They Call Me Doctor Mae

@dr-maeforrest

She/her, disabled trans genderqueer lefty anarchist theologian, PhD in Theology and Ethics. Cohost of the Anarchodox Podcast.

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They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· 25d

Agent Dale Cooper giving a solid thumbs up

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· Jul 11

Went to apply for job here, and everyone there was a weird British person who asked very invasive questions about me

Screenshot from the jobs website Glassdoor for a company called "Troon." I know. Baffling.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· Jul 7

Proof we warned yall about Platner last year

Screenshot of the episode of my podcast, Anarchodox, talking about Playner having a Nazi tattoo, dated back to October 24, 2025. Episode title: sit down slugger, we need to talk (about Nazis)

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· Jul 6

I was not aware that The Boiled One had such an illustrious history in Trek lore

Close up on a figure from the original Pic, specifically the red, melted person that resembles a meme character called The Boiled One

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· Jul 5

Same energy

Meme of Arthur's sister DW saying "that sign cant stop me, because i can't reat!"

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· Jul 4

This is my experience. So much of who I am is in response to the isolated and emotionally toxic stuff I dealt with growing up. Parents were fine, but at the same time, they were just as traumatized as I was, and they did the best they could.

Tweet from @stopworkplacebu: The reason CPTSD goes undiagnosed: it doesn’t look like trauma. It looks like personality.

PTSD is an event. CPTSD is an environment you couldn’t escape during, most often, your formative years. It’s trauma that gets woven into the fabric you mistake for identity.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· Jun 29

TMBG did it better

Cover of Thet Might Be Giants Album "Lincoln", featuring a white monument looking building behind two podiums.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· Jun 28

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· Jun 22

Happy 3-year Tranniversary to me! HRT for 3 years.

Pre-transition Mae selfie. About 8 months pre-HRT. Full beard, balding, dull eyes.

Mae, 3 months on HRT. She is wearing a white blouse and matching headband. Her smile is warm and genuine, and the twinkle in her eyes is brighter.

Mae, 3 years HRT. Hair is a bit longer. Round glasses, blue headband, black blouse. A faint smile is on her lips, but her eyes are somehow more engaged and serene.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· Jun 6

Local museum posted this: >trans woman elder >MFA in Electronic Music We've always been like this huh (I love her)

FB post from the Vacaville Museum: Ms. Bob Davis (she/her/hers), the founder and director of the Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive in Vallejo, CA, introduced us to the archive and explored how trans guests of Casa Susanna, the 1960s and 1970s cross-dressing resort, expressed their lives with candor only possible when writing for a transgender audience.
Ms. Bob holds an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Technology from the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music. She has taught music at City College of San Francisco and Solano Community College, and currently teaches at Napa Valley College.
*Photos by Kathy Keatley Garvey 🐝

Image is of Ms. Bob Davis, an elderly trans woman, wearing a white blouse and red cat's eye glasses, positively radiant

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 30

Can I say I hate that the first insult they lobbed at Talarico when Paxton won the primary was "HE'S TRANSGENDER!" Not only is it nonsensical (is he a trans man? a trans woman? is he just a f*g? SAY IT WITH YOUR CHEST, YOU HOLLOW FUCKS), but it implies that my trans identity is somehow wrong.

A screenshot of Stephen Miller's quote tweet of the Democrat's post on X.
Democrats: Fired up. Ready to go. It's time to take back Texas. (accompanied by an image of James Talarico in front of a large Texas flag.)
Stephen Miller: The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 26

Being trans is a blessing, and transition is a prayer. All of it is animated by truth and hope.

Tweet from @tranz_schubert: doom all you like, but at the end of the day the very act of coming out as trans is one of unfathomable optimism. it's an act entirely predicated on the chance that you can make a complete and total change of your life for the better. on some level, you do have hope.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 26

I heard the chatter that Leo apologized for the church's involvement with the slave trade, but it really is a poignant piece of writing.

176. In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues. It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. In antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves. Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” [174] It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII. [175] This development offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards. Although there was not always consistency in practice — given that slavery was long tolerated before being unequivocally condemned — there has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized. This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. [176] It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 26

Well now he's just cribbing from my dissertation almost verbatim. (JK, but it is uncannily close.)

122. Finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others. Indeed, precisely because we experience limits — vulnerability, suffering and failure — we can recognize the inviolable dignity of every person, both our own and that of others. In this same experience, we remain capable of intuiting a fraternity greater than ourselves and of perceiving injustice as a scandal. Authentic culture and art preserve this spark, resisting the normalization of evil. For this reason, certain works have taken on an almost prophetic significance: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony can be seen as a desire for unity; Guernica as a denunciation of dehumanization; Schindler’s List as a call not to consign the past to oblivion.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 26

This was EXACTLY the reason I pivoted away from transhumanism as a scholar: the loudest voices in favor of it were simply not concerned with equality or equity, justice or fairness. JUSTICE MATTERS, DAMMIT.

