収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

The last time everything anti-LGBT was flying this thick and furry, I was naturally covering it, but I was also working the anti-abortion activism side of the story. Everyone involved in anti-LGBT law was also deep into anti-abortion law, so it was simple. Not all the rank and file were joined at the hip, but the leadership was; I had lots of exposure to all of it.

At one point, I started seeing anti-abortion activists saying outright that once they won on abortion, they’d be coming for birth control next. Again: that was them saying they would do this. Not others asserting that’s what they’d do; what they said they’d do.

It was an obvious inevitability even without that outright statement, though. Their definitions of “abortion” included most forms of birth control, including the birth control pill, which in no way actually causes abortion. Was there any medical or scientific basis for this? Of course not, no. They’d just decided that using birth control was abortion, and so, for them, it was.

As per usual – remember, they lie like they breathe as long as they’ve decided God Said – the scientific truth of the matter doesn’t matter, not in the least.

Naturally, I’d already been talking about that lie, and how it would be used, and getting dismissed if not laughed at for it. So I started quoting anti-abortion activists saying “yes, that’s right, we’re coming after birth control next.”

I still got dismissed if not outright laughed off.

And now, finally, here they come. Alabama has ruled that in-vitro fertilisation embryos are “people.” Naturally, the chief justice of the court is from exactly the same crowd and has the same beliefs and goals.

The idea is, of course, insane, but it’s fully in line with their moment’s historical attempts to have IVF fertilised eggs designated to be people. In their propaganda, they called them “snowflake babies” – yes, really, snowflake babies, this was before they started calling their enemies “snowflakes” – and tried to recruit women to carry every single one of them to term. They even talked about requiring every single one of them be implanted and that destroying the spares – there are always many spares when working IVF – be declared criminal.

Some warned then that this would make not just but many other fertility treatments illegal, of course. That doesn’t matter, because while the point is more white babies, the real point is control and ownership of women.

The idea of “God Said life begins at conception” is so universally accepted in rightist circles that agreement with all of this is immediate and universal amongst Republican politicians, with walkback only starting after truly massive blowback. The most hateful part of this lie is how absolutely nothing about it is actually Biblical; life is breath, God breathed the breath of life into Adam, it’s in fucking Genesis and consistent through the old testament, and none of it matters. God Said, and so it is, even when God Said Something Else.

Not that any of these psychopathic baying fascists actually care about any of that anyway; it’s just another example of their infinite ability to lie as long as the lie serves the movement.

So even as Alabama and the inevitable spread of anti-IVF campaigning serves as an example of continuation – even as they now effectively mandate that all fertilised eggs be implanted just like they tried to do 30 years ago – it also serves the signpost showing how they will move to ban all forms of birth control next. They will continue to lie about hormonal birth control as they have always done, and then will assert that all hormonal birth control is in fact abortion, and under such “reasoning,” ban it.

They say they will ban birth control; they will do so if they can. At this point, they’re just saying it, but they always have been saying it, sometimes by implication, and sometimes just outright in words.

I can’t draw this line any more clearly. I truly don’t know how. Everything they’re doing is something they’ve said they were going to do if they could, and have tried every chance they got. They’ve been saying all of it for decades, and it’s the one place where they’ve always meant every word – you can tell because the actions actually match the rhetoric – and all anyone has had to do to know all of this years in advance is just listen to them, and refuse to turn away.

The biggest problem in American politics isn’t the fascist right; the biggest problem is everyone else absolutely refusing to believe what is literally happening directly in front of them.

We can’t afford denial anymore. Not even one more minute of it. If you’re one of the people still desperately trying to pretend it’s not real, wake the fuck up. If you’re not, figure out how to get through to the people you know.

I’m lucky in that I’ve always preferred horrible truths to comforting lies. It’s why I’m still alive; I’ve always looked hideous reality straight in the face, because I know all too well that reality will not be denied. Not forever. And all of this is all too very, very real.

2024 is the key year. We win here, it starts getting slowly easier, then much easier all at once.

Wake everybody up. Reality’s here. Time to fight.

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Republicans love racism and hate education so very very much, so when they can do both at once it’s a bloody bonanza! And they’ve been really going at both again over the winter.

Where do we start?

DeSantis was behind this: New Florida law blocks Chinese students from academic labs. It’s Chinese as in came themselves from China, specifically, but c’mon. Like this won’t be seen as the racist broadside it is.

