#trans liberation tuesday

[kanagenwrites]

So. Tuesday sucked.

We've all had a chance to come down from the "what the fuck" of it all, and we're starting to see the usual circular firing squad. Lots of lib centrists are doing everything they can to throw trans people, minorities, and basically anyone who isn't a finance bro under the bus, as is (very tiresome) tradition after both victories and defeats in the Democratic Party. I will be 42 years old in a few months, so this is far from the first time I've seen it, and sadly, I'm sure it won't be the last. To the lib centrists and those carrying water for them: This never works. Please stop trying it. Trans issues were not a major motivator; I'll get into that below. Sit down, kids, it's time for Auntie Kana's Fireside Dialectics.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of my followers are significantly younger than me. (Imagine that, an audience that skews young on Tumblr.) A lot of you folks probably haven't been following politics for very long, and you've been able to participate in them for even less time than that. For some of you this is probably your first election as an adult, and it kinda feels like everything blew up in your face, doesn't it? I was about your age for 2000, when the election was nakedly stolen by George W. Bush, and not much older for 2004, when despite his disastrous presidency Bush the Younger rode a wave of 9/11-brained racism to the last popular vote victory the GOP had prior to (likely) this year. So I get it. I really do.

If you're living in the USA you have probably had a subpar education in politics and civics. This is largely by design - education is horrendously underfunded and there is a sustained attack on the ability of teachers to even discuss things like the Civil Rights Movement, the legacy of slavery in the United States, the genocide this country was founded on, and so on and so forth. Economic education isn't much better; you very likely got a short lecture on basic supply and demand and an argument-from-authority that "socialism doesn't work." All this combines to leave a lot of folks totally baffled as to how something like this election happens.

But it's pretty simple. It's just material conditions. That's it. What the media isn't telling you (because there's no profit in it, and the media is nothing but a clickbait engine when they aren't open propagandists) is that there has been a massive anti-incumbent wave of elections across the world. How massive? Japan's LDP, which has held power almost uninterrupted since the establishment of Japan's postwar democracy, managed to lose their recent election.

And why are material conditions so shitty? That's a complicated question, but a lot of it is the fact that we had a lengthy period of low inflation followed by a period of extremely high inflation due to the absolutely botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic. A bag of Doritos used to be 2.50, and now it's like 6 bucks. That's worse than all the inflation (and naked price-gouging, because there's a lot of that going on too) I experienced in my life prior to 2020, squeezed into the space of a year or two. This smacks everyone in the face every time they buy groceries, and while the government and the Federal Reserve were doing everything they could to manage inflation (and understand what a big deal it is for me, the anarcho-communist, to say that the US actually did an extremely fucking good job of doing it, because every other country on Earth had it worse than we did), they did fuck all to actually improve the material conditions people were experiencing. Wages were not keeping up with the cost of living, and price-gouging wasn't being dealt with.

Remember the 600 bucks Joe Biden still owes you? The American electorate sure the fuck does. Invisible backrooms liberal wonkery does not connect, regardless of whether it works or not, but going back on a promise? People remember that shit.

It's a rare incumbent that could win in an environment like this, especially when tied to a track record of doing exactly fucking nothing to actually help people from the perspective of the vast majority of the population. Kamala Harris was not that incumbent. She was a singularly uninspiring candidate who failed to connect with voters so thoroughly that she was on track to lose her home state in the 2020 Democratic primary. Nobody liked her (except a few very eager and very loud fans in the K-Hive), and speaking as someone who lives in California, I am not surprised she ate shit. She was a terrible choice for VP and a terrible choice of successor for Biden, but because Biden('s handlers) insisted on pretending he wasn't obviously declining before our very eyes, Harris, a singularly uninspiring candidate, had three months to build and run a campaign.

And it was still weirdly close.

Now, there's two possibilities: Either she actually ran an amazing campaign and it's incredible that it was even this close, or Trump is just so loathsome that even in a massively anti-incumbent environment he didn't bring anyone new to the table. Given that Trump is on-track to receive less votes this time than he did in 2020, and how many of those votes seem to have been cast for Trump and no one else down-ballot, I think it's more of the latter than the former. Trump brought the usual suspects, while Kamala successfully drove away voters that even Joe fucking Biden and Hillary fucking Clinton were able to bring home. Not on the left, not in minority demographics, but across the board. After all, if things are horrible and you're being promised that "nothing will fundamentally change," (literally an early-presidency quote from Joe Biden, whose agenda Kamala Harris 100% aligned herself with) and keeping in mind that the average American voter is not nearly so plugged into the minutiae and the day to day of politics (as evinced by the sudden peak in google searched for "Did Joe Biden drop out?" on Tuesday), why the fuck would you bother to vote?

Hopefully you have a better idea how we got here now. The question, of course, is where do we go from here? I will probably continue posting about this from time to time, especially if there's interest, but my advice is this:

We are still here. We will be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and so on. Plan accordingly.

Things will get fucked up. Things will always get fucked up. That is the nature of things no matter who is running the government. Plan accordingly.

Organize. Develop parallel structures of power and assistance, because the government is likely going to be even more useless to directly assist you than it already was. Our greatest strength is each other, and our ability to care for and help one another.

I have been here before. You will be here again. It always feels like it's the worst thing ever to happen. That never really goes away, but your ability to deal with it, to plan around it, to endure it, and to rise up again on the other side of it and say "No, fuck you" is entirely under your control and within your capabilities. And you will get better at it as you do it. And you are not doing it alone. None of us are.

Do not give up. Do not surrender. This isn't the end, or the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning: it just is.

Now go watch a video of a cat doing something cute, or read some smut, or whatever gives you joy. You can't take care of others unless you take care of yourself. That's General Order #1: Take care of yourself.

Solidarity, y'all.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michael Tomasky at The New Republic:

I’ve had a lot of conversations since Tuesday revolving around the question of why Donald Trump won. The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad that ran a jillion times. And so on. These conversations have usually proceeded along lines where people ask incredulously how a majority of voters could have believed this or that. Weren’t they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated rapist? Didn’t his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50 other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him? And couldn’t they see that Harris, whatever her shortcomings, was a fundamentally smart, honest, well-meaning person who would show basic respect for the Constitution and wouldn’t do anything weird as president?

The answer is obviously no—not enough people were able to see any of those things. At which point people throw up their hands and say, “I give up.” But this line of analysis requires that we ask one more question. And it’s the crucial one: Why didn’t a majority of voters see these things? And understanding the answer to that question is how we start to dig out of this tragic mess.

The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win. Let me say that again, in case it got lost: Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country. Not The New York Times. Not The Washington Post (which bent over backwards to exert no influence when Jeff Bezos pulled the paper’s Harris endorsement). Not CBS, NBC, and ABC. The agenda is set by all the outlets I listed in the above paragraph. Even the mighty New York Times follows in its wake, aping the tone they set disturbingly often. If you read me regularly, you know that I’ve written this before, but I’m going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who are the only people in the world who have the power to do something about this state of affairs—take some action.

[...]

This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter. And that is why Donald Trump won. Indeed, the right-wing media is why he exists in our political lives in the first place. Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment. Imagine Trump coming down that escalator in 2015 with no right-wing media; no Fox News; an agenda still set, and mores still established, by staid old CBS News, the House of Murrow, and The New York Times.

