpful" articles in the 90's. Fuck that.

Also, I think you are nearly a mirror image of me in terms of bi-women. I have a very visceral "hot" reaction to men and no amount of personality makes up for that lack. With women it's MUCH more about personality and chemistry which can take about five seconds to overlap into "hot" mode.

My reticence about identifying as bisexual is more because I AM that bi from all the stereotypes. The best thing about getting a bit older is meeting more people who have done the kind of self-exploration to decide if my vision of a relationship will work for them. Also, I got heartily SICK of being propositioned by couples by the time I was 19, so I hid behind leabian or straight accordingly.

The world has also opened up a bit since my 20's.

L, I want to ditto brook in calling you brave. My complications are teeny compared to yours. I survived quite a bit of violence in the 90's being out in straight spaces. Lesbians have never incurred nearly the levels of wrath that queer men or trans people have recieved. My little taste of hell was exremely humbling for me. I still have to deal with bullshit sometimes, but I get more backup these days.

You are very brave. Scary enough to tackle who you are. Add the layers of ass-hattery from the outside world and it's miserable. Xoxo.

Edit: Nestor, :like:

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Just wanting to make it clear that my issue with the 'stereotypical bisexual' was just that I knew it wasn't me... so I felt I needed some different label (and I'd not yet been exposed to queer except as an insult or I may have ended up there)

One other thing I forgot to mention that isn't important but is somewhat interesting is that during that period I was identifying as straight all my fantasies were m/f but I always imagined myself as a guy. I guess it was the only way I had of reconciling the whole 'I'd really rather be sleeping with her' thing.

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L - I'm with the others, you aren't being a coward. And I probably have more authority to say that, having been exactly where you are identifying as bigender. That continued right through until after I started hormones, the dysphoria dropping away helped me realise that I wasn't feeling still a guy sometimes, I was just feeling like me and falsely equating me=guy.

But even with that identification it was clear to me from the moment I tried having sex while "cross dressed" that I needed to transition. I felt great and right dressed as a woman, even the highly sexualised outfit I was in, but sexually not aroused at all...I wasn't even able to get off. I realised that what I had assumed was entirely a sexual kink in fact had nothing to do with sex and was a far deeper need for me, it was about all the time not sex. That night I was still trying to have sex as a man and it didn't work for me. The first night I truly had sex as a woman was after hormones had started to kick in, and coincidentally was the next time I had sex, and it was mind blowing, and amazing and fundamentally different in a way that's hard to articulate. It's more soft, even when it's hard to the point of painful, it's more sensual, it's more teasing, it's more tender, it's more... Me. I wish I could explain that better, but that's all I've got - I've had a fair amount of sex with people of varying experience levels, some an awful lot, and there is a fundamental difference in the way it feels when are having sex in that mind set independent of your partner, although my partner for that first time sure as fuck contributed to it being amazing and memorable. I do view it as losing a virginity of sorts, I know virginity itself is a bullshit construct of repression, and one that did a lot of harm to old me (I lost it rather late which was extraordinarily destructive to my sense of self worth at the time), but there is value in it to me reclaiming it and the process by which I truly lost it as my real self. I'm rambling at this point, didn't get enough sleep so I'll stop with that lol.

Nestor - thank you for reading it and challenging yourself like that, it's easier to brush those feelings under the carpet but you didn't. Thanks also for what you said about how you had been in the past, and for your comments about me - I've been struggling a lot and had come to a very different conclusion on your feelings about me. Your description of yourself sounds a lot like how I was as a man I think. I identified as bisexual, although I was very much more into women (not sure if that is true for you) but had something feminine about me. I didn't dress feminine, nor present in any way as particularly feminine other than maybe my hair for a time, but there was something inherently fundamentally feminine about me. It didn't matter how I dressed or presented myself, it was there. My mother could see it, and a conversation about that presented the only good segue into coming out I ever had, although my father could not, and it led almost everyone outside my family to assume I was gay. This really irked me not because of any internalised homophobia, but because I was really into women and felt this assumption was working against me and hurt me. My attraction to women is also a fundamental part of my identity and the feeling that my sexuality was that of a lesbian not a straight man was the first sign of incongruence I had, I don't even know how I knew the difference at the time I felt it but I did, so calling me gay erased a very important part of my identity back then.

Once again thank you, challenging your beliefs is one of the hardest things we can do, meeting that head on instead of flinching away is a great thing. I wish others would do the same.

Sorry I gave the wrong impression of the book with that excerpt, it's just a very small slice of the book that I find very resonant. I couldn't agree more with your assessment of its place in the future of feminism, and I'm pretty sure Lyanma agrees with that too, she certainly references Serano a lot.

