Making Snow Black: When We Act - We Create Our Own Reality

strategic-culture |  The infamous Carl Rove (we shall not bother with an explanatory note, whoever remembers this cowboy and is still interested may look him up) twenty and some years ago articulated the gist of the empire’s swaggering ideology:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Students of “empire” must wonder indeed how this foolish man, if he is still around, would now comment his erstwhile utterance. The empire in whose name Rove arrogantly spoke a quarter of a century ago lies in shambles; its reality-producing powers seem notably diminished. If the pretentious nincompoop Rove had any notion of history, he would probably acknowledge that the lifespan of his empire had been even shorter than Assyria’s, its ephemeral prototype from antiquity.

The crude vulgarity of Rove’s boasting should not, however, obscure the fact that a similar disdain for reality was articulated before him by Lord Bertrand Russell, by any measure a genuinely substantial figure. In his 1953 treatise “The Impact of Science on Society,” the sophisticated intellectual Russell wrote up a much more polished and cynical version of Rove’s plebeian ranting:

“The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of schoolchildren on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black” (Page 33).

The effort to invert reality and produce just such an unshakable conviction is in full operation in the terminally sick community of nations Dostoevsky charitably referred to as “the precious graveyard,” now known also as the Collective West.

The West’s newest ideological fad is reality inversion. Another way of putting it is that the most compelling expression of fealty to the West’s values consists of vociferously denying the evidence of one’s senses.

Proof abounds. The dogma propagated in February of this year at an “educational” workshop sponsored by Oklahoma State University was that the biological fact that chromosomes determine an individual’s gender is of no significance. It was expected that on, the contrary, the participants should embrace the unshakable conviction that gender, besides being multiple, was also a matter of arbitrary self-determination. Ideology “cancels” facts. Members of the scientific community and students of biology who, in order to pass their exams, until recently considered it advantageous to affirm empirical facts about the role of chromosomes, are henceforth required to recalibrate scientific knowledge, making it conform to ideological criteria. Who can blame readers who used to be citizens of another empire, denounced not long ago as “evil,” if they find such abrupt reversals of officially approved reality uncomfortable, or even traumatising?

The pandemonium triggered at Portland State University when a biologist contended that there were “explicitly anatomical and biological” differences between men and women, and that taking offense at that constitutes “rejection of reality,” richly illustrates the depth of the madness to which the West has descended.

To summarise, the party line now is that it is not objective factors such as chromosomes that determine gender but “one’s internal sense of being male, female, neither of these, both, or another gender(s) … for transgender people, their sex assigned at birth and their own internal sense of gender identity are not the same. Female, woman, and girl and male, man, and boy are also not necessarily linked to each other but are just six common gender identities.” In other words, one “is” the way one “feels” and the feeling need not be anchored in external reality. (See here.)

The Benjamins Make Baron HarkonnenJennifer Pritzker's Fetish Into "Synthetic Sexual Identities"

Tablet  | One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive an ideology and practice of disembodiment into our medical, legal, cultural, and educational institutions.

I first wrote about the Pritzkers, whose fortune originated in the Hyatt hotel chain, and their philanthropy directed toward normalizing what people call “transgenderism” in 2018. I have since stopped using the word “transgenderism” as it has no clear boundaries, which makes it useless for communication, and have instead opted for the term SSI, which more clearly defines what some of the Pritzkers and their allies are funding—even as it ignores the biological reality of “male” and “female” and “gay” and “straight.”

The creation and normalization of SSI speaks much more directly to what is happening in American culture, and elsewhere, under an umbrella of human rights. With the introduction of SSI, the current incarnation of the LGBTQ+ network—as distinct from the prior movement that fought for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans, and which ended in 2020 with Bostock v. Clayton County, finding that LGBTQ+ is a protected class for discrimination purposes—is working closely with the techno-medical complex, big banks, international law firms, pharma giants, and corporate power to solidify the idea that humans are not a sexually dimorphic species—which contradicts reality and the fundamental premises not only of “traditional” religions but of the gay and lesbian civil rights movements and much of the feminist movement, for which sexual dimorphism and resulting gender differences are foundational premises.

Through investments in the techno-medical complex, where new highly medicalized sex identities are being conjured, Pritzkers and other elite donors are attempting to normalize the idea that human reproductive sex exists on a spectrum. These investments go toward creating new SSI using surgeries and drugs, and by instituting rapid language reforms to prop up these new identities and induce institutions and individuals to normalize them. In 2018, for example, at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at the University of California Los Angeles (where the Pritzkers are major donors and hold various titles), the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology advertised several options for young females who think they can be men to have their reproductive organs removed, a procedure termed “gender-affirming care.”

The Pritzkers became the first American family to have a medical school bear its name in recognition of a private donation when it gave $12 million to the University of Chicago School of Medicine in 1968. In June 2002, the family announced an additional gift of $30 million to be invested in the University of Chicago’s Biological Sciences Division and School of Medicine. These investments provided the family with a bridgehead into the world of academic medicine, which it has since expanded in pursuit of a well-defined agenda centered around SSI. Also in 2002, Jennifer Pritzker founded the Tawani Foundation, which has since provided funding to Howard Brown Health and Rush Memorial Medical Center in Chicago, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Foundation Fund, and the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Health, all of which provide some version of “gender care.” In the case of the latter, “clients” include “gender creative children as well as transgender and gender non-conforming adolescents ...”

In 2012, J.B. Pritzker and his wife, M.K. Pritzker, worked with The Bridgespan Group—a management consultant to nonprofits and philanthropists—to develop a long-term strategy for the J.B and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation. Their work together included conducting research on developments in the field of early childhood education, to which the foundation committed $25 million.

