#anti bullying activist

[higherentity]

[pcktknife]

and why did they make toralei rich and british. the people aleady hated her when she was poor and ambiguous 😭

[sag-dab-sar]

If saving nature via a conservation park makes refugees/IDPs out of indigenous people, it isn't real conservation: it some sort of unrealistic fantasy ideal of nature free of human touch. Humans are an important keystone species regardless of how much we like to demonize ourselves as some sort of plague killing the planet.

[itsawritblr]

Holy shit, the New York Times is FINALLY interviewing and listening to detransistioners.

The tide is turning.

Opinion by Pamela Paul

As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.

Feb. 2, 2024

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.

Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy.

“I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex.

Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself.

At 17, desperate to begin hormone therapy, Powell broke the news to her parents. They sent her to a gender specialist to make sure she was serious. In the fall of her senior year of high school, she started cross-sex hormones. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men’s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man.

At no point during her medical or surgical transition, Powell says, did anyone ask her about the reasons behind her gender dysphoria or her depression. At no point was she asked about her sexual orientation. And at no point was she asked about any previous trauma, and so neither the therapists nor the doctors ever learned that she’d been sexually abused as a child.

“I wish there had been more open conversations,” Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told me. “But I was told there is one cure and one thing to do if this is your problem, and this will help you.”

Progressives often portray the heated debate over childhood transgender care as a clash between those who are trying to help growing numbers of children express what they believe their genders to be and conservative politicians who won’t let kids be themselves.

But right-wing demagogues are not the only ones who have inflamed this debate. Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced increased scrutiny in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress.

Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach — including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures — have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.

And while Donald Trump denounces “left-wing gender insanity” and many trans activists describe any opposition as transphobic, parents in America’s vast ideological middle can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine risks or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care.

Powell’s story shows how easy it is for young people to get caught up by the pull of ideology in this atmosphere.

“What should be a medical and psychological issue has been morphed into a political one,” Powell lamented during our conversation. “It’s a mess.”

A New and Growing Group of Patients

Many transgender adults are happy with their transitions and, whether they began to transition as adults or adolescents, feel it was life changing, even lifesaving. The small but rapidly growing number of children who express gender dysphoria and who transition at an early age, according to clinicians, is a recent and more controversial phenomenon.

Laura Edwards-Leeper, the founding psychologist of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States, said that when she started her practice in 2007, most of her patients had longstanding and deep-seated gender dysphoria. Transitioning clearly made sense for almost all of them, and any mental health issues they had were generally resolved through gender transition.

“But that is just not the case anymore,” she told me recently. While she doesn’t regret transitioning the earlier cohort of patients and opposes government bans on transgender medical care, she said, “As far as I can tell, there are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what’s going on.”

Most of her patients now, she said, have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Others refer to this phenomenon, with some controversy, as rapid onset gender dysphoria, in which adolescents, particularly tween and teenage girls, express gender dysphoria despite never having done so when they were younger. Frequently, they have mental health issues unrelated to gender. While professional associations say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, several researchers have documented the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices.

“The population has changed drastically,” said Edwards-Leeper, a former head of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the organization responsible for setting gender transition guidelines for medical professionals.

For these young people, she told me, “you have to take time to really assess what’s going on and hear the timeline and get the parents’ perspective in order to create an individualized treatment plan. Many providers are completely missing that step.”

Yet those health care professionals and scientists who do not think clinicians should automatically agree to a young person’s self-diagnosis are often afraid to speak out. A report commissioned by the National Health Service about Britain’s Tavistock gender clinic, which, until it was ordered to be shut down, was the country’s only health center dedicated to gender identity, noted that “primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.”

Of the dozens of students she’s trained as psychologists, Edwards-Leeper said, few still seem to be providing gender-related care. While her students have left the field for various reasons, “some have told me that they didn’t feel they could continue because of the pushback, the accusations of being transphobic, from being pro-assessment and wanting a more thorough process,” she said.

They have good reasons to be wary. Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she spoke out in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to pay attention to detransitioners, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been attacked by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her licensing board saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy.

In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children.

“I don’t feel safe having a location where people can find me,” she said.

Detransitioners say that only conservative media outlets seem interested in telling their stories, which has left them open to attacks as hapless tools of the right, something that frustrated and dismayed every detransitioner I interviewed. These are people who were once the trans-identified kids that so many organizations say they’re trying to protect — but when they change their minds, they say, they feel abandoned.

Most parents and clinicians are simply trying to do what they think is best for the children involved. But parents with qualms about the current model of care are frustrated by what they see as a lack of options.

Parents told me it was a struggle to balance the desire to compassionately support a child with gender dysphoria while seeking the best psychological and medical care. Many believed their kids were gay or dealing with an array of complicated issues. But all said they felt compelled by gender clinicians, doctors, schools and social pressure to accede to their child’s declared gender identity even if they had serious doubts. They feared it would tear apart their family if they didn’t unquestioningly support social transition and medical treatment. All asked to speak anonymously, so desperate were they to maintain or repair any relationship with their children, some of whom were currently estranged.

Several of those who questioned their child’s self-diagnosis told me it had ruined their relationship. A few parents said simply, “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.”

One mother described a meeting with 12 other parents in a support group for relatives of trans-identified youth where all of the participants described their children as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. To all questions, the woman running the meeting replied, “Just let them transition.” The mother left in shock. How would hormones help a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression? she wondered.

Some parents have found refuge in anonymous online support groups. There, people share tips on finding caregivers who will explore the causes of their children’s distress or tend to their overall emotional and developmental health and well-being without automatically acceding to their children’s self-diagnosis.

Many parents of kids who consider themselves trans say their children were introduced to transgender influencers on YouTube or TikTok, a phenomenon intensified for some by the isolation and online cocoon of Covid. Others say their kids learned these ideas in the classroom, as early as elementary school, often in child-friendly ways through curriculums supplied by trans rights organizations, with concepts like the gender unicorn or the Genderbread person.

‘Do You Want a Dead Son or a Live Daughter?’

After Kathleen’s 15-year-old son, whom she described as an obsessive child, abruptly told his parents he was trans, the doctor who was going to assess whether he had A.D.H.D. referred him instead to someone who specialized in both A.D.H.D. and gender. Kathleen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her son’s privacy, assumed that the specialist would do some kind of evaluation or assessment. That was not the case.

The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. “In front of my son, the therapist said, ‘Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?’” Kathleen recounted.

Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child’s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail. Proponents of the gender-affirming model have cited studies showing an association between that standard of care and a lower risk of suicide. But those studies were found to have methodological flaws or have been deemed not entirely conclusive. A survey of studies on the psychological effects of cross-sex hormones, published three years ago in The Journal of the Endocrine Society, the professional organization for hormone specialists, found it “could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” In a letter to The Wall Street Journal last year, 21 experts from nine countries said that survey was one reason they believed there was “no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.”

Moreover, the incidence of suicidal thoughts and attempts among gender dysphoric youth is complicated by the high incidence of accompanying conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder. As one systematic overview put it, “Children with gender dysphoria often experience a range of psychiatric comorbidities, with a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders and autism spectrum conditions, suicidality and self-harm.”

But rather than being treated as patients who deserve unbiased professional help, children with gender dysphoria often become political pawns.

Conservative lawmakers are working to ban access to gender care for minors and occasionally for adults as well. On the other side, however, many medical and mental health practitioners feel their hands have been tied by activist pressure and organizational capture. They say that it has become difficult to practice responsible mental health care or medicine for these young people.

Pediatricians, psychologists and other clinicians who dissent from this orthodoxy, believing that it is not based on reliable evidence, feel frustrated by their professional organizations. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have wholeheartedly backed the gender-affirming model.

In 2021, Aaron Kimberly, a 50-year-old trans man and registered nurse, left the clinic in British Columbia where his job focused on the intake and assessment of gender-dysphoric youth. Kimberly received a comprehensive screening when he embarked on his own successful transition at age 33, which resolved the gender dysphoria he experienced from an early age.

But when the gender-affirming model was introduced at his clinic, he was instructed to support the initiation of hormone treatment for incoming patients regardless of whether they had complex mental problems, experiences with trauma or were otherwise “severely unwell,” Kimberly said. When he referred patients for further mental health care rather than immediate hormone treatment, he said he was accused of what they called gatekeeping and had to change jobs.

“I realized something had gone totally off the rails,” Kimberly, who subsequently founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance and the L.G.B.T. Courage Coalition to advocate better gender care, told me.

Gay men and women often told me they fear that same-sex-attracted kids, especially effeminate boys and tomboy girls who are gender nonconforming, will be transitioned during a normal phase of childhood and before sexual maturation — and that gender ideology can mask and even abet homophobia.

As one detransitioned man, now in a gay relationship, put it, “I was a gay man pumped up to look like a woman and dated a lesbian who was pumped up to look like a man. If that’s not conversion therapy, I don’t know what is.”

“I transitioned because I didn’t want to be gay,” Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, “I believed homosexuality was a sin.”

When she was 15, Emerick confessed her homosexuality to her mother. Her mother attributed her sexual orientation to trauma — Emerick’s father was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly when she was between the ages of 4 and 7 — but after catching Emerick texting with another girl at age 16, she took away her phone. When Emerick melted down, her mother admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. While there, Emerick told herself, “If I was a boy, none of this would have happened.”

In May 2017, Emerick began searching “gender” online and encountered trans advocacy websites. After realizing she could “pick the other side,” she told her mother, “I’m sick of being called a dyke and not a real girl.” If she were a man, she’d be free to pursue relationships with women.

That September, she and her mother met with a licensed professional counselor for the first of two 90-minute consultations. She told the counselor that she had wished to be a Boy Scout rather than a Girl Scout. She said she didn’t like being gay or a butch lesbian. She also told the counselor that she had suffered from anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. The clinic recommended testosterone, which was prescribed by a nearby L.G.B.T.Q. health clinic. Shortly thereafter, she was also diagnosed with A.D.H.D. She developed panic attacks. At age 17, she was cleared for a double mastectomy.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m having my breasts removed. I’m 17. I’m too young for this,’” she recalled. But she went ahead with the operation.

“Transition felt like a way to control something when I couldn’t control anything in my life,” Emerick explained. But after living as a trans man for five years, Emerick realized her mental health symptoms were only getting worse. In the fall of 2022, she came out as a detransitioner on Twitter and was immediately attacked. Transgender influencers told her she was bald and ugly. She received multiple threats.

“I thought my life was over,” she said. “I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.”

Today Emerick’s voice, permanently altered by testosterone, is that of a man. When she tells people she’s a detransitioner, they ask when she plans to stop taking T and live as a woman. “I’ve been off it for a year,” she replies.

Once, after she recounted her story to a therapist, the therapist tried to reassure her. If it’s any consolation, the therapist remarked, “I would never have guessed that you were once a trans woman.” Emerick replied, “Wait, what sex do you think I am?”

To the trans activist dictum that children know their gender best, it is important to add something all parents know from experience: Children change their minds all the time. One mother told me that after her teenage son desisted — pulled back from a trans identity before any irreversible medical procedures — he explained, “I was just rebelling. I look at it like a subculture, like being goth.”

“The job of children and adolescents is to experiment and explore where they fit into the world, and a big part of that exploration, especially during adolescence, is around their sense of identity,” Sasha Ayad, a licensed professional counselor based in Phoenix, told me. “Children at that age often present with a great deal of certainty and urgency about who they believe they are at the time and things they would like to do in order to enact that sense of identity.”

Ayad, a co-author of “When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents,” advises parents to be wary of the gender affirmation model. “We’ve always known that adolescents are particularly malleable in relationship to their peers and their social context and that exploration is often an attempt to navigate difficulties of that stage, such as puberty, coming to terms with the responsibilities and complications of young adulthood, romance and solidifying their sexual orientation,” she told me. For providing this kind of exploratory approach in her own practice with gender dysphoric youth, Ayad has had her license challenged twice, both times by adults who were not her patients. Both times, the charges were dismissed.

Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible.

Proponents of early social transition and medical interventions for gender dysphoric youth cite a 2022 study showing that 98 percent of children who took both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones continued treatment for short periods, and another study that tracked 317 children who socially transitioned between the ages of 3 and 12, which found that 94 percent of them still identified as transgender five years later. But such early interventions may cement children’s self-conceptions without giving them time to think or sexually mature.

‘The Process of Transition Didn’t Make Me Feel Better’

At the end of her freshman year of college, Grace Powell, horrifically depressed, began dissociating, feeling detached from her body and from reality, which had never happened to her before. Ultimately, she said, “the process of transition didn’t make me feel better. It magnified what I found was wrong with myself.”

“I expected it to change everything, but I was just me, with a slightly deeper voice,” she added. “It took me two years to start detransitioning and living as Grace again.”