That atmosphere would have denied an outrageous figure like Trump the oxygen he needed to survive and flourish. He just would not have been taken seriously at all. In that world, ruled by a traditional mainstream media, Trump would have been seen by Republicans as a liability, and they would have done what they failed to do in real life—banded together to marginalize him. But the existence of Fox changed everything. Fox hosted the early debates, which Trump won not with intelligence, but outrageousness. He tapped into the grievance culture Fox had nursed among conservatives for years. He had (most of the time) Rupert Murdoch’s personal blessing. In 2015-16, Fox made Trump possible. [...]

The fake story about Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio eating cats and dogs, for example, started with a Facebook post citing second- and third-hand sources, Gertz told me; it then “circulated on X and was picked up by all the major right-wing influencers.” Only then did Vance, a very online dude, notice it and decide to run with it. And then Trump said it himself at the debate. But it started in the right-wing media. Likewise with the post-debate ABC “whistleblower” claims, which Gertz wrote about at the time. This was the story that ABC, which hosted the only presidential debate this election, fed Team Harris the questions in advance. This started, Gertz wrote, as a “wildly flimsy internet rumor launched by a random pro-Trump X poster.” Soon enough, the right-wing media was all over it.

Maybe that one didn’t make a huge difference (although who knows?), but this one, I believe, absolutely did: the idea that Harris and Joe Biden swiped emergency aid away from the victims of Hurricane Helene (in mostly Southern, red states) and gave it all to undocumented migrants. It did not start with Trump or his campaign or Vance or the Republican National Committee or Lindsey Graham. It started on Fox. Only then did the others pick it up. And it was key, since this was a moment when Harris’s momentum in the polling averages began to flag.

[...]

To much of America, by the way, this is not understood as one side’s view of things. It’s simply “the news.” This is what people—white people, chiefly—watch in about two-thirds of the country. I trust that you’ve seen in your travels, as I have in mine, that in red or even some purple parts of the country, when you walk into a hotel lobby or a hospital waiting room or even a bar, where the TVs ought to be offering us some peace and just showing ESPN, at least one television is tuned to Fox. That’s reach, and that’s power. And then people get in their cars to drive home and listen to an iHeart, right-wing talk radio station. And then they get home and watch their local news and it’s owned by Sinclair, and it, too, has a clear right-wing slant. And then they pick up their local paper, if it still exists, and the oped page features Cal Thomas and Ben Shapiro. Liberals, rich and otherwise, live in a bubble where they never see this stuff. I would beg them to see it. Watch some Fox. Listen to some Christian radio. Experience the news that millions of Americans are getting on a daily basis. You’ll pretty quickly come to understand what I’m saying here.

[...] The reason? The right-wing media. And it’s only growing and growing. And I haven’t even gotten to social media and Tik Tok and the other platforms from which far more people are getting their news these days. The right is way ahead on those fronts too. Liberals must wake up and understand this and do something about it before it’s too late, which it almost is.

Michael Tomasky of TNR explains it perfectly: Donald Trump won due to the right-wing media apparatus feeding lies to the voters.

[mariacallous]

A well-known Georgian transgender model has been murdered, local officials said, a day after the government passed legislation that will impose sweeping curbs on LGBTQ+ rights in the country.

Georgia’s interior ministry said Kesaria Abramidze, 37, was believed to have been stabbed to death in her apartment in suburban Tbilisi on Wednesday.

Georgian media later reported that a man had been arrested in connection with the crime.

Abramidze was one of the country’s first openly trans public figures. Her death follows controversial legislation on “family values and the protection of minors” that will allow officials to outlaw Pride events and censor films and books.

The law, which was approved by the Georgian parliament on Tuesday in its third and final reading, includes bans on same-sex marriages and gender-affirming treatments. It is expected to be another point of contention between Georgia and the EU as the country seeks to join the bloc.

Critics argue that the bill, initially introduced by the ruling Georgian Dream party in the summer, mirrors laws enacted in neighbouring Russia, where authorities have implemented a series of repressive anti-LGBTQ+ measures over the past decade.

Although the motive behind Abramidze’s murder remains unclear, her death was swiftly cast by Georgian civil society as part of a state campaign against minorities in the country.

Under the Georgian Dream party, which has taken an increasingly anti-liberal stance, the country has seen a rise in violence against LGBTQ+ people.

Last year, hundreds of opponents of gay rights stormed an LGBTQ+ festival in Tbilisi, forcing the event to be cancelled. This year, tens of thousands of people marched in the capital to promote “traditional family values” at an event attended by the ruling party amd the deeply conservative and influential Orthodox church.

“There is a direct correlation between the use of hate speech in politics and hate crimes,” the Social Justice Center, a Tbilisi-based human rights group, said in its statement reacting to the murder.

“It has been almost a year that the Georgian Dream government has been aggressively using homo/bi/transphobic language and cultivating it with mass propaganda means,” it added.

On Wednesday, Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, called on the Georgian government to withdraw the “family values” law, warning it would harm Georgia’s chances of joining the bloc. The legislation would “increase discrimination & stigmatisation”, he said on X.

After Abramidze’s death, Michael Roth, the Social Democratic party chair of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee in Germany, echoed that call. “Those who sow hatred will reap violence. Kesaria Abramidze was killed just one day after the Georgian parliament passed the anti-LGBTI law,” Roth wrote on X.

The introduction of the law comes just five weeks before parliamentary elections that many see as a litmus test of whether Georgia, once one of the most pro-western former Soviet states, will now drift towards Russia.

The country’s pro-western president, Salome Zourabichvili, whose functions are mostly ceremonial, is expected to veto the law before it comes into effect. However, Georgian Dream and its allies have enough seats in parliament to override her veto.

Earlier this year, the Georgian Dream also pushed through the divisive “foreign influence” law, which western critics argue is authoritarian and Russian-inspired, and has derailed the country’s EU aspirations.

Meanwhile, tributes have started to pour in for Abramidze, who represented Georgia at Miss Trans Star International in 2018 and had more than 500,000 followers on Instagram.

“Kesaria was iconic! Provocative, wise, incredibly brave! A trailblazer for Georgia’s trans rights,” Maia Otarashvili, a Georgian political scientist, wrote on X.

Zourabichvili said the murder should be a “wake-up call” for Georgian society.

“A terrible murder! The death of this beautiful young woman … should not be in vain!” the president wrote on Facebook.

[thebreakfastgenie]

https://www.tumblr.com/thebreakfastgenie/766051466520690688/thats-exactly-what-im-hoping-for-too-im-voting

I think a deep flaw in the online left is that they're basically comparing the current far left with a far right wing that's made every effort to entrench themselves for decades by comparison.

They keep mentally thinking that both sides are equal in power, and thus the thing that will clearly help them succeed is the moral purity of their cause.

Except that's not the case at all. Because the reality is that the far right has done far more work to make their hate normalized than the far left has ever done for their beliefs and entrench themselves into actual positions of power, both due to a combination of cruelty being easier, and simply doing far more work by comparison.

