Big Data knows if you're pregnant, and therefore the government can, too

2022:

Nearly limitless harvesting of our personal information was always leading to this moment.

In the days since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, there have been gobs of published material and warnings from privacy advocates about how digital bread crumbs might expose women seeking abortions to potential legal jeopardy.

* * *

In a situation in which one company refuses to cooperate, odds are that similar digital information might be available from another company that will. (There’s been some attention around the potential for period-tracking apps to blab to the authorities, but there are more direct sources of similar information.)

— Shira Ovide, "Our data is a curse, with or without Roe," NYT subscriber newsletter OnTech (June 29, 2022).

2023:

"When Grace, whose last name is being withheld to protect her family’s privacy, was sitting in the hospital room waiting to be treated for her ectopic pregnancy, the television was on announcing a new six-week abortion ban in Texas.

That was the first time she asked herself if it made sense to share news of pregnancy online.

Grace’s next pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, and during her third pregnancy, the laws in her politically purple home state changed twice. 'Suddenly, my body is this battleground and my safety and autonomy is not guaranteed,' she says. 'Do I want there to be evidence online that I’m pregnant? God forbid something goes wrong, I don’t want it documented.'"

— The new pregnancy announcement is no announcement. (subscriber gift link) More parents are skipping the stylized “We’re expecting!” post in favor of waiting for birth. Fortesa Latifi. Washington Post. December 5, 2023

2024:

How A Trump-Vance Presidency Might Allow The Government To Monitor Pregnancies: One underreported proposal in Project 2025 would give the government a chilling amount of power to track Americans' health care. Sara Boboltz, HuffPost, Aug 1, 2024

Even before they knew there was ketchup

Republicans said not to watch the ketchup hearing even before they knew there was ketchup.

Fries and ketchup by Fernando Andrade on Unsplash

Yesterday, the House Judiciary GOP tweeted this:

It shows a complete lack of messaging strategy. They are telling people in advance of the hearing — which they are not organizing nor involved with, and thus have no prior knowledge of — that there'll be nothing worth hearing. It also shows their intellectual and moral bankruptcy on this topic.

Just FYI, the sixth public hearing on June 28, 2022 was worth listening to. You can learn more about it on the Wikipedia page for the January 6 public hearings, which includes links to watch the video and read the text transcripts. There is ketchup.

Transphobia of the Day alert: You may crossdress as long as you admit you're a "clown"

The Drag Queen Story Hour website says:

"DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real."

In "Drag Queen Conservatism" (June 24, 2022), Andrew Sullivan acknowledges that the story hours can be kid-friendly. After all, in his view, the kids may not see them as sexually explicit "trannies" so much as "costumed clowns."

But he claims that nevertheless these story hours amount to "indoctrination in the various precepts of critical gender and queer theory." How? Because he objects to those two sentences on the DQSH website (above). He reads: queer role models. He argues that, since most gay kids have "absolutely no interest in being a drag queen," and because, once upon a time, "drag queens actually made me think I wasn’t gay, because I had no desire to be one" [emphasis mine], the drag queen isn't a role model for everyone and thus should be a role model for no one. He says: "Presenting it as a model for gayness is part of a misguided bid to impose the postmodern concept of 'queerness' on all gay people."

Look here: There's a potential misreading of the phrase "[adjective] role models." It might mean a role model who is [adjective], not necessarily a role model who teaches you the proper way to be [adjective]. For example, though I am not Christian and do not need a role model to teach me how to be Christian, nonetheless I might admire someone billed as a "Christian role model." Likewise, I might be inspired by a "woman role model," though I'm a man.

To say that a drag queen is a "queer role model" doesn't mean that all gay and trans kids, and only gay and trans kids, can be inspired by them. Straight and cis kids, too, can learn something from gay and trans adults about defying sexual and gender norms so the straight and cis kids, too, can be who they are. And if someone doesn't connect with this kind of role model on a personal level, that's OK, too. We learn from other people's similarities and differences. We learn who we are and who we are not.

Will all children appreciate every adult role model? Of course not. Some kids will think to themselves: I'm kind of like this person in one way, but not like them in another way. That we're all unique doesn't invalidate all role models.

Nor does it imply that Sullivan is the proper role model for all gay boys merely because he believes that his own identity/presentation align with whatever he believes the majority of gay boys feel.

He thinks it's necessary for other gay/trans people to diminish or hide themselves so that he, Sullivan, can be openly and proudly who he is. That may be how Sullivan works, but that is not how diversity works.

What Sullivan is doing here is characterizing drag queens and/or trans people as "just men in silly costumes" and implying that they really can't be role models for anyone except aspiring stage performers, because — in his anti-transgender worldview — the way in which they resist gender norms is, paradoxically, creating their own norm and imposing it on others. Just by visibly being who they are, he alleges, they pressure children to grow up to be exactly like them. Why this argument applies only against drag queens and but is invalid when it is used to compel gay men like himself back into the closet, I can't explain. You'd have to ask him.

And the idea that the child will believe that all gay men are drag queens only makes sense if you think the child interprets the drag queen as gay and that the child is unlikely ever to meet an openly gay adult who isn't a drag queen.

Sullivan also says that "bring[ing] up your kids to see cross-dressing as wicked" isn't necessarily "fear-mongering and moral panic." I really don't know what is to be gained from that distinction. Does he think it's good for parents to bring up their kids to see gay people as evil; would he say that's anything other than fear and hate? Then why does he allow for beliefs that it's evil to resist gender stereotypes in clothing, as if such beliefs had any rational or moral basis?