Ever since, a motivating and driving force behind the Pritzkers’ familywide commitment to SSI has been J.B.’s cousin Jennifer (born James) Pritzker—a retired lieutenant colonel in the Illinois Army National Guard and the father of three children. In 2013, around the time gender ideology reached the level of mainstream American culture, Jennifer Pritzker announced a transition to womanhood. Since then, Pritzker has used the Tawani Foundation to help fund various institutions that support the concept of a spectrum of human sexes, including the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the Williams Institute UCLA School of Law, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Palm Military Center, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), and many others. Tawani Enterprises, the private investment counterpart to the philanthropic foundation, invests in and partners with Squadron Capital LLC, a Chicago-based private investment vehicle that acquires a number of medical device companies that manufacture instruments, implants, cutting tools, and injection molded plastic products for use in surgeries. As in the case of Jon Stryker, founder of the LGBT mega-NGO Arcus Foundation, it is hard to avoid the impression of complementarity between Jennifer Pritzker’s for-profit medical investments and philanthropic support for SSI.

Pritzker also helps fund the University of Minnesota National Center for Gender Spectrum Health, which claims “the gender spectrum is inclusive of the wide array of gender identities beyond binary definitions of gender—inclusive of cisgender and transgender identities, gender queer, and nonbinary identities as a normal part of the natural expression of gender. Gender spectrum health is the healthy, affirmed, positive development of a gender identity and expression that is congruent with the individual’s sense of self.” The university, where Pritzker has served on the Leadership Council for the Program in Human Sexuality, provides “young adult gender services” in the medical school’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Health.

Teenvogue Marketing The Lifestyles Of Useless White Women To Black Boys....,

teenvogue  | The fast food joint where Zuriel Hooks worked was just up the street from where she lived in Alabama, but the commute was harrowing. When she started the job in April 2021, she had to walk to work on the shoulder of the road in the Alabama sun. She would pause at the intersection, waiting for the right opportunity to run across multiple lanes of traffic. 

It was hot, it was dangerous, it was exhausting – but if she wanted to keep her job, she didn’t have much of a choice. “I felt so bad about myself at that time. Because I'm just like, ‘I’m too pretty to be doing all this,’” Hooks said, laughing while looking back. “Literally, I deserve to be driven to work.” 

Hooks, 19, now works for the Knights and Orchids Society, an organization serving Alabama’s Black LGBT community. But the experience of walking to that job stuck with her. Though she’s been working towards it for two years, Hooks doesn’t have a driver’s license. 

For trans youth like Hooks, this crucial rite of passage can be a complicated, lengthy and often frustrating journey. Trans young people face unique challenges to driving at every turn, from complicated ID laws to practicing with a parent. Without adequate support, trans youth may give up on driving entirely, resulting in a crisis of safety and independence.

The most obvious obstacle involves the license itself. Teenagers who choose to change their names or gender markers face a complicated and costly legal battle. The processes vary: some states require background checks, some court appearances, some medical documentation. At times, the rules can border on ridiculous. Alabama’s SB 184 forbade people under the age of 19 from pursuing medical transition. Yet the state also passed a law requiring drivers to undergo medical transition in order to change their gender markers. Though that law has since been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court, the state of Alabama is appealing that decision, leaving trans drivers with no official resolution. 

“It creates this – I don't want to use the cliche, but – patchwork,” said Olivia Hunt, director of policy at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “Not just state-to-state, but even person-to-person, where every person's name change and gender marker change situation is different.”

The cost can vary widely, too. Documentation, court fees and other requirements can quickly tally up to hundreds of dollars. “If you've got somebody who's already in a situation where, due to financial problems, [who] doesn't have access to a car, that might make it just that more inaccessible for them,” Hunt told Teen Vogue.

This lack of access to name and gender marker revisions puts first time drivers in a dangerous limbo. If your name or gender marker doesn’t match your appearance, there’s potential for harassment. The fear of getting outed by an ID (and subsequent abuse) is what some researchers call “ID anxiety.”

“For trans drivers, this is a unique, personal embodiment of stress,” said Arjee Restar, a social epidemiologist and an assistant professor at the University of Washington, “given that the same ID anxiety does not occur to cisgender drivers.”

With that being said, ID law is not the only thing troubling young trans drivers. Public driver education programs have dwindled significantly since the 1970s, leaving much of the burden of teaching driver’s ed on parents. In most states, teenagers must practice for their driving exams under adult supervision, typically a parent or guardian. 

But trans youth often have fraught relationships with the adults in their lives . Hooks, who started practicing driving with someone close to her at 17, often felt like a captive audience while trying to drive. “As [they were] trying to somehow teach me how to drive, I feel like it was [their] way to try to… I would say somehow try to brainwash me back from being who I am,” said Hooks. “They’d turn [the conversation] from driving to, ‘why are you even transitioning?’”

In Alabama, teenagers must complete a minimum of 50 hours of driving with adult supervision in order to get their licenses in lieu of a state-approved drivers’ education course. Hooks tried to muscle through it. But navigating the roads while navigating the emotions in the passenger side got to be too much. One day, Hooks just gave up. “If I'm gonna have this much agony trying to get this done,” Hooks recalled thinking, “then I don't want to do it.”

The alternative wasn’t much better. She didn’t just feel miserable walking everywhere; she felt vulnerable. 

“I always got catcalled, I always got beeped at by a lot of men,” she said.

World War III Is A Conflict Of Anthropological Values

twitter |  Emmanuel Todd, one of the greatest French intellectuals today, claims that the "Third World War has started."

Small 🧵 translating the most important points in this fascinating interview.