The far right has spent years sticking their ilk amongst the populace, from the highest ranking positions to the lowliest high ranking positions possible in order to indoctrinate as many people as possible to their cause.

The far left by contrast has done diddly squat. They're the arrogant punk kid who waltzes in expecting to kick ass and take names and be lauded and praised for it simply because of who they are, while ignoring that either everyone is a neutral bystander who doesn't like grandstanders with more bark than bite, or an ally of the guy they're coming in to sock the face of.

And that's bitten them in the ass time and time again, because while the big evil guy is unpopular, he's also entrenched and just needs to win once to smack the upstart down.

But unlike actual main characters, the far left is so convinced of their righteous superiority that rather than wising up and building a real base of power and catching the far right off guard for a knockout blow, they just keep on throwing themselves over and over again with the same idea expecting different results.

Yeah... I think there's a combination of not understanding how asymmetrical it is and an attitude of "it's not fair!" Like, no it's not, so it goes though. We've watched the far right become so deeply entrenched they've taken over the mainstream conservative party. The right played the long game on the courts and the left was complacent about that for way too long. It's also a huge thing in local elections. The right has paid way more attention to school boards and other positions like sheriff that are elected in many places, even up to state legislatures. Far right candidates winning these elections really helped entrench the far right in addition to the material effects they've had on people's lives.

I think part of the problem is just that electorate is a lot more conservative than the left is willing to admit. There isn't a hidden groundswell of support for the far left. You have to do the work the hard way and a lot of leftists aren't willing to. You know that Contrapoints quote about wanting to "endlessly critique power?" She was right on with that. I think there are elements within the left that romanticize the perpetual struggle. One might say

He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl And he's always at home with his back to the wall And he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost And he struggles and bleeds as he hangs on his cross

On the other hand, a lot of voters like the far right and want them to win. They may not like them for rational policy reasons, because a lot of voters don't vote for those reasons (I know, it's maddening, but so it goes) but they like them.

One of the reasons I tend to align myself with liberals rather than leftists is liberals get stuff done. I've seen tangible progress from liberals within my lifetime. There are so many structural advantages favoring the right that it's a huge fight to keep them out of power. We can turn the tide but we have to do the work.

I don't know how much sense I made I'm a little groggy.

[aaknopf]

Martyr!, the poet Kaveh Akbar’s propulsive debut novel, tells the tale of Cyrus Shams, the son of a lost mother (victim of a 1988 U. S. Naval snafu in the Persian Gulf that killed 290 people on a commercial airliner) and the long-suffering father who emigrated to Fort Wayne, IN with his baby boy. We meet Cyrus as a student of poetry at Keady University and a reformed addict. In this excerpt, he’s at the local open mic with his friends; we also share one of the poems from Cyrus’s bookofmartyrs.docx, helpfully supplied by Akbar, the poet behind the fictional poet.

. .

The Naples Tuesday night open mic had become a mainstay of Cyrus and Zee’s friendship. It was a small affair, not much to distinguish it from the myriad other open mics happening elsewhere in the country—except this was their open mic, their organic community of beautiful weirdos—old hippies singing Pete Seeger, trans kids rapping about liberation, passionate spoken-word performances by nurses and teenagers and teachers and cooks. As with any campus open mic, there was the occasional frat dude coming to play sets of smirky acoustic rap covers and overearnest breakup narratives. But even they were welcome, and mostly it felt like a safe little oasis of amongness in the relative desert of their Indiana college town, a healthy way to spend the time they were no longer using to get drunk or high.   Naturally, Naples didn’t have its own sound equipment, so Zee would usually show up fifteen minutes early with his beat-up Yamaha PA to set up for Sad James, who hosted every week. Sad James was called this to distinguish him from DJ James, a guy who cycled nightly through the campus bars. DJ James was not a particularly interesting artist, but he was well-known enough in the campus community to warrant Sad James’s nominative prefix, which began as a joke but somehow stuck, and to which Sad James had grown accustomed with good humor, even occasionally doing small shows under the name. Sad James was a quiet white guy, long blond hair framing his lightly stubbled face, who played intensely solemn electronic songs, punctuated by sparse circuit-bent blips and bloops, and over time at Keady, he had become one of Zee and Cyrus’s most resilient and trusted friends.   On this night, Cyrus had read a poem early, an older experimental piece from a series where he’d been assigning words to each digit 0–9, then using an Excel document to generate a lyric out of those words as the digits appeared in the Fibonacci sequence: “lips sweat teeth lips spread teeth lips drip deep deep sweat skin,” etc. It was bad, but he loved reading them out loud, the rhythms and repeti­tions and weird little riffs that emerged. Sad James did an older piece where the lyrics “burning with the human stain / she dries up, dust in the rain” were repeated and modulated over molten beeps from an old circuit-bent Game Boy. Zee—a drummer in his free time who idolized J Dilla and John Bonham and Max Roach and Zach Hill in equal measure—hadn’t brought anything of his own to perform that evening, but did have a little bongo to help accompany any acoustic acts who wanted it.   On the patio listening to Cyrus talk about his new project, Zee said, “I could see it being a bunch of different poems in the voices of all your different historical martyr obsessions?” Then to Sad James, Zee added, “Cyrus has been plastering our apartment with these big black-and-white printouts of all their terrifying faces. Bobby Sands in our kitchen, Joan of Arc in our hallway.”   Sad James made his eyes get big.   “I just like having them present,” Cyrus said, slumping into his chair. He didn’t add that he’d been reading about them in the library, his mystic martyrs, that he’d taped a great grid of their grayscale printed faces above his bed, half believing it would work like those tapes that promised to teach you Spanish while you slept, that some­how their lived wisdoms would pass into him as he dreamt. Among the Tank Man, Bobby Sands, Falconetti as Joan of Arc, Cyrus had a picture of his parents’ wedding day. His mother, seated in a sleeved white dress, smiling tightly at the camera while his father, in a tacky gray tux, sat grinning next to her holding her hand. Above their heads, a group of attendees held an ornate white sheet. It was the only picture of his mother he had. Next to his mother, his father beamed, bright in a way that made it seem he was radiating the light himself.   Zee went on: “So you could write a poem where Joan of Arc is like, ‘Wow, this fire is so hot’ or whatever. And then a poem where Hussain is like, ‘Wow, sucks that I wouldn’t kneel.’ You know what I mean?”   Cyrus laughed.   “I tried some of that! But see, that’s where it gets corny. What could I possibly say about the martyrdom of Hussain or Joan of Arc or whoever that hasn’t already been said? Or that’s worth saying?”   Sad James asked who Hussain was and Zee quickly explained the trial in the desert, Hussain’s refusing to kneel and being killed for it.   “You know, Hussain’s head is supposedly still buried in Cairo?” Zee said, smiling. “Cairo, which is in which country again?”   Cyrus rolled his eyes at his friend, who was, as Cyrus liked to remind him when he got too greatest-ancient-civilization-on-earth about things, only half Egyptian.   “Damn,” Sad James said. “I would’ve just kneeled and crossed my fingers behind my back. Who am I trying to impress? Later I could call take-backsies. I’d just say I tripped and landed on my knees or something.”   The three friends laughed. Justine, an open mic regular whose Blonde on Blonde–era pea-coat-and-harmonica-rack Bob Dylan act was a mainstay of the open mic, came outside to ask Zee for a cigarette. He obliged her with an American Spirit Yellow, which she lit around the corner as she began speaking into her cell phone.   In moments like these Cyrus still sometimes felt like asking to bum one too—he’d been a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker before he got sober, and continued his habit even after he’d kicked everything else. “Quit things in the order they’re killing you,” his sponsor, Gabe, told him once. After a year clean he turned his attention to cigarettes, which he finally managed to kick completely by tapering: from one and a half packs a day to a pack to half a pack to five cigarettes and so on until he was just smoking a single cigarette every few days and then, none at all. He could probably get away with bumming the occasional cigarette now and again, but in his mind he was saving that for something momentous: his final moments lying in the grass dying from a gunshot wound, or walking in slow motion away from a burning building.   “So what are you thinking then? A novel? Or like . . . a poetic mar­tyr field guide?” asked Zee.   “I’m really not sure yet. But my whole life I’ve thought about my mom on that flight, how meaningless her death was. Truly literally like, meaningless. Without meaning. The difference between 290 dead and 289. It’s actuarial. Not even tragic, you know? So was she a martyr? There has to be a definition of the word that can accom­modate her. That’s what I’m after.”