The article is called "Drag Queen Conservatism: A toxic, stupid sideshow is defining the post-liberal right as scolds." Not sure exactly what he means by "sideshow" here &mdash Drag Queen Story Hour or someone's reaction to it. Probably he's happy to leave that ambiguous.

He wrote another article, "Is Obergefell Next?" — i.e., given that the Supreme Court says that states can crimininalize abortion, can they also eliminate same-sex marriage — as his "immediate reaction to today’s [June 24, 2022] Roe decision." That one is for paid subscribers only. In a tweet teasing his article, he says the overturning of Roe is "unrelated" to certain "precedents" but doesn't specify which precedents he's talking about. I won't be paying for a subscription to find out.

See also: "121 Things I Want Cis Men to Stop Doing". It's a list of 121 sentences in a different article — also by Andrew Sullivan, still anti-transgender. It's a 44-minute read on Medium. Medium lets you read a certain number of stories for free every month. You may also consider a paid membership on the platform.

Also, no clownery in sports:

"gender critical" is now where you insist that only boys can play rugby and only girls can play netball and anything else goes against the natural order of things https://t.co/AjpXodz0bh

— Elaine Scattermoon (@scattermoon) March 30, 2023

Rosie Duffield in The Times fronting a report which says '60% of schools allow children to take part in sports traditionally played by the opposite sex.'

Is it the official Labour position that the two genders are 'assigned football at birth' & 'assigned netball at birth'? pic.twitter.com/VUpprvdhsW

— Tabitha McIntosh (@TabitaSurge) March 30, 2023

Related: Transvestigation

Fixation on supposed differences in trans and cis bodies leads to transvestigation.

"Gender Critical ‘feminists’ will go to desperate lengths to prove that trans women aren’t women, and that includes ‘transvestigation,’ or publicly accusing people of being trans using arbitrary metrics, such as measuring their hands. Sometimes, they succeed in outing trans people. Other times, they shame and mock cis women for having traits they associate with transness."
— Dr. Casey Lawrence, "Vulva Phrenology and the GC Crusade", An Injustice! (Medium), March 31, 2023. This is my Friend of Medium link: unpaywalled for you, earning $ for the author.

Related: Gay people who mock trans people with violent imagery

In 2014, Mitch Kellaway wrote An Open Letter to HuffPost Gay Voices: Why This Trans Man Will No Longer Blog on Your Page. Kellaway objected to "a parody video (later retracted) in which a trans woman is murdered as a consequence for voicing her objections to offensive language used on RuPaul's Drag Race." Kellaway wrote:

"Joy Less" is, as other commentators described her, a "man in a dress" -- an indictment often leveled at trans women to dehumanize them. She is coded, unlike the cisgender drag queen character, as a failure -- not solely in her femininity but in being able to "take a joke." She is a visual entry into a hateful lexicon that surrounds trans women in pop culture.

The fact that this video was produced by a gender-nonconforming drag queen does not mitigate its harmful effects. Viewers are still cued to make certain connections -- Joy Less' opinions are invalid, her gender is invalid, her life is invalid -- despite the veneer of in-your-face comedy that says, "We're absolved of blame if you take these conclusions seriously." Like rape jokes to rape culture, this video contributes to a culture of violence toward trans women, implying that it's "OK" to joke about, portray, and envision murder as a consequence for a trans woman's disagreement."

Related: They turn on Andrew Tate

Andrew Tate swimsuit pic starts trans panic among conspiratorial right: A not-so-revealing picture of Tate in men’s swimwear has some on the far-right saying he’s a woman. Mikael Thalen, Daily Dot, Aug 7, 2024

One of the knowledge-dominance memes used against trans people (in Spanish)

This ridiculous rant has been published for a year and a half, and it has received 101,000 reactions, almost all positive.

This ridiculous response gushes that it's "the best post I've ever seen in my all my life with regards to this theme of damned gender ideology!" It has likewise received 4,000 positive reactions.

In my response — not on the original post, but instead on a shared version — I said that the phrase "teach them the way things are" makes it clear that this is not only about how to raise one's own child but about the affirmation that the sex/gender binary is the way things really are. As such, it's a knowledge-dominance display over all trans people. Additionally, warning that a person may say "I want to be...a cannibal, vampire, or a tree..." reduces the concept of being transgender to an absurdity. (It's called the "one joke" of the anti-transgender crowd.) The hypothetical person didn't say they were a cannibal, vampire, or tree; they said they were transgender. That's different. When you immediately equate being transgender with something that is universally understood as immoral or that is physically impossible, all you show is that you are closed-minded to understanding what it means to be transgender. Here, the cis person presents the trans person as a deluded infant who needs to be taught how life really is. They claim they are positioned to enforce it as long as the trans person is their own child living under their roof. But they are also making the wider knowledge claim over all trans people.

Otherwise, why would they bother sharing the meme? They would just privately inform their own child of their opinion.

What would SCOTUS do with a fetal personhood case?