Emmanuel Todd: «La Troisième Guerre mondiale a commencé» GRAND ENTRETIEN - Au-delà de l’affrontement militaire entre la Russie et l’Ukraine, l’anthropologue insiste sur la dimension idéologique et culturelle de cette guerre et sur l’opposition entre l’Occid… https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/emmanuel-todd-la-troisieme-guerre-mondiale-a-commence-20230112#Echobox=1673601494-1

 

He says "it's obvious that the conflict, started as a limited territorial war and escalating to a global economic confrontation, between the whole of the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other hand, has become a world war." 

 

He believes that "Putin made a big mistake early on, which is [that] on the eve of the war [everyone saw Ukraine] not as a fledgling democracy, but as a society in decay and a “failed state” in the making. [...] I think the Kremlin's calculation was that this decaying society... 

 

... would crumble at the first shock. But what we have discovered, on the contrary, is that a society in decomposition, if it is fed by external financial and military resources, can find in war a new type of balance, and even a horizon, a hope." 

 

He says he agrees with Mearsheimer's analysis of the conflict: "Mearsheimer tells us that Ukraine, whose army had been overtaken by NATO soldiers (American, British and Polish) since at least 2014, was therefore a de facto member of the NATO, and that the Russians had... 

 

... announced that they would never tolerate Ukraine in NATO. From their point of view, the Russians are therefore in a war that is defensive and preventive. Mearsheimer added that we would have no reason to rejoice in the eventual difficulties of the Russians because... 

 

...since this is an existential question for them, the harder it would be, the harder they would strike. The analysis seems to hold true." 

 

He however has some criticism for Mearsheimer:

"Mearsheimer, like a good American, overestimates his country. He considers that, if for the Russians the war in Ukraine is existential, for the Americans it is basically only one 'game' of power among others. After Vietnam... 

 

...Iraq and Afghanistan, what's one more debacle? The basic axiom of American geopolitics is: 'We can do whatever we want because we are sheltered, far away, between two oceans, nothing will ever happen to us'. Nothing would be existential for America. 

 

Insufficient analysis which today leads Biden to proceed mindlessly. America is fragile. The resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system towards the precipice. No one had expected that the Russian economy would hold up against the 'economic power'...

...of NATO. I believe that the Russians themselves did not anticipate it.

If the Russian economy resisted the sanctions indefinitely and managed to exhaust the European economy, while it itself remained, backed by China, American monetary and financial controls of the world......would collapse, and with them the possibility for United States to fund their huge trade deficit for nothing. This war has therefore become existential for the United States. No more than Russia, they cannot withdraw from the conflict, they cannot let go. 

 

This is why we...... are now in an endless war, in a confrontation whose outcome must be the collapse of one or the other." 

 

He firmly believes the US is in decline but sees it as bad news for the autonomy of vassal states:

"I have just read a book by S. Jaishankar, Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs (The India Way), published just before the war, who sees American weakness, who knows that the......confrontation between China and the US will have no winner but will give space to a country like India, and to many others. I add: but not to Europeans. Everywhere we see the weakening of the US, but not in Europe and Japan because one of the effects of the retraction of......the imperial system is that the United States strengthens its hold on its initial protectorates. As the American system shrinks, it weighs ever more heavily on the local elites of the protectorates (and I include all of Europe here). 

 

The first to lose all national autonomy...... will be (or already are) the English and the Australians. The Internet has produced human interaction with the US in the Anglosphere of such intensity that its academic, media and artistic elites are, so to speak, annexed. On the European continent we are somewhat...... protected by our national languages, but the fall in our autonomy is considerable, and rapid. Let's remember the Iraq war, when Chirac, Schröder and Putin held joint anti-war press conferences." 

 

He underlines the importance of skills and education: "The US is now twice as populated as Russia (2.2 times in student age groups). But in the US only 7% are studying engineering, while in Russia it is 25%. Which means that with 2.2 times fewer people studying, Russia trains......30% more engineers. The US fills the gap with foreign students, but they're mainly Indians and even more Chinese. This is not safe and is already decreasing. It is a dilemma of the American economy: it can only face competition from China by importing skilled Chinese labor." 

 

On the ideological and cultural aspects of the war: "When we see the Russian Duma pass even more repressive legislation on 'LGBT propaganda', we feel superior. I can feel that as an ordinary Westerner. But from a geopolitical point of view, if we think in terms of...... soft power, it is a mistake. On 75% of the planet, the kinship organization was patrilineal and one can sense a strong understanding of Russian attitudes. For the collective non-West, Russia affirms a reassuring moral conservatism." 

 

He continues: "The USSR had a certain form of soft power [but] communism basically horrified the whole Muslim world by its atheism and inspired nothing particular in India, outside of West Bengal and Kerala. However, today, Russia which repositioned itself as the archetype......of the great power, not only anti-colonialist, but also patrilineal and conservative of traditional mores, can seduce much further. [For instance] it's obvious that Putin's Russia, having become morally conservative, has become sympathetic to the Saudis who I'm sure have a......bit of a hard time with American debates over access for transgender women in the ladies' room.

Western media are tragically funny, they keep saying, 'Russia is isolated, Russia is isolated'. But when we look at the votes at the UN, we see that 75% of the world does not......follow the West, which then seems very small.

With an anthropologist reading of this [divide between the West and the rest] we find that countries in the West often have a nuclear family structure with bilateral kinship systems, that is to say where male and female kinship......are equivalent in the definition of the social status of the child. [Within the rest], with the bulk of the Afro-Euro-Asian mass, we find community and patrilineal family organizations. We then see that this conflict, described by our media as a conflict of political......values, is at a deeper level a conflict of anthropological values. It is this unconscious aspect of the divide and this depth that make the confrontation dangerous."