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.

Browse Kaveh Akbar's poetry collections and follow Kaveh on Instagram @kavehakbar.kavehakbar.

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[usaigi]

Is Matt Murdock Homophobic?

Short answer: Doubt it.

Long answer: I seriously doubt, just because he’s Catholic/was raised in a highly Catholic environment (a Catholic orphanage) doesn’t mean he’s homophobic. Being Catholic does not automatically equal being homophobic. 

And if we’re being completely honest, I won’t consider Matt to be “extremely” Catholic in the way the fandom seems to think about him. Matt attending mass on Sunday, going to confession, and having a relationship with his priest just makes him a churchgoer. Which I guess makes him more devote than a lot of other Catholics but the way some of the fandom talk about him makes it seems like he’s having a crisis of faith every other Tuesday. 

I've seen this topic come up in fanfiction and in fandom in general so I’d like to offer a liberal queer Catholic perspective on being queer. 

Is being gay a sin in Catholicism?

Having same-sex attraction is not a sin in Catholicism. However, having sex outside of marriage is a sin. And since the church only recognizes heterosexual marriages, it essentially does make being gay a sin. The whole “being gay isn’t a sin but if you act upon it is” which is... ugh.

We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are and for the strength that each of us fights for our dignity. Being homosexual is not a crime. It is not a crime. 'Yes, but it is a sin.' Fine, but first let us distinguish between a sin and a crime. It is not the first time that I speak of homosexuality and of homosexual persons. And I wanted to clarify that it is not a crime, in order to stress that criminalization is neither good nor just. When I said it is a sin, I was simply referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin. Of course, one must also consider the circumstances, which may decrease or eliminate fault. As you can see, I was repeating something in general. I should have said, 'It is a sin, as is any sexual act outside of marriage.' This is to speak of 'the matter' of sin, but we know well that Catholic morality not only takes into consideration the matter, but also evaluates freedom and intention; and this, for every kind of sin. And I would tell whoever wants to criminalize homosexuality that they are wrong. - Pope Francis 2023

HOWEVER: We have not seen Matt Murdock having religious objections/feel guilty for having premarital sex. Birth control is also not accepted in Catholicism but I seriously doubt Matt’s not wrapping it. I’m sure I don’t need to cite one of the million jokes about him being a manwhore, we all know it. Do we really think Matt would be such a hypocrite to think someone is a sinner for being LGBT when he himself has had how many girlfriends? Not to mention he was also born and raised in New York City and his need for justice is one of his primary character traits. Do you really think Matt learned about the Stonewall Riot(his own city’s history), the AIDs epidemic, the general mistreatment and discrimination of LGBT people and would really support it? BFFR.

Matt Murdock is a lot of things, mainly a self-loathing idiot in desperate need a therapy, but he’s not a bigot. 

I’m going to link this post by the lovely @ceterisparibus116 about Matt’s "religious guilt" and what I think is fandom’s general misunderstanding of Matt’s Catholic guilt. 

What about internalized homophobia?

In my own fics I’ve written Matt as bi/pan (hooking up with Moon Knight) (also that one Ziwe meme) and as a trans guy who pre-transition thought he was a lesbian/sapphic. (If you read it I’ll love you forever). Mattfoggy is the biggest ship in the fandom so it's only normal to have this discussion.

Sure, maybe Matt wouldn’t judge other people for being gay and having sex outside of Catholic-recognized marriage but would he judged himself? How can Matt still consider himself Catholic and queer? 

A misconception I think a lot of people have about Catholicism is that we must all follow the church’s teaching and that everything the Pope says is infallible. Which is silly and simply not true. Pope Benedict XVI once stated that: "The Pope is not an oracle; he is infallible in very rare situations, as we know." Pope John XXIII also once said: "I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible." 

First of all, the church is not a monolith institution. Second of all, not all Catholic teaching is infallible, “no church teaching is automatically free from error, because the church is composed of human beings. God alone is a priori free from error in detail and in every case.” (Infallible? An Inquiry by Hans Küng). Very few things are infallible statement. The Immaculate Conception of Mary and the Assumption of Mary are infallible statements. But as far as I know, “being gay is a sin” is not. 

Conscience, actually, takes priority over church teaching. Pope Francis said “that priests must inform Catholic consciences ‘but not replace them.’ And he stressed the distinction between one’s conscience—where God reveals himself—and one’s ego that thinks it can do as it pleases.” (x)

In extolling conscience the Catechism quotes from another Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes. It states: "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. “For a man has in his heart a law inscribed by God . . . His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary,” the document goes on, “There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.” In summary, it is possible for a good Catholic in good faith to act contrary to the teachings of the church. - Patsy McGarry

If Matt prayed, asked for guidance and his conscience said that being (trans, gay, bi, however you headcanon him) is not sinful, he can, in good faith, oppose the church. And yes, he’d be welcomed to take the Eucharist. Eucharist is not a reward that only the most faithful free-on-sin living saints. It’s a source of healing and for those striving to live in the Gospel.  

In terms of the church, as I said, it’s not a monolith and people can and do disagree in current teaching. Here’s Cardinal McElroy calling for the ‘radical inclusion’ of LGBT, women and others in the Catholic Church. Here’s a letter by 6,000 nuns standing in solidarity with Trans community.

This is just my headcanon, but I don’t think Father Lantom is homophobic. I’d like to think he’s one of the priest calling for reform and acceptance of LGBT people. I also like to think Sister Maggie was one of the nuns that signed that letter. If Matt came to him asking for support, I honestly think Father Lantom would give him that.  

Would everyone in his community accept him? No, probably not and that’s unfortunate. But there are those in the community don’t accept the young single mom or the recovering alcoholic. Religious gatekeeping is a problem and I don’t want to pretend it isn’t, but it’s not the only truth. I dislike the idea that being queer and Catholic are mutually exclusive. Or that Matt would leave his religion for being queer. To be honest, as a queer Catholic I find it pretty disrespectful. I would love to read more fics where Matt realize he’s queer and struggles with it but it’s so incredibly annoying when the fic concludes with Matt leaving his faith. We’re Catholic for God not for a church. There are other queer Catholic Matt could hypothetically find community with. 

