#Republican Freak Show

[tomorrowusa]

« THE REPUBLICAN PARTY today isn’t incidentally grotesque; like the man who leads it, Donald Trump, it is grotesque at its core. It is the Island of Misfit Toys, though in this case there’s a maliciousness to the misfits, starting with Trump, that makes them uniquely dangerous to the republic. Since 2016, they have been at war with reality, delighting in their dime-store nihilism, creating “alternative facts” and tortured explanations to justify the lawlessness and moral depravity and derangement of their leader.

None of this is hidden; it is on display in neon lights, almost every hour of every day. No one who supports the Republican Party, who casts a vote for Trump and for his MAGA acolytes, can say they don’t know. »

— Peter Wehner at The Atlantic. (archived)

Having a disturbingly weird malefactor as leader of the GOP over the past nine years has turned the Republican Party into one big freak show.

Donald Trump acts like a magnet of yuck attracting fellow lowlifes. It's not unexpected that disreputable individuals like Mark Robinson, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and Tucker Carlson would gravitate towards him.

Such people now drive the narrative of the GOP. And even if some Republicans wanted to condemn (for example) Mark Robinson's pro-Nazi and other lunatic comments, they simply can't because it would imply criticism of the Orange Dear Leader. So Donald Trump is the face of the Republican Party.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Theo Moudakis :: @TheoMoudakis :: @TorontoStar

* * * *

MAGAt GROTESQUERIE

TCinLA

Sep 29, 2024

Roseanne Barr: They eat babies. It’s true.

Tucker Carlson: So it’s not just the dogs and cats?

Roseanne Barr: Everybody thinks I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. They love the taste of human flesh and they drink human blood.

Tucker Carlson: I think you have some authority on this.

And also:

Fresh off an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s extremist election tour (above), Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance is set to sit for a Pennsylvania town hall hosted by far-right Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau. Wallnau has pushed a litany of extreme views, including that Vice President Kamala Harris embodies “the spirit of Jezebel,” saying earlier this mont:

“What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel. When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation and domination — especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth — you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit. So, with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation.”

You cannot make this shit up. Former Republican Peter Wehner wrote about this in The Atlantic this week. All these points need repeated emphasis:

The Republican Freak Show :: By: Peter Wehner

The GOP is a moral freak show, and freak shows attract freaks. Which is why Mark Robinson fits in so well in today’s Republican Party.

Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, has described himself as a “devout Christian.” But a recent CNN story reported that several years ago, he was a porn-site user who enjoyed watching transgender pornography (despite a history of an anti-transgender rhetoric), referred to himself as a “Black Nazi,” and supported the return of slavery. According to CNN, commenters on the website discussed whether to believe the story of a woman who said she was raped by her taxi driver while intoxicated. Robinson wrote in response, “And the moral of this story….. Don’t f**k a white b*tch!” Politico reports that Robinson’s email address was also registered on Ashley Madison, a website for married people seeking affairs. (Robinson, the current lieutenant governor of North Carolina, has denied all of the claims.)

These allegations aren’t entirely shocking, because Robinson—a self-described “MAGA Republican”—has shown signs in the past of being a deeply troubled person.

Regarding the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, in 2011, Robinson wrote, “Get that fucking commie bastard off the National Mall!” Robinson also has referred to the slain civil-rights champion as “worse than a maggot,” a “ho fucking, phony,” and a “huckster.” During the Obama presidency, Robinson wrote, “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!” He promoted the conspiracy theory claiming that Obama was born in Kenya. He referred to Michelle Obama as a man and Hillary Clinton as a “heifer.” He compared Nancy Pelosi to Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Castro and mocked the near-fatal assault on her husband, Paul Pelosi. He is also an election denier, claiming that Joe Biden “stole the election.”

In 2017, Robinson wrote, “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered.” He has used demeaning language against Jews and gay people. He has cruelly mocked school-shooting survivors (“media prosti-tots”). And he supported a total ban on abortion, without exceptions for rape or incest, even though he admitted that he’d paid for an abortion in the past.

Much of this was known before he ran for governor. No matter. Republicans in North Carolina nominated him anyway, and Donald Trump has lavished praise on the man he calls his “friend,” offering Robinson his “full and total endorsement” and dubbing him “one of the hottest politicians” in the country.

SOME REPUBLICANS ARE distancing themselves from Robinson partly because they are worried he’ll be defeated, but also because they’re even more concerned that he will drag down other Republicans, including Trump. But the truth is that Robinson is a perfect addition to the Republican ensemble.

The GOP vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, has been relentlessly promoting the lie that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating pets. In 2021, he said that the United States was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs, and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has blamed wildfires on a Jewish space laser, promoted a conspiracy alleging that some Democratic Party leaders were running a human-trafficking and pedophilia ring, and agreed with commenters who suggested that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Florida, was a “massive false flag.” Another House Republican, Paul Gosar, has promoted fluoride conspiracy theories and posted an animated video depicting him slashing the throat of a Democratic congresswoman and attacking President Biden. Yet another Republican member of Congress, Lauren Boebert, was ejected from a family-friendly musical for vaping, being disruptive, and groping her date (and vice versa). She also falsely claimed that school authorities “are putting litter boxes in schools for people who identify as cats.”

The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey reported that Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, who is under House investigation for having sex with an underage girl, “used to walk around the cloakroom showing people porno of him and his latest girlfriend,” according to a source Godfrey spoke with.

This is not normal.

The GOP is home to a Republican governor, Kristi Noem, who describes in her book shooting her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, in a gravel pit, as well as killing an unnamed goat. A Republican senator, Ron Johnson, claimed that COVID was “pre-planned” by a secret group of “elites” even while he promoted disinformation claiming that Ivermectin, which is commonly used to deworm livestock, was an effective treatment for COVID. (Because people were hospitalized for taking the drug, the FDA tweeted, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow.”)