She tried in vain to find a therapist who would treat her underlying issues, but they kept asking her: How do you want to be seen? Do you want to be nonbinary? Powell wanted to talk about her trauma, not her identity or her gender presentation. She ended up getting online therapy from a former employee of the Tavistock clinic in Britain. This therapist, a woman who has broken from the gender-affirming model, talked Grace through what she sees as her failure to launch and her efforts to reset. The therapist asked questions like: Who is Grace? What do you want from your life? For the first time, Powell felt someone was seeing and helping her as a person, not simply looking to slot her into an identity category.

Many detransitioners say they face ostracism and silencing because of the toxic politics around transgender issues.

“It is extraordinarily frustrating to feel that something I am is inherently political,” Powell told me. “I’ve been accused multiple times that I’m some right-winger who’s making a fake narrative to discredit transgender people, which is just crazy.”

While she believes there are people who benefit from transitioning, “I wish more people would understand that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,” she said. “I wish we could have that conversation.”

In a recent study in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, about 40 young detransitioners out of 78 surveyed said they had suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria. Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite evidence that the condition is real. In its guide for journalists, the activist organization GLAAD warns the media against using the term, as it is not “a formal condition or diagnosis.” Human Rights Campaign, another activist group, calls it “a right-wing theory.” A group of professional organizations put out a statement urging clinicians to eliminate the term from use.

Nobody knows how many young people desist after social, medical or surgical transitions. Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so.

As Americans furiously debate the basis of transgender care, a number of advances in understanding have taken place in Europe, where the early Dutch studies that became the underpinning of gender-affirming care have been broadly questioned and criticized. Unlike some of the current population of gender dysphoric youth, the Dutch study participants had no serious psychological conditions. Those studies were riddled with methodological flaws and weaknesses. There was no evidence that any intervention was lifesaving. There was no long-term follow-up with any of the study’s 55 participants or the 15 who dropped out. A British effort to replicate the study said that it “identified no changes in psychological function” and that more studies were needed.

In countries like Sweden, Norway, France, the Netherlands and Britain — long considered exemplars of gender progress — medical professionals have recognized that early research on medical interventions for childhood gender dysphoria was either faulty or incomplete. Last month, the World Health Organization, in explaining why it is developing “a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people,” said it will cover only adults because “the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender-affirming care for children and adolescents.”

But in America, and Canada, the results of those widely criticized Dutch studies are falsely presented to the public as settled science.

Other countries have recently halted or limited the medical and surgical treatment of gender dysphoric youth, pending further study. Britain’s Tavistock clinic was ordered to be shut down next month, after a National Health Service-commissioned investigation found deficiencies in service and “a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.”

Meanwhile, the American medical establishment has hunkered down, stuck in an outdated model of gender affirmation. The American Academy of Pediatrics only recently agreed to conduct more research in response to yearslong efforts by dissenting experts, including Dr. Julia Mason, a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal.”

The larger threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections. But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.

“I was always a liberal Democrat,” one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. “Now I feel politically homeless.”

She noted that the Biden administration has “unequivocally” supported gender-affirming care for minors, in cases in which it deems it “medically appropriate and necessary.” Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR in 2022 that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”

Of course, politics should not influence medical practice, whether the issue is birth control, abortion or gender medicine. But unfortunately, politics has gotten in the way of progress. Last year The Economist published a thorough investigation into America’s approach to gender medicine. Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor, put the issue into political context. “If you look internationally at countries in Europe, the U.K. included, their medical establishments are much more concerned,” Beddoes told Vanity Fair. “But here — in part because this has become wrapped up in the culture wars where you have, you know, crazy extremes from the Republican right — if you want to be an upstanding liberal, you feel like you can’t say anything.”

Some people are trying to open up that dialogue, or at least provide outlets for kids and families to seek a more therapeutic approach to gender dysphoria.

Paul Garcia-Ryan is a psychotherapist in New York who cares for kids and families seeking holistic, exploratory care for gender dysphoria. He is also a detransitioner who from ages 15 to 30 fully believed he was a woman.

Garcia-Ryan is gay, but as a boy, he said, “it was much less threatening to my psyche to think that I was a straight girl born into the wrong body — that I had a medical condition that could be tended to.” When he visited a clinic at 15, the clinician immediately affirmed he was female, and rather than explore the reasons for his mental distress, simply confirmed Garcia-Ryan’s belief that he was not meant to be a man.

Once in college, he began medically transitioning and eventually had surgery on his genitals. Severe medical complications from both the surgery and hormone medication led him to reconsider what he had done, and to detransition. He also reconsidered the basis of gender affirmation, which, as a licensed clinical social worker at a gender clinic, he had been trained in and provided to clients.

“You’re made to believe these slogans,” he said. “Evidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled — and none of that is evidence based.”

Garcia-Ryan, 32, is now the board president of Therapy First, an organization that supports therapists who do not agree with the gender affirmation model. He thinks transition can help some people manage the symptoms of gender dysphoria but no longer believes anyone under 25 should socially, medically or surgically transition without exploratory psychotherapy first.

“When a professional affirms a gender identity for a younger person, what they are doing is implementing a psychological intervention that narrows a person’s sense of self and closes off their options for considering what’s possible for them,” Garcia-Ryan told me.

Instead of promoting unproven treatments for children, which surveys show many Americans are uncomfortable with, transgender activists would be more effective if they focused on a shared agenda. Most Americans across the political spectrum can agree on the need for legal protections for transgender adults. They would also probably support additional research on the needs of young people reporting gender dysphoria so that kids could get the best treatment possible.

A shift in this direction would model tolerance and acceptance. It would prioritize compassion over demonization. It would require rising above culture-war politics and returning to reason. It would be the most humane path forward. And it would be the right thing to do.

*~*~*~*~*~*

For those who want tor ead more by those fighting the cancellation forquestioning, read:

Graham Lineham, who's been fighting since the beginning and paid the price, but is not seeing things turn around.

The Glinner Update, Grahan Linehan's Substack.

Kellie-Jay Keen @ThePosieParker, who's been physically attacked for organizing events for women demanding women-only spaces.

REDUXX, Feminst news & opinion.