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah.., ARE YOU SEXUALLY DESIRABLE - OR NOT!!!

coveteur |  Every so often, I’ll receive the occasional you’re so lucky comment from a fellow trans woman. The sentiment is usually in reference to my body or my looks and their proximity and similarities to that of a cisgender woman. In other words, it’s usually in reference to my ability to “pass” in a cisgender world. At first, that comment, you’re so lucky, made me viscerally uncomfortable. It was easy for me to comprehend how passing privilege is a gateway to survival for many trans people, and while it isn’t a privilege afforded to all of us, words like “lucky” or “easy” left me thinking. Thoughts would race in my mind, a feeling of guilt would weigh on my heart, and I would wonder if my attractiveness or “passability” negates how difficult it is to exist as a trans woman in a cis-normative society. To counter my discomfort, I would often reply to such comments with a self-deprecating joke, as if to minimize the existence of my attractiveness as a privilege. A privilege I did not earn nor work for.

I suppose you can say the word “lucky” had become a sore spot for a while. Uncomfortable with looking at the ways in which I benefit from my looks, I was adamant to prove how I wasn’t lucky. After all, at the end of the day, I will always be transgender and that comes with its own prejudice and discrimination, right? To acknowledge the unearned advantages of physical attractiveness felt as if it would undermine everything I had to overcome to get to where I am. I mean, how lucky could I actually be?

In my search to validate how I was feeling, I stumbled across the opposite: Pretty privilege.

Pretty privilege is the concept that pretty people benefit in life from being perceived as beautiful. Studies have shown that pretty people will more than likely receive higher earnings or better grades. But what is beautiful? Like the saying beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, what we find attractive is often thought to be subjective. However, society inherently bases value on certain attributes over others. Those attributes are often based on whiteness, able bodiedness, leanness, straightness, and cisness, to mention just a few. Pretty privilege is much like how being white or being male provides people with unearned advantages in society.

Pretty privilege benefits and hurts all types of people, both cis and trans, across all races and sexualities. The intersectionality of our existence must be addressed when speaking to the topic. Kelsey Yonce refers to intersectionality perfectly in their 2014 thesis, “Attractiveness Privilege: the unearned advantages of physical attractiveness.” Yonce states “intersectionality refers to the idea that different areas of privilege and oppression do not exist in isolation from one another; instead, they overlap and interact with each other in ways that create unique experiences of privilege and oppression for each individual.” For example, the privilege and oppression experienced by a trans woman of color will look very different from the privilege and oppression experienced by a white trans woman, despite both experiencing the stigmatization and oppression of being transgender because of the inherent societal hierarchy towards race.

When speaking to pretty privilege in the context of cisness, it could be argued that the barrier for entry to such a privilege is more difficult for a transgender person because that hurdle is our very sex assigned at birth, my “maleness.” It’s the belief that in order to achieve such a standing in society it would require a distancing from, squandering of, and rejection of our transness as a whole. This reinforces the false reality that in society, a transition is deemed “successful” only when one is conventionally beautiful by cisgender standards. When in actuality we all know the real value a transition can bring to one’s life is more than mere aesthetics or looks, but rather living more fully and freely. Suddenly, it began to feel like not addressing my own pretty privilege head-on would be disadvantageous to what my mission is, and that's to uplift and advocate for all transwomen.

Having defined it, it has become shockingly easy to see how I benefit from such a privilege. In hindsight, pretty privilege in the context of cisness wasn’t something I was always presented with and might be why it has felt so obvious. I haven’t always existed in the world looking like this. While I can acknowledge how I’ve always benefitted from certain privileges like whiteness, able bodiedness, and leanness, benefitting from my “cisness” was a very foreign thing for me. I started my transition 21 months ago, and only two years ago started hormone replacement therapy, followed by a recent facial feminization surgery. As my body and features began to change and become more cis-passing, I had started to witness peoples’ treatment of me change—it was almost as if one day people saw me differently, they started smiling at me as they walked by, doors were held open, and drinks were being bought for me from those who simply wanted my attention. These are only a few small examples, but at first it all seemed unnatural and uncomfortable because my experience in the world had been different for nearly 30 years. The exact moment where it changed is hard to pinpoint, but looking at my transition in its totality, it’s jarring and impossible for me to not see the difference. It is now my responsibility to swallow my guilt and acknowledge that such experiences are not afforded to everyone and I have benefitted from the unearned privilege of assimilating into a cisgender society because of my pretty privilege. This has, in fact, made my transition easier than most but not without its own challenges.

 

TIL That Compiling The Fuckery That Wokestan Puts On Public Display Is Extremist Hate Speech

Slate |  On Thursday night, the latest installment of what CEO Elon Musk has dubbed the “Twitter Files” was published on the social media platform, this time with a bombshell-promising thread from former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss, who now runs an online magazine called the Free Press. Weiss, like fellow Twitter Files author Matt Taibbi, was given access to internal documents of the company by its new owner in order to interrogate the content-moderation actions of Twitter’s leadership before Musk bought the company. Many extremely online right-wingers have long accused Twitter of being biased against conservatives. Weiss’ thread, like Taibbi’s from a week earlier, tells them just what they want to hear.

Weiss’ focus is on Twitter’s ability to deamplify accounts so that, for example, they are boosted less by the platform’s news-feed algorithm or are barred from trending topics or search (a policy Twitter has been open about, publicly describing it in a blog post in 2018). Among several examples, Weiss cites the platform’s treatment of Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account that remains active despite its connection to multiple acts of terror and intimidation from far-right extremists, including multiple bomb threats against a children’s hospital. This portrayal of Libs of TikTok as representative of accounts posting conservative views is alarming. The implication seems to be that platforms that seek to protect users from harassment and violence—which is what Libs of TikTok has repeatedly inspired—are engaging in anti-conservative bias when they do so. Weiss contrasted the treatment of Libs of TikTok by Twitter with a post harassing Libs of TikTok using personally identifying information that was not taken down by Twitter staff, which seems to have been an error on Twitter’s part. (All content moderation involves human error, and thus far Weiss has not demonstrated any sort of consistent pattern on any side.)