EXCLUSIVE: Supreme Court justices "prayed with" these right-wing, evangelical activists — then cited them to overturn Roe v. Wade https://t.co/Edrqj2HLiw

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) July 6, 2022

See: An earlier post on this blog about evangelicals praying with the U.S. President

To read the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade: "The Dobbs v. Jackson Decision, Annotated" (New York Times)

Earlier in 2022, the Dobbs decision was leaked to the press. The Supreme Court's internal investigation of the matter announced in January 2023 that it failed to identify who had leaked it. Robert Reich, on his Jan 20, 2023 Substack post, speculated that it was Justice Samuel Alito:

"First, it’s unlikely any of the justices was interviewed. The report said all witnesses were told they could be dismissed if they refused to answer questions. That’s a dead giveaway: Supreme Court justices cannot be dismissed from their jobs.

Second, Alito had a motive for leaking. He wrote the draft in Dobbs and got four other justices to tentatively sign on. He presumably wanted to lock them in. Leaking the draft was a way to do so.

Third, Alito is already under suspicion for leaking another draft Court opinion that he authored [Hobby Lobby], which marked another triumph for the religious right."

How the US compares to the rest of the world on abortion (CNN)

What comes next?

Mary Papenfuss, "Rachel Maddow Predicts 'Fetal Personhood' SCOTUS Case Will End Abortion Nationwide", HuffPost, June 25, 2022:

“A fetal personhood case ... would give this court a path to not just let individual states ban abortion, which is what they did today. ... A fetal personhood case could be their vehicle to impose a nationwide ban on abortion, on the order of the United States Supreme Court,” she said.

* * *

“The conservatives have the power on this court, and they will now wield it however they want, to achieve whatever outcomes they want, to change the country however they want without restriction — and you must do what they say,” she warned.

Maddow told viewers to begin watching for new cases that will challenge the rights Justice Clarence Thomas has already warned will be next on the chopping block: same-sex marriage and birth control.

“Watch for a county clerk somewhere to refuse a license to a couple trying to get married,” she said. “Watch for somebody who works at a health facility somewhere to refuse to process a prescription or an order for contraception. ... Watch for Texas or another Republican-controlled state to bring back its sodomy law.”

“For them, the dam has burst,” she said of the justices.

“What do you see in their behavior that would give you any reason to believe that they see a reason to stop?”

Also by Mary Papenfuss, please see "Decision Destroying Roe Threatens Legal Right To Interracial Marriage, Experts Warn," HuffPost, June 24, 2022:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested Friday in a solo concurring opinion that the court should reexamine other rights protected under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

“We should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”

Thomas sidestepped the Loving case, which, if overturned as Roe was, could threaten his own interracial marriage. That doesn’t mean other justices wouldn’t toss out protections, despite any protestations they might make. Some of the justices had previously claimed they believed that Roe v. Wade was settled law.

Mary Ziegler wrote for the New York Times on June 24, 2022: "The fight to undo Roe, then, has been a fight to remake our country — and it has succeeded. That fight seems even more ominous when one looks around the globe: Other countries that have recently undone abortion rights are backsliding democracies." ("Roe’s Death Will Change American Democracy")

Since most of the country supports abortion access, this may hurt Republicans in the November 2022 midterm elections. "Trump Privately 'Sh**ting' On Roe Reversal, Fearing GOP, Midterm Backlash: Report," Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost, June 25, 2022:

GOP strategist John Thomas also moaned to Politico about the Roe ruling: “This is a losing issue for Republicans.”

This is “not a conversation we want to have,” he added. “We want to have a conversation about the economy. We want to have a conversation about Joe Biden, about pretty much anything else besides Roe.”

It’s like the “dog that caught the car,” quipped Sarah Longwell, a GOP strategist who became a supporter of Biden in 2020. While battling abortion is good for campaigns, ending abortion rights loses voters.

In Texas, for example, residents are unhappy with the state's ban on abortion ("Texans are seeing what a post-Roe world looks like. The GOP may regret it," Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, July 7, 2022):

"If forced-birth activists thought this situation would be popular, they have greatly miscalculated. A new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds only 37 percent of the state’s residents support the new law; 54 percent oppose it. Contrary to the new law, the poll reports, only 8 percent and 13 percent of Texas voters would ban access to abortion in the cases of rape and incest, respectively."

"Constitutional protection of unborn children as equal 'persons' under the law remains the movement’s ultimate — if elusive — goal," writes Erika Bachiochi, a conservative legal scholar who supported the overturning of Roe v. Wade, in an opinion for the New York Times on July 1, 2022.

If Congress codifies marriage equality there are going to be a LOT of takes about why that got passed but not abortion and the answer is very simple: abortion is radical and marriage is assimilationist.

— Lux “Ask Me About Self-Managed Abortion” Alptraum (@LuxAlptraum) July 21, 2022

Marriage — even same gender marriage — accepts the premise that the state should have a say in your personal life. Full decriminalization of abortion does the exact opposite.

— Lux “Ask Me About Self-Managed Abortion” Alptraum (@LuxAlptraum) July 21, 2022

Update: On 11 Oct 2022, SCOTUS declined without comment to take up a fetal personhood case.

I hope people are taking advantage of this amazing offer from Rutgers University Press: free book downloads related to abortion/reproductive history. I just downloaded a bunch of books and it was super easy:
https://t.co/1Kjd4gDvWf

— Kirsten Leng (@KirstenLeng) October 21, 2022

When trans people said, in 2017 when the current wave of transphobia started, that they would no stop at trans people's human rights, that they would come for human rights for others, we were ignored.