Also in Republican Florida, Palestinian-American Student Expelled Over Mom’s Online Support for Gaza. Mmm, group punishment and oppression. It’s a private school, but that doesn’t really make it better, just maybe less actionable.

In Republican Texas, Prosecutors Won’t Drop Charges Against Brownsville ISD Honor Student who was arrested on bullshit charges after reporting his principal for bullying. HE’S ELEVEN YEARS OLD. ELEVEN. And for a little while, they put him in solitary, because that’s who they are. It’s the kind of sadistic horror show that wouldn’t play in a movie because it’s too bluntly evil, too stupidly, blindly cruel, and yet, here we are.

(In non-education related abuse by cops, we have Ohio prosecutors broke rules to win convictions and got away with it and 3 Tacoma police officers found not guilty in 2020 death of Manny Ellis – the latter is now being investigated by the Feds.)

Naturally, Elon Musk has been involved in attacking schools and boosting racist lies on his fascist propaganda fountain once known as Twitter, where he endorsed a tweet saying students at HBCUs – Historically Black Colleges and Universities – have very low IQ scores, far below the (white, obviously) average. He may’ve done a little walking back of that, but if he did, it’s just to cover his ass. He does this shit all the time, and uses the power of his platform to broadcast it to as many people as possible.

Over in Republican Texas, evangelicals continue their efforts to either destroy public schools or take them over as religious schools: In Texas, debate over school chaplains escalates school board culture wars. “Conservative Christian activists are hoping to turn Texas public schools into a ‘mission field.'” They’ve long seen it that way, of course.

Furor over the Ivies — and crickets about Florida addresses the right’s war against the Ivy League schools. This was written before they were able to whip up enough of a ragefest to force out Claudine Gay, but sets the stage well. The key takeaway is that this didn’t start with her and won’t end with her.

Talking of, Indiana University just suspended a tenured professor for two semesters. Officially it’s for bullshit reasons involving improper paperwork and use of a meeting room, in reality it’s in response to allowing an anti-war Israeli to speak about Palestine.

(Meanwhile, on the pro-war Israeli side, Israeli military chief rabbi-designate under fire over remarks on rape, by which they mean he said raping enemy women was basically okay, that “it was permitted [for warriors] to ‘satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will.’” He doesn’t deny saying it, he just says it was a “theoretical question.” Don’t fucking care, he’s still literally arguing “soldiers raping enemy women is fine.”)

To round off and give you an historical medium-read that’s not too bad, Teen Vogue once again does the heavy lifting so many US newspapers won’t, writing up how the Second Ku Klux Klan rose to prominence a century ago. As they say, it’s good background to have in times like these.

Finally, I have a few updates about anti-LGBTQ campaigns outside the US that I haven’t been able to fit in anywhere else. So given a lack of “anywhere else,” let’s get these out here:

• This is one of the way anti-LGBTQ law is used against straight people, as Russian rapper who attended ‘almost naked’ party jailed for second time. It wasn’t his New Year’s party, he was just there, but they’re making an example out of him, charging him with “Gay Propaganda” and re-charging him with something new every time he gets out.
• Burundi President calls for stoning of gay couples. While African countries had their fair share of post-Colonial-era homophobia, American evangelical groups have been encouraging it, growing it, and test-marketing anti-queer hate propaganda for decades.
• For example, in Uganda, where fundamentalist evangelical group The Family are hugely behind much of the propaganda used to whip their government into making our existence punishable by death. There’s not that much we can do, but there are measures like this: Joe Biden boots Uganda from trade deal over horrific “Kill the Gays” law. It’s not much, but it’s something that carries at least a little actual weight.
• Meanwhile in the UK, Disgusting Transphobic Labour Leader Set Upon By Disgusting Transphobes, as Terf Island shows how these purity tests have no lower limit and are eternally self-ratcheting. There’s now a conspiracy that Keir Starmer – who has been running from his previous lip-servious support for the rights of trans-people since he realised he has a shot at becoming PM – has a trans child and they’re using it to go after him. The horrible party is that he’s still better than the Tories – if he can manage somehow not to fuck this all up.

That’s it for today. Good luck out there, stay healthy, and stay warm. Things will slowly get better – but only after we win in 2024.

