WSJ publishing anti-trans articles (2022) in context of bomb threats against hospitals and libraries

Screenshots collected by:

Wow, WSJ. Not only are they Shrier's biggest publisher, but this article by Colin Wright and subsequent illustration in The Wall Street Journal is absolutely gross. The journal which for the record has space for this, but hasn't covered the multiple threats to major hospitals. pic.twitter.com/UwNjsaZeB0

— jess kant (@jessdkant) September 23, 2022

The latest from WSJ

When all of their articles are considered as a single corpus, the WSJ plays the part of the ultimate neoliberal concern troll. Standing for literally nothing except money, they will do or say whatever sells. And right now, what sells is bigotry.

— jess kant (@jessdkant) September 23, 2022

These are the earlier screenshots:

The hospitals being targeted by the anti-trans right shifted from children's hospitals (Boston, DC) to university hospitals (Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins) because they realized the optics of bomb threats shutting down a children's hospital are so heinous

— Gillian Branstetter (@GBBranstetter) September 24, 2022

Yelling at universities is Republican praxis. The narrative becomes about elite institutions leading kids astray instead of what it is--elite right-wing operatives terrorizing families and their doctors

— Gillian Branstetter (@GBBranstetter) September 24, 2022

We are at the stage of the coordinated anti-LGBTQ hate campaign in Texas where elected officials appear to be making thinly veiled calls to commit violence against doctors. pic.twitter.com/3jx5YCvcS9

— steven monacelli (@stevanzetti) September 22, 2022

BPD says a bomb squad is currently on scene at Northeastern. A threat was called in about 25 minutes ago. Students received this message in their inboxes. pic.twitter.com/8QbRIy1nKb

— clara mccourt (@McCourtClara) September 23, 2022

Oh you know, only Tucker Carlson leaving the image of hospital executives at a hospital that provides gender affirming care to trans teens, a minute after saying that they are the criminals and deserve the bomb threats they receive, and naming them one by one... pic.twitter.com/Lfe8TPbLIO

— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) September 22, 2022

Something I need cis people to understand: Trans people were four times as likely to be violently attacked, three times as likely to go hungry, and twice as likely to live in poverty *and then* all this bullshit started.

— Gillian Branstetter (@GBBranstetter) September 15, 2022

Two nights ago Tucker Carlson falsely accused hospitals of "sex crimes" and told viewers they have a "moral duty" to carry out "instant justice" "no matter what they law says"

Tonight he continued his assault and put names of hospital execs on screen with the below chyron pic.twitter.com/h7eM0sontQ

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) September 22, 2022

The anti-LGBTQ grievance cycle is so predictable. Gays Against Groomers was banned from PayPal and they get booked on Tucker Carlson. I said that's exactly what they would do in an interview I gave this morning. Tucker is providing cover for all the anti-LGBTQ accounts. pic.twitter.com/SXrI5IziWh

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) September 20, 2022

It's increasingly clear that the mid-term electoral strategy for the anti-LGBTQ reactionaries is going to focus entirely on trans youth and gender affirming care. The wave of terror against Children's Hospitals, providers, and support networks is going to escalate dramatically.

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) September 20, 2022

Tucker Carlson is openly calling for violence against teachers and LGBTQ+ people:

"No parent should put up with this for one second, no matter what the law says. Your moral duty is to defend your children. This is an attack on your children and you should fight back." pic.twitter.com/dwMkO057Ne

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) September 20, 2022

There is another active bomb threat investigation at Boston Children's Hospital. This is the second in a matter of weeks. How much more of this will it take for people to act to stop this?https://t.co/9DOaWivwWX pic.twitter.com/derhs1jiRq

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) September 9, 2022

December 2023

Oh, the WSJ is still at it. On December 14, Roy Eappen, "a former Conservative Party of Quebec candidate and member of the anti-trans organization Do No Harm," an organization that was founded with a $1 million ontribution from a billionaire, published an article headlined: "Most 'Transgender' Kids Turn Out to Be Gay."

The article is false. Erin Reed published this: "Fact Check: WSJ Publishes False Article Claiming Trans Kids Are 'Actually Just Gay.'" Erin in the Morning (Substack), December 15, 2023.