We were right however... https://t.co/7CC6cOHEPw

— Dr Natacha Kennedy 🏳️‍⚧️ (She/her) (@natachakennedy) February 21, 2023

In El Salvador, women have faced harsh punishments for miscarriages.

After Amari Marsh had a miscarriage, South Carolina prosecutors jailed her without bond, charged her with murder/homicide by child abuse, and threatened her with life imprisonment. The criminalization of pregnancy loss in red states after Dobbs: www.cnn.com/2024/09/23/h...

[image or embed]

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) September 23, 2024 at 11:40 AM

"The next Republican president could effectively ban most abortions through a simple policy change at the Department of Justice, experts and advocates on both sides of the abortion debate say. ... At issue is the meaning of the 1873 Comstock Act... A Justice Department memo issued last year contends that the law doesn't prohibit mailing abortion drugs when the sender expects them to be used lawfully. A new administration could easily change that interpretation, experts say, and not just restrict patients from receiving pills at home — but also stop pharmacies and health care providers from getting shipments." — How the next Republican president could stop most abortions without Congress, Caitlin Owens, Axios, November 15, 2023

Images for 2024: New Year, New Fight: The year ahead in the ongoing battle for reproductive freedom. Aubrey Hirsch. The Audacity. January 26, 2024

"Arizona Republicans Refuse To Even Consider Basic Birth Control Protections": "Not once have any of my bills been heard in committee or reached the floor,” one of the bills' authors said. Lydia O'Connor,Mar 14, 2024

Abortions outside medical system increased sharply after Roe fell, study finds: Researchers report that volunteer-led networks distributing abortion pills helped drive a rise in ‘self-managed’ abortions. Caroline Kitchener and N. Kirkpatrick, Washington Post, March 25, 2024

"More recently, the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling to take IVF away from families put this procedure used by millions of Americans to have children every year at risk. There have been bills introduced in over a dozen other states and at the federal level that would ban IVF." — press release from the office of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, April 1, 2024

How to Keep Your Abortion Private in 2024, Tom Read

The GOP really knows how to motivate women to have children. Sterilization rates have doubled since the Dobbs decision. kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

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— Bethany Doolin (@bethanydoolin.bsky.social) Aug 10, 2024 at 6:14 PM

I don’t care that it’s old news, I don’t care that his supporters don’t care, I don’t care that this is just how he talks. A presidential candidate saying that people should go to jail for their opinions about his political allies should be a five-alarm fire in the discourse.

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— Jon Green (@jongreen.bsky.social) September 24, 2024 at 5:34 AM

For as long as he’s been around people who fashion themselves savvy have kept saying we should take Trump seriously but not literally. The longer this goes on the more I think that’s an excuse to not take him seriously either.

[image or embed]

— Jon Green (@jongreen.bsky.social) September 24, 2024 at 5:39 AM

Donald Trump assails judge and his daughter after gag order in New York hush-money criminal case, Michael R. Sisak, AP, March 27, 2024

Amazon deforestation: Comments from Gustavo Petro, president-elect of Colombia

"Gustavo Petro Wins the Election, Becoming Colombia’s First Leftist Leader," Julie Turkewitz, New York Times, June 19, 2022:

"Gustavo Petro, a former rebel and a longtime legislator, won Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday, galvanizing voters frustrated by decades of poverty and inequality under conservative leaders, with promises to expand social programs, tax the wealthy and move away from an economy he has called overly reliant on fossil fuels.

His victory sets the third largest nation in Latin America on a sharply uncertain path, just as it faces rising poverty and violence that have sent record numbers of Colombians to the United States border; high levels of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon, a key buffer against climate change; and a growing distrust of key democratic institutions, which has become a trend in the region."

Also from that article:

"Mr. Petro, in an interview earlier this year, said he believed he could work well with the government of President Biden, adding that his relationship with the United States would focus on working together to tackle climate change, specifically halting the rapid erosion of the Amazon.

“There is a point of dialogue there,” he said. “Because saving the Amazon rainforest involves some instruments, some programs, that do not exist today, at least not with respect to the United States. It is, in my opinion, the priority.”"

---

"Chicken from Tesco linked to deforestation in the Amazon" Adam Vaughan, Times UK, April 13, 2023

Colombia declara un nuevo Parque Nacional Natural: Serranía de Manacacías, El Espectador, December 2023

---

"When considering Indigenous American civilizations, it’s important to understand that they had different resources at hand, different pressure to respond to, and different values guiding how they approached things. Metallurgy may not have developed to the same extent, but much of the Amazon rainforest is the product of intensive management by indigenous peoples across several “civilizations.” It may not have required direct and active management throughout its existence, but I would be comfortable arguing that a food forest the size of Western Europe equals the scope of the construction of all the cathedrals of the Middle Ages."
— Cameron Summers, What is Technology? (Contraslop, Part 1), Broken Hands, June 19, 2024

See my art essay We secrete a shell.

Image by Heike Hartmann from Pixabay

24 de octubre de 2024: 361 ambientalistas han sido asesinados en Colombia desde 2018. Más de 350 ambientalistas han sido asesinados desde 2018 en Colombia, país anfitrión de la COP16, reveló la ONG Fundación Paz y Reconciliación (PARES) en un informe publicado el miércoles.

On compromising with fascists

Some people say that "identity politics" causes the left to lose elections and that the left should compromise away the interests of certain groups to attract more centrist voters so they can win elections.