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Last week, I posted about how Republicans were fighting efforts to insure that LGBTQ foster kids aren’t abused, stating in very clear terms that the fundamentalist authoritarians (and Republicans, by extension, since they control the party) actively want queer children abused, for a variety of reasons and also just because they find it fun. They always say it’s not about that, it’s about “religious liberty,” and that’s always a lie, because that “liberty” is always the right to abuse queer kids.

I got pushback on this. I was dismissed. I was accused of gaslighting. I have decades of studying these folks and have documented it for about as long, and yet.

So.

Here are a group of MAGAts on video in one of their own podcasts saying everything I said about what they want, in their own words, about themselves, now, in 2024. Saying that they enjoyed beating up queer kids – and straight kids with LGBTQ parents – because it was fun. Because nobody stopped them, because it forced queer kids into the closet, because queer kids deserved it, and because it enforced the idea that queer equals bad and is worthy of violence and contempt. And they miss it and want to bring it back and be able to do it all again.

DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY MORE FUCKING QUESTIONS?

BECAUSE THIS IS THEY THEMSELVES SAYING EXACTLY WHAT I SAID ABOUT THEM IN EVERY WAY. THIS IS WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY WANT.

Is that enough evidence, or do I still sound like I’m gaslighting?

Look, this is who they’ve always been. Yet again, this isn’t me saying this stuff about them; this is them saying things about themselves. What they say here was what they believed when I got into this, when they said exactly all these same things; it’s still so now, in 2024. They’ve said all of this and more amongst themselves, in their discussion groups, on their Christian radio stations nobody else listened to – well, except for me – for longer than I’ve been around. The only difference between the guys in this podcast and the rank-and-file is that the rank-and-file have learned that it’s bad optics to say it in public, and mostly stopped.

Mostly.

That’s not the only reason I know it, but it’s one of the reasons I know it.

So I am telling you, stop making excuses and accept it: abuse of queer children is the goal. Remember this every time you see another round of anti-LGBTQ legislation, particularly legislation aimed at queer kids, because they don’t want to protect queer kids, they want to hurt queer kids – and the straight kids of queer parents.

The damage they cause is intentional. The abuse is always the goal.

And that absolutely includes their anti-trans laws. Every single one of them. No exceptions.

Just listen to them and let them tell you, because sooner or later, as soon as they think it’s safe, they always absolutely will.

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No good news today, I’m afraid. I could include a huge section on Threads, but it would be huge so I’m going to separate it off in another post. Some previous good news even got reversed: Federal appeals court allows Republican Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for minors to take effect. That’s really bad, of course.

From Republicans and the “part of small government” and – long ago – the “party of reality,” we now have “Queers are literally Satan.” The story being covered is 7 GOP attorneys general threaten Target over Pride display, saying it’s illegal – what they want is Russia’s laws wherein any mention, any hint of LGBT existence is a serious crime – but take a second look at that link.

In particular, take a look at the Fox News chyron in the screenshot that heads up the piece. It’s the chyron that’s important: it states that Target is selling satanic merchandise. Talking about Pride merch, putting satanism up in words, conflating the two.

This conflation is entirely intentional, and is showing the hand of the Republican 2024 campaign, which is going to be “everyone but us is literally the incarnation of evil and actively in league with Satan.”

It’s just one example; see also right-wing media figures prepare for “spiritual war” in 2024 by claiming their opponents are demonic entities.

If you think I’m joking or that they won’t do this, don’t. There are no rules and there are no limits.

Hell, it’s not even the first time, it’s just the first time in a while it’s been so high profile. “Spiritual Warfare” goes back to at least the 1990s and was brought up in part directly to fight LGBT rights. They really revive it when they want every one of their rank-and-file to go all in, to go for the throat.

Remember all those times I’ve written about the fundamentalist movement’s infatuation with Revelations 3:15-16 and how they’ve turned that into a self-radicalising ratchet? Well here we are, back in the endgame. If you aren’t already ready for it, get ready, because it’s already here.

Today’s Republican Party is brutal; deliberately stupid; fundamentalist and cultish – murderously so; censorious; and authoritarian.

Brutality? It’s not even that cruelty is the point, though it is. It’s that Cruelty is no longer enough: as he seeks a return to power in 2024, Trump has already pivoted to brutality, and there is nothing subtle about it. I mean, fash will find any reason to hate you, including breastfeeding your own children, but it’s all in service of the brutality.