Earlier this month, Trump attended a 9/11 memorial event in New York City. He took as his guest a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Laura Loomer, who has claimed that 9/11 was an inside job, referred to Kamala Harris as a “drug using prostitute,” and said that Democrats should be tried for treason and executed. (Trump has called Loomer a “woman with courage” and a “free spirit.”)

Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, floated the idea of having Trump declare martial law so that he could “rerun” the 2020 election. He suggested that the president should seize voting machines. He predicted that a governor will soon declare war. He has also warned about the dangers of a “new world order” in which people such as Bill Gates, George Soros, and World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab “have an intent to track every single one of us, and they use it under the skin. They use a means by which it’s under the skin.”

Tucker Carlson, a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention and an unofficial Trump adviser, recently hosted a Holocaust revisionist on his podcast. He praised the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones as having been “vindicated on everything” and described Jones as “the most extraordinary person” he has ever met. (Two years ago, Sandy Hook families won nearly $1.5 billion in defamation and emotional-distress lawsuits against Jones for his repeatedly calling the 2012 school shooting, in which 20 first graders and six educators were killed, a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to get more gun-control legislation passed. As The New York Times reports, “The families suffered online abuse, personal confrontations and death threats from people who believed the conspiracy theory.”) (TC Note: all of Jones’ InfoWars property is being disposed of by court order to satisfy the judgement against him)

Carlson, one of the most influential figures on the American right, has also peddled the claim that the violence on January 6, 2021, was a “false flag” operation involving the FBI and used to discredit Trump supporters; alleged that former Attorney General Bill Barr covered up the murder of Jeffrey Epstein; and promoted testicle tanning.

Then there’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former Democrat who recently endorsed Trump. The former president has asked Kennedy to be on his transition team should Trump win the election and “help pick the people who will be running the government and I am looking forward to that.” Trump told CNN’s Kristen Holmes, “I like him, and I respect him. He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy.”

Sara Dorn of Forbes listed some of the conspiracy theories that Kennedy has promoted—vaccines can cause autism; COVID was genetically engineered and is targeted to attack Caucasian and Black people (and Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people are mostly immune); mass shootings are linked to Prozac; the 2004 presidential election was stolen from John Kerry; the CIA was involved in the death of his uncle John F. Kennedy; and Sirhan Sirhan was wrongly convicted of murdering his father.

In addition, Kennedy, who has revealed that he had a parasitic brain worm, told the podcaster Joe Rogan that Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain.” He believes that chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender. He claims that 5G networks are being used for mass surveillance. He’s said that Katherine Maher, the president and CEO of NPR, is a CIA agent. “Even journals like Smithsonian and National Geographic … appear to be compromised by the CIA,” according to Kennedy.

According to Kennedy’s daughter Kick Kennedy, her father chain-sawed the head off a dead whale on a beach in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, bungee-corded it to the roof of their car, and drove it five hours to the family home in Mount Kisco, New York. (The severed head streamed “whale juice” down the side of the family minivan on the trip home. “It was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick told Town & Country magazine in 2012. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”) Kennedy has also recently admitted to leaving the carcass of a bear cub in Central Park a decade ago, as a joke.

Donald Trump Jr. has said that he could see Kennedy being given some sort of oversight role in any number of government agencies if his father is reelected, including the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services. “I can see a dozen roles I’d love to see him in.”

Like Mark Robinson, RFK Jr. fits right in.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY today isn’t incidentally grotesque; like the man who leads it, Donald Trump, it is grotesque at its core. It is the Island of Misfit Toys, though in this case there’s a maliciousness to the misfits, starting with Trump, that makes them uniquely dangerous to the republic. Since 2016, they have been at war with reality, delighting in their dime-store nihilism, creating “alternative facts” and tortured explanations to justify the lawlessness and moral depravity and derangement of their leader.

None of this is hidden; it is on display in neon lights, almost every hour of every day. No one who supports the Republican Party, who casts a vote for Trump and for his MAGA acolytes, can say they don’t know.

They know.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in an essay titled “As Breathing and Consciousness Return,” warned that no one who “voluntarily runs with the hounds of falsehood” will be able to justify himself to the living, or to posterity, or to his friends, or to his children. Don’t surrender to corruption, the great Russian writer and dissident said; strive for the liberation of our souls by not participating in the lie. Don’t consent to the lies. The challenges facing Solzhenitsyn were quite different, and certainly far more difficult, than anything we face, but his fundamental point still holds.

The Trump movement is built on layers of lies. It’s late, but it’s never too late to liberate yourself from them. One word of truth outweighs the world.

[TCinLA]

[dogshit-enchantment]

I am obsessed with people who are into Metalocalypse having stuff like "DNI problematic ppl" when mtl is a show that has so much problematic shit in it (sexism, racism, p*dophilia, so much murder, etc) like, u understand that you can watch/consume a media without it influencing your actual perception of reality but fail to realize the same is true for others?

Like I get having notps or even ick pairings but to have a blanket statement like that while enjoying smth that's also fucked by principle is just... Haha wow.

[hauscrashburn]

"we had no tax before 1913"

yes, yes we did.

We called them "tariffs." They were taxes on products. Ever hear of the Whiskey Rebellion? A tax on whiskey to help the fledgling American government fund itself and pay its tax.