It's wrong on principle:

Imagine thinking that the key to beating fascism is sacrificing continuously more minority groups to the fascists.

— Katelyn Burns (@transscribe) June 19, 2022

Which may signal either that the leaders don't actually hold these principles or that they expect their voters don't:

This is exactly why the Democrats openly say they want to ignore the issue: Their own voters are becoming transphobic.

It is going to take each and every one of us to chip into the effort to combat this wave of hate. There's no other way to end it. 2/9

— Donnodubus (@donnodubus) June 22, 2022

If you do hold principles in support of trans people, then compromising them is wrong for pragmatic reasons:

Why would anyone vote for Democrats if they never actually take a stand on anything they promise?

Don’t you get it? If they give in on trans rights, they can give in on anything. Maybe something important to you.

— Katelyn Burns (@transscribe) June 19, 2022

The thing about that “trans rights are not a priority while we’re headed towards full fascism” tweet is that the fascism usually starts at liquidation of the minority groups perceived as a minor “fringe” and rapidly escalates from there. There’s a popular poem about this.

— ḃ̸̢̗̺̭͐̋e̵̳̾̌̾̐̌̎̓à̴̢̛̺̱̪͙̤̀̃̊̽r̸͖̗̭̙̗̮̉ (@w0jt3c) June 21, 2022

The idea that throwing trans people under the bus would mollify the right instead of emboldening the right is delusional

— Matthew Sitman (@MatthewSitman) June 20, 2022

Noah Berlatsky wrote on June 30: "You can’t save democracy by letting fascists pick their victims."

Thus, here's a recommendation that you have conversations with people. (Of course, consider whether it's safe for you to do so and if it won't be a total waste of your time.)

Here's what people need to know: The anti-trans movement is becoming a mass hysteria. This is not an exaggeration.

It's not just right-wingers and activists anymore: there are many ordinary, apolitical, and liberal type people who have become obsessed with the topic. 1/9

— Donnodubus (@donnodubus) June 22, 2022

So what does that mean? It means being an active advocate. It means being willing to delve into difficult or unpleasant conversations with people.

It means doing what's called "deep canvassing": "engaging in long, empathic conversations to help shift someone's beliefs". 3/9

— Donnodubus (@donnodubus) June 22, 2022

---

Unfortunately, sometimes the conversations can't be productive. It's not that they don't know facts. It's that they have different values.

Already blocked, but again, these fascists know the racist & repressive history of the U.S. & *embrace* it. We can't educate ourselves out of this fascism crisis bc the fundamental problem is not an absence of info but the presence of an ethnonationalist vision of power. pic.twitter.com/wpGn3yLICX

— Dr. William Horne (@wihorne) October 18, 2022

The anti-trans message is that the state owns your body

Kara Dansky, the co-founder of the Women's Liberation Front, went on Tucker Carlson in 2017 "to make common cause with the far-right against what she calls the 'Transgender Agenda,'" as explained by someone who has since made their Twitter account private and then deleted it. This person noticed in 2021 that Dansky "was actively involved in the UK anti-trans crusade as the president of the US chapter of Women's Declaration International" and is connecting the anti-transgender platform (Dansky calls these supporters her 'terven,' according to the person's Twitter thread) "with the Christian nationalist far-right." "There is a plainly obvious direct line from anti-trans bigotry, to hate and lies directed towards drag queens, calling trans and gay people 'groomers,' and Neo-Nazis showing up at Pride events with violent intentions," the person says. And, of course, anti-trans initiatives "harm not only trans people, but gay people, and women who do not conform to gender stereotypes," as well as "girls who want to play sports free from invasive exams into their sex and gender." Dansky "has never acknowledged how her activities relate to the growing fascist movement."

By the way, as Naomi Klein wrote in Doppelganger (2023): "let us not forget Tucker Carlson's 2022 documentary in which he recommended that men regularly tan their testicles with a special infrared light in order to increase testosterone levels in preparation for the 'hard times' ahead."

---

Looks like the TERFs are having a rally in DC.

I always love when they pair up with Alliance Defending Freedom and The Heritage Foundation, two of the leading anti-abortion organizations in America.

You know, just in case you thought they were actually "feminists." pic.twitter.com/xts2z5tofc

— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) June 21, 2022

---

Esther Wang wrote in 2019: "As the trans writer, activist, and scientist Julia Serano wrote recently, “We are now living through the biggest anti-trans backlash since the 1970s.” She added, “It’s not just Republicans or evangelicals — it’s coming from numerous fronts.” ("The Unholy Alliance of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists and the Right Wing," Esther Wang, Jezebel, May 9, 2019)

---

But also, as Roger Pielke Jr. tweeted on June 16, 2022: "The most visible academics pushing to ban trans women from womens sport have hitched their work to the far right fringe in the US"

---

Racheline Maltese, in their Twitter thread:

Cis people: I need you to understand (and help others understand) that “the trans debate” is NOT relevant “to only a small number of people” but to everyone. Thread below for why:

(This is focused on cis women, but cis dudes I need you to listen too. You are also in danger.)

— Racheline Maltese (@racheline_m) June 19, 2022

Being anti-trans is only possible by policing the gender and sex of everyone. Because I promise you - you don’t know who is trans and who isn’t.