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Interesting that you mention Butler. Of the Butler I've read and read about, it seems like mostly excellent and valuable insight and not at all in fundamental conflict with Serano. My own concept of everything owes a lot to both. I wonder if that's because I read Serano first? That way I never fell into the trap (as I've seen many do) of taking Butler's focus on social constructionism as a complete ontology rather than a directed critique of essentialist assumptions. I had Serano's synthesized nature/nurture approach already in mind.

I think with a lot of post-whatever-ist theorists like Butler there is a tendency to read it as 'X is false, Y is true' when the intent is more along the lines of 'X is harmful, Y is a way to challenge X or mitigate its harm' - which is a similar proposition politically but entirely different ontologically. Excluded isn't as concise or revelatory as Whipping Girl but I get a kick out of how it's basically focused on deconstructing this mode of deconstruction: pointing out how it can set an aporic, politicized mode of expression (such as drag in Gender Trouble) as superior to the normative mode of expression and also superior to subaltern modes of expression (here, binary trans id). this particular example is one that Butler has been apologizing for accidentally implying for quite a while.

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@NMLc- Admitting that you have been wrong is a rare act these days and I don't think I've ever read a mea culpa as earnest and comprehensive. Bravo - though I still felt the interactions you drove in wrongheadedness added to the discussion and other peoples' understanding.

important to remember that sexual orientation is not equivalent to sexual practice. two people who have no sexual attraction to one another can have sex. it can be an enjoyable act. it can be a culturally meaningful act. it can be an act of closeness and friendship and trust. traditional sexual attraction is not required for these things. so e.g. cultures where m/m sex is a culturally important celebration or rite of passage do not tell us anything particularly about orientation/attraction. if it tells us anything, it is to debunk the universality of the revulsion which current normative male heterosexuality projects onto m/m sex.

I never said orientation = practice, but I would still say the removal of taboos or the addition of "cover" inevitably allows for more individuals to self-discover their orientation. If the "universality of revulsion" were removed, for example, I'm sure we would find more bi men admitting to being bi. As for the capacity of (non-attracted?) sex being enjoyable, coupled with friendship and closeness, I think a lot of couples would be lucky to maintain these elements throughout their relationship.

L - I'm with the others, you aren't being a coward...

But even with that identification it was clear to me from the moment I tried having sex while "cross dressed" that I needed to transition. I felt great and right dressed as a woman, even the highly sexualised outfit I was in, but sexually not aroused at all...I wasn't even able to get off. I realised that what I had assumed was entirely a sexual kink in fact had nothing to do with sex and was a far deeper need for me, it was about all the time not sex...

Thanks for all your help and support, Kara.

Though...I'm not sure why you continue to repeat not getting an erotic charge out of women's clothes as a proof-point for being trans. As emberling noted in another thread, kink can be a pathway to self-discovery and clothes can be an aid in seeing the self as a woman and as a sexual being. Not that you're not expressing a personal truth, it's just that I'm sure you don't want to imply the inverse for someone else (i.e., erotic charge from women's clothes = you are a fetishist, not trans).

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You are right, I most certainly don't intend to imply the inverse for anyone else. There is a chunk of internal awareness that accompanied the discovery that I'm not sure how to articulate. I'm dilating atm so I'll give it some thought and see if I can come up with a way to say it.


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Robin - the simple protocols you describe inherently prevent anyone that doesn't have a chance of "passing" from getting to transition and I don't care if I'm hurt by them getting to, I can't sanction any situation which throws them under the bus for my own safety. I have at least one friend that almost certainly would have been denied by that gate keeping and she is quite possibly even more of a woman than me, and that's saying something.

I don't have a link sorry, however I'll try answer the bold now I've remembered I forgot to answer. I don't know if I'd speculate that "most" people start out with the capacity to be bisexual, but I suspect it's close to that. Research is scarce at the moment, but I think the best chance we have of measuring this is looking at the numbers of gay+bi/pan/queer trans people, and I think that is >50%, but as I said...numbers aren't very solid. My reasoning being that with trans people, most who have the capacity for same sex attraction will end up exploring it, due to two effects. The first being those that transition later have the opposite impact from socialisation, as I said earlier, and also when you've attempted to live as both genders, getting hung up on the gender/homophobic blocking of attraction makes a whole lot less sense. It still happens, but a lot less, so you'll get closer to the true rates. I think it tends to break down at 40% straight, 40% bi/pan/queer, 20% gay or thereabouts. So whether its a majority, or just very close, having the capacity for attraction to both I think its a hell of a lot more than we currently see in the general population and I think it's a pretty standard way to be.