We also had income taxes during the Civil War and after, although only on certain incomes (for example between $600 and $10,000 were taxed at 3%)

In 1892, the Us passed an income tax on all incomes over a certain amount ($3,000 maybe? Not sure on this). This was a flat tax. People who made $3,000 were taxed at 2% of their income, same as someone making $10,000, same as JP Freaking Billionaire of his time Morgan (He did not have a billion dollars but tens of millions, similar to billions in our currency value). Flat taxes, like sales tax, are regressive taxes where an individual who makes less income gives up a greater portion of their worth to pay the tax ($100 is more to someone making $3,000 a year than someone making $10,000 a year)

States also had their own taxes, including income and property taxes (like New York). You had to raise revenue for your armies and your legislative bills and processes somehow.

In 1895, the Supreme Court called a federal income unconstitutional in Pollock vs Farmers. But the gov't crashed again in 96 or 97, Morgan loaned the federal government to get it through and the rumblings began on the Republican side to bring back an income tax.

The new tax proposed was a progressive tax, where the wealthy would pay a higher share. Unlike today, it was proposed by Republicans, lead by Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, who said that wealthy people needed to pay their share as part of their patriotic duty to their country. Rockefeller hated this and lobbied against it, saying that when someone is as wealthy as him, he owes people nothing (I believe it was a Vanderbilt who said "the public be damned" (ok this was about railroads but the sentiment stands).

The bill passed, it became the 16th amendment in 1913. Then the battle became with states enacting their own codes and conforming to Chapter 26 of the US Code. The first income tax was levied at $4,000 income which meant most Americans didn't pay because the Average American salary was about $1,000. This is in keeping with now, as about 40% of American households don't have taxable income--that is income after deductions subject, subject to tax.

The road to filing statuses (America required people to file by marriage status, while most other countries file by economic earner with credits for children, etc. This means choosing to file separately, if you are married, functions as a tax penalty as you lose credits) is really interesting and rife with sexism, but that's for another thread.

So the next time someone says "Americans used to all pay their fair share" and "America never had a tax before the 16th Amendment" kindly inform them that they were wrong, wrong, wrong.

[socialistexan]

The new Democratic line of calling Republicans weird is incredibly effective, and I think I know one of the reasons why.

It's a reversal of the weaponization of cringe culture that conservatives - especially very online conservatives who try to appeal to young white men - had weaponized against the left since 2014.

Think of all the "cringe comps" that had a feminist with dyed hair making a yelling face. "Cringe Woke SJW Trans Groomer Compilation Owned By Ben Shapiro" type stuff. Conservatives ran on that shit for a decade and it worked.

Plus, a lot of people on the left are used to being seen as freaks, because a lot of us are from marginalized groups, but the right is obsessed with the image of the normie nuclear family 2.5 kids white picket fence, so this breaks their brains, they can't counter effectively. Fascism thrives on optics and being taken seriously. You take that away and show people what they really are.

It's exposing bullies as the truly weird ones. They're not only weird, they're cruel.

[nothorses]

Regarding the Congress bathroom thing. I cant help but think their strategy is to try to cast it as 'dems are wasting time standing up for trans people instead of focusing on real issues' while making a hostile workplace so they can just make her look crazy. A lot of people think trans issues are a waste of time bc there aren't that many of us, and it's in their favor to make it look like other people are the ones wasting time on it. It's bait - fighting it would be falling into a trap.

I think the problem with this is that Republicans are actually literally passing very enforceable laws that make it illegal for trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with our gender, and by extension also put us at greater risk of transphobic violence- and MUCH greater risk of police brutality- if a visibly gnc/trans or passing trans person uses any other gendered bathroom, too.

It's dangerous for me to visit my fiancé's family in Florida right now, and I haven't tried in over two years, because they passed a law there that makes it essentially impossible for me to safely use the bathroom in the airport after I land in Florida (and many other bathrooms!).

Anyone who suspects me of being in the wrong bathroom can tell me to leave, and I have to comply immediately or risk arrest (and police brutality as a result). If I don't leave immediately enough when told, they can call the cops to "verify my sex assigned at birth", a thing that there is currently no documentation to prove, meaning I'd have to show my genitals to the cops... and again risk police brutality! Even if I'm in the "right" bathroom by their standards!

Either I try the men's bathroom and hope I pass well enough to everyone there that nobody thinks to question it/that there are no "transvestigation" freaks feeling particularly inclined towards vigilantism that day, or go to the women's bathroom and hope even harder that the only people in there are trans allies. Again: even in a women's restroom, I would have to leave or risk the cops. Because I do not and cannot look (or sound) like a woman.

This is so much worse for people who actually live in FL, and who can't just, like, choose not to fly in. And this is happening in other places, too.

Bathroom laws aren't a silly niche unimportant issue that can be sacrificed to Republicans in pursuit of more meaningful justice. They actually literally matter, in real life, right now.

[godlessondheimite]

Will and Emma are having relationship problems because Will is not taking COVID seriously enough ("Therapy"). The next day Will takes his frustration out on the glee club and accuses them of not taking COVID seriously enough (Finn doesn't understand germ theory and Brittany is QAnon.)

Will says, "You guys lack historical perspective. Back in the 80s and 90s there was a young gay composer named Jonathan Larson who saw disease and suffering all around him. When he found out he was afflicted with AIDS, he put all of his pain into the timeless and unreproachable work of art, RENT. RENT taught us about community and caring for one another and more importantly...it taught us that musicals can rock." Will sings the title song from RENT with Artie and Finn.

That night: Santana is fed up with lockdown restrictions and sneaks out of her house to visit Brittany ("Out Tonight"). Brittany is planning a big show that will blow the whole COVID conspiracy wide open. She previews it for Santana ("Over the Moon"). Santana is freaked out and breaks up with Brittany. Santana can excuse ignoring disease prevention guidelines but she draws the line at being Republican about it.

Also that night, Will tries to sleep with Emma but she's too COVID-cautious ("Green Green Dress"). She says maybe they need some time apart because of their different priorities.