Also, most of this isn’t really about trans people although we get hurt the most first - it’s about control.

— Racheline Maltese (@racheline_m) June 19, 2022

See the thread for some examples, like:

Here are just some of the types of cis women who have faced harassment, violence, and legal repercussions for using a women’s bathroom:
- women with short hair
- women with alopecia
- women who are athletes
- women who have had mastectomies
- women who are tall
(Continued)

— Racheline Maltese (@racheline_m) June 19, 2022

The anti-trans message is that the state owns your body.

I mean we’ve got multiple state governments super hyped to give kids internal and external genital exams because there might be one trans girl in Ohio playing softball. What’s the purpose of that beyond telling girls their bodies belong to the state?

— Racheline Maltese (@racheline_m) June 19, 2022

It's part of the fascist agenda.

The anti-trans panic part of a broader fascist agenda focused on taking away everyone’s choices in public and in private.

Abandoning trans people to persecution and death is immoral.

It also opens the doors of your community and your home and your heart to fascism.

— Racheline Maltese (@racheline_m) June 19, 2022

---

many LGBTQ+ people, and specifically trans people, have been saying this but just to echo it again: if you can’t wrap your head around how countries slip into fascism just look at all the ways in which America is criminalizing trans identities and who supports it.

— megan | מיה 🌈 (@kehillahjewess) July 15, 2022

---

Well, maybe not quite so effective in the 2022 midterm elections in the US:

This comment by Matt Walsh is aging like milk.

Anti-trans candidates are failing across the country tonight, especially in local school board races. pic.twitter.com/owFd1IgHog

— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) November 9, 2022

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más evidencias de que el terfismo se da la mano con el patriarcado fascista al desear un genocidio trans (y qué asco además que instrumentalicen así el derecho al aborto 🤮🤮) https://t.co/dP98IBy7pN

— Iván (elle 🏳️‍⚧️) (@ierobog) February 27, 2023

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Sad news for the Bolognese queer community, and all of Italy: today, Lucy Salani has left us. She was deported, after deserting both the fascist and nazi drafts, to Dachau. She's the only Italian trans woman to survive deportation. May the earth be light upon your body ❤️ pic.twitter.com/gNAgdHUwVr

— Francesca Tacchi 🫒 preorder TRANSMOGRIFY! (@jackdaw_writes) March 22, 2023

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Big news: a judge just blocked Wyoming's abortion ban.

Why? Because of language that *conservatives* put in the WY constitution last decade to enshrine health care choice... as their way to attack Obamacare.@yeargain had explained that twist last week: https://t.co/WDa4X1C4l3

— Taniel (@Taniel) March 23, 2023

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'We can always tell' if you're trans?

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Bruno Latour's reaction to climate denialism (a 2018 article)

A 2018 feature in the New York Times Magazine:

As early as 2004 he [Bruno Latour] publicly expressed the fear that his critical “weapons,” or at least a grotesque caricature of them, were being “smuggled” to the other side, as corporate-funded climate skeptics used arguments about the constructed nature of knowledge to sow doubt around the scientific consensus on climate change.

But Latour believes that if the climate skeptics and other junk scientists have made anything clear, it’s that the traditional image of facts was never sustainable to begin with. “The way I see it, I was doing the same thing and saying the same thing,” he told me, removing his glasses. “Then the situation changed.” If anything, our current post-truth moment is less a product of Latour’s ideas than a validation of them. In the way that a person notices her body only once something goes wrong with it, we are becoming conscious of the role that Latourian networks play in producing and sustaining knowledge only now that those networks are under assault.

— Ava Kofman. "Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science." New York Times. October 25, 2018. (This is a gift link from my paid subscription that gets you around the paywall.)

Scientists have been warning us for decades that prolonged extreme heatwaves and out of control disease outbreaks will become more frequent and deadly due to climate change.

We need to completely change our ways of living instead of continuing our "back to normal" denial.

— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) July 16, 2022

Today, climate deniers are hooting about something called the World Climate Declaration, an anti-science screed that claims to have 1,200 "scientists" declaring that there is no climate emergency. A couple of notes on that. 1/ pic.twitter.com/sQZcNtapLY

— Dave Vetter (@davidrvetter) August 19, 2022

The Declaration is in fact just a continuation of a project by something called the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL), a lobby group funded by two Dutch millionaires. @DeSmog has plenty of details here:https://t.co/M3RUAfiPRX 2/

— Dave Vetter (@davidrvetter) August 19, 2022

As you'd expect, CLINTEL is deeply intertwined with fossil fuel money and many of its ambassadors are involved with US fossil fuel lobbyists the Heartland Institute and the Cato Institute. 3/

— Dave Vetter (@davidrvetter) August 19, 2022

The Declaration can be found below. As you will see, the wording itself is extremely lazy, comprising a list of stale, debunked I-got-this-from-Facebook tropes. No research is cited.
4/https://t.co/CYuMwGW2Jj

— Dave Vetter (@davidrvetter) August 19, 2022

When you scroll down the list of signatories, you'll note that few come from climate-related disciplines. A notable number are from the oil and gas industry. Eight are either current or former Shell employees. 5/

— Dave Vetter (@davidrvetter) August 19, 2022

The six climate change myths listed are all dealt with comprehensively on Skeptical Science's Argument page (below). Not one of them holds up to even casual scrutiny. 6/https://t.co/Bghf6BYKMm

— Dave Vetter (@davidrvetter) August 19, 2022

For the second year in a row, a self-declared “leader” in the fight against global climate change will host the Super Bowl of climate change denial.

