#kids’ rights

[sparksinthenight]

My letter to Biden about KOSA

You can use the following letter as a template to send to your representatives. Or you can write your own letter.

Dear President Biden,

My name is ______ and I am a ______ in _____. I am writing to you to ask that you please oppose the Kids Online “Safety” Act. This act harms children, especially queer or abused children , and allows children to be indoctrinated into their parents’ worldviews.

Children, especially teenagers, deserve the freedom of the current internet. They deserve to listen to many different viewpoints, to hear the stories of many different people, to learn about many different experiences. They deserve to meet many different people and learn from them. They deserve to interact with many different forms of art expressing many different viewpoints. This allows them to form their own ideas and opinions about the world and become their own people. It broadens their horizons and makes them more open minded.

If parents are given control over what children learn about on the internet, then many parents will ensure that their children are not exposed to any views that contradict their own.

This will make it so that future generations can no longer learn more than and become better than older generations. The only thing making our society progress is younger generations learning more and becoming more accepting than older generations.

LGBT+ children under KOSA will often be stopped from accessing resources that help them learn that being LGBT+ is okay. Many children won’t be able to go against their parents’ homophobia and learn to love themselves. This will lead to many mental illnesses and suicides.

Also, abused children often go to the internet to access resources that teach them that what is happening to them is bad and they deserve better, and to access resources that help them escape. Their parents of course will not allow them to access these resources under KOSA.

Thank you for reading my letter and please take my concerns to heart.

Sincerely,

[thatrandomblogsays]

I’m so happy for them

[Image Description: Castiel from Supernatural is saying I love you, underneath is an image of Dean Winchester with the caption: “After four months of striking the WGA has a reached a tentative agreement & finalizing the contract. If all goes well writers will get to return to work with better pay and protections. They did it. Go unions”]

(Source)

[weabooii]

⛩️✨DAN DA DAN ✨🛸

zoom in below

[heph]

The tech guy in movies

[bunnie-the-idiot]

the kids online safety act passed the u.s. senate.

long story short (for anyone who hadn't heard of this before) the kids online safety act, aka kosa, is a bill that will censor online content and resources for lgbtq+ matters, reproductive healthcare, activism (INCLUDING PALESTINE AND LIKELY OTHER CRISES GOING ON LIKE IN CONGO OR SUDAN), mental health, etc. everywhere--its effects likely won't be contained to just america.

today, july 30th, 2024, the senate passed it 91-3. it has officially moved to the house of representatives.

is this a pretty massive setback? yes. do you have every right to be scared, sad, angry, or whatever else about this happening? absolutely. but should you give up hope completely? NO!

even though kosa passed the senate, the house is on break/august recess at the moment. we have around an entire month to get emails, calls, and faxes in to house reps, maybe more depending on when they decide to vote on it.

should it pass the house and get signed into law, we still have a whole 18 months before it actually goes into effect. this is plenty of time for digital rights orgs (e.g. fight for the future, the electronic frontier foundation) and other groups that oppose it to file a lawsuit against it. even if, worst-case scenario, it flies through the house immediately after the recess ends, we can still fight this up to march 2026.

so, yes, remember what's at stake here, but also remember that it's not over yet. we lost a battle, not the war.

below are some resources to learn more about kosa and how to contact your reps (first link) + a page that lets you directly contact progressive house reps, sign an open letter opposing the bill, and view others' testimonies against it (second link):

FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT.

[katrafiy]

now more than ever I think it's important for people to remember that puberty blockers *were* the compromise position.

if you start from a position that trans people should have equal rights in society, then it becomes obvious that all the faux concern about "irreversible changes" is utter bs, because puberty itself is irreversible, and these people want all trans people to be forced to go through the wrong one

the people calling for our healthcare to be banned don't give a single solitary fuck about the "irreversible changes" that they want every single trans person to be forcibly subjected to

[doctorsiren]

sock opera

[midnight-coffee94]

No single line has ever wrecked me as hard as this one from the Good Place and I think about it constantly

[novaneondream]

it’s our turn to make you smile

[chloesimaginationthings]

“Cassidy, stop doing the FNAF golden Freddy pose”

[linolinoing]

HYUNIBINI ♡ SKZ CODE EP. 61

[faunandfloraas]

[agarthanguide]

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[akanemnon]

So THAT'S where he is!

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)