And I get it, a lot of people are coming from a place of religious trauma and are writing fanfic to express it. I'm sorry for anyone who was hurt by the church, religion or toxic family. The church has and continues to do a lot of harm, both on the individual and global level. If anyone wants a rant about colonization of Latin America, I’m your girl. I just dislike this black-and-white mindset that Matt is either Catholic or gay.  

If anyone has questions, I can try to answer. I’m not a theology expert, I’m just a virgo and a fanfic writer. 

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Tags to help navigate this blog

While I invite all questions, I unfortunately don't have the time or spoons to answer every one. So I encourage (though don't require!) you to visit my FAQ before sending your ask.

Wandering through my most-used tags may also prove helpful! So here's a list.

POST CONTENTS:

Queer survival and thriving

On God

On Scipture

On Creation, Humanity, Salvation/Liberation

Communication and Relationships

Other Faith-Related Things

Various recs (music, podcasts, resources, etc.)

Miscellaneous

Queer Survival & Thriving

#affirmation – posts that affirm and support queer Christians

#validation – posts that show queer identities as valid

#encouragement

#good fruit

#in the closet - encouragement and advice when closeted

#coming out

#sex tag

#church hurt – stories of pain caused by the church and how to cope with such hurt

#leaving or finding a church – how to cope with leaving a church and how to find a new one

On God

#the nature of god

#Us and God

#God’s Love

#God of the oppressed

#God beyond gender

#the Body of Christ

#the human Jesus

#trans Jesus

#autistic Jesus

On Scripture

#Bible tag

#reading and studying the Bible

#bible study

#biblical women

On Creation, Humanity, & Salvation/Liberation

#Liberation Theology

#Black Theology

#Trans Theology

#Queer Theology

#Disability Theology

#asexuality and #aromanticism and #polyamory and #trans stuff and #trans women and #intersex and #bisexuality and #sapphic and #mlm

#Creation

#faith and science

#kingdom come – discussions on Heaven and Hell; see also #heaven and #hell

#fear of hell

#Salvation

Communication & Relationships

#dialogue tag – tips for engaging with conservatives / who otherwise don't share your beliefs

#rebuttals – tag full of responses to arguments commonly used by some Christians against LGBTA+ folks

#solidarity

#community

#family tag and #parent tag

#rejection

#racism and #white supremacy

#antisemitism and #supersessionism and #pharisees

#testimony tuesday and #storytelling saturday - tags full of stories sent in by mostly queer Christians

Other Faith-related Things

#devotional

#prayer tag

#interfaith

#other faiths tag

#new to christianity tag

#Saints tag – Saints who were queer themselves or with whom queer folks can strongly identify! 

#Catholic tag

#queer and catholic tag

#Mary tag (x) 

Various Recs

#recs

#resources

#podcasts

#books

Miscellaneous

#quote tag

#art tag

#chatting tag

#essays — posts where I wrote even more than normal lol. Usually well cited too

#ocd tag – coping with scrupulosity and support from Christians with OCD

[jothb]

The reasoning for cisheterosexual patriarchal violence has nothing to do with upholding a millenia old tradition of the oldest form of class oppression, nor with nurturing the far right beliefs at the core of liberal democracy for material gain of the ruling bourgeois class It's actually because trans women post about fat tgirl puppy tuesday on tumblr

[kafus]

i think part of my isolation as a woman and a lesbian is my childhood sexual trauma having a severe effect on my queer experience and just. well. life experience in general. problem is any time i see any other person who is openly a woman and sexually traumatized online they either weaponize this to be the “i hate men” type or god forbid a TERF, both things i absolutely do not agree with or even remotely align myself with, or they’re incredibly sex repulsed and take that out on other people by basically being a christian purist but with a “progressive” coat of paint, which despite being incredibly sex repulsed myself i also do not agree with whatsoever. obviously i am not alone in my experiences, i think i’ve just gotten unlucky in meeting only the worst kinds of people. it doesn’t help that now i’m afraid of other women and feel judged and broken in their presence. i don’t understand why the most seen and heard i’ve ever felt in my queer experience is by trans men even though every time i consider it, i come to the conclusion i am not a man.

it’s so tiring dude. i had a conversation with a lesbian who understood me somewhat one (1) time, a childhood friend who i can’t talk to often anymore but we were catching up, and it actually changed my life and convinced me to start using he/him in addition to she/it without taking away from my identity as a woman/lesbian and convinced me to ask the person i liked out. and i am so thankful for that but like. to them it was nothing. to them that conversation was a normal tuesday. they are so liberated and comfortable in their identity. but to me that one conversation that was nothing big to them has eaten at me for months and changed my life. there is something deeply wrong and repressed about me and i don’t know how to get out

[mayra-quijotescx]

I gave zero days' notice and peaced the fuck out from employment with them exactly three years ago today but if I ever stop giving HPL shit, either they got completely overhauled* or I died. So let's get into it!

I've been going downtown at least once a week for the past month to help sling water bottles and fill plates with our local FNB, who you may know from 1. refusing to let people suffer the slow and painful social death penalty of starvation for being unhoused and 2. having our walking bruised ego of a mayor declare war on them for same. The group took their 56th ticket last night. For more info, check out this excellent Texas Observer article.

And every time I went I noticed that Central had fancied itself up; new bike racks, orderly clusters of tables and chairs, big fuckoff flatscreen displaying Library Updates...

...and I also noticed that it looked mighty closed for 7PM on a Wednesday.

So I got nosy and I pulled up the hours tonight. And uh.

You could say they've changed.

Here let me just

OLD SCHEDULE (barring natural disasters... it did happen) Monday thru Thursday: 9AM to 8PM Friday: 9AM to 5PM Saturday: 10AM to 5PM Sunday: 1PM to 5PM

it was also an emergency cooling center back then and isn't now but ohhhhh we won't get into that because I'll never shut up

NEW SCHEDULE Tuesday thru Thursday: 9AM to 6PM Friday: 9AM to 5PM Saturday: 10AM to 5PM Sunday and Monday: CLOSED

like

excuse me

Now I understand that the system has been hemorrhaging workers for years due to mismanagement by a business-class administration creating a work environment so toxic it could give the gnarliest sludge in the port imposter syndrome, so this could be a literal inability to retain enough staff to keep the main branch open, but admin has also been shamelessly vocal for years about how much they despise the local community (which is the downtown unhoused community) and wish they could be more choosy about who they serve as a (begrudgingly) public service, so this is equally likely to be a policy choice to further cut off who I cannot stress enough is their main patron base at that location and who will continue to be, barring outright revolution, whether the precious petty bourgeoisie who made the baffling choice to all take public service positions like it or not.

Anyway, they can quit bellyaching about wanting more families at their ~public asset~ (snarl chomp growl biting them biting them biting them) because even with the original hours, my former coworkers and I puzzled over how to get even families willing to pay for parking to brave the freeways and traffic to get to us before closing. At 8PM. Now? Virtually the only way someone with kids is getting there before the gates get slammed shut is if they're sleeping outside. And those aren't the families the gossamer-skinned Apple-exec LARPers in admin want to serve. So they can truly shut the fuck up about Making Central Family-Friendly(TM).