While grocery shopping, Will runs into Holly Holliday. Holly is lighting scented candles in the middle of the store but for some reason all of them are defective/unscented ("Light My Candle.") Holly propositions Will. Will says he's seeing Emma, and Holly admits she also has a boyfriend.

"I'm sure we can work something out," Holly says. "Meet me at the basement of the swinger's club at 9:00."

Will shows up at the swinger's club and spots his old rival, Brian Ryan (the Neil Patrick Harris character). They glare at each other, then confront each other and it's revealed that Brian is Holly's boyfriend ("Tango Maureen.") She knew Brian and Will were old high school rivals and set all this up because she's into the whole enemies-to-lovers thing.

Will scolds her. "That is so cruel and manipulative of you. I can't believe you would do this."

Holly tries to convince him to live life to the fullest. ("Another Day.")

Eventually Will thinks about what proud openly gay icon Jonathan larson would do, and he has a threesome with Holly and Brian ("Contact," I'm afraid.)

The morning after, Will can't believe he kind of cheated on Emma/hooked up with Brian and really enjoyed it ("Real Life").

On Monday, Brittany and Santana are still broken up but sitting on opposite sides of the choir room is emotionally difficult for them ("Without You.")

On the way home from school, Kurt and Blaine are like "Aren't you glad we're not like Brittany and Santana, breaking up every 5 seconds over something stupid?" and they sing "I'll Cover You" but then they break up over something stupid.

Will contemplates his sexual awakening, torn between Holly+Brian and Emma ("Johnny Can't Decide/Come To Your Senses" mashup).

The tension in glee club is unavoidable.

"Mr. Shu, this is ridiculous," Rachel says. "Ever since you brought up RENT and Jonathan Larson, it's been nonstop hookups and fighting. Also, Jonathan Larson wasn't gay and he didn't die of AIDS! He was straight and died of some random heart thing."

"What? Jonathan Larson wasn't gay? So my sexual experimentation was under false pretenses?"

Will immediately calls and breaks it off with Brian and they argue ("What You Own").

The next day Santana says "I can't believe we caused this much fuss over a straight man, who died of a random heart thing."

"Wait, just because he was straight doesn't make his words less powerful," Finn says.

"You're right," Will says. "Maybe I'm bisexual." ("Louder than Words.") And then they all sing La Vie Boheme.

At some point Santana and Mercedes sing "Take Me or Leave Me" as their glee club presentation. (It's a four-part episode.) Also I think Gwyneth would have fun with Today 4 U, don't kill me.



[feminismisstillahatemovement]

In 2017 I interviewed Bernadette Wren, then head of psychology at the Tavistock Gids clinic, and asked what effect puberty blocking drugs have on the adolescent brain. Looking highly uncomfortable, she replied that the evidence so far was only anecdotal but that the clinic would study its patients “well into their adult lives so that we can see”.

Even back then, before whistleblowers had exposed the rush to medically transition children, it was alarming to hear that heavy-duty GnRH agonists such as triptorelin — used to treat advanced prostate cancer and “chemically castrate” sex offenders — were being prescribed to arrest puberty in hundreds of children as young as 11.

Moreover, they were being used “off-label” before any clinical trials. And the long-term study Wren promised never materialised: Gids (the Gender Identity Development Service) routinely lost touch with patients, and the 44 it did follow reported little long-term mental health improvement.

This shocking chapter in medical history, where the ideological objectives of trans rights campaigners trumped the welfare of disturbed children, is coming to an end worldwide. The decision by NHS England effectively to ban the prescription of puberty blockers comes after the Cass review noted these drugs could “permanently disrupt” brain development, reduce bone density and lock children into a regime of cross-sex hormones requiring life-long patienthood.

NHS England unites with other national health services including those in Finland, France, Sweden and, most notably, the Netherlands — where the “Dutch protocol”, a regime of early blockers then hormones, was devised in 1998 — in pulling back from prescribing them.

Even in the United States, where a toxic combination of extreme activism and medical capitalism has pushed child gender medicine to grotesque extremes, with double mastectomies performed on 14-year-old girls, there is some retrenchment.

Leaks from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the body which formulates guidance on “trans healthcare”, reveal doctors perplexed at how they should explain to an 11-year-old child that drugs will render them infertile. Crucially, liberal media such as The New York Times are now reporting grave medical misgivings about child transition, once dismissed as a culture-war issue for the Republican right.

Yet the question remains: how was this ever allowed to happen? For years, puberty blockers were cheerily billed as a mere “pause button”. In 2014, Dr Polly Carmichael, the last head of Gids before the Cass review ordered its closure, went on CBBC in a show called I Am Leo, saying of blockers: “The good thing is, if you stop the injections, it’s like pressing ‘start’ and the body carries on developing as it would if you hadn’t started.”

The BBC permitted her to make this unevidenced claim to an impressionable audience of six to 12-year-olds. Imagine hearing this as a developing girl, freaked out by your new breasts and periods. No wonder Gids referrals subsequently rocketed.

Carmichael failed to mention that she did not know if pressing “restart” on puberty is always medically possible — it is not — and in fact, almost every child Gids put on blockers went on to irreversible cross-sex hormones.

After years in a Peter Pan state while their peers developed, they understandably felt there was no way back and forged on with treatment. Yet if allowed to experience natural puberty, almost 85 per cent of gender dysphoria cases resolve themselves.

Nor did Carmichael tell CBBC kids that the blockers-hormones combination, if taken early enough, not only results in sterility but kills the libido so that a young person will never experience an orgasm.

At the 2020 judicial review brought by a former Tavistock clinician and Keira Bell, the brave young detransitioner rushed onto hormones by Gids, judges expressed astonishment at Gids’s lack of an evidence base.