Gays Against Groomers @againstgrmrs, A nonprofit of gay people and others within the community against the sexualization, indoctrination and medicalization of children under the guise of "LGBTQIA+"

[probablyasocialecologist]

GCs claim to campaign for the “safety” of women and children. I’ve long suspected this was confined to the “right kind” of women and children. Kathleen Stock, a former trustee of the “LGB Alliance” (public statements of which include “adding the + to LGB gives the green light to paraphilias like bestiality…”) appeared (to me) to suggest that it would be “more honest” for high-profile trans allies to publicly “declare” if they have trans children. Her post made no mention of obtaining the children’s consent. It seems reasonable to interpret this as a call for the public outing of certain trans children. Given “out” trans children have been murdered and 64% are subjected to bullying, it strikes me as, at the very least, callous. Joey Barton, one of the movement’s most high profile (and oft platformed) voices, will shortly stand trial accused of assaulting his wife. Donald Trump, who was found by a jury to have sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll, has increasingly made attacks on trans people a campaign talking point. The GC movement has claimed a degree of legitimacy based on previous legal successes, notably the case of Forstater v CGD Europe, in which GC beliefs were declared “worthy of respect in a democratic society”. Some seem to have interpreted this as a licence to persecute trans people. This summer three separate courts gave clear statements to the contrary. The Employment Tribunal upheld the sacking of teacher Kevin Lister after he equated being transgender (as one of his students was) with having a mental illness. The High Court upheld an order banning Joshua Sutcliffe from teaching children after he repeatedly misgendered a child in his care. In Australia, the Federal Court prohibited a dating app from discriminating against trans women. The message from the courts is clear: GC beliefs are worthy of respect, but GCs must also respect trans people. The summer of court losses also undermines the movement’s claims to expertise. High profile GC activists often hold themselves out as experts. The courts made clear that many are no such thing. Maya Forstater gave “expert” evidence in the Sutcliffe case. The judge was “not persuaded that she is properly described as an expert”, noting: “Ms Forstater explained that the use of non-preferred pronouns in this case might be due to cognitive dissonance. Mr Phillips was not, however, able to identify any medical expertise that she might have to opine on that issue.” Helen Joyce, Director of Advocacy at the GC group “Sex Matters”, purported to give “expert” evidence in the Australian case. The judge said she: “…does not have any formal education or qualifications even in biology, let alone in gender, sex or law… she is not an expert at all. She has no recognised expertise in any of the areas in which she expresses an opinion.” In April the Cass Report gave a veneer of scientific legitimacy to the GC movement’s various claims. Both Labour and the Conservatives used the report as justification to prevent trans children from accessing puberty blockers (which, contrary to popular myth, do not prevent puberty but, rather, delay its onset). Cis children are still given access. The report was swiftly rejected by medical bodies around the world. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society said, in a joint statement, “Medical evidence, not politics, should inform treatment decisions”. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists followed suit. The British Medical Association called Cass’ claims “unsubstantiated”. I’d argue the report was largely debunked by a Yale School of Medicine review.

15 September 2024

[emperor-kumquat]

Fandom, WTF

It's not just X; it could happen here too. My fucking god, a Transformers YouTuber almost did the unspeakable last night because of cyberbullying. Because people who claim they are being heroic are doing such terrible things. And they do it so damn fast.

(The YouTuber is more stable and safe at the moment)

You don't need to know the exact details, but the person made a post on X that was a little iffy. Not discriminatory to anyone, not an inappropriate picture or anything. The kind of thing that SHOULD have led to a discussion to change his opinion. And that's what the some other YouTubers and I did, we talked to him, and he regretted his words and changed his mind. Just like that. So fucking easy.

He wanted to write an apology and tell everyone he understood the issue now, but he was struggling to. His account was reported and suspended over and over. In the end, he did manage to write that apology on X and tell people he changed his opinion. That kind of thing can happen when we act patiently and try to guide people! But before then, other people were DMing him madly on Discord and X to say horrible shit, show gore, tell him to die. People were photoshopping a convicted criminal's face onto his profile pic. Friends severed ties without even talking to him. People doxxed him and someone left him a threatening phone call.

These people probably loved the excuse to do it. They would happily slap a label on someone then act dramatic about it. They pile on the hate because "that creator deserves it", they think.

How can you do any of the above and think you are a good person??

What on Earth happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt? Out of all the ways a statement could be interpreted, why do people choose the most negative instead of the most positive? When drama hits and your friend is involved, how can you leave without at least hearing the other side of the story? How can you forget that you may be harassing someone who has mental health or is neurodivergent?

It's like people love being mad. They want to put a bad label on someone, like some kind of "_ist", "_phobe", or a "p*do". They don't need much evidence before attacking. Here on Tumblr a while back, some people very eagerly wanted to harass me. They called me transphobic. The reality they didn't care to find out: I am trans, I make trans activist videos, I go on the front lines countering anti-trans protests in Canada while getting screamed at by conservatives for hours. Get real. If you are so quick to hate someone and label them, you were probably just eager to misinterpret anything they said to get a chance to be angry. You don't know them and you are not a sensible, fair person. They act like a pack of wolves if they can tell themselves it's justified. It is NOT justified. They should be ashamed. They are just bullies hiding behind a hero’s mask.

[queerxqueen]

"I just want to clarify that I’m well informed on the situation that is going on but Byler has only one chance of happening. Meanwhile Palestinians are dying anyway. They have been for years and will continue to die. Since when do y’all care about them and their lives? You started talking about it only when it became trendy.

Fake activists, move on and continue eating expensive food in your comfy house and not giving a fuck about people far away from you dying. That shit happens everyday and if you get involved your psyche will be hurt. Let the politicians deal with this instead of bullying a random actor that didn’t do anything harmful"

browsing through the noah schnapp tag to see what he did now and seeing these words was a literal slap in the face how can someone post this and think theyre a good person???

(When I first read this, I thought you were saying that shit in my inbox and was ready to throw hands, so I was very relieved to see you were just sharing the bullshit from someone else's blog.)

I just searched in the tag and saw this exact post. How fucking horrifying. Instant block. I doubt anyone could reason with this person.

"Palestinians are dying anyway. They have been for years and will continue to die." Can't believe anyone typed this genuinely and without pause. Just say you don't care about Palestinian lives and stop there, you'll get your point across better.

"Since when do y’all care about them and their lives? You started talking about it only when it became trendy." Many people are only just now beginning to really educate themselves on the history of Israel and Palestine. I'm among them - I used to be one of the folks who thought it was too complicated and nuanced to take a stance on. Then I read Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, started reading from news sources and independent journalists outside of mainstream western media, started listening to Palestinian and anti-zionist Jewish voices, and realized how false that was. I take responsibility for not educating myself sooner. But it's actually weird to frame people educating themselves and having empathy for people dying as jumping on a trend.

"Let the politicians deal with this..." Ah, yes, let's leave it to the politicians, who notoriously have our best interests in mind and would never do anything to cause harm. (/sarcasm) "... instead of bullying a random actor that didn’t do anything harmful." If you think sharing violent zionist rhetoric such as "you stand with Israel or you stand with terrorism" or trivializing the deaths of eleven thousand Palestinians with stupid stickers calling zionism sexy, in front of your audience of millions as a celebrity, is "not harmful" then we clearly are not going to agree on anything.