Weiss may be best known for a column introducing “the intellectual dark web,” a group of anti-progressive types fixated on the concept of cancel culture and the idea that liberals routinely censor conservative ideas. With the Twitter Files, she describes herself leading a team that has been given “broad and expanding access” to Twitter’s internal documents and communications. This group includes opinion writer Abigail Shrier, who is best known for writing Irreversible Damage, a book opposing transition for female-assigned people on the grounds that an unproven social contagion is the root cause of transmasculine identities.

It is unsurprising that this team highlighted the treatment of an account notorious for its anti-trans activity. But Libs of TikTok goes far beyond expressing political opinions about transgender issues. That would certainly be allowed under Twitter’s policies, which exist to curb harassment, violence, and hate speech, not opinions. In fact, Libs of TikTok has repeatedly highlighted specific individuals, events, and institutions with inflammatory language, often falsely suggesting they are guilty of heinous acts against young children. The account’s spotlight has repeatedly resulted in harassment and violent threats toward the individuals involved, in a process typically referred to as stochastic terrorism. Those targeted include doctors and hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for youth, teachers and schools with inclusive policies, and all-ages or youth-focused drag events.

Contrary to the extremist rhetoric, gender-affirming care is supported by all mainstream medical organizations as potentially lifesaving for young people with gender dysphoria. It is also perfectly possible to speak with children about the existence of transgender people and about families headed by same-sex parents in an age-appropriate, nonsexual way. All-ages drag events are places where kids can see members of the drag community in elaborate full-body costumes providing innocent entertainment in the name of inclusivity and fun, and even adult drag shows are raunchy rather than sexual in nature. However, the issues with Libs of TikTok and the Twitter Files are fundamentally not about anyone’s opinion on gender-affirming care, diversity in schools, or drag. They’re about the conflation of stochastic terrorism with conservative opinions, and the refusal of many conservatives to recognize or respect any line drawn between the two.

Armed white supremacist gangs seem to closely monitor Libs of TikTok’s posts to find new targets, based on the multiple incidents associated with those named on its Twitter feed. Account owner Chaya Raichik, meanwhile, has done nothing to attempt to calm, dissuade, change how she communicates, or otherwise bring an end to the pattern of violence and near-violence driven by her posts. These often include misinformation as well as a conflation of healthy, age-appropriate discussions of diversity with child abuse. Instead of seeking to end the violence directed at the targets she chooses, Raichik and Libs of TikTok are constantly toeing the line, attempting to stop short of what is officially considered either harassment or hate speech, and occasionally catching a ban when Twitter decides that line was crossed.

I'm Thinking Guaranteed Blinding White Light And Cleansing Blue FYRE!!!!

NYPost |   San Francisco’s transgender guaranteed income program application provides over 130 gender, sexuality and pronoun options, and encouraging enrollees to “check all that apply.”

The “Guaranteed Income for Transgender People (G.I.F.T.)” program will provide 55 “economically marginalized transgender people,” who have a monthly income of less than $600 with $1,200 per month for a year-and-a-half. Although, enrollees can make a maximum of $4,000 a month and still be enrolled in the program, according to the program’s website.

Pronoun options on the application include “Zie/zim/zis,” “Fae/faer/faers” and “Tey/ter/ters.”

Under the gender identity category, applicants can choose from options like “Aggressive (AG),” which is an “identity label claimed by some African-American and Latin@ masculine of center lesbians,” according to the University of Florida LGBTQ+ Affairs office.

“Genderf—” is another option in the gender identity category, which is “the idea of playing with ‘gender cues’ to purposely confuse stereotypical gender expressions, usually through clothing.” according to the University of Connecticut Rainbow Center. Another option is “Two-spirit,” which is an “identity label used within many American Indian and Canadian First Nations indigenous groups to describe an individual that possesses both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ spirits.” according to the University of Florida.

Other gender identity options included “Feminine-of-center,” “Demigirl,” “Boi,” “Tomboy,” “Khanith/Xanith” and “Ninauposkitzipxpe.”  Applicants could also choose between sexual orientations like “BDSM/Kink,” which is defined as a “sexual activity involving such practices as the use of physical restraints, the granting and relinquishing of control, and the infliction of pain,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, as well as options like “pansexual” and “skoliosexual.”

Clownish 25 Year Old Man Charts His Fame And "Girlhood"

dailymail |  Childcare experts are expressing alarm over transgender TikToker Dylan Mulvaney’s popularity bump after her White House debut, saying social media is driving a spike in teens seeking sex-change procedures.

Clinicians say Mulvaney’s sit-down time with President Joe Biden has raised the social media sensation’s profile, extending her reach and likely influencing teenage fans who may themselves be questioning their own gender identity.

Mulvaney’s TikTok following grew to 8.4 million after her White House appearance, and while she is entitled to share her experiences online, experts told DailyMail.com that online influencers like her in part drive an alarming uptick in teen transitioning.

dailymail |   'A lot of the initial deals were tailored to my queerness and to my transness,' she told The Creators newsletter last month.

'For some of these major corporations, I was actually their first trans creator. It's exciting to make money to support myself since I lost my job, and to have my transition surgeries be covered too.'

Her agency, CAA, did not answer DailyMail.com's interview request.

Mulvaney's ascent has not been without hiccups. Her appearance on Ulta Beauty last month led to controversy and calls to boycott the cosmetics firm. Critics called her 'misogynistic' for 'appropriating' womanhood.