Reporting on this issue for seven years, I too have been struck by a complete clinical incuriosity. Not only was data not collected, but those who queried treatments or pressed for evidence faced angry condemnation. Perhaps activists knew what research might find because one long-term Finnish study, recently reported in the BMJ, destroyed the myth used to justify blockers: that a child will commit suicide if denied them.

The Finns found that “gender-affirming care” does not make a dysphoric child less suicidal. Rather, such children had the same suicide risk as others with severe psychiatric issues. In other words, changing bodies does not fix troubled minds.

Yet even after NHS England’s announcement, activists refuse to heed the now-overwhelming evidence. In its response, Stonewall persists with the myth that puberty blockers “give a young person extra time to evaluate their next steps”.

Many questions remain unanswered: will private clinics still be permitted to prescribe puberty blockers; and is Scotland’s Sandyford child gender clinic still determined to close its ears to all evidence? Plus, we have few details on how the NHS’s new “holistic” treatment for gender-questioning children will operate when it opens next month.

This repellent experiment — in which girls who like trucks or little boys who dress as princesses, and who invariably grow up to be gay, are corralled inexorably down a road towards life-changing treatments — belongs in the book of medical disgraces. As do the cheerleaders who raised money for Mermaids and those who persecuted whistleblowers or damned journalists asking questions as transphobic.

In 50 years, chemically freezing the puberty of healthy children with troubled minds will be regarded with the same horrified fascination as lobotomies — which, never forget, won the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz the 1949 Nobel prize.

--------------------

{Article source (behind paywall)}

[dingodad]

it's interesting to look at jane crocker's political career not always in terms of how it makes her a ""fascist monster"" so to speak - along the lines of homestuck's literal fascist monsters like the condesce and lord english - but in how it plays into the crucial fact at the heart of her character that she is "normcore". jane is a character of the context she was born in, the almost-exact midpoint of the barack obama presidency; superficially and popularly, a time of great optimism for a liberalising america, but through this facade of optimism a time which also saw a great deal of "normalisation" of deeply evil american imperialism both abroad and at home.

jane's love of the NBC's Parks & Recreation is emblematic of this. homestuck and parks & rec are similar in one respect, which is that p&r also began and ended over the course of the obama presidency - and like jane, p&r is deeply of that era. in many senses it is the ancestor to the "copaganda" of programming like Brooklyn 99 which took over its position of popularity into the trump era: at the core of its comic dynamic is the interplay between leslie knope, a progressive-liberal "girlboss" and champion of big government, and ron swanson, the hard-working, moustache-toting libertarian sentinel of private capitalist interest. but in the classic mode of liberal american thought, the core message of the show is that these two characters are friends. despite the complete incompatibility of their respective ideologies, the two must work together and make compromise at every stage, ensuring that the political landscape of america - implicitly the perfect state - never changes or progresses from where it is now. and it's telling that, despite being the liberal "girlboss" with visions of political ascendancy, jane's love and admiration is for the male character. like obama himself, swanson serves to put a friendly, sometimes goofy but always loveable face on american patriarchal hegemony.

because by the time homestuck had closed up and the post-canon had opened america had crossed that threshold from obama's presidency into the next, it's impossible not to draw parallels between jane's descent into xenophobia and the overt isolationism of the trump republican administration. but i think putting jane on this trajectory is also in a very real sense just as much an indictment of the democrat majority of homestuck's genesis; xenophobia is not a "trump problem" but rather an AMERICA problem, and in fact the political landscape of the late 2010s and 2020s is an inevitable progression of the kind of politics that were considered "normal" in 2011, not the result of some freak misstep of electoral probability in 2016.

[eugenedebs1920]

This is Trump’s America. Him and reptilian alien, turtle variant, Mitch McConnell, not only their theft of Obama’s Supreme Court pick, not only rushing through Amy Barrett, in a breathtaking feat of hypocrisy, but the unlawful obstruction in the vetting of Kavanaugh, who, as fate would have it, not only takes rights away from women’s bodies by enacting (or removing)laws, turns out he is a serial sexual assailant, taking away a woman’s freedom to say no to what he will do to her body!

Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott are some of the most hideous humans on earth! Texas is the scrimmage game of how JD Vance and the psychopaths with the Heritage Foundation want America to be in accordance to their dystopian manifesto Project 2025 (and if you think Trump isn’t going to be using that playbook because he said so, you don’t know Donald Trump). Between Paxtons antidemocratic, unethical, countless lawsuits to disenfranchise voters in Texas, his case to get women’s medical records so if they go out of Texas to get medical treatment for a miscarriage, the government is aware and will jail her. Abbotts razor wire in the Rio Grande, his relentless disparagement and dehumanizing of immigrants, this is a glimpse of a future with a second Trump term.

Texas is huge! It’s very much a microcosm of America. Large, diverse cities on the gulf coast, a few scattered larger cities, and a very rural center. Austin, one of, if not the, #1 music city in America, very blue, large population, great place! Houston, and the surrounding areas. Massive population, heavy blue, large diversity. Dallas Ft. Worth. Red leaning yet purple, massive population. Then there’s a lot of rural desert area. It is voter suppression that keeps that state red. With its minority populations, the younger families in the major cities, the hip young areas. It should be blue, if not a close 50-50. Paxton was on Steve Bannons show in 2022 BRAGGING, LAUGHING, with Bannon on how he had taken the votes of 2 MILLION Texas voters away from them right before the 2020 election saying “Texas could have been one of those Biden states”. That’s the Republican Party!!! That’s Project 2025 and the 2nd Trump term. That is the microcosm of America if we don’t stop voting against our own interests (I’m looking at you MAGA) and start voting for those who will actually represent you and do their job according to the Constitution.