[txttletale]

The "calling police is inherently immoral" takes feel… maybe a bit US-centric? All countries have structural issues with police that come as the result of the conflict of interests between individual people and the interest of the bourgie state, but not every country's police force is a highly-militarized, highly-armed trigger-happy murder force comprised of wannabe bullies the way the US's seems to be. Some do clear that very low bar. Hell, there are tons of countries where regular police officers aren't even armed.

In my life I've called the police twice over student parties past midnight so loud you could hear them two streets away, and once over someone's dog being trapped/forgotten in the trunk of car, distressed and barking continuously.

Even in a world after police abolition, the above kind of policing will continue to need to happen. Some people are dicks, and some situations need intervention. A shitton of civil law, not criminal law, exists for a very good reason and still requires some form of police to enforce. I like to think I have a pretty hopeful view of humanity, but the reason people in my country have stopped smoking indoors, and don't leave their trash in random places, and don't piss in the middle of the street, is that all of those things are illegal and can result in police being called and getting you fined. There is absolutely no way people en masse would obey those "don't be a dick" laws without that stick hanging over them.

In a country where police are so fucked up that calling them over a minor disturbance is likely to get people killed, yeah, I would probably not call the police and just suck it up and mourn the fact that the supposed justice system has become completely unusable for its intended purpose. But not all countries are like that.

(To be clear: I don't agree with calling police over someone doing drugs.)

even in countries where the police are not just outright death squads putting young people, especially young people of colour or working class young people, into a situation where they suddenly have to interact with the police is just not a cool thing to do. you've correctly identified that the role of the police is to repress the working class, no matter whether they're the white supermacist paramilitary groups of the US or the less militarized and better at PR police forces of Europe. like. the police in the UK are also 'not as bad' as the police in the US and yet they still do all kinds of horrendous racist violent shit and kill people. even the darling of democratic socialism norway, famous for its humane prison and policing system, actually still experiences police brutality, because no matter how 'professional' and disarmed the police force is its role is to enforce bourgeois property rights through violence. the idea that there is an 'intended purpose' to the justice is just buying into the police's hype.

& hey by the way you know who leaves their trash in the street and pisses there? homeless people. people who have nowhere else to put their trash or piss. the idea that the police are the only thing keeping society from descending into 'chaos' (i.e. visible signs of poverty and homelessness existing) is genuinely deeply reactionary. it's thin blue line shit. sure, it's cool that calling the police in your country isn't playing russian roulette with someone else's life but if you think that the police aren't 'a murder force' or 'comprised of wannabe bullies' wherever you live then i think you should probably look harder and pay more attention because there are almost certainly anti-police activists there who can tell you otherwise!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Boy, 12, is referred to counter-extremist Prevent officers by his own school after declaring there 'are only two genders' and 'I'm gay not queer'

By: Alex Ward

Published: Jun 29, 2024

Boy also made a video in which he stated 'there's no such thing as non-binary'

School made referral to Prevent amid fears he could be radicalised by far-Right 

He was accused of unhealthy interest in weapons as he owns a toy crossbow

A 12-year-old schoolboy has been investigated by counter-extremism officers after he declared there 'are only two genders'.

The child made a video, posted online, in which he also stated: 'There's no such thing as non-binary'.

And in response to school bullies who mistakenly believed he supported transgender ideology, he said: '[I'm] gay not queer.'

Originally a homophobic slur, trans activists claim the word 'queer' now describes people who don't adhere to ideas of sex or gender.

But the school told the boy's mother they would refer him to Prevent, the Home Office programme that attempts to stop people becoming terrorists, amid fears he could be at risk of being radicalised by the far-right.

The Mail is aware of the boy's identity but has agreed not to disclose it, and has also viewed the social media posts.

The boy's mother was visited by Prevent and Northumbria Police officers this week, in a meeting she described as 'an interrogation'.

Officers listed a string of allegations to illustrate the boy was at risk of radicalisation.

The boy's mother said: 'We think that he was targeted as the children believe gay people agree with trans ideology.

'He made a video which I uploaded to YouTube where he said there 'are only two genders' and 'I'm gay not queer'.

'The school phoned up and were incensed by it. They said that they would refer him to Prevent for that video.

'They said that he was at risk of radicalisation - not that he had been, but was a risk when he gets to 13 and is entitled to his own social media accounts.

'There was a risk he would fall in with Far Right groups.'

She said counter terror officers - who visited the family home - raised concerns over the fact that her son, who is Jewish, harboured extremist views on account of his response when asked if there were any groups that shouldn't exist. 

She said her son responded that 'Hamas (the Gaza-based terror group) should be wiped out'.

Further fears were raised over comments he made to school bullies, stating he wanted to 'exterminate' them. 

He is said to have made the remark in relation to appalling racist slurs from classmates.

In a letter to the school in South Tyneside - seen by the Mail - his mother detailed how he was subjected to vile verbal abuse and Nazi salutes.

Prevent officers also suggested the boy had an unhealthy interest in weapons on account of another online video - again uploaded by his mother - which showed him demonstrating a toy crossbow bought from English Heritage, she said.

English Heritage describes the 'best seller' item as 'completely harmless but lots of fun'.

The mother said the school and Prevent officers were guilty of double standards, claiming anti-Semitic incidents at the school were not dealt with in the same way.

She said: 'We sat down with the Prevent officers and there was an interrogation - they had an attitude of 'we'll ask the questions'.

'We were asked if we monitored his social media and what songs he listens to.

'They said there was a whole series of things he had been accused of.'

The police response was criticised by free speech campaigners who rebuked officers for 'wilfully missing the target'.

Harry Miller, chief exec of Fair Cop, said: 'His views on gender are as far away from terrorism that it's possible to be. 

'They are views that are held by the majority of people in Britain and don't even get into the foothills of terrorism.

'You couldn't call it criminality, let alone terrorism. There is a difference between bad behaviour and terrorism.

'This is another instance of the police wilfully missing the target because hunting down school children is easier than confronting actual terrorists.

'Fair Cop will continue to stand between these idiots and the public until they stop behaving like the woke, cowardly Stasi they have become.

'The Home Office needs to get a grip. Sack every complicit Chief Constable.'

Kate Barker, chief exec of LGB Alliance, said: 'If it's a sign of radicalisation to say you don't like being called 'queer' then according to our research, 94 per cent of LGB people can expect a knock on the door from counter-terrorism officers.

