#Andrew Doyle

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Oct 14, 2024

It was hardly a plague of locusts, but it was disruptive nonetheless. During the annual LGB Alliance conference at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in Westminster on Friday afternoon, teenage activists unleashed thousands of crickets into the auditorium. The inconvenience was only temporary. The crowd simply relocated to another room and the event went on as before.

As those responsible were apprehended, many people were struck by just how young and posh they were. By this point, it should surprise precisely no-one that anti-gay activism in its current form is a predominately bourgeois pursuit. The symbolism of the crickets was, of course, deliberate. It was an attempt to dehumanise those in attendance, to suggest that they were akin to parasites, vermin, spreaders of disease, a common trope of those who seek to demonise minorities.

The perpetrators were children, and so it would be unwise to speculate too much on their motives. It is likely they were being manipulated by the group that has claimed responsibility, calling itself “Trans Kids Deserve Better”. As Bev Jackson, co-founder of LGB Alliance said on my show last night:

“Trans kids do deserve better. They deserve better than to be told lies that that they might have been born in the wrong body. They deserve better than to be told that these hormones and surgeries that they are clambering for will somehow solve all their problems. Many are on the autism spectrum. Many are struggling with their sexual orientation. We know that. They deserve better than to be told that we hate them. And they deserve better than to be labelled trans when they’re going through all the turbulence of adolescence, when your feelings about yourself are in constant flux.”

Irrespective of the intentions of the teenagers involved, this was anti-gay activism. To attack a group of lesbian, gay and bisexual people who have assembled to discuss the ongoing threats to their civil rights could hardly be defined in any other way. Likewise, to refer to groups such as LGB Alliance as “anti-trans”, “transphobic” or “hateful” - as activist media outlets such as the Metro and the Guardian have been known to do - is also an anti-gay strategy. In order to address a problem, one needs to label it accurately.

Gender identity ideologues are, by definition, anti-gay. They are campaigning to force their pseudo-religious belief-system onto the rest of society, one that claims that same-sex attraction is a myth, and that a mysterious spiritual sense of “gender” is the defining feature of homosexuality. Even if they have convinced themselves that they are “pro-trans” and “compassionate” and “progressive”, the implementation of their demands would result directly in the demolition of gay rights. And so “anti-gay activism” is not only an accurate description, it also cuts to the heart of what is at stake.

The trans activist movement in its current form is dominated by this belief in a material and stable “gender identity”, what one trans campaigner explained to me as an “essence of male or female”. This is a departure from the theories of Judith Butler, who posits that “gender identity” is an illusion created performatively and repetitively in accordance with societal expectations. For all their deification of Butler, the trans rights movement is insistent that she is wrong on this key point, and that an individual is “born trans” when there is a misalignment of body and “sexed soul” (to borrow Helen Joyce’s phrase).  

This belief is wholly incompatible with the struggle for gay rights, which has always been predicated on the notion that there exist a minority of people who are innately attracted to their own sex. Activist groups such as Stonewall now argue that “homosexuality” is based on gender rather than sex, meaning that it is possible for a man to be a lesbian. He may have been born male (or “assigned male at birth” to borrow the voguish parlance), but his “gender identity” is female and this should be the salient factor when it comes to sexual orientation.

It is no easy feat to explain the contortions of logic on display here. Lesbian dating apps are now replete with men who claim to be women, many fully bearded and bepenised. Likewise, sex clubs for gay men now routinely admit women who have had their breasts removed and believe themselves to be male. The gay male hookup app Grindr even prohibits its users from filtering out women. As the company’s website puts it:

“When designing gender settings on Grindr, it was important to us to not further perpetuate discrimination and harm for the trans and nonbinary community. For this reason, we allow filtering based on gender - you can specify that you want to see men or women - but this will include all men or all women, because trans men are men and trans women are women.”

In other words, a company that has made a fortune from gay men’s sexuality is now shaming its customers for being gay.

The situation is so confusing that we now have mainstream celebrities such as Billy Bragg effectively campaigning against gay rights without realising it. He is not homophobic (as far as I’m aware) and yet he is assiduously promoting a movement whose end goal is the eradication of homosexuality. Bragg’s 1991 song Sexuality included the lyric: “Just because you’re gay, I won’t turn you away”. Perhaps a more appropriate version would be: “Just because you’re gay, I’ll have you surgically corrected in order to better conform to heterosexual paradigms”, although it wouldn’t scan or rhyme.