What kind of America does an 18 year old hopeful mother DIE because she’s having a miscarriage and can’t get the help she needs. Another young woman in Tx, 23, wanted a sibling for her 2 year old, at 16 weeks there’s a problem, the fetus dies. This 23 years old mother gets sepsis, has 40 hours of excruciating pain in a Texas emergency room as doctors look on and can’t do anything to save this 23 year old mom. She dies in the hospital after 40 hours of suffering. From sepsis needing an assisted miscarriage (an abortion)

That’s what the right can’t wrap their dogmatic little brains around! Abortion is not simply discarding a viable child, it women’s health! Things don’t always work out with pregnancies and a woman needs healthcare. Shes not doing it because she doesn’t respect life or whatever other misogynistic bullsh*t thing the anti abortion freaks say! Also! Mind your own f*cking business!! What a man and a woman decide when planning to have a family is their own private decision!

You know who does respect woman’s rights? You know who believes a woman should be in control of her own body? You know who respects the sanctity of life enough to keep a mother alive by allowing the reproductive healthcare she needs!? Kamala Harris.

For freedom, for Woman’s rights, for women’s LIVES!! Vote Kamala Harris

[beatrice-otter]

I really like John Scalzi's analysis of the whole wtfery of this. (I'm not a great fan of his books, I think he's really overrated as a novelist, but his political commentary and commentary on the SF/F world is interesting.)

I think he has a good point about how while the initial panic about his bad performance at the debate was genuine (and if he'd done better, he'd never have withdrawn), but also that once there was panic, he decided how to manage things to maximize Harris' chances at both getting the nomination and winning the election.

Consider that the announcement was made on the Sunday after the Republican National Convention, and after the Sunday morning political talk shows were put to bed, i.e., after the GOP political capital was spent slagging Biden, and when professional spinners would be caught flat-footed by the announcement. Biden’s news was quickly followed by his endorsement of Kamala Harris, which in turn was followed by a flood of endorsements for Harris across the Democratic political firmament, effectively slamming the door on any serious challenge to Harris at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. If you think something like that just happens spontaneously, well, one, bless your heart, and two, you’re wrong. This was a work, a rope-a-dope, and a strategy to energize the Democratic base and to toss what little momentum the GOP had coming out of their convention down a deep, dark hole. And it worked! Harris raised an huge amount of money for her campaign in its first day — $49 million at least, and I’ve heard up to $70 million — and the GOP messaging was in disarray, limited largely to Trump whining on Truth Social, Stephen Miller freaking out on Fox News, and Mike Johnson trying to suggest that the Democrats can’t do that, it isn’t fair. Which is just what the Democrats wanted out of this. ... The current iteration of the GOP has been mask-off racist and sexist for some time, and Donald Trump sets the tone for the party on this score. Be expecting the whole array of nonsense from them, from dog whistles to flat out racist and sexist shit, said out loud, and also all over the former Twitter by Trump’s pet fascists and/or Russian bots. I guarantee you it will be nothing Kamala Harris has not heard before, but you might see a couple of new ones. The GOP outsourced their policy making to The Heritage Foundation with its Project 2025, which is already deeply unpopular, probably because it’s terrible for anyone who is not already a billionaire cryptofascist with a cross fetish. The GOP can’t go after Harris on policy grounds, and Trump doesn’t do policy anyway. So expect endless variations of she’s an uppity black woman for the next several months. ... Also, Biden has manifestly changed the narrative around both himself and his presidency. I didn’t want him to stop running for re-election, but choosing to do so allows for a “country over self” positioning that’s a hugely effective contrast to Trump’s “I’m running to avoid prison and to get revenge” narrative. It also allows a fresh reframing of the Biden administration’s achievements and accomplishments, and positions Harris to say she will continue them. Biden can lean into the whole “Grandpa Joe” thing now, and have it seen as a positive rather than a negative. ... To put it another way, after eight years, we know what the hard cap is on Trump’s support. We don’t know what the cap is yet for Harris’ support. History does suggest that cap is higher than Trump’s.

[pika-ace]

TWST as Ghost Stories quotes...because it popped into my head and I couldn't resist

Kalim: There’s nothing to be afraid of, guys, monsters only eat evil people like Republicans and we’re not old enough to vote!

__________

Yuu: Grim is a very special cat! He just showed up…on the day of my mother’s funeral. My DEAD mother? You feel bad now?

-------------

Ruggie: My BS detector’s going ‘ding!’

-------------

Deuce: I can read! Well, not well, but I can read. And THOSE letters…are BACKWARDS!

-------------

Silver: looking at a rabbit cage My friends over there think you’re a rabbit serial killer. And in the movies, this is the part where I foolishly trust you not to kill me and stick my hand in the cage. rabbit becomes a demon YOU SON OF A BITCH!!

-------------

Rollo: (holds up a cell phone) Like Jesus, it never stops working for you

Sebek: A cellphone! Well what do you know; would’ve been nice to know 30 MINUTES AGO!!!

-------------

Vil: I didn’t force you into this, you’re the one who wanted to do it, so there.

Cater: Sometimes ‘yes’ means ‘no’!

Vil: And sometimes, you’re a bitch.

-------------

Lilia: Now THAT is some really nice animation.

-------------

Epel: Alright, c’mon guys!

First Years: THUNDERCATS HO!

-------------

Jade: Holy time machine, Batman, it’s 1973!

Floyd: Holy pre-Parkinsons Michael J. Fox Christopher Lloyd Back to the Future plot rip-off device, WHERE’S MY DELORIAN?!

-------------

Ace: Leave me alone, I’m doing my standard ‘anime elbows up’ pose.

-------------

Idia: gasp It’s the chick from The Ring! I mean…The Grudge…what movie are we ripping off again?