'We applaud this young boy for standing up for his beliefs, and we condemn the teachers and police who think it's wrong to abhor this horrible slur.'

The Prevent strategy was introduced by the Government in 2011 as part of a bid to tackle terrorism through early intervention.

According to the latest Home Office data there were 6,817 referrals to Prevent in the year ending 31 March, 2023 - the figure was up 6.4 per cent on the previous year.

A joint statement from Northumbria Police and Counter Terrorism Policing North East read: 'We are unable to discuss individual cases, or identify anyone who may or may not be the subject of a Prevent referral.

'All referrals are treated in the strictest confidence and will always prioritise the safety and welfare of those concerned.

'Prevent is a multi-agency approach to safeguarding and supporting those most at risk of radicalisation through early intervention. 

'It seeks to protect young and vulnerable people against all forms of extremist activity, regardless of ideology.'

South Tyneside Council declined to comment.

==

Apparently, there's so few burglaries and murders that police have nothing better to do than harass children expressing completely true, mainstream and reasonable positions, and treat them as extremists deserving of counter-terrorism intervention.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was not supposed to be an instruction manual.

[planetofsnarfs]

When a child dies – any child – the loss is incalculable. There’s the loss of a son or daughter, a sibling, a cousin, a best friend. There’s a loss of a life, snuffed out before its time. The loss of a future – who knows what that child could have accomplished? 

And when that child dies, particularly under horrific circumstances, there is a loss of innocence for all of us, regardless of whether we knew that child or not. Among the first impulses for anyone with a heart who wishes to protect other children is to find a way – any way – to prevent a loss like that from happening again.

The hyper-cruel antithesis of this is what’s going on right now in Oklahoma in the wake of 16-year-old Nex Benedict’s death. As we first reported, Nex, a transgender sophomore at Owasso High School, was brutally beaten by other students in a school bathroom and died the following day. The incident has drawn national attention – but not nearly enough, in my opinion – with many attributing the violent act to a culture of transphobia they say is being stoked by state officials.

Days before Nex’s death, The Oklahoman reported that there were a whopping 50 bills in the state legislature targeting LGBTQ+ people. The state ranks 48th in both education and health care. Don’t you think the state legislature and state government officials have better things to do than sow queer hate among its citizens? 

One of those state officials is the superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters. Even before Nex’s death, Walters was virulently anti-LGBTQ+. More than 350 LGBTQ+ organizations, activists, and celebrities urged his removal from office after Nex died, saying he has encouraged “a climate of hate and bigotry” throughout his career. Nex’s death didn’t stop him from fanning the flames of hate.

Walters poured salt into a festering wound, telling The New York Times, “There's not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us.” He added that he did not believe that nonbinary or transgender people exist and that the state would not let students use names or pronouns other than those matching their birth records.

It seems the goal of the official responses around Nex’s death has been to protect those who bullied and beat him. Police were quick to release initial reports saying that Nex "did not die as a result of trauma."

It’s important to note that school officials did not reprimand, sanction, or report to authorities the students who critically harmed Nex. “No report of the incident was made to the Owasso Police Department prior to the notification at the hospital,” Chief Dan Yancey told The Advocate.

The police jumped out over their skis with their initial statement, which raised eyebrows. In fact, Sue Benedict, who was Nex’s adoptive mother, told the news site Popular Information that a statement released by the Owasso Police was a “big cover."

Parents and other members of the public expressed outrage over how the school was handling the response to Nex’s death, particularly pointing out that protecting queer kids and making sure that it didn’t happen again was not a priority for the school board. “Apparently people don’t feel safe here. I can’t imagine why at all,” public commenter Walter Masterson said at the first Owasso school board meeting after Nex's death. “A more 'woke' school board would see the death of a child and work to make sure it never happens again. Not this board.” 

Then, along comes the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Oklahoma, which concluded that Nex died by suicide. The medical examiner’s one-page summary report identifies the cause of death as combined toxicity from diphenhydramine (Benadryl) and fluoxetine (Prozac). Noticeably absent from the report were all the injuries Nex incurred the day before.

My colleague Christopher Wiggins was once a paramedic. When he saw the cause of death was attributed to two very common medications, he decided to investigate. He’s a damn good reporter, and his suspicions regarding the report were justified. He reached out to two toxicology experts, who first made it clear that they weren’t privy to Nex’s autopsy report; however, they told Christopher that the risk of death from these medications, especially when used as directed, is extraordinarily low.

In response to the coroner’s report, GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement, “Nex’s family accurately notes how the report released this week does not reflect the full picture of what happened to Nex and continues to urge accountability of those who failed to keep Nex and all students in Oklahoma safe from bullying, harassment, assault, and most brutally, death.”

Now you have this full picture of all those involved, coupled with a backdrop of hate. Taken in its totality, the reaction to Nex’s death shows that a corrupt, do-nothing clique is part of a deceptive lie and cover-up that shows they did nothing, zero, zilch to protect the life of Nex or any child like him. The authorities' only goal is to protect the perpetrators, not just those who attacked Nex but all those who will be emboldened to beat others just like Nex in the future in school bathrooms throughout the state.

The grossly deceptive response to Nex’s death makes the state of Oklahoma a breeding ground for the bullying – and for beating to injury or death – of LGBTQ+ kids. What the state is doing goes against all we know about protecting vulnerable children. 

If the state legislature pushes hate bills, if state officials spew hate, if local authorities and administrators cover up hate, then you create this breeding ground. You create an atmosphere where that hate explodes, like it did with Nex, and you use hate to demean the victim and ennoble the haters.

Suicide rates among LGBTQ+ youth are astronomically high. If Nex ultimately did commit suicide -- and this initial autopsy report does not make a convincing case -- then Oklahoma officials still deserve to be held accountable. Oklahoma's LGBTQ+ suicide prevention line saw a 230 percent increase in calls after the cause of Nex's death was revealed by the coroner. As transgender activist Ari Drennan noted, in a climate of anti-trans hate, "every trans suicide is a murder." 

But if Nex's death was ruled a suicide to avoid addressing anti-LGBTQ+ bullying, Oklahoma officials have crossed a line. Using suicide as a cover, as a deception, should be a crime.

It is worth repeating the ominous words of Walters that nonbinary or transgender people don’t exist. That means, in Walters’s world, Nex never existed. And if Nex never existed, how would Walters and other officials associated with him be able to objectively investigate Nex’s death?