And FNB doesn't start distributing until a solid hour and a half at most after closing time, assuming the library was even open that day to begin with, so they can shut the fuck up about it ~making them look bad~ too. Just my $0.02, adjusted for inflation.

-

*Harris County Public Library workers, if you're reading this and willing/able/planning to launch a hostile takeover of the HPL system, I will support you in every possible capacity, up to and including giving my life in the line of duty. Call me. My one condition is that I want to plant a giant trans flag in the middle of the Central Plaza when we finally liberate it from the tyrants. And I want the director to watch.

[a-captions-blog]

[Image descriptions: 1. Screenshot from The Independent of a headline that reads, ‘Trans women to be banned from female NHS wards, as Steve Barclay insists “Tories know what a woman is.”’ The sub-heading reads, ‘Health secretary vows to restore “common sense” to NHS despite no evidence of complaints about trans people.’ The article is by Archie Mitchell.

2. Text: ‘But there is no evidence of complaints about trans people in the NHS. And an investigation by the TransLucent website, which submitted freedom of information requests to 102 NHS Foundation Trusts, found no women had complained about sharing a ward with a trans woman.

3. A headline that reads, ‘The UK government will force schools to out trans pupils to their parents.’ A photo shows people at a pride parade, with a person at the front holding a sign that says, ‘Tras Liberation Now!’ The photo caption says, ‘Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images.’ Text reads, ‘Alongside a raft of other discriminatory measures, this presents the Tories’ most significant attack on the rights of trans young people yet.

4. Text: ‘UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has shared his anti-trans views while speaking at the Conservative Party Conference. The Conservative party leader told the predominantly right-wing crowd on Wednesday (4 October) that the British public are being “bullied” into believing that “people can be any sex they want to be.”

‘“A man is a man, and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense,” he said to a round of applause from Tory MPs, conservative members, and others in the audience.’

3. Tags that read: #the thing is when it’s in the us that’s all everybody is talking about #I kid you not the french media may have mentioned it like once and then forgot about it #and even if I haven’t been online much lately. if it wasn’t for you talknig about it I still wouldn’t know exactly what is happening #trans people in the uk deserve more awareness this is legit terrifying please wake up everyone #because it’s starts like this and then it’s only a matter of time before it gets worse. pretty much everywhere. #which is exactly why we need to speak up right now #important

4-9. Screenshots of an article that read:

4. [Heading] The UK government’s guidance for schools on supporting trans pupils has finally been published, and uses combative language and dog-whistles to describe trans experiences.

On Tuesday (19 December) the Conservative government released its long-delayed guidance for schools on how to support trans, non-binary and gender fluid pupils.

The non-statutory guidance aims to provide information to teachers and school staff on how to approach a range of issues related to trans youngsters in educational settings, such as pupils socially transitioning, changing names and pronouns, access to single-sex spaces, admissions to single-sex schools and sport.

The Department for Education says the guidance has been developed after working closely with the Equality Hub and utilises expert clinical view and interim conclusions from the Cass Review, as well as taking a “parent first approach”.

5. The guidance uses combative language to describe trans lives and experiences. Within the first two paragraphs of the foreword the phrase “gender identity ideology” appears before later stating gender is a “contested belief”.

“In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in the number of children questioning the way they feel about being a boy or a girl, including their physical attributes of sex and the related ways in which they fit into society,” the guidance states.

“This has been linked to gender identity ideology, the belief that a person can have a ‘gender’, whether male (or ‘man’), female (or ‘woman’), or ‘other’, that is different to their biological sex.

“This is a contested belief. Many people believe this concept is one that reinforces stereotypes and social norms relating to sex.”

Further on in the guidance, the guidance also outlines when the school community is informed that a child is socially transitioning it must be done “without implying contested views around gender identity are fact”.

“Other pupils, parents and teachers may hold protected religious or other beliefs that conflict with the decision that the school or college has made, these are legitimate views that must be respected,” it reads.

6. [Heading] Teachers do not have to use chosen pronouns

Under the guidance teachers and school staff can “decline” a request by a trans pupil to use the pronouns they identify with.

It outlines that schools should only “agree to a change of pronouns if they are confident that the benefit to the individual child outweighs the impact on the school community”. However, the government says it expects there will be “very few occasions in which a school or college will be able to agree to a change of pronouns”.

Alongside this, the guidance explicitly states primary school aged children “should not have different pronouns to their sex-based pronouns used about them”.

7. As previously mentioned, there were deep concerns prior to the guidance’s publication that social transitioning in schools would be blocked outright, which could have a negative impact on the mental health and wellbeing of trans kids. This is not the case as laid out by the guidance, with the government instead stating that any decisions schools take in terms of pupil’s requests must be “never be taken in haste or without the involvement of parents”.

It reads: “Where a child requests action from a school or college in relation to any degree of social transition, schools and colleges should engage parents as a matter of priority, and encourage the child to speak to their parents, other than in the exceptionally rare circumstances where involving parents would constitute a significant risk of harm to the child.”

Further on, it outlines that schools should not “proactively initiate action” towards social transition. Any action that is taken should only be considered after it has been “explicitly requested by the child” and a number of steps carried out, such as “engaging with parents”.

8. [Heading] Single-sex spaces not included in social transitioning

The most heavily scrutinised part of the guidance and the debates around it prior to release, have come down to single-sex spaces.

The guidance outlines that responding to a pupil’s request to social transition does not include access to such spaces, such as toilets, showers and changing rooms.

“As a default, all children should use the toilets, showers and changing facilities designated for their biological sex unless it will cause distress for them to do so. In these instances, schools and colleges should seek to find alternative arrangements, while continuing to ensure spaces are single-sex,” the guidance reads.

This “alternative” is suggested to be a toilet facility that can be “secured from the inside and for use by one child at a time, including for hand washing” or a changing room that can also be locked from the inside and used by a single pupil.

9. Minister for women and equalities, Kemi Badenoch said: “This guidance is intended to give teachers and school leaders greater confidence when dealing with an issue that has been hijacked by activists misrepresenting the law.

“It makes clear that schools do not have to accept a child’s request to socially transition, and that teachers or pupils should not be pressured into using different pronouns.

“We are also clear how vital it is that parents are informed and involved in the decisions that impact their children’s lives.” \End transcriptions]

guys why the fuck aren't we talking about what's happening in the uk right now

nobody outside the uk is talking about this. why is nobody talking about it

[lunarsilkscreen]

Trans Periods

Ok. We're all gonna take this seriously and not joke about hemorrhoids and Magical Thinking or my own slow decent into mental unwellness.

Dammit; it's too late, isn't it?

Medline Plus - Menstruation

I'm reading this page on PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome) I'm starting to think my old primary care doctor did a reverse sexism in me. Because most of these symptoms sound exactly the same as my Arthritis symptoms...

Period Symptoms;

Abdominal or pelvic cramping pain, Lower back pain, Bloating and sore breasts, Food cravings, Headache and Fatigue, Mood Swings and irritability.