-------------

Crowley: Time to go home, load up that bong, and watch Pokemon! WOO!

-------------

Jamil: RUN! She’s a ghost AND a bitch!

-------------

Rollo: ….HaveyouacceptedJesusasyoursavor?

Ruggie: No, I’m Jewish

Rollo: I just want to make sure you’re saved-

-------------

Ace: How high ARE you?

Deuce: on the phone There’s no one around! I can’t hear anything! I’m freaking out! Paranoid!

Ace: You smoked ALL OF IT didn’t you? ...I mean, what are you talking about, there’s tons of people here!

Deuce: YOU smoked all of it!! There’s NO ONE here!

[chrissy-kaos]

If we're too masculine then we're disgusting freaks. They collect the most masculine of us - innocent women minding their own business trying to live a life that was denied to them - and mock us, openly discussing how nobody could ever love us, how nobody could be fooled that we're women.

If we're too feminine then we're stupid men. They find the most tone deaf quotes from trans girls, usually those who have been out for only months if they're out at all. They find these quotes of girls still learning how to be women, post them everywhere as proof that we are just pantomime caricatures of women.

If we are too strong then we are violent and dangerous. We are an unfair factor in sport, evil men just trying to steal victories from real women. We could lose our temper at any moment. We are a risk that cannot be tolerated. If we're too weak then we are to be mocked. They call us failed men who ran to womanhood because we couldn't take it. We're victims of our own masculinity. Poor feminine men to be saved... In the same way that Republicans want to save those 'poor unborn babies.'

If we lose our temper we're back to dangerous men. But if we cry, if our shoulders buckle under the weight of endless, endless, ENDLESS, ENDLESS, ABUSE. Then they mock us again. They share pictures of trans women crying and laugh over it. Of course they make sure to find the pictures where our stubble is showing, our makeup has already run. It's not the way that women are mocked for weakness; it's the way men are. They find videos where are lips are trembling. Where our voice has gone deep because we don't have the energy to keep it at its heightened octave.

If we find ourselves ugly they mock us. But if we're happy with ourselves then we're disgusting degenerates. "Autogynephilic." Medicalized. They find the tweets of newly out girls who said something improper in their tiny moment of not guarding themselves. An awkward, amateurish attempt at roleplay or dirty talk becomes a meme. A woman who likely spent years growing the courage to begin sexual exploration, probably for the first time in her life, sees herself come up every so often in their replies, their threads, their gifs. What happens to these people? Is it even possible for them to ever resume that exploration?

We're trying to trick everyone into dating us. We should be required to show visible identification on us at all times; to be trans without the people around you knowing is deceit. But also, nobody would ever date us, everyone can tell, immediately, always. Everyone knows, the terfs say GLEEFULLY. Reveling in the idea that our subconscious is constantly telling us this. Basking in the thought of our depression and anxiety eating our minds until there's nothing left.

Even the terfs never stay the same for long. One moment it's a wall of 'concerned mothers' with all the passive-aggressive venom of a white woman calling the police because she doesn't want to put a leash on her dog; make ABSOLUTELY NO MISTAKE that these are the same people. The next it's anime-avatar alt righters. The next it's puritanical Christians claiming we are the natural result of the "rainbow agenda." It's lesbians saying that we're destroying lesbianism, following right on the heels of a pastor saying that anything that isn't a man and a woman is unnatural.

Half the URLs are Mumsnet and half are Kiwifarms. How many are bots? Sock puppets? How many really are just transphobic housewives accessing Kiwifarms from their phones? How many took the full plunge? The answer to all of the above is, we don't know, but it's a whole lot more than zero.

Every time we go into a bathroom, there's a chance we'll be the next screen shot pasted over reddit. It doesn't matter whether it's the men's or women's. They are equally unsafe.

If we need a women's shelter, we flip a coin on whether the person running it has already decided she hates us, because of these people.

We cannot upload a picture to facebook without this risk.

We cannot post about our lives without this risk.

We cannot appear at our work without this risk.

We cannot exist without this risk.

Every possible action we could take will be judged. There is no outcome that isn't negative. There is nothing we can do that isn't negative. Masculinine, feminine, pretty, ugly, angry, sad, sexual, frigid, proud, ashamed, strong, weak. Pre-op, post-op, non-op. Vagina, ovaries, chromosomes, fertility: womanhood is defined as whatever we aren't in that particular context.

I don't want to think about how many people this has killed. To call it a moving goal-post is inept, it is a void, an endless mass of hatred that follows us no matter what we do. Nothing is good enough. Everything, every single thing, is just waiting to be weaponized against us.

It has killed so, so many.

It won't kill any more.

If you're trans and you're reading this you already know everything I said. We've lived through it. You already know that I've spent time as all of the above because you have too. That when I get SIX HUNDRED COMMENTS calling me a man I want to swing my fists and I want to cry and I want to curl into a ball and I want to scream and I want to end my own miserable existence. The ugly beautiful girl in the mirror is so angry and sad and prideful and ashamed and violent and passive and this constant stream of abuse has torn me apart and created so many ugly things in this mind but if there is ONE. FUCKING. THING. THAT. THEY. WILL. NOT. MAKE. ME.

It is dead.

I will live. I will survive. And I don't even care about justice anymore. These people will get away with all this. Somewhere in that mix of the trans population and the infamous 40% number is a figure of how many people they've killed, but they'd never care. I'll live because all of their jeering and mocking and gaslighting and those goddamn fucking insufferable legions of laugh reacts, they don't do a fucking thing.

That's all it comes down to in the end. It's hard and it's painful and it hurts, it just ENDLESSLY hurts to weather their blows. But my name is Alexia. I am a woman.

You can hurt me all you like, but that won't change, and you can die mad about it.