This is why to grow up gay in 2024 is considerably more risky than during the time of Section 28 in the 1980s. We have gay conversion therapy being promoted by the NHS in the form of “gender-affirming care”, and children who are gender non-conforming (and therefore statistically far more likely to be homosexual in later life) are being medicalised and shamed for their orientation. Moreover, the very organisations that were originally established to fight for gay rights are now actively working against the interests of gay people.

To release bags of insects into a gathering of homosexuals is the kind of tactic we might once have seen from neo-Nazis and extreme religious fundamentalists. Just because those responsible now claim to be “on the right side of history” does not justify their behaviour or make them any less regressive. These are the new reactionaries, espousing a particularly toxic form of anti-gay ideology because it has the approval of the corporate, media, political and managerial class. Homophobia never went away, it just took on a fresh disguise.

==

[ Source. ]

Gay men are not allowed to filter out women from their dating pool.

[orphanblaque]

we need to stop treating social justice like a religion and start treating it like an action we pursue. you don't have to believe what i believe. but you do have to not cause harm to people who do believe it. today, in a society where we are encouraged by social media to say everything we think, we have to consider what we mean by "harm" though. thoughts are not dangerous, actions are dangerous, as anyone who read 1984 can attest. so we have to consider harm beyond direct physical harm, and consider the larger movement caused by those words that create the harm. in the past, if your crazy cousin said at a family dinner that transpeople weren't real, everyone would roll their eyes and move on because your crazy cousin doesn't have much influence beyond their social circle and they are just gonna talk shit and do jack so it's very easy to manage to not see that cousin again and therefore not hear the talk. but when your crazy cousin starts posting all these things online, they reach a wider audience than just the friends who are all talk, and more importantly, they reach those who don't realize it's supposed to just be talk. and then they start doing shit.

jk rowling saying shit online about trans people is not the same as your crazy cousin rambling about stuff to your family at dinner. she has influence and reach, and people take her words seriously to the point that they go beyond thoughts into actions. and that's when it becomes dangerous. that's not to say talk can't be harmful, but it's not as permanent a harm if one person in your life says it and in order to escape that talk you can move to a more accepting place. if your talk makes everywhere unacceptable to someone because now that talk is everywhere, it's harm.

if you don't believe there is a difference between sex and gender, that's fine, but you have to respect that i believe it and allow me and others to act on our beliefs, so long as they don't hurt you in turn. and if talk about trans and non binary people being real upsets you and you want to walk away from it, feel free to do so, but remember that the stress you are seeking relief from when you want to not hear about trans shit is only a tiny fraction of the stress trans and non binary people are going through considering how your talk spreads and informs people about how to act towards those who are trans and non binary.

now, in considering all of this, social justice cannot be a religion, because it is not about what we believe, it's about how we act. because policing people on what they believe is always and has always been wrong, regardless of how morally right we may feel out beliefs to be. and since social justice is not a religion but an action, touting how much you believe in these things is not a form of activism. it's a form of touting. we're done spreading awareness now. everyone is aware that things are wrong. either doing something to make it right or shut up. and if the only thing you can do to "make it right" is to cause harm to others, then you are not seeking justice, you are seeking vengeance because you are not actually hurt. you are uncomfortable with the feelings that you have and don't know how to deal with them. if that's the case, i refer you back to shut up.

[zmkccommonplace]

Authoritarianism works by stealth.

Andrew Doyle

[krispijnbeek]

Klimaatwetenschap uitgelegd door Jonathan Pie

Klimaatwetenschap is ingewikkeld en de modellen waarmee klimaatwetenschappers werken ook. Ook het taalgebruik van wetenschappers helpt niet altijd mee om het begrijpelijk en behapbaar te maken. Nieuw bericht toevoegen In onderstaande video legt Jonathan Pie (een typetje van de Ierse komiek Andrew Doyle) in normale mensentaal uit wat Joanna Haigh, emeritus Professor atmospheric physics aan het…

[kingsnorthportfolio]

[thearbourist]

New Zealand & Australia - The Violence Against Women in the name Transactivism

People need to rethink their positions on those claiming to be on the ‘right side of history’. The “Be Kind” transgender activists have proven repeatedly they are nothing of the sort.