And yes, I absolutely think the culture we are in impacts the growth of the brain and the formation of our sexuality. I think in a completely accepting society, the numbers will end up close to that of trans people although I think the numbers of exclusively same sex attracted (both trans and cis) would actually be lower than what we see in trans people now, as the socialisation compulsion that works the opposite way in late transitioning trans people wouldnt be present. The exclusively heterosexual might also be a little lower, so I wouldn't be surprised if you end up with a majority bi/pan/queer.

With your last bolded question, I'm not sure what you mean? Does it bother me that my sexuality was shaped by culture? Not really, I don't see any way for it to be avoided. I think I'm happier and safer being exclusively attracted to women in the current state of affairs than I would be if I was trying to date men as well. Frankly speaking I'm terrified of men in the general sense and I don't want to go near them romantically. There are some sexual urges that are much stronger now I've had surgery and I'd like to explore certain activities, and ruling out cis men basically means my only avenue for that is a trans woman who hasn't had surgery, still has functionality with her bits and is on board with using them. I'm certainly attracted to women like that, but there aren't that many of them and I'm very much concerned about the possibility of them feeling that I'm fetishising them, and I absolutely do not want to do that. So I guess in that sense I'm losing out from the influence culture has had on me, but in a way I'm OK with.

Ok so some sort of answer to Cora....

I was later than average to really develop much in the way of sexual attraction to anybody. In hindsight I can tell you that my obsession with a certain tv character was... well at least romantic if not sexual in nature (and has had a scarily large inpact on my 'type' in the sense that I find a pretty big range of women attractive but give a woman brunette curls and a few freckles on her nose and I'm almost certain to at least take notice). I had similar somewhat confused feelings for one of the girls who used to babysit for us.

So anyway I was I think 13 the first time I was aware of any actual sexual feelings for someone real and that was in the middle of a slumber party in with a bunch of my friends cuddled up with my best friend and wanting rather desperately to kiss her.

At this point I can thank every 90's teen magazine ever that ran lots of articles assuring girls that it was totally normal to get crushes on female friends and that it didn't mean they were gay but somehow forgot to mention that yes they might be (and Bi was never even considered as an option). So I convinced myself if was nothing and spent the next couple of years half suspecting I was a lesbian, half not really thinking about it at all and at the same time trying desperately to somehow make myself crush on the same male celebs my friends were because I was already 'weird' enough and I really didn't want to have another reason to not fit in.

Fast forward to 15 and I start to realise that real life boys can be interesting as well so I just kind of assume that the magazines were right and if was just a phase and I was definitely straight.

I have no idea how I reconciled that with the fact that my first kiss with a boy was followed quickly by my first with a girl (a different friend of mine and I mean I don't even remember that boy's name but I can tell you every detail of what happened the night that we made out and my world just exploded) or that once I started sleeping with people I quickly discovered I liked sleeping with women as well. All I knew about bi people was stereotypes and I knew that wasn't me so I somehow convinced myself that it was all just fun. I was head over heels in love with my best friend but had absolutely no awareness of that fact.

It was my late teens that I really started to stuggle with things and by my very early 20's I actually self-identified as a lesbian even though I was in a long term relationship with a guy who I was deeply in love with. My attraction to guys has always been much more about emotions or personality traits leading me to appreciate the physical while my attraction to women is much more a mix of that and just pure 'wow she's hot' and so I dunno to me at that stage I just decided I could fall in love with guys despite being bi.

It was a few years more before I was able to actually completely come to terms with things and identify myself as bi... and that came with a considerable amount of self-loathing (that'd be the stereotypes again) which in turn was one factor which led me to a relationship with the completely wrong man who 'accepted' that part of me (he didn't for the record, or he did as long as I never spoke about it or did anything that indicated I was ever attracted to women) which is all why I'm so fucking happy when higher profile celebrities come out as Bi because I really wish I'd had an actual range of role models out there who could have shown me that there were real options to be a bi adult and 'normal'.

Sigh so jealous I hate you (I love you though)

I've been reading these over and over again, and feel that I have nothing to add or ask as of now.

I appreciate you sharing your stories and experiences.

I feel like people will always find a reason to hate what is different, and with being a minority that come with the package...

Though at the same time I won't let it change me, which is why I'm appreciative of you guys who've been doing this many times over, you know far more than myself and its made you so strong and desirable! (All of you) I really admire that!!

Okay sorry I'm gushing...

Um... Yeah when I actually have something of value to contribute I'll return. :D

<3 you guys!!!!

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You don't need to have anything major to add Cora, you belong in here anyway <3 whenever you have anything you want to say or ask. Making the world better for people like us younger than us is the whole point for me.