- Lindwyrm Weisseritter

[mariacallous]

By far the most embarrassing thing about white Dems freaking out last night was that they showed weakness to the Republicans. For all their harping about how "Democrats need to control the narrative," it was white Democrats controlling the doomerism, which the Republicans saw and were gleeful about. Meanwhile Black Democrats were the ones actually controlling the narrative by being the ones actually focusing on what Trump said, not Biden's hoarse voice. They were the ones making Trump's "Black jobs" bit go viral by pointing out how racist it was.

Thank god Black Democrats are the base of the party. We'd be so screwed if white Democrats were anything other than the smallest voting bloc because these people quit at the drop of a dime and prostrate themselves in front of the Republicans like it was a kink.

It's so embarrassing and yet no self-reflection.

[fortuna-et-cataclysmos]

Ms. Sans-Culotte and the obvious French Revolution symbolism

This episode is a field day for me, so I'll need to analyse it bit by bit. Let's first start with the obvious and less obvious French Revolution references in this episode. This will be especially obvious for French viewers, but I thought that it may be interesting for others.

Sans-culotte

I know that the term sounds funny to most, but sans-culottes are a key figure in the French history. Those were the commoners who revolted to the King and aristocracy, and undertook the French Revolution of 1789. As Mademoiselle Bustier explains in the beginning of the episode, the sans-culottes were called so because:

Contrary to rich aristocrats, they would wear simple pants.

So when Mlle. Bustier is akumatised, we see the following character design:

THE PANTS. Very obviously the pants. But there are more obvious symbols in this character design.

Marianne

Marianne is the national personification of the French Republic. She is very much synonymous with the free and republican spirit of France. Yes, that's also the name of Master Fu's girlfriend, and for good reason (she was a Résistance fighter during the German occupation of France!).

By the way this exact painting is in the background in the few seconds after Mlle. Bustier is akumatised:

Marianne is usually depicted with the following symbols:

the Phrygian cap

Greco-Roman clothes

Partial nudity

We see these signs in Mlle. Sans Culotte's character design.

Mlle. Sans Culotte's helmet has the unique shape of the Phrygian cap.

2. Mlle. Sans Culotte is dressed in a Greco-Roman armour. The usual depiction of Marianne is in flowy Greco-Roman clothes, but the helmet and armour really add to that fighter spirit of Mlle. Sans Culotte. Also, even though rarer, there are some depictions of Marianne with a Greco-Roman armour.

3. Partial nudity. Obviously they couldn't actually show that on a kids show. However, I think that the character design does hint to a type of nudity. The fact that the white of the French flag covers all of Mlle. Bustier's face and body make it seem like it is not actually her clothes but her skin. And other than the golden armour she wears, she has no other clothes on her.

The Guillotine

Mlle. Sans Culotte's weapon of choice is a freaking guillotine knife. This was a device used by the French revolutionaries to behead their opponents. To this day, it is associated with the violence of the French revolution.

Now to more implicit references:

Ça ira

When Mlle. Sans Culotte hits people, they turn into balloons that chant:

Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!

Which is a song sang by the sans-culottes during the French Revolution (thanks to @2manyfandoms2count for helping out with this one!)

Other quotes and remarks

There are various quotes throughout the episode with a revolutionary lexicon.

Monarch: The power of Jubilation will help you show the people their dream of freedom, and as such gain partisans/supporters to your cause.

Monarch: To arms, citizens! Form batallions!

This one is especially striking for me, because it is very explicit call to violence (frequently used in French revolutionary history too).

Mlle. Sans Culotte: No one stops the revolution. Long live the revolution!

She quite literally says Vive la révolution. Seriously, it doesn't get any more obvious than that.

She literally runs head-first into a group of policemen, paralleling the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. And literally afterwards Chat Noir mentions this same event:

Chat Noir: It is not the 14th of July, my Lady. Do you think that this akuma victim wants to celebrate the Bastille Day early?

And later on:

Mlle. Sans Culotte: Ladybug, Chat Noir! Help the sans-culottes (plural!) to liberate Paris from its aristocratic Mayor!

Ladybug: Terror is not the solution!

Chat Noir: To get your voice heard there are the elections!

Ok, the word "terror" here is important. I had previously mentioned in my post on Felix's anarchist revolution that the French Revolution was followed by a period of violence where all those against the revolution were murdered. The name of the period is literally the Reign of Terror. We see that Ladybug's words is a reference to that.

Ladybug: (after receiving her lucky charm) Revolution, sans-culotte, and the Mayor of Paris who acts like the King?

The parallel is there. They're not even trying to be subtle. This is the retelling of the French Revolution.

Except that it doesn't turn out like the French Revolution. In the end, Mr. Bourgeois willingly steps down, Mlle. Sans Culotte rejects Monarch's powers (as in, she drops her weapons), so there is no revolution and no bloody reign of terror.

But still, the power dynamics end up shifting tremendously in the Miraculous Paris. How and why? I'll make a post specifically analysing this. Stay tuned for part two!

(Also, I have likely forgotten or omitted some other symbols, feel free to add them to the comments - if there are enough, I can make an addition to the post :))

[edenpriime]

God I'm sorry to keep going on it but the reality is people don't care about survivors. In their head, there's always men who deserve to get away with and commit assault and there's always women they believe deserve it. If it was been allegations against a Republican or someone deemed to have incorrect opinions, it would've been taken at face value. But bc it's some weirdo who wrote something that sparked a British TV show, everyone has decided that he's obviously credible and the women are not. It's all fucking misogyny and victim blaming and every survivor in your life is watching you make a complete and fucking total ass of yourself. Your parasocial relationship with this weirdo is UNHEALTHY and you are a freak with zero empathy