In February, the right-wing Heartland Institute is scheduled to convene its three-day “International Conference on Climate Change” at the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista hotel, near Walt Disney World Resort. The Illinois-based think tank is unwavering in its dismissal of established climate science and has a long history of cheerleading for the fossil fuel industry and fighting environmental regulations and renewable energy projects.

* * *

The event is wildly out of step with Hilton’s stated climate and environmental pledges.

— "Self-Proclaimed Climate 'Leader' To Host Annual Climate Denier Conference," Chris D'Angelo, Huff Post, Nov 23, 2022

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For the last month I've been reporting on a group of people who travel across America blocking wind and solar projects.

This group has passed clean energy opposition laws in states across the country.

Here's the story of one man who has been doing this for 10+ years.

🧵

— Michael Thomas (@curious_founder) November 18, 2022

Last week someone sent me dozens on internal documents from a fossil fuel trade group.

They reveal a massive greenwashing campaign that aims to convince Americans that propane (a fossil fuel) is good for the environment.

The campaign has already reached 300m+ people.

🧵

— Michael Thomas (@curious_founder) January 19, 2023

"Why was 1934 the warmest year in the US?" I was asked today. Climate scientists often get strawman questions. so my response is, "It wasn't." But then ask, "Why do you think it is?" to turn the conversation to the motivation--which is what really matters! https://t.co/jHo61hBHMF pic.twitter.com/cGcNS5Qmn3

— Prof. Katharine Hayhoe (@KHayhoe) March 29, 2023

2020 U.S. coup attempt: Consensus reality broke long ago

“Watergate” was “a mytho-poetic perversion of governance whose real and symbolic betrayals helped feed the paranoia and disaffection with consensus reality that form the ambient political background for high weirdness.” (As described by Erik Davis. High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. London: Strange Attractor Press, 2019.)

The 2020 coup attempt

We know that Eastman sent an email on December 24, 2020, saying that Trump was unlikely to win on the "legal merits" of his position, to which another lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, replied that the Supreme Court Justices might be pressured to rule in Trump's favor if they "start to fear that there will be wild chaos on January 6".

USAmericans were already paranoid and disaffected, yes, but there was no longer any consensus reality to break. It was broken long ago.

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6/ The confidential Proud Boys informant said the Proud Boys would have killed other lawmakers too, if given the chance. Listen. https://t.co/N0EqNPawEp

— Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢 (@jennycohn1) June 16, 2022

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Happens in other places too: 7 Dec 2022...

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Related: See this February 20, 2023 Twitter thread about the narrative in the Dominion Voting Systems legal brief.

In April 2023, Elie Honig says Fox is 'headed for a full-blown journalistic and legal disaster'. (CNN video)

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Update on Eastman: John Eastman (see the Eastman memos) and Jeffrey Clark (see the Clark letter) were both indicted in GA. They were also named as co-conspirators in the federal case, and they could eventually be indicted federally, perhaps after a verdict is delivered on Trump.

"The proceeding against Eastman in California is only one effort across the country where disciplinary authorities are seeking to compromise the law licenses of attorneys who assisted Trump after the election. Attorneys who worked for Trump in Michigan have been sanctioned, Rudy Giuliani’s law license is currently suspended, and he and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official under Trump, are facing their own ongoing bar disciplinary proceedings. On top of those efforts, the criminal charges against Eastman, Giuliani, Clark and others in Fulton County, Georgia, could lead to their inability to practice law, if they are convicted."
— CNN, November 3, 2023

Darkling beetle larvae can eat Styrofoam

Pranshu Verma in the Washington Post today ("This Styrofoam-eating ‘superworm’ could help solve the garbage crisis"):

In a paper released last week in the journal of Microbial Genomics, scientists from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, showed that the larvae of a darkling beetle, called zophobas morio, can survive solely on polystyrene, commonly called Styrofoam.

* * *

...the scientists will study those enzymes to see how well they can digest polystyrene on a large scale — modifying them if necessary to become more effective. “We want to not have gigantic superworm farms,” he said. “Rather, we want to focus on the enzyme.”

If the research proves successful, Rinke said waste managers could collect and grind Styrofoam materials and put them into a liquid solution made with the superworm enzyme. The solution would ideally dispose of the Styrofoam or digest it in a way that allows new plastic products to be created, thereby reducing the need for new plastic materials, Rinke said.

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Image by Sebbi Strauch from Pixabay

The Republicans were given to understand there would be no diversity here

Thomas Zimmer writes in The Guardian today, "The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the room":

"And how are the people the hearings present as Team Normal, as standing up to Trump’s coup attempt, dealing with all this? Take Bill Barr: he’s on record saying he would vote for Trump in 2024. In his testimony for the committee as well as in his book, Barr has left no doubt that he believes Trump is either willfully pushing treasonous conspiracy theories or is completely detached from reality – yet Barr is still willing to help put him back in the White House.

Barr’s ability to rationalize this astonishing balancing act is the main reason I am skeptical that the hearings, by focusing narrowly on Trump, could succeed at turning Republicans away from him. When confronted with how he could possibly still support another Trump presidency during his book promotion tour earlier this year, Barr replied: “Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party.” There it is: after everything we have been through, conservatives still see the Democrats (or progressives, or liberals, or the left – they see them as interchangeable) as the biggest threat.