All of which means that Nex’s autopsy report is a lie and a facade. Null and void. Plain and simple. Nex and his family deserve so much more, and we need to keep protesting loudly until we get the truth.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Elsie Carson-Holt at LGBTQ Nation:

Though conservatives often accuse companies of losing out when a brand touts progressive values, the right-wing adage “go woke, and go broke,” has been disproven by a recent study. Brands that are supportive of LGBTQ+ rights or social justice movements see greater consumer engagement and loyalty from customers.  Unstereotype Alliance, a business initiative convened by UN Women, more inclusive advertising campaigns positively impact profits, sales and brand worth. Researchers at Saïd Business School at Oxford University analyzed data from Diageo, Kantar and Unilever, in collaboration with the Geena Davis Institute. The research, based on an analysis of 392 brands across 58 countries, reveals that inclusive advertising can boost short-term sales by nearly 3.5% and drive long-term sales by over 16%. The study spanned various product categories, including confectionery, snacks, personal care, beauty, pet food, pet care, alcohol, consumer healthcare, and household products across diverse regions. Inclusive advertising also persuades 62% of consumers to choose a product and enhances brand loyalty for 15% of shoppers. The study highlights that ads that authentically portray people, without using stereotypes, have a clear competitive advantage in the marketplace, influencing consumer preferences and long-term success.

[...]

On the other side, the beer brand Bud Light also faced right-wing rage after partnering with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. After the incident,  Jason Warner, CEO of the European branch of Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, said that the company would no longer attempt inclusivity and “stay in our lane.”

The study comes after right-wing influencer Robby Starbuck has forced multiple companies to cave by accusing them of having “woke agendas” and sending a social media mob after them. Starbuck succeeded in getting companies such as Lowe’s, John Deere, Harley Davidson, and more to drop their DEI initiatives, stop partnering with the Human Rights Campaign, and end sponsorship of Pride festivals. When fear of Starbuck caused Ford Motors to follow behind the other brands, President of the Human Rights Campaign, Kelley Robinson, called Starbuck a “MAGA bully and Republican-reject.” It later released a study that details how rollbacks on DEI from large corporations in recent years are wildly unpopular with LGBTQ+ individuals and alienating many consumers. The latest research adds even more weight to that argument.

A new study by Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and Geena Davis Institute reveals that pro-inclusive advertising and support for social justice (esp. LGBTQ+) causes see increased consumer engagement and loyalty from customers, much to the chagrin of anti-inclusion activists like Robby Starbuck.

[darkmaga-retard]

Australian Journalist Jane Hansen has died suddenly from brain cancer, after the aggressive illness developed following her first Pfizer jab in 2021.

Lioness of Judah Ministry

Aug 08, 2024

One-time or recurring donations can be made through Ko-Fi:

Ms. Hansen spent her life ridiculing vaccine safety activists, and actively lobbied to have unvaxxed kids banned from schools, before and after the pandemic, with initiatives such as the 2013 "No Jab, No Play" Campaign.

She was known for bullying parents who challenged the childhood shot schedule and adults who questioned the testing of the emergency mRNA shots, calling them "hysterical drama queens" who are threatening to kill the "vulnerable" in society.

She also produced the 2021 documentary "Big Shots: Anti-Vaxxers Exposed" which harassed RFK Jr's Children Defense Fund and Del Big Tree's film Vaxxed for their unwavering commitment to reveal the dangerous side effects from v*ccines.

Before taking her 1st Pfizer shot, Ms. Hansen worked to ban a group raising attention to adverse reactions and called a women whose father-in-law had been hospitalized a fake story. Tragically she said she knew the mRNA shots needed to be questioned and properly tested because it was brand new, but she labelled real inquiry as medical misinfo.

Would she be alive today if she had listened to the warnings? RIP

[ofekma]

I never planned to end up like this.

I signed into this website for cool art and fandom posts. I learned English and spent years on this platform because I just wanted to vibe here, as one of the millions of users who get to just live their lives and talk about things they like.

I just want to pet cats and post memes.

But unfortunately, as an Israeli person, my mere existance is political and the sentence "I want to keep living here" is radical.

Unfortunately I have to be ready to either block or defend myself against the hundred thousands of people here who don't know the first thing about what's going on here but think that they get to determinate my future.

Because the website that can come up with pages upon pages of nuanced takes on fictional characters and cartoons can't fathom the concept that maybe the real world isn't black and white either.

The people who encourage for tolerance for every gender identity and sexual orientation under the sun because people's expiriance are different and complicated and diversed, think that Israeli people are a monolith.

They think that we are all the same as our dumbest politicians but would be shocked and horrified if anyone dared to compare them to Trump.

Those people who believe that if you are lgbt+ supporter or are anti racism or anti sexism or pro human rights you are automatically anti zionist.

Because you can't be a good person and a zionist, apparently.

As if any of you even know what zionism is! As if any of you know the first thing about this conflict and don't just parrot words you hear on instegram!

And then you pat yourselves on the shoulder and go to sleep self satisfied that you are Good People and then move on with your lives, leaving us to deal with the fallout. Because THIS is our lives. This is MY life. Long after you will all move on I'll stay here, trying to pick back the pieces once you find a shiny new thing to get into.

And if I can't get any care or support or nuance or empathy, at least I can get escapism right?

But I can't even have that, because every single cute and funny blog who talks and draws my blorbos suddenly has to get into the hot new trend of having an uninformed opinion on a conflict that started before they were even born.

You guys get to reblog a "from the river to the sea" post then go back to talking about fashion and crafts and anime. You get to spread misinformation and encourage hate you yourself are blind to, and not going to face the consequences of.

I don't. We don't.

So yeah, I hope you're fucking proud of yourselves, tumblr, because you are not human rights activists or progressive leftists or whatever.

You are just bullies.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Troy O. Fritzhand

Canary Mission, an antisemitism watchdog group, has made headlines since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war for its work exposing groups and individuals that support the Palestinian terror group and express hatred for the Jewish state.

Critics have accused Canary Mission of what they call unfair “doxing,” or publicizing information about a person or organization without their consent. However, that has not stopped the watchdog from calling out a wide range of entities for allegedly antisemitic behavior and spreading hateful ideology throughout North America, especially on college campuses.

The organization, which operates anonymously, spoke to The Algemeiner about its work since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel. To stay anonymous and protect the safety of staff, the group did not attribute its remarks to a specific individual.

Since the outbreak of the war, Canary Mission has been working on what it calls four “significant” developments.

“First, there has been a sharp escalation in global antisemitism, both in frequency and severity,” a representative said. “We are no longer discussing simple breaches of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Discourse has alarmingly shifted to overt expressions of hate, including endorsements of Hamas’ violence against Jews, coupled with a stark indifference to the suffering of kidnapped, raped, and murdered Jews.”

Antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed globally since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7. Most recently, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported a 360 percent surge in such incidents over the past three months, with about two-thirds directly related to the Israel-Hamas war.

“Second,” Canary Mission continued, “antisemites on the left and right seem even more willing to work with each other in their common cause against Jews and Israel.”

“Third, a bipartisan consensus has emerged with a clear recognition of the extreme antisemitism fostered within the anti-Israel movement,” the group added.

Lastly, Canary Mission addressed the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) refusing to say at a congressional hearing last month that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ codes of conduct against bullying and harassment.

“Fourth, despite the dismal failure of Harvard, UPenn, and MIT leadership to condemn calls for the genocide against Jews, there have been some positive campus developments,” the watchdog said. “Several universities have finally understood that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is essentially an incubator for hatred and have taken action against them.”

Some schools have banned or suspended SJP chapters, which have orchestrated pro-Hamas demonstrations on campuses across the US, for violating school rules.

Over the past three months, Canary Mission has, among other projects, linked US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) to fundraisers with Hamas ties, profiled dozens of signatories of a letter denouncing Israel just one day after the Oct. 7 massacre, and exposed the organizers of a recent rally in Philadelphia that targeted a local Jewish restaurant for having a history of backing Hamas and calling for the destruction of Israel.

“Our support has significantly grown since the war began,” Canary Mission said. “The traffic to our website has substantially increased, reflecting the heightened interest in our cause … Our new support comes from across the political spectrum from individuals and organizations who understand the danger and hatred Jews are facing. Naturally, we have also received plenty of threats and abuse from neo-Nazis and anti-Israel activists alike.”

Canary Mission described its work as necessary and “far from finished” in combating “unfounded hatred towards Jews and the Jewish state.”

“Since our inception in 2015, Canary Mission has stood as a vigilant watchdog against antisemitism, with a particular focus on the spread of antisemitism in academic institutions,” the group said. “From UPenn to Harvard, our findings reveal an unsettling reality that has been simmering in American academia for years … Our work is comprehensive. We highlight instances of antisemitism across the political landscape and refuse to ignore or excuse it regardless of its source. The profiles we create are not just records but tools that hold individuals accountable for their words and actions. In doing so, we create lasting consequences for those who propagate hate against Jews and Israel.”

Canary Mission dismissed criticism that it’s doxing, saying it does not release any personal information such as home addresses, emails, or phone numbers. The watchdog added it “presents an individual’s words and actions. This enables the public to form their own opinion and decide on their own response to the content presented.”

Concluding, the group said, “Critics will continue to dislike the Canary Mission platform, and supporters will continue to recognize the vital importance of shining a light on anti-Jewish hatred during this difficult time in our history.”

“And a note to our critics: We are not going away — we have only just begun.”

[punkeropercyjackson]

HM How do i put this.So people often think 'punk' and 'asshole' are synomyous and this causes problems when it comes to character interpretations(and irl too ofc but that's for a future post).Now i'm not saying you can't be punk and an asshole because that would be absolutely stupid and just incorrect but the latter does not make the former and you shouldn't force anyone to when they're not even if they're fictional since how you treat characters who're part of a group reflects how you think of the irl one

I'm gonna use the example that prompted this post:Spiderpunk aka Hobie Brown.Hobie is often characterized as mean-spirited and perverted because he's explicitly meant as the embodiment of black punks but the thing is,in the actual movie and og comics,Hobs is an incredibly sweet and gentle person and if you think i'm being ridicilous for saying that about the dude who kills fascists and runs his mouth all the time,consider that direct action is not an act of cruelty but kindness towards oppressed people by helping them have a safer world and that Hobie's only actually rude to authority figures and with everyone else he's just goofy.He's also pretty open with how much he loves his friends and always has their backs and i find it very odd how often he gets assumed to be an extremely sexual person when there were never even any under the radar adult jokes about or by him and the smoker headcanon for him is baseless too and pretty obviously only happens for sex appeal

And that's a general problem with both canonical and popularly headcanon punk characters-Most fandom members think punk is 1.Exclusively male and 2.Inherently made to make yourself attractive.There's nothing wrong with finding punk men super hot but there IS a lot wrong is assigning punkhood to them with that intention alone,especially often the characters are not only just EdgyTM but also straight up fascists(Hp and Marauders Flop Era 'kinnies',please touch grass)

This leads to defanging of punk female characters.Katara is a classic example and Zuko is a rich boy with weird biases he's very open about that didn't fade until adulthood while Katara is an eco-terrorist who reclaims girlhood for herself by being anti-traditionalist and feminine in her own way yet Zuko is always the punk of the Gaang in aus.Stephanie Brown and not a girl but Duke Thomas are a poor woman who grew up friendless and abused by her dad and had a drug addict mom so she became a vigilante at 14 to help people like her and is implied to be a metalhead and a black boy who grew up getting kicked out schools and in and out of foster homes and joined a gang of crime fighters respectively but Stephanie is called scene instead(cause pastel punks don't exist right /s)and Duke is turned a meek black boyloser stereotype so that Jason Todd can be the punk Batkid instead,which is certainly......a choice seeing as Under The Red Hood is basically about him doing freestyle death penalty and is not actively an activist even if he does enjoy helping people and does whenever he has the opportunity to by narrative.Very important sidenote is that Stephanie and Duke are often entierly erased from Batman fan content despite being Jason's Batgirl and Robin and i think you can guess why(that obviously the coolest Batkid has to be the fan favorite white boy /s x2)

And i feel the need to include this one due to my url and that is Percy Jackson.Percy is representation for audhd and dyslexic people who can never mask and got bullied and abused for it but remained kind against all world's cruelty and choose to help others since they wanted the world to be like that to them as a kid instead but they ALSO aren't a pussy about it so they openly stand up to corrupted people and refuse to be like them no matter how hard they try to get them to and they openly hate them for what they're like and they act like a parental figure to younger minorities.Their creator stated he never inteded Percy as being bisexual and has no interest in it but he also said he'd be happy and supportive of Percy being played by a poc one day and within the books Percy is extremely transfem-coded so obviously the fandom pops several blood vessels when literally any of this is aknowledged because they read the wrong books and wanted a white male power fantasy in ancient greek gays flavor

You can be super nice and punk because punk is a subculture,not an entire personality type.And i hate to break it to edgecases on here but being super mean to people without a justified reason because you think it's cool or finding irresistibly hot on others is one of the most normal things you can do