[lifemod17]

Jackboot Jump by Hozier

3Arena, Dublin, night 2 || 12/11/2019

[thepunkmuppet]

yes tara willow and kennedy are amazing barrier-breaking representation and I adore them with my whole entire heart forever and ever, but also here’s just a friendly reminder that:

spike and angel have canonically had sex, as have darla and drusilla

lorne just straight up shamelessly asks angel out that one time (and is. you know. lorne)

I was gonna split it up into like ten different points but honestly just faith and buffy’s entire relationship you know exactly what I mean

also self explanatory, lindsey’s complete and utter obsession with angel that literally ends with his name being his last words. he is not normal about that old man like “it’s not me you wanna screw it’s him” “I wanna know the details, everything he did to you” UM HELLO WHAT

fred canonically has a crush on willow

buffy has a sexual and romantic relationship with a woman in the comics

lorne mentions picking up demon girls in pylea, meanwhile his mother has a whole ass beard and more testosterone than a bodybuilder (also he’s. you know. LORNE)

xander thinks having sex with spike is understandable because he is strong and mysterious and sort of compact but well muscled

illyria exists outside the gender binary

the visions are canonically passed by what is essentially true love’s kiss, and will only transfer if the person romantically loves the other person. in a universe where cordelia didn’t join angel investigations, doyle gave the visions to angel. I am so incredibly normal about this fact

“recently I’ve been wondering what it would be like to share the slaughter of innocents with another man. that doesn’t make me some kind of deviant, does it?”

vampire willow is very intensely bisexual, and angel confirms that vampires hold the same attractions as their human selves

faith “doesn’t take the guys she has a connection with very seriously”

lilah is canonically attracted to cordelia

CANON GAY ANDREW AND HIS DEEP AND HILARIOUS OBSESSION WITH WARREN XANDER AND SPIKE I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

angel has no problem spanking men <3

so yeah basically hey don’t cry all your favs are raging bisexuals :)

[exastria]

on grief.

glennon doyle / andrew garfield / shannon barry / jamie anderson / ocean vuong / dalai lama xiv

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

Sherlock Holmes randomly retiring because the author got sick of him.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Jan 21, 2025

Day one. It’s already started. ‘Elon Musk appears to make back-to-back fascist salutes at inauguration rally’ claims the Guardian. ‘Elon Musk accused of giving “Nazi salute” at Trump inauguration celebration’ says the Independent. The activist media are positively priapic with glee that Donald Trump’s most powerful ally just publicly endorsed Hitler live at his inauguration. Except of course that didn’t happen. And we know it didn’t happen because we do not have cabbages for heads. Let’s just hypothetically suppose for one moment that Musk is a clandestine fascist, one so ingenious and Machiavellian that he has managed to inveigle his way into the White House and is now poised to initiate the Fourth Reich. Does any sentient human being suppose for one moment that such an evil genius would now accidentally reveal his scheme to millions of people live on television?

Nobody believes this, of course. Or if they do, they should be supervised at all times, especially around cutlery. That goes for Rex Huppke at USA Today, who has published a piece entitled ‘Elon Musk’s “odd-looking” salute sure looked like a “Sieg heil” to me’. Perhaps it does. But I could have sworn that I saw the face of David Hasselhoff in my spinach frittata yesterday, and yet I’m pretty sure that’ll be the old pareidolia playing tricks on me again. If I were as literal-minded as Huppke, I’d probably assume that The Hoff had actually found a way to invade my breakfast and call an exorcist or something.

Within an hour of Huppke’s article being posted online, the following note was appended: ‘This column was updated to add new information’. God knows what defamatory nonsense that hit-piece contained before I got around to reading it. The media class still hasn’t quite grasped that falsely smearing someone as a Nazi is libellous, and that perhaps someone like Musk has the financial means to do something about it. (Also at the end of the article we have this little nugget: ‘Follow USA Today columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky’. That explains quite a lot.)

I’m starting to think that avoiding libel should be included on the first day of any basic journalism course, given how often we see media outlets posting lies and then having to frantically apologise for it. And while they’re at it, the course should probably also include a session on why male rapists, paedophiles and murderers shouldn’t be referred to as ‘she’ and ‘her’. Just a thought.

While I would usually be prepared to concede that Huppke might just be as simple-minded as he seems, there’s something about his article that suggests otherwise. If he genuinely believed that Musk was giving a Nazi salute, why did he have to misrepresent the story? Not once in his piece does Huppke mention the context for the admittedly ill-advised gesture. Musk said to the audience, ‘my heart goes out to you’, which is why he struck his heart and mimed throwing it out to the crowd. He then turned and did it again, and the meaning is perfectly clear when the clip is seen in its entirety:

Now look at the clip that was being shared online by Musk’s detractors.