PMS

Physical symptoms may include: Breast swelling and tenderness, Acne, Bloating and weight gain, Headache, Joint pain Backache, Constipation or diarrhea, Food cravings

Emotional symptoms may include: Irritability, Mood swings, Crying spells, Depression, Anxiety, Sleeping too much or too little, Trouble with concentration and memory, Less interest in sex

This describes like ... My entire life... Wait... Can Men even get Periods? Or is it like ... A Uterus thing?

Irritable Male Syndrome (pubmed)

All the symptoms match up... Yup; not just a Uterus thing... Well I mean ... Well shit...

Hemorrhoids can be a symptom of PMS

Ok, but .. ok, but... Trans Women have purposefully lowered the Testosterone and Androgens and increases their Estrogen. So... Trans Women must be immune right?

Why is it that my [redacted] bleeds in the first Tuesday of every month?

Whatever [heckle] you're gonna put it in the comments... It's not that. But thanks for the compliment... I think?

Ok, so wait. Ok.

IMS can be caused by Low-T;

PMS can be caused by Low-E;

So how do I tie this to my self-diagnosed AutoGynePhyilia and my Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Either I've had low-T my entire life; OR Low-E... Which is more plausible?

As for my [REDACTED] I've done extensive research on [REDACTED] seepage...

For now; every first Tuesday of the month; is a little bit of grossness; but none of the other symptoms you'd tie to... Not Menstruation.

So either I have Butt Cancer; or there's some other thing happening... And If it was simply IBD; it'd be happening a bit more frequently I think...

Well whatever, what do you think? Is it possible for Non-Uterus havers to have a period? Or has the liberal media lied to me about Trans Women getting periods? Should I get a refund on my Gender?

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lil Kalish at HuffPost:

The first-ever mobilization of trans voters around a presidential candidate took place on Zoom on Tuesday, as around 1,000 transgender people, including lawmakers, advocates, health care workers and celebrities, logged on to show support for Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the presidency. Trans Folks For Harris was one of numerous identity-based webinars to support Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month. Over the last few weeks, many LGBTQ+ advocates have embraced Harris, touting her decadeslong record of supporting LGBTQ+ rights, and her decision to make Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who transformed the state into a “trans refuge,” her running mate. This came just after Advocates for Trans Equality released a report showing that 75% of eligible trans voters turned up to the polls in the 2020 presidential election, compared to 67% of the general U.S. population — and that trans voters make up a crucial part of the electorate.

“We know our rights and our progress are on the line, but so is our very sense of belonging,” said Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, who was elected as the first openly transgender state senator in the country. If McBride wins her bid for Delaware’s open House seat, she would become the first transgender member of Congress. “We have the opportunity, but more importantly, the responsibility in this election to show a trans young person who fears that the heart of this country is not big enough to love them too, that no matter what extremists say or do, our next president and vice president continue to have their backs,” McBride continued. The Harris-Walz campaign has yet to release any concrete policy plans on civil rights ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, but advocates say Harris and Walz have demonstrated their commitment to supporting LGBTQ+ rights, access to abortion and the rights to bodily autonomy overall. A draft of the Democrats’ platform, which was released in July, outlines their fight to restore reproductive rights, address racial inequalities, and protect democracy.

“It’s a step forward to ensure that trans people, especially Black and Brown trans women, have the representation and the resources they need to live with dignity and pride,” Zahara Bassett, CEO of Chicago trans advocacy organization Life Is Work, said on the call. “We need to make sure that our future is one of equity, justice and liberation for us all.” Harris was one of the first elected officials to publicly back marriage equality in 2004, and she refused to defend Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, in 2008. As a prosecutor, she also led the charge to end the so-called gay and transgender “panic defense,” a legal strategy often used to seek a lesser offense for perpetrators of anti-LGBTQ+ violence or murder by claiming that the victim made same-sex sexual advances. In June 2023, Harris became the first sitting vice president to visit the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement, and the site of the historic 1969 uprising of LGBTQ+ people fighting back against police raids in the New York City bar. And earlier this week, Harris released a video on X outlining how former President Donald Trump vastly restricted LGBTQ+ rights while in office — and how he would do so again if elected. Trump has already promised to roll back several policies, including blocking access to gender-affirming care for minors and rescinding the Biden administration’s Title IX rules that expand protections for transgender students. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, introduced a bill in the upper chamber to criminalize gender-affirming care for trans youth.

[...] Today’s embrace of Harris is in stark contrast to how some LGBTQ+ voters remembered her last bid for president in 2019. Back then, some advocates took issue with Harris’ tenure as a prosecutor for how she pushed for criminal penalties for parents of truant children and which led to the arrest of many Black and brown people. Many also noted how as attorney general, Harris’ office denied an incarcerated trans woman’s request for gender-affirming care. Harris has since apologized and said she takes “full responsibility” for her office’s actions. But still, not all LGBTQ+ voters are convinced. Harris’ support for the Biden administration’s policies towards Israel’s war in Gaza has alienated some of these voters. In the Democratic primaries this year, hundreds of thousands of voters cast “uncommitted” ballots as a form of protest to push for a cease-fire and end U.S. weapons transfers to Israel.

For the first time in American Presidential history, an organized mobilization effort for trans Americans to support Kamala Harris’s Presidency bid has cropped up, featuring a Trans Folks For Harris Zoom call. 🏳️‍⚧️

[mariacallous]

Another month to go: can we bear it? Brainless dishonesty, puerile insults, false accusations, the whole charade takes us for idiots. The more desperate they get, the lower the Tories drag down the tone of debate.

The week begins “woke”, with Kemi Badenoch challenging Labour to follow her into an anti-trans gesture to change the Equality Act to something the law already broadly does. It looks glaringly empty in the worsening cost of living crisis, when an extra 100,000 households will see their mortgages shoot up between now and election day.

Labour seeks to shrug off these diversions as it evades Tory attacks, while methodically staying calm and attempting to stay on message.

And for Rishi Sunak, the woke thing is a tough sell. Voters will not easily be persuaded that Keir Starmer is secretly a snowflake warrior while he talks defence of the realm, nailing down that “triple lock” on nuclear weapons, and promising that nuclear submarines will be built in Barrow. All that tells the electorate is that this party is no longer led by a man who refused to sing the national anthem at a Battle of Britain remembrance service.

Immigration is on Labour’s grid, too, with the plan to bring it down by boosting skills training at home. Forecasters expect it to fall anyway. So Keir the woke warrior? Good luck with that.

It may seem an age already, but voters are not yet concentrating on the election, say the focus-groupers. If you, the reader of political columns, are bored rigid by hearing of Starmer’s toolmaker dad and nurse mum, it remains true that most voters still say they don’t really know him. So, in Tuesday’s TV debate between the leaders, expect Starmer to use every chance to describe himself. Most voters don’t watch prime minister’s questions, so they’ll observe these head-butting duels with a fresh eye. Neither leader floats like a butterfly or stings like a bee, but Starmer usually prevails. Sunak plans to exploit some kind of underdog status, but that too is a tough sell when he is PM, he was chancellor, he is so obviously vulnerable on every flank and so clearly to blame – in full or part – for everything ill-fated in these wretched Tory years.