This is the perfect encapsulation of the permission structure that governs conservative politics: anything is justified in defense against what they constantly play up as a radically “un-American,” extremist “left” that has supposedly taken over the Democratic party."

That "progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party" is maybe not most widely understood as a what, but rather a who. What I understand from this is: Republicans will vote to end U.S. democracy rather than accept that certain kinds of people exist.

transphobia connects the entire fascist movement, it is its living tissue, and you have to defend trans people without caveat if you want to fight fascism in earnest

— Talia Lavin (@swordsjew) June 16, 2022

I think that we’re entering a period when the most meaningful political distinction will be fascist and anti-fascist. It’s really important to understand that transphobia is one of the most potent entry points to fascism today - and act accordingly.

— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) July 3, 2022

Terrifying to watch the escalation of transphobic rhetoric in the US. It so closely mirrors what’s happened here - with the hostility from legacy media being amplified by large social media contingents and certain celebrities.

— Anna Orridge (@orridge_anna) July 5, 2022

Really tho, the fact that we see cis women who are actively losing their rights joining in on attacks on trans people, and scapegoating them, as eliminationist policies are pursued at the state level in red states around the country, should be historically horrifying to people.

— Puff the Magic Hater (@MsKellyMHayes) July 5, 2022

This is part of the fascist spiral.

— Puff the Magic Hater (@MsKellyMHayes) July 5, 2022

It's terrifying and sad that a number of feminists from the 70s & 80s have, with fascism, world war and environmental collapse imminent, chosen to obsess with persuading women that trans people are the real existential threat.
It's the mindboggling fucking pettiness that gets me.

— Roz Kaveney (@RozKaveney) July 3, 2022

“What killed the organized national feminist movement? Could it have been a massive, organized right wing attack that dismantled their institutions, from NOW to Planned Parenthood to Title IX, over the course of decades? No, it was definitely a 13 year old who goes by they/them.”

— Moira Donegan (@MoiraDonegan) July 5, 2022

6/ “Culture wars” may seem to address different issues, but they serve the same purposes because they are driven by a storyline of theft.

— Kay Whitlock (@KayJWhitlock) July 5, 2022

Just learned something horrifying abt how liberal media aids transphobia & fascism.

For a hearing, Texas has entered Bazelon’s NYT article into evidence to help justify Abbott’s directive for child welfare to investigate families w trans kids,

Way to go, @emilybazelon.

— Dr. Thrasher (@thrasherxy) July 5, 2022

Cis journalists gearing up to write an article for a major news magazine that'll end up being cited by at least three states trying to criminalize healthcare for trans people pic.twitter.com/a1hb9f4Ilj

— Ari Drennen 🏳️‍⚧️ (@AriDrennen) July 7, 2022

Man alive. It took literally no time for the Right and moderates to take the fallout from the overturn of Roe and divide any sort of mass response.

Everything says we’re being prepared to live within a new reactionary era.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 5, 2022

Already you can hear a drumbeat gaining. Sacrifice trans people. Sacrifice gay people. Sacrifice any notion of progress.

This is how authoritarianism gains purchase and control.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 5, 2022

It is SO STRANGE that as soon as Roe v Wade was overturned, almost every venue from @nytimes down turned to an intense attack on trans persons. TERFs are transparently just being used now.

— Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) July 5, 2022

I know a lot of my jokes revolve around hyperbole but I am not remotely exaggerating when I say that once a person gets into transphobia it eventually becomes all they're capable of thinking abouthttps://t.co/mzO3vMJGDz

— Zack Budryk (@BudrykZack) July 5, 2022

The attacks on trans people coming from center-left and "centrist" media sources like the NYT is very much part of the bigger plan by the right. The goal is to undercut any potential resistance to what comes next. 1/n

— Brynn Tannehill (@BrynnTannehill) July 6, 2022

These narratives are all the same with different coats of paint.

There is an "evil group" orchestrating the chaos from behind the scenes. It's most often anti-Semitic and the "threat" creates a need for violence and antidemocratic actions to "solve the crisis."

14/ pic.twitter.com/iPvmxk6cU2

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 7, 2022

With this shift, the instability and chaos are blamed on loosening of tradition, including changing gender roles, progress, and unchecked liberalism.

They build their base on reestablishing patriarchal and religious culture by force.

21/ pic.twitter.com/we3SOhWpGI

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 7, 2022

Remember this when you read articles that blame gay and trans people for Roe being undone.

When you hear it's the Left or "wokeness" or "cancel culture."

It's preparing America to accept the Right Wing reactionary authoritarianism. To place the blame on the vulnerable.

27/

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 7, 2022

All kinds of people exist.

What we have now is a gunman who advocated "sav[ing] ammunition" to target people who support "gender transitioning." (Three months later, he died trying to attack the FBI.)

The FBI HQ attacker had some thoughts about trans rights pic.twitter.com/rHdr1vmHHP

— Katelyn Burns (@transscribe) August 11, 2022

I really think it's worth being aware of how "Gender Critical" people talk about trans rights. They keep saying things like "when this is all over" and "once we're back to normal". They really think that one day soon there will just be no trans people, like their imagined past https://t.co/LQDDWSPIX1

— Katy Montgomerie 🦗 (@KatyMontgomerie) October 14, 2022