Deliberately stupid? QAnon and anti-vaccincation just for starters, but here’s the latest: Oklahoma superintendent of schools says Tulsa Race Massacre wasn’t due to color of anyone’s skin, because reality denial is core to literally every Republican position at this point. See also: DeSantis’ AP course crusade, and the right’s fight to remain stupid.

Fundamentalist/Cultist: Here, have a fleet of articles about the Moms for Liberty cult: Read up on six reasons why Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization. I mean, that is the whole point of them, after all. More: Inside Moms for Liberty’s Close Relationship With the Proud Boys. Have some comparisons between Moms for Liberty and previous far-right women’s organisations, including the Women’s Auxiliary to the Klan. And another take: Conservative women are embracing extremism under the guise of motherhood.

Plus, you know, the whole 2024 campaign is centred around “our enemies are literally the actual, literal devil and this is an end-times battle for your souls.”

Murderous: Everything they’ve done to try to kill all of us for the last few years – including becoming the Party of Plague – but also enjoy (?): US Intel executive Greg Slater is ‘actively responsible’ for driving anti-LGBTQ+ agenda in Africa, according to campaigners. Also, as I have documented for decades, the US religious right at is at the center of anti-LGBTQ+ messages pushed around the world.

Be it death-penalty-for-gays bills, or Thousands of far-right protesters storm LGBTQ+ festival in Tbilisi, the American fundamentalist movement and its direct allies – like Putin – are involved.

Censorious? The biggest threat to free speech in the United States is the Republican Party. That Republicans are persecuting researchers and journalists who track disinformation online should be more widely reported. You know who’s saying that? Science. As in, the world’s single most respected scientific journal.

Authoritarian? GOP rank-and-file deeply “pessimistic” about democracy (WaPo, but gift link, anyone can read it). See also: Member of Supreme Court Bar resigns, announces in letter to the New York Times: “It is clear that the majority is not acting as a court, but as an unelected political body ignoring every rule of law it was sworn to uphold.”

What else do you need to see? And please, understand that there are no “moderate Republicans,” not once they take power.

That’s what we’re dealing with. Don’t let people not understand this. So very many people are so very low-information when it comes to this, but we have to get them up to date one way or another. There’s literally no other choice.

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Following Musk’s removal of systematic intentional misgendering and use of anti-LGBT slurs generally as grounds for suspension or account revocation, Musk has now declared the words “cis” and “cisgender” to be slurs which are harassment and grounds for account suspension “at least.”

Twitter is a hate machine. If you’re still using it, you are supporting the hate machine.

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I saw this internal … migration, refugee, whatever you’re going to call them … numbers estimate this morning and saved it to use in the next Fascism Watch, because, yeah, obviously.

But a few minutes ago I popped into my local neighbourhood buy-nothing group (these are all over the place, we give away stuff we don’t need but others might, and asks are welcome), and saw someone post an ASK for a dresser for their new roommate…

…who had fled Texas on short notice after the new round of anti-LGBT-in-general/anti-trans-in-particular laws. She’s trans.

This is already starting to hit home for the straights. Now let’s see if they decide to care.

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The big two:

1: If you missed it, Elon Musk threw anti-trans hate propaganda produced by a major anti-LGBT group in front of tens of millions of people to start Pride Month, and pledged to work towards jailing for life any therapist or doctor who helps trans children. I’ve been telling everyone for months that turning Twitter into a neofascist/alt-right propaganda and disinformation fountain was the point, and here we are. I raged over the weekend and I meant and I still mean every single word. If you’re still using Twitter after this, we are not friends.

2: Ohio Republicans have launched a special election for fucking August to make it harder for the citizens to overturn their asinine and evil anti-abortion-rights laws. The special election will have one (1) issue, which is whether to make following elections to overturn their bullshit have to pass with 60%, rather than 50%+1, of the vote. It’s called ruling from the minority and that’s what they do.

If you are in Ohio, get involved. If you aren’t in Ohio, send money, but also tell people who are in Ohio to get involved. This local shit matters, and it matters a lot.

And now, everything else.

Not suspicious at all: Showtime Pulls ‘Vice’ Episode on Ron DeSantis without explanation. You may recall testimony repeated here about his role in Bush’s torture regime.