Likewise, a post about Tampax feminine hygiene products left some viewers shocked and confused. Two replied: 'Is this a joke?' She is frequently bashed for referring to the vagina as a 'Barbie pouch'.

She has gained a massive following on TikTok as she documents her transition to a transgender female — originally identifying as 'nonbinary' but telling followers in March that she was a girl.

Mulvaney interviewed Biden last month as part of a panel of six progressive activists for NowThis News. In the interview, the Democrat vowed to protect 'gender-affirming care,' saying states should not limit access to transgender treatments.

 

If Your Political Identity And Pride Celebrations Are Inherently Sexual....,

reddit | Yes, exactly- someone being the minority doesn't mean they should be out of sight, and it doesn't mean that the majority's rights are being infringed by seeing it or having to (the horror!) explain it to kids. One, kids are a lot less fragile than people think, and two, you can't shield them from everything. Like you pointed out, the same people would probably hate to explain the existence of black people, Jews, the disabled/people in wheelchairs/people with amputations/people with heavy scarring, pregnant people... Actually, really take a long think about that last one. Pregnancy is about the closest it gets to explicit sex, because pregnancy is proof sex happened at some point. And sure, you can explain the baby's presence without sex- but you can also explain attraction towards the same sex without sex, too, by describing it the way you would a straight relationship. They're in love, they're holding hands, they're kissing. If you can do one, you can do the other. (Worth noting: the same Texas GOP platform that declared LGBT identity abominations, also says that all children must be taught that fetuses are people and that live begins "from fertilization". How do you explain fertilization without explaining what sex is? The GOP's own platform undercuts their claim that this is about protecting children from sex.)

I understand your reluctance to think of children having sexualities. This is why the split attraction model is used. Have you ever heard terms like "homoromantic asexual"? The model was used for people like that, who don't experience sexual attraction but do have romantic, but I think it would help for you to think of everyone in those terms to understand this. Most adults are heteromantic (fall in love with adults of the opposite sex) and heterosexual (want to have sex with adults of the opposite sex.) Most kids are heteromantic, but don't have sexual feelings yet, which is why they're okay with movies like Beauty and the Beast. But some kids are homoromantic. They don't have sexual attraction yet either, but they do have romantic ones. If you can understand a 12 year old girl having a boyfriend, you can understand a 12 year old girl having a girlfriend, too.

I think you are falling into a fallacy of fundamental attribution error. You, and other heterosexuals, have feelings which may or may not include sex. But LGBT people are sexualized so severely that people try to assign sexual meaning even to us just holding hands or kissing each other on the lips. Our motivations are stripped away by people who insist we are driven only by sexual desire. That's part of the reason "love is love" has been such a big part of our messaging; because we have had to convince people that we even experience love and other emotions separate from sex in the first place.

When we get accused of "grooming" kids (and note that they chose a word associated with child molestation, when they could have, if they really felt we were changing kids into something else, used "converting" which would have worked just as well- this is deliberate) we are being made out such that our existence is inherently that of a sexual deviant predator.

Truth be told, that's another insidious layer to the denial that LGBT youth even exist. If they occur naturally, it weakens the argument that children are being preyed upon. Only by furthering the narrative that this is an unnatural behavior that occurs only in either adults or in children who have been "tainted" by a perverted adult can the narrative be upheld. In other words, people don't call LGBT people groomers because they are truly worried about the kids; they mention the kids because it supports the narrative they have already created.

I hate to invoke Godwin's Law, but as a Jew, I thought I would bring up some similarities in the genocidal language and actions used.

1. You are probably familiar with a certain picture of a Nazi book burning immediately before Hitler rose to power. What you are likely not aware of is that this was the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a sexuality institute, that studied LGBT people extensively. The first successful gender confirmation surgery was performed there. The books being burned in that photo? They were years of studies on LGBT people.

2. Weimar Germany, in the years leading up to Hitler seizing power, was known as the best place in the world to be LGBT. Transgender people were even allowed to get special markers on their IDs to exempt them from gender-restricted dress codes. When Hitler seized power, those IDs were used to imprison trans people. Trans women were treated the same as gay men and given the pink triangle. Trans men were treated as lesbians and, while persecuted, were not sent to concentration camps.

3. After WW2 ended, LGBT people in the camps were sent back to prison to serve out the remainders of their sentences. Some weren't freed until the 1970s.

4. LGBT people, leading up to the Holocaust, were accused of grooming and molesting children. Not coincidentally, Jews were also depicted as stealing and converting children to Judaism and sinful lifestyles, particularly in political comics and caricatures.

5. The current anti-trans movement is symbiotically fused with antisemitism. There are countless conspiracy theories that Jewish elites- particularly George Soros- are funding pharmacies to "trans the children" so they can make money from the medications and surgeries. Anti-semitism and transphobia almost always occur clustered together.

6. The rise of the Great Replacement Theory is also linked to both of these. Jews are accused of bringing the immigrants into this country to replace white people. They're also accused of pushing "the trans" so that white children will be rendered infertile (despite the huge numbers of trans people of color, which they ignore) and drive down their numbers. An Idaho legislator who penned an anti-trans law explicitly says she sees it as an extension of the pro-life debate due to her worries about "teenagers losing perfectly healthy reproductive organs."

7. In Nazi Germany, the role of women was primarily to make more good little Aryans and raise them properly. While abortions were often performed involuntarily on Jews and other undesirables, they were forbidden for white women. There was a high stigma for infertile women.

Taking all of these facts into account, I think you can see how it's hard for a lot of people to believe that the concern over children is actually genuine. It's something much more sinister and linked to a lot of other forms of bigotry, and we are seeing echoes of it now.