117. From the perspective of the Church’s Social Doctrine, the key issue is not the use of technology as such, but the vision that underlies it. If the human being is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy. In the name of progress, “necessary sacrifices” may begin to be justified, placing the burden on the most vulnerable in pursuit of a supposed optimization of the species. In this regard, the aforementioned warning of Saint Paul VI retains great foresight: indeed, scientific and technological advances, when detached from moral and social progress, end up turning against humanity. [130] For this reason, a clear distinction must be made. It is one thing to integrate technology within a human-centered, relational vision; it is quite another to be guided by an outlook that devalues human limits and promises a purely technical form of “salvation.”

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 26

The ghost of Immanuel Kant is hooting and hollering

114. The quality of a civilization is measured not by the power of its means, but by the care it is able to offer, by its ability to recognize the other as a face not merely as a function. The ability to care for one another is a fundamental dimension of our humanity, one that is learned and mastered through lived experience. Reading stories to a child, offering company to an elderly person and arranging a home so that it is welcoming are simple gestures often rooted in family life. They teach us to value care at a societal level and train us to recognize others as persons worthy of attention. Technology can also support this mutual care between people, for example, by providing tools that help us anticipate and organize things, without undermining human freedom and judgment. After all, human beings are the subjects of relationships and responsible for their own decisions.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 26

Oooo hoo hoo hooo hoo! Leo is cooking. The very language of competition inherent in capitalism is a distinct problem for us if we take seriously the common good. Cooperation and solidarity, not domination, seem to be the direction he is heading, which is antithetical to Silicon Valley.

Finally, I would like to employ the expression “to disarm,” which is close to my heart. Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life. Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 26

This, I think, is a crucial point to what is now a growing field of ethics, as it regards AI. Who decides what the "good" is? Are the developers of AI even aware that they themselves are not entirely without bias or free of any flaw?

103. Indeed, entrusting an algorithm in practice with the power to select who is worthy or not, without anyone bearing responsibility for that judgment, is to hand over the task of redefining the boundaries of human possibilities. In this process, political responsibility is also lost, not just empathy toward those excluded, which can, after all, be simulated. The exclusion of the vulnerable becomes cloaked in a veneer of neutrality and objectivity, against which it becomes difficult to raise objections. In this way, injustice goes unnoticed, and compassion, mercy and forgiveness — understood not as mere appearances but as real political actions — gradually disappear from view.

104. From this follows a simple but compelling consequence: we cannot consider AI to be morally neutral. In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations. If a system is designed or used in a way that treats some lives as less worthy, or excludes them without the possibility of appeal, then it is not merely a tool “to be used well,” since it has already introduced criteria that contradict the inalienable dignity of the human person. For this reason, ethical discernment cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes; it must also examine how that system is designed and what vision of the human person and society is embedded in the data and models that guide it. [126]

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 26

Back at it again! And again, I am struck with how strongly the pope is coming to bat for basic human rights, something a lot of the tech world seems to disregard entirely.

It is individuals that matter, each and every person, together with their families. Social movements, communal ideologies and grand political proclamations in favor of a population are worthless unless they lead to the flourishing of persons — men and women — with their inalienable rights. Similarly, it is not enough to extol individual freedom or private enterprise if we then allow a multitude of people to continue living without decent work, protections or access to basic necessities.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 25

This is lovely, brother, but come on. The Catholic Church is one of the supreme arbiters of patriarchy. It's a bit rich for you to get high and mighty on women's rights when you won't even allow women to be priests.

Along with a greater awareness of the value of every human person and their rights, recognition of minority rights has also grown. Yet, there is still a long way to go to ensure that the rights of a great many, namely women, are equally and genuinely guaranteed throughout the world. It is a fact that “doubly poor are those women who endure situations of exclusion, mistreatment and violence, since they are frequently less able to defend their rights.” [74] It is, therefore, not enough to state simply that men and women have equal dignity and rights; it is necessary that this be reflected in concrete decisions, such as in laws, access to employment, education, social and political responsibilities, and the way society listens to and values women’s contributions. As long as this gap persists, we cannot say that society truly and fully recognizes that women have the same dignity as men.

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 25

Skipping past some history, here's a good bit where finally we can see some of Leo's personal perspective. In line with social teaching, of course, but I do wonder how deep this will go regarding disabled people, if at all.

Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective. From this perspective, persons end up being reduced to a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited, and are no longer recognized as a proper end in themselves who should never be instrumentalized. The value of persons, however, does not depend on what they achieve or produce. There are rights that apply to everyone simply by virtue of being human, and no human power can legitimately deny or arbitrarily limit them. [59]

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 25

So far so good, honestly. Using the Tower of Babel as a chief reference is a pretty solid foundation, imo.

We must, then, avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. The risk of dehumanization — of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means — is an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise. Instead, let us choose the “way of Nehemiah,” which highlights the importance of working together to make the City of God a safe place for returning exiles. Rebuilding today means recognizing that, precisely from the plurality of voices and visions which, even though they sometimes remind us of the confusion caused by the diversity of spoken languages, a bright possibility emerges. Indeed, this is the possibility of building together, of transforming diversity into a resource and of making listening and dialogue the common ground upon which to cultivate justice and fraternity. Within this shared task, Christians discover their unique role of guiding actions toward God so that, in his light, pluralism does not dissipate into disorder, but instead, through the practice of synodality, it becomes the space in which humanity rediscovers its solid foundations and its final end. In the Book of Revelation, John sees the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:2) as a gift for all humanity. And this vision of grace is an invitation for us Christians to work together in order to foster a peaceful, just and dignified life in community within today’s “cities.”

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 25

You ever just idly read Wikipedia, come across Camille Paglia's page, and then start reading, only to find some of the most whiplash-inducing paragraphs ever written about the most exhausting kind of person

In the early 1990s, Naomi Wolf traded a series of sometimes personal attacks with Paglia. In The New Republic, Wolf wrote that Paglia "poses as a sexual renegade but is in fact the most dutiful of patriarchal daughters" and characterized Paglia as intellectually dishonest.[55][56][57][58] In a 1991 speech, Paglia criticized Wolf for blaming anorexia on the media, calling Wolf a "twit".[59] Gloria Steinem said of Paglia that, "Her calling herself a feminist is sort of like a Nazi saying they're not anti-Semitic."[60] Paglia called Steinem "the Stalin of feminism".[61] Katha Pollitt calls Paglia one of a "seemingly endless parade of social critics [who] have achieved celebrity by portraying not sexism but feminism as the problem". Pollitt writes that Paglia has glorified "male dominance", and has been able to get away with things "that might make even Rush Limbaugh blanch," because she is a woman.[62]

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 25

Lowkey, this is the kind of game NPC parties absolutely go feral for in DND

I thought my pigeon curse was lifting. Then it took a darker turn
Adrian Chiles

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 14

Meme of a small Grey cat with short legs on a white background. They are in the center of a two-step cycle diagram labeled "i wake up" and "there is something wronger with Britain "

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 8

Oh, word? It's becoming HR standard practice to reject trans people outright? I hadn't noticed. Good society! Love to have legal prejudice in hiring practices

tweet from @decolonialmarx: My partner went to an HR conference recently and a lawyer there said "i'd stay away from hiring anyone trans because it's lawsuit waiting to happen"

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 3

the conversation, for those curious

Me: THOU SHALT NOT BOOMERPOST
Them: how is this a boomer post?
Me: back in my day we made our FAN EDITS the HARD way, and got our TATTOO INK from the HOSE
Them: AI art is insanely bad for the environment but ok
Me: I AGREE. And I definitely HATE AI. It's a drain on the planet and it also robs people of livelihoods. BUT ALSO. Nostalgia is an inherently reactionary mindset. It idealizes the past, turns it into a fiction tinged by memories and sensations that may or may not have been present. Yes, I agree, it is much better to hand-edit images. But you have to be wary about idealizing the past too much.
Them: you’re making a sweeping generalization that doesn’t really work here. Having nostalgia is fine, as long as you don’t use it to pretend like there weren’t bad things about the past. It was broken, but some parts of it were beautiful in a way

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 3

Saw this on FB, and like, on the one hand, yes, edits are better than AI. But my response was THOU SHALT NOT BOOMERPOST and the people... are not as receptive to this perspective as BlueSky is. Lol.

an image macro with the text : Missing times when AI didn't exist and edits were like this.

The image is a collage of four Disney princesses (Ariel, Aurora, Rapunzel, and Alice) each edited to be more "alt," with facial piercings, dyed hair, and Ariel has hipster glasses for some reason

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 3

Ok, so this popped up on X, and I wanted to share my answer here because I think it is fun and I liked writing it out: TL;DR-- my answer is a resounding NO

Poll tweet by @marcybelowfloor: You have a friend who has over multiple months replaced parts of their body with identical robot duplicates, and has now copied all their memories onto a disk and had their real brain removed and destroyed. Are they still the same person you knew?
Poll answer:
Yes 62.8%
No 37.2%

They Call Me Doctor Mae@dr-maeforrest· May 1

well whaddya know