As Reed explains:

• Trans kids are trans (not cis, gay or straight), and trans identity/transition just isn't conversion therapy to make gay kids straight.
• It doesn't make sense that homophobia would motivate gay cis people to be transgender, since transphobia also exists, and in fact trans people currently enjoy "significantly lower social acceptance than gay people."
• Even if some people were trying to encourage kids to be trans so that they wouldn't be gay, that strategy would be "entirely ineffective" given that lots of trans people are also gay.
• The claim that "80% of transgender youth will desist from being trans" — i.e., not go on to transition at all, or else transition and then detransition — is false. Reed herself has already published an article debunking this. The real stat for people who regret their gender transition: 1–3%.
• Regarding the claim that 80% of trans kids will stop being trans, Eappen appears to be referencing two data sets: one from 1995, the other from 1989-2001. The issue is that, under the DSM-IV at that time, a kid could be diagnosed with "gender identity disorder" just for enjoying the clothes and games associated with the other gender, preferring to make friends of the other gender and pretending to be the other gender during play, and feeling "discomfort" with their assigned "gender role." They did not actually have to insist that they were, nor want to become, a member of the other gender. So these kids who never said they were trans ended up not transitioning. This is not surprising. It doesn't mean that they were trans and stopped being trans. Furthermore, at this time, it was hard to transition, so the fact that they never did so doesn't imply they didn't want to. There's a flattening of people who are happy/unhappy with their lives or their choices; there's an assumption that everyone who never transitioned or who detransitioned is happy with that path.
• Eappen "incorrectly states that gender-affirming care is administered to children 8 years old or younger," Reed says; if a child is on puberty blockers before age 8, it would be because their puberty onset is too early, not because they're preparing for cross-sex hormones.
• Eappen refers to people as being "transed." This term, Reed notes, is "not recognized in legitimate discourse."
• Letting trans people transition doesn't harm gay cis people.

In summary, the WSJ is publishing crap.

Please subscribe to Erin Reed!

In the UK

This, in the UK, is also crap.

In February 2023, a 16-year-old transgender girl was murdered. The Daily Mail is going to...make a documentary? And probably not donate the proceeds to support trans people's safety?

How to find where you used a particular font in a Microsoft Word document

While making an ebook in the Calibre program, Calibre asked me if I'd like to embed the "Cambria" font. Hmm — I didn't use the Cambria font in my Word file. Or did I?

The document is hundreds of pages. Let's go back to the document in Word and find where I used the Cambria font.

Screenshots are from Word for Mac 2016.

#1: When you do a "Find," there should be an option to do an "Advanced Find and Replace."

#2: Select the font you want to search by. This option is at the bottom of the pop-up: Find -> Format -> Font.

#3: Once you've selected the font and run the search, Word finds the text that's in that font, even if it's only a single letter.

Bio-pots: Avoiding single-use plastic pots for houseplants

In CNN today:

According to the USDA, large growers and nurseries use tens of millions of plastic pots in a single season. They are not recyclable in many places, and 98% wind up in landfills. In 2009, the USDA calculated that the container crop industry had produced 4 billion units, equalling 1.66 billion pounds of plastic.

"That piece of nature is wrapped in one of the most toxic materials for nature," said Andreas Szankay, a plant-shop owner in Brooklyn. "It doesn't really have to be that way."

The alternative is biodegradable pots, which Szankay and his wife Stephanie aim to popularize with their shop, Pollyn. They replant all their nursery plants into bio-pots, which are made of materials including coconut fiber, cow manure, and paper pulp.

Bio-pots keep plants healthier because "they allow for more air and water exchange," Andreas explained, and can help fertilize a plant's roots, depending on the material.

—

"How green is your Pinterest-perfect plant collection?" Jacqui Palumbo. CNN. September 1, 2022.

I added the link to Pollyn in the quoted passage above.

Update: In January 2023, a global index of plastic use found that single-use plastic increased from 2019 to 2021.

'We can't recycle our way out of this': https://f24.my/9Wye