You don't call a group of people "groomers" if you want to live peacefully with them. Pedophiles are seen as subhuman, as dangers to society. Not one person on the planet wants to coexist peacefully with pedophiles. (And despite your insistence that they mean "grooming" as in converting, they never try to invoke that imagery. It's always claims of perversion, of sexual abuse- pedophilia without ever actually touching a child.) Once a group is perceived as being a front for pedophiles, it takes decades of advocacy for them to be seen as human beings again- if they are so lucky as to not be targeted for extermination instead.

This is genocidal language. It doesn't have to mean genocidal as in trains and gas chambers. It can also mean things like forcing them in the closet (which is to say: if you let Jews live, but said them going to temple was banned, and didn't let them wear their traditional clothing on the grounds that this was upsetting to children, that would be a form of genocide), taking their children away (there is a growing sentiment that LGBT couples should not be allowed to have or adopt children, and there is only one place that line of thinking leads. If it's grooming to tell someone else's kids it's okay to be gay, then it's grooming to tell your own kids, too, which means any LGBT adult with a child is now a groomer. Not to mention Texas's new initiative to have parents of trans kids investigated by CPS, which DeSantis has indicated he is interested in bringing to Florida), and otherwise making their lives unbearable in an attempt to drive up suicide rates (Trans people already have a 40% rate of attempting suicide, and this is higher when they are in unsupportive environments or those in which they can't access gender-affirming care, which both Abbott and DeSantis have said they want to ban in all circumstances in their states).

Further, there are increasing calls for pogroms against LGBT people from elected officials, those running for office, and/or people with heavy influence on elected officials. This has resulted in a sustained campaign of terror against LGBT people from the alt-right. Just twenty minutes from my hometown, two weeks ago, a U-Haul full of Patriot Front members was stopped on their way to attack an LGBT Pride event. At the same event, there were instances of harassment perpetrated by other groups, including, you guessed it, parents with kids being called groomers.

The LGBT community is in danger right now. I understand people like you who may have concerns, but the problem is that those concerns are often used as a pretext for the alt-right to radicalize people against LGBT people. The entire "groomers" rhetoric, for reference, started as a campaign on 4chan a year or two ago. And look how effective it has been just in the last six months. Five years ago, anyone who objected to LeFou being gay in the new Beauty and the Beast movie was laughed off the internet; if that movie was released now, there would be riots in Anaheim. This is getting out of hand at an alarming rate, and this really isn't a good time to be on the fence or "have concerns."

The Week The Trans Spell Was Broken

unherd |  Not very long ago, the fear of being denounced as a transphobe meant that doubts about extreme gender ideology were confined to private WhatsApp groups and quiet conversations among friends. This is very much no longer the case. Two weeks ago, the Times’s chief sports writer, Matt Dickinson, wrote on Twitter, “Are we really talking about fairness in sport in the transgender debate – or fear and prejudice?”

“Fairness” replied hundreds of women, including some from his own paper. The only replies agreeing with Dickinson were from other male sports writers, insisting that the way the trans women athletes had been treated was “horrendous and disgusting” (John Cross, Daily Mirror ) and “awful” (Martyn Ziegler, The Times) It’s sweet how males always stick together, isn’t it?

Gender ideologues complain that this shift in public tolerance is merely a conservative backlash against trans rights, but they are wrong. What we are seeing is the inevitable result of trans activists – and, most of all, Stonewall – pushing far beyond civil rights for trans people and insisting instead on unpopular and unworkable policies, such as trans women in sport, child transition and any open acknowledgement of female biology.

This third issue caused the Labour Party to have one of its regular internal breakdowns, as its politicians – and leader – became unable to answer the question, what is a woman? And not only could they not answer the question, they couldn’t think of a way to not answer the question, hemming and hawing about it being a “gotcha” question. Yes, it is, interviewers replied, and what we’re trying to get is an answer that a three-year old could provide. Last month, Angela Rayner came up with a solution: “I think we should be taking it off social media and taking it away from commentators,” she intoned solemnly. Ah yes, censorship from the left. That always plays so well! Oddly, only a month earlier Rayner had been loudly insisting that the next leader of the Labour party will be a woman. Presumably that kind of woman-chat is permitted by Rayner, just not what a woman actually is.

The Tories have certainly not been spared from all this. On 30 March, at 2:48am, the Tory MP Jamie Wallis posted on Twitter to say that he’d been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and would like to be trans. Suddenly, his long history of dodginess – from running companies that attracted more than 800 complaints, to being affiliated with a sugar daddy website, to fleeing the site of a car crash – was instantly forgotten and his honesty and courage were trumpeted to parliament’s rafters by, among others, the Prime Minister. It was strikingly reminiscent of that time, in 2015, when Glamour magazine named Caitlyn Jenner Woman of the Year, two months after she was involved in a car accident in which a woman, Kim Howe, died. The district attorney ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Jenner, but Glamour decided they had all the evidence they needed to cite her as the year’s best woman. At least Caitlyn bothered to make an effort: in the sobering light of day, Wallis tweeted, “I remain the same person I was yesterday, and so will continue to use he/him/his pronouns.” So no change at all, then, other than the identity of being trans. Or wanting to be, anyway.

 

The First DNC Attack On Joe Rogan Came In 2020

CNN  |  Bernie Sanders is facing a backlash from some Democrats after his campaign trumpeted an endorsement from comedian Joe Rogan, a popular podcast and YouTube talk show host with a history of making racist, homophobic and transphobic comments.

The Sanders campaign touted the endorsement in a tweet on Thursday afternoon, featuring a clip of Rogan's supportive remarks. 

 

"I think I'll probably vote for Bernie. Him as a human being, when I was hanging out with him, I believe in him, I like him, I like him a lot," Rogan said on an earlier episode of his show.