The runes are being read. Both parties were alarmed by the mighty electoral calculus MRP poll predicting just 66 seats for the Tories. It raised no cheers in the Labour camp, where there is gnawing fear that complacency will stop too many people from bothering to vote, or will give potential Labour voters licence to vote Green. It could also complicate the calculation in “blue wall” seats, where Labour people need to turn out and, as a way to oust the Tories, vote Liberal Democrat.

But that same poll caused flat panic in the Tory camp, where the campaign seems solely focused on stemming the flow of rightwingers to the hardline church of Reform. That panic will heighten after the screeching U-turn on Monday in which Nigel Farage took control of Reform and deigned to run as an MP, hoping it will be eighth time lucky.Sunak and his chancellor beseech elderly voters with wafted pension bribes, and tickle their fancies with absurd plans to force national service on Britain’s young people. Badenoch’s transgender pitch was a ploy to discomfort Labour, but more than that, it was a desperate attempt to head off further defections by those who prefer their extremism full fat rather than semi skimmed.

In many ways, this is the election we expected. But that is not the same thing as saying that – on the evidence so far – this is the election we deserve.

Amid the promises, there needs to be a reality check, not least about the public finances. In the Financial Times last week, the International Monetary Fund exposed the hitherto unmentioned, and unmentionable, gaping £30bn hole awaiting the next chancellor. A field of fiscal landmines has been laid by Jeremy Hunt, with zero expectation he will ever be expected to navigate them. One report suggests he sees a nicer post-election life for himself presenting at Classic FM. So be it: so long as they don’t let him present the financial reports.

Both parties in this election pretend not to hear the voice of Paul Johnson, truth-teller-in-chief at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who warns that pledges of no new taxes and no spending cuts, while shrinking the national debt, are impossible to fulfil. Labour ignores him for now, promising to clear the backlog of people waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment, and raise employment from 75% to 80%, though Johnson warns “we never got close” to that rate. We need a reality check. We’re getting magical thinking.

Think, too, about all the issues that aren’t being properly addressed in this election yet. Brexit is parked, with Labour keen to avoid accusations of cosying up to the EU, and the Tories desperate to hide from their Brexit failures.

Also missing in action: social care, the plight of the 1.6 million frail people denied the help they need. Both parties bear the scars of Theresa May’s 2017 election plan and Andy Burnham’s 2010 scheme, both of which exploded mid-campaign.

The burning planet should be the burning question but it isn’t, despite Labour rightly making green energy its engine for growth and its prime spending priority. Sunak ditched net zero, warning: “Labour’s decarbonisation proposals will cost £3,297 per household.” That’s Toryism at its most despicable, lying about the need for climate action for no electoral gain. But one way or another, we should be talking about it.

Here we are again, at the pinnacle of our democratic process and yet, again, failing to find a way to grapple honestly with the great issues. Democracy is worshipped, but its potential is eroded and its practitioners reviled. Whose fault is that? MPs or the public? Voters who think they stand aloof from “lying” politicians might ask themselves how much they are to blame for demanding the impossible – Swedish-level public services on US-level tax rates.

I don’t blame Labour for this; it is up against the great Tory lie factory. Always facing that wall of sound from the howling, dominant Tory media – its volume turned up now by GB News. The wonder is that Labour ever gets a hearing, ever wins elections. If it is staying muted now, the process makes that sensible, because discussing difficult dilemmas thoughtfully would do little more than provide ammunition for the enemy. After years in opposition, an election – in this Britain, at this time – is a perilous moment for Labour to seek to reshape the entire way we do politics.

With polls swinging strongly towards a Labour win and a social democratic future, with voters apparently ready to rebel against the devastations of austerity, maybe there is scope for boldness. Maybe Labour should trust polls showing that a majority would pay more tax to revive public services. Maybe it should be more expansive in the knowledge that voters broadly agree with the party over Brexit, tax, social care, poverty, benefits and the climate.

But, with a great victory within grasp and the chance of a different future for this country, is it reasonable to demand that it take that risk?

[qnewsau]

MPOX: A couple of shots can keep away the spots

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/mpox-a-couple-of-shots-can-keep-away-the-spots/

MPOX: A couple of shots can keep away the spots

Since the late 1960s, the LGBTQ+ community has had a fraught yet ultimately rewarding relationship when it comes to sex and sexual health.

From sexual liberation movements to navigating the HIV epidemic, we have evolved to own the power of (safer) sex. Through education, empowerment and access to safe and non-judgement medical care, we have made tremendous strides for our health and wellbeing.

Then comes MPOX (the virus previously known as Monkeypox) recently resurging in Australia after first arriving here in 2022.

“MPOX has made a big comeback in 2024.” Dr Robert Harris, a S100 accredited GP from Paddington Doctors explains.

“NSW has had over 440 new cases [now more than 550] since June, and most of those are in Sydney.”

MPOX: Need to know

For those unfamiliar with MPOX, it’s an infectious disease that was first found in humans in 1970. The most common symptoms are pimple-like lesions or sores in a rash on the genitals, face or body. Rectal pain and bleeding or a sore throat may occur without a rash, and some people may experience flu-like symptoms such as fever and body aches.

Highly contagious and spread through physical contact, primarily through sex and sexual contact, MPOX has quickly become a focus for sexual health professionals. Many of the people who test positive for MPOX see doctors thinking they have another condition, highlighting the need for better symptom awareness.

“Vaccination rates amongst those most at risk are too low” Dr Harris says.

These high risk groups include cis and trans MSM (men who have sex with men), sex workers and their sexual partners.

All are eligible for free MPOX vaccinations provided by NSW Health, yet a University of NSW survey of gay and bisexual men in NSW, Victoria and the ACT, showed that only 42% were fully vaccinated. This means 2 doses, 28 days apart.

Treatment and Prevention

“Vaccination is the best way to protect yourself” Dr Harris confirms.

“If you have not previously had 2 doses of the vaccine and come into contact with MPOX, getting vaccinated as soon as possible after exposure can reduce the risk of having a severe illness.”

Whilst fully vaccinated people can still catch MPOX, the symptoms are usually shorter in duration and much less severe.

Although antivirals do exist to help treat MPOX, these are not widely available in Australia and are reserved for immunocompromised patients and those hospitalised with severe symptoms. For most, the treatment will be good old bed rest, hydration, over-the-counter pain relief and non-steroid creams, such as zinc oxide. Symptoms last from 2-4 weeks and being aware of them can lead to a prompt diagnosis and help protect the community.

According to the International AIDS Society, Inner Sydney has reduced new HIV acquisitions by 88%, making it the first locality in the world likely to reach the UN target to end HIV as a public health threat. Examples like this not only should fill our lil’ rainbow hearts with pride, but remind us that what we do to keep our communities safe and sexy, works!

To help keep yourself and our community safe, become familiar with the MPOX symptoms and find your nearest nonjudgmental clinic that stocks MPOX vaccines and consider making an appointment. Paddington Doctors in Sydney’s Inner-East stock vaccines for MPOX, and appointments can be made online or by phone.

-Dr Robert Harris is a GP at Paddington Doctors, 266 Oxford Street, Paddington NSW. He is available Tuesday to Saturday. For information and appointments visit drrobertharris.com.au