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Though...I'm not sure why you continue to repeat not getting an erotic charge out of women's clothes as a proof-point for being trans. As emberling noted in another thread, kink can be a pathway to self-discovery and clothes can be an aid in seeing the self as a woman and as a sexual being. Not that you're not expressing a personal truth, it's just that I'm sure you don't want to imply the inverse for someone else (i.e., erotic charge from women's clothes = you are a fetishist, not trans).

I would say that, broadly speaking (for amab people), feminine embodiment fantasies are an indicator of being transfeminine. But sexualized feminine embodiment fantasies indicate that you are [either trans or have a fetish]. Non-sexualized feminine embodiment fantasies lack that clear alternative, so they are a very strong indication, suitable to be called 'proof' if there are other preexisting strong indications.

Having been there, I read 'proof' as like: I think this is what's going on with me, but it's such a huge step and gets increasingly hard to reverse! I need to prove it to myself before I do anything too drastic! That's an important step. Out of context 'proof' could be read as more: welp, like it or not, you're trans, kid. sorry. and yeah it doesn't really work that way; it can only be 'proven' from the inside. (though there does seem to be a trans version of gaydar, just in that we get good enough at recognizing the signs that when a lot of people come out it's really no surprise.)

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@emberling - does this transdar work via the internet?



ETA: your explanation makes sense as a sort of stock-taking of internal indicators. And personally I've noticed any erotic charge has been replaced with a simple sense of relief to be out of male-gendered clothes. Though recently I've surprised myself with how congruent the idea of settling into a sort of soft-butch presentation might be if I actually medically transitioned. Meaning the femme stuff is sort of a stretching or re-purposing of the physically male body I'm in now, but if I were "actually"* a woman I might lean back toward the "center".




*I know this is the wrong way to say this, but I'm tired.


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part of the mystery of the thing is that nobody knows how it works! and it's so inconsistent that who knows if it even does work! but my own suspicions that so-and-so seems maybe trans usually comes from the way they relate to pop culture, patterns in things they love suggestive of nonsexualized feminine embodiment fantasy; ways they speak about their body suggestive of dysphoria (e.g. 'husk'); or from the way they relate to hypermasculinity, the way they socialize with men vs women. all of that is internettable and tbh it probably makes it easier seeing people as maybe-girls if you don't have a male-coded body to unimagine. but unlike gaydar, it requires being fairly well acquainted with someone.

right now there are a lot of people sharing experiences from before they realized they were trans, on twitter ht #eggmode. lots of these are things you can recognize in others and can go into a 'transdar' kind of evaluation. but of course, just like gaydar, it is at best a guess and very prone to false positives/negatives and requires very careful handling (spreading accurate trans information is valuable but trying to push someone into seeing themselves as trans is dangerous and kind of icky.)

read nevada for a literary example of someone getting a transdar ping and handling it badly

(note: I don't know enough trans men to be able to say one way or another about whether this is a thing for them and what it would look like)

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I was pretty certain my best friend was trans before she came out to me but in her case it wasn't something I think anyone would have been shocked by (I'm not the only friend whose response to her breaking the news was 'yes I know')

I have another friend who I think is and they say they aren't (just for the record I never tried to tell them they were, the denial was spontaneous and in the context about talking about their crossdressing). It's a bunch of little things there, the way they talk about the need to crossdress (it's usually in terms of wanting to express more femininity), a whole lot of joking with me (over a 15 year period) about needing my help turning them into a girl, play acting as a girl online, the fact that their response to talking about a trans friend of mine was 'they are so brave I could never be that brave'... If they ever do come out it's certainly not going to shock me. They recently had a career move from one of the most hypermasculine areas you'll find to.... well something still male dominated but literally everything is less 'blokey' than their previous employer so I'm kind of hoping that if they do turn out to be trans that will make coming out easier.

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Yeah I definitely have a sense of it too, the friend brook talked about pings the fuck out of it. I'd probably say close to 90% they are actually repressing, whether consciously or not.

I read a post on here a few days ago, first post I read by the person and immediately said to brook "25% chance that's a trans woman, that post could have been written by me at that age". Not going to even touch where or who it was because totally not my place, just observing that reaction in action. I get a different one in person that's more like my gaydar where I just get a sense of it. Fucked if I know what I'm picking up on for either of them, but my gaydar is more accurate. It also somehow works over the internet lol.

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So the school I work at (actually, our sister school in the same building) has just made national news for having the first LGBT history course offered by a public school. Unfortunately I made the mistake of reading the comments. The school has 30% of students identifying as LGBT so it's an appropriate elective to offer but I feel bad for any students who make the same mistake I just did.

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