 

"What Bernie stands for is a guy -- look, you could dig up dirt on every single human being that's ever existed if you catch them in their worst moment and you magnify those moments and you cut out everything else and you only display those worst moments. That said, you can't find very many with Bernie. He's been insanely consistent his entire life. He's basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from."

Rogan, a libertarian-leaning broadcaster with a public persona in the mold of Howard Stern, is a divisive figure who has said the N-word on his show and in 2013 questioned -- using offensive language -- whether a transgender MMA fighter should be able to compete against other women. 

 

"If you want to be a woman in the bedroom and, you know, you want to play house and all of that other sh-t and you feel like you have, your body is really a woman's body trapped inside a man's frame and so you got a operation, that's all good in the hood," Rogan said. "But you can't fight chicks.". 

 

The decision to highlight Rogan's support has divided opinion among Democrats and activists, particularly online, where it has sparked a heated debate over whether Sanders should have aligned himself with Rogan in any form or context. 

 

Sanders' strategic targeting of young, unaffiliated and working class voters often takes him to places, and onto platforms -- like Twitch -- that most Democratic candidates rarely venture. But that practice, when it brings a figure like Rogan into the political spotlight, also carries the risk of alienating parts of a liberal base that, especially in the Trump era, has become increasingly cautious about the company it keeps -- and what that signals to marginalized communities. 

 

On Saturday, the progressive group MoveOn called on Sanders "to apologize and stop elevating this endorsement."

 

"It's one thing for Joe Rogan to endorse a candidate," MoveOn said in a tweet from its official account. "It's another for @BernieSanders' campaign to produce a video bolstering the endorsement of someone known for promoting transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and misogyny."

Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 25, 2020

 

Less than an hour later, former Vice President Joe Biden appeared to enter the fray.

 

"Let's be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time," Biden tweeted. "There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights."

Wokeism Seems Parasitic To Hard Won Black Civil Rights In America...,

andrewsullivan  |  If we were going to construct a test-case for how dysfunctional our politics have become, it would be hard to beat the transgender issue. It profoundly affects a relatively minuscule number of people in the grand scheme of things, and yet galvanizes countless more for culture war purposes. It has become a litmus test for social justice campaigners, who regard anyone proposing even the slightest qualifications on the question as indistinguishable from a Klan member. It has seized the attention of some of the most extreme elements among radical feminists, who in turn regard any smidgen of a compromise on the rights of women as a grotesque enforcement of patriarchy. 

Worse, it has now excited the Christianist right, who see the recognition of trans rights as an effort to destroy the sexual binary that is at the core of almost all orthodox faith. And it has become a Twitter phenomenon, where all reasonable arguments go to die. If you are an opinion writer, you really do have to be a masochist to even want to dabble in the debate. And the mainstream media is, at this point, completely unreliable as a source of balance or information. They openly advocate the most extreme critical theory arguments about sex and gender as if they were uncontested facts and as if the debate can be explained entirely as a function of bigotry vs love. (A recent exception to this, though tilted clearly from the start in one direction, is this explainer from the NYT last night.)

Big global stories — for example, a high court case in Britain that found that minors under 16 are not developmentally capable of making the decision to take puberty blockers — are routinely ignored. Check out this video from the Washington Post. It doesn’t even gesture at fairness: no presentation of counter-argument; instant attribution of bigotry for anyone deemed in disagreement.

And the issue has recently become, even more emotively, about children — how they are treated, how the medical world deals with them, amid complicated arguments about specific treatments, their long-term effects, and genuine scientific disputes. And all of this is taking place with far too few reliable, controlled studies on transgender individuals, as children and adults, or on medical interventions. A lot of the time, we’re flying blind.

I’ve been trying to think these things through for the past few years. I used to think trans rights were a no-brainer. Of course I supported them. And I still do. I believe trans people when they tell the stories of their lives; I empathize because I’m human, and the pain and struggle of so many trans people is so real; and perhaps also because being gay helps you see how a subjective feeling can be so deep as to be an integral part (but never the whole) of your identity. 

Equally, however, I have some reservations. I trust biology on the core binary sexual reproductive strategy of our species, without which we would not exist, and which does not cease to exist because of a few variations on the theme (I’m one of those variations myself). I do not believe that a trans woman or a trans man is in every way indistinguishable from a woman or a man. If there were no differences, trans women and trans men would not exist as a separate category. I do not buy the idea that biological sex is socially constructed, or a function of “white supremacist” thought, for Pete’s sake. I further believe that no-one should be excluded from this or any debate; and that “lived experience” cannot replace “objective reality”, although it can often help complicate and explain it.  

In our current culture, this somewhat complicated stance is anathema. For some trans activists, especially the younger more thoroughly woke ones, I am simply evil, beset by phobias, and determined to persecute and kill trans people, or seek their genocide. I wish this were a caricature of their views, but it isn’t. For some radical feminists, my empathy for trans women, and concern for their welfare, is regarded as a function of my misogyny and hatred of women, often wrapped up in some anti-gay, misandrist bile. I wish I were exaggerating here as well. The proportion of people in this debate who seem psychologically unstable, emotionally volatile and personally vicious seems larger than usual.

But we can no longer avoid the subject. There is now a flood of bills in state legislatures designed to ban medical procedures for minors who appear to be trans, and to ensure fairness between trans girls and girls in school sports, and a few that are even more extreme. Lines have been drawn. The woke establishment — all major corporations, the federal government, the universities, all cultural institutions, the mainstream media and now the medical authorities — are unequivocally on the side of anything the trans activists want. Amazon won’t even sell some books presenting one side of the case, while they still sell Mein Kampf. K thru 12 education now routinely tells children that biological sex is a spectrum (it isn’t) and they can choose where to fit.