We have seen this kind of dishonesty so often, and it simply never works. The internet has certainly enabled the media to spread this misleadingly edited clip, but it also enables us to check its authenticity. And when people release that they have been lied to, the inevitable outcome is resentment. This is why throwing the word ‘Nazi’ around as though it has no meaning other than ‘someone I vaguely dislike’ is not an endearing or astute way to behave.

Naturally, Democratic politicians have been quick to exploit the situation as much as the press. Jerry Nadler, Representative for the 12th District of New York, jumped on to X to post his verdict:

‘I never imagined we would see the day when what appears to be a Heil Hitler salute would be made behind the Presidential seal. This abhorrent gesture has no place in our society and belongs in the darkest chapters of human history. I urge all of my colleagues to unite in condemning this hateful gesture for what it is: antisemitism.’

Thankfully, there have been some voices of reason. The Anti-Defamation League put out a sensible statement in an effort to subdue all the frenzied mutual masturbation of the Bluesky clan:

‘It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge. In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath.’

Musk and Trump have their political opponents; that much is obvious and all for the good. But given all the histrionic hogwash about ‘Nazis’ and ‘fascists’ during the run-up to the last election, I was hoping they might have all grown up a little. As I say, it’s absolutely clear that this strategy is wholly ineffective. The public are capable of reading history books. They understand that Nazis generally don’t pay visits to Auschwitz to learn about the horrors of the Holocaust and lay wreaths at memorial services there, as Musk did last year. They also are unlikely to be seen dancing to ‘YMCA’ with the Village People.

So once more for the hard of thinking in the media: calling people Nazis doesn’t work anymore. It’s not only unethical, it virtually guarantees that the very people you don’t want to be in power will win their elections. By all means, criticise Musk and Trump as much as you like. Those in power must be criticised; it’s essential for any functioning democracy. But lying about them and smearing them as fascists only lets the public know that you’re not to be trusted.

--

==

It's all so fucking tedious.

You don't hate legacy media enough. You think you do, but you don't.

[sergeantjeffersonhammond]

do you think Alex leaving the band could have something related to the rumours of cultural appropriation and bad management flying around hozier

I sincerely hope not and hope that maybe he just had a 10 year contract that expired and that he wants to explore his on music more.

From the outside it has always appeared that Andrew and Alex were close friends who held each other in high regard, that being said, none of use ACTUALLY know these people so there’s no saying what was genuine and what was work.

I do believe they were close in some way, Son of Nyx on his last album is a testament to that in and of itself.

When you look at everything together such as the controversy surrounding Andrew’s partner and the issues some fans had with her appropriation of Native American culture and then the blocking of those upset by both her AND Andrew, Andrew’s manager Caroline unfollowing Alex, Larissa, Melissa, and Joy (which I know could just be people looking into social media too much had this been an isolated event), Kristen hinting at some mental health issues she dealt with before leaving, and Kristen, Melissa, Joy, and Larissa all posting about being unappreciated and about the way Taylor Swift treated her crew and the bonuses she provided it all feels like it points to issues amongst the crew.

Also, Alex appears to be very intentional with comments he has liked on his instagram post by liking ones pointing out how talented he is and how Andrew’s music will not be the same without him while avoiding comments eluding to him rejoining the band at some point in the future.

At the end of the day it’s all speculation and connecting dots where it could just be coincidences but I do think SOMETHING happened. Right now though they all still follow Andrew.

[balu8]

"Hold it or I'll spill your saucer of milk !"

Archie #157: Signs of Peace

by Frank Doyle: Harry Lucey and Mario Acquaviva

Archie Comics

[dirtyriver]

"Do It Yourself", preview of Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #356, written by Frank Doyle, art by Harry Lucey

[archersart]

They share a brain cell, you cant convince me otherwise.

[hotcelebritymenilike]

Just a bunch of hot out queer celebrities I had waiting to be posted: Andrew Keenan Bolger, Billy Eichner, Chris Salvatore, Dam Amboyer, Jake Borelli, Matteo Lane, Mike Doyle, Murray Barlett, Robert Grant, Jake Shears, Steven Grand, and Vincent Rodriguez III