Trans adults in Florida are scrambling in many cases to leave the state now that Republican Governor DeSantis’s new anti-LGBT bills have hit the ground, including discovering they no longer have health care and can’t get it. The Associated Press and The Hill have coverage.

The commission Marine Le Pen demanded as an investigation into allegations of Russian influence in and control over far-right parties like hers reports that Marine Le Pen’s party is hip deep in Russian influence, propaganda, and money. She’s pissed off and calling the commission she demanded a politicised witch-hunt.

Six Women Attempt to Oust a Trans Girl from Their Sorority after she was voted in by a majority of the sorority, and after their harassment campaign failed, they’re suing. “Artemis Langford has been targeted with dehumanizing, salacious stories and a right wing media frenzy, conceived of and promoted by six of her own Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters.” Rightist media have been slavering over this.

This kind of racist-as-fuck Republican property law goes back a long time and if there was such a thing as “shame” in the Republican Party, they’d be steeping in it, but there’s not. I mean, it even targets individuals with visas allowing them to live and work here long-term. It’s severely not okay.

The Progressive recognises the wave of anti-LGBT (particularly anti-trans) bills and laws as a coordinated national election strategy for 2024, and that’s certainly part of what it is. But it’s more than that; they absolutely do hate us – as one particular Florida Republican was honest enough to straight-up say so recently – and will make every single one of us illegal again if they can. But they are good enough to quote people from their leadership on the whole “trans is a wedge to break up the LGBT alliance” agenda:

At the Family Research Council’s 2017 Values Voter Summit, Meg Kilgannon of Concerned Parents and Educators of Fairfax County, Virginia, laid out a strategy for attacking LGBTQ+ rights by going after transgender people first: “The LGBT alliance is actually fragile, and the trans activists need the gay rights movement to help legitimize them,” Kilgannon said. “Gender identity on its own is just a bridge too far. If we separate the ‘T’ from the alphabet soup, we’ll have more success.” Kilgannon advised conservatives to do three things: Target health care for children first; avoid religious arguments; and avoid name-calling transgender people.

YouTube is dropping its ban on election-denialism for the 2024 elections. What could possibly go wrong? The Navy removed its Pride Month posts from their Instagram and Twitter accounts and won’t say why, but I think we all know.

Now, the states:

Arizona cops harassed and made two official visits to a Democrat for their anti-Trump signs, in a county loaded with Trumpists. Yes, this is political intimidation by police.

California media are ignoring the nature of the violent far-right protests at Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywood. VPS Reports have video.

Republican Texas joined most other Republican states at banning youth trans health care. Obviously, this was expected, and is part of their national campaign of cruelty. Remember, like they said right above: peel one letter off at a time, split the coalition, go after us all. Straight-acting white cisgendered gay men, you are not an exception. Don’t pretend you are.

And to close, here’s “those same old psychotically evil fucktarts,” with their new hit, “why care about saving the world, since the afterlife is real?”

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This shit – this shit RIGHT HERE – is why I WILL NOT use Twitter and WILL NOT allow links to Twitter on discords I run – or anywhere else I control, for that matter:

On Thursday, Twitter was roiled by an organized pressure campaign by conservative pundits seeking to promote a 95-minute anti-transgender video called “What Is A Woman?” Musk, who has staked out views hostile to transgender advocates, initially responded in ways that seemed to satisfy no one before he eventually relented and agreed to promote the video… Musk himself tweeted out the film, adding, “Every parent should watch this.” The film was pinned to the top of Musk’s profile on Friday afternoon.

NBC News, “Musk’s response to an anti-trans video sparks 24 hours of chaos at Twitter,” 2 June 2023

I keep saying Twitter is now an alt-right/fascist disinformation and propaganda fountain, and documenting how continuing to use it supports Elon Musk in his attempts to push fash and alt-right and anti-LGBT propaganda. I keep saying this. And people I personally know keep using Twitter.

And today, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, personally recommended and promoted, on Twitter, a 95-minute long piece of anti-trans hate propaganda from an anti-LGBT hate group to tens of millions of people…

…to start PRIDE MONTH.

At time of writing, it’s pinned to the top of his profile. For me, that’s right now.

Is that rubbing it in your face hard enough yet?

If you’re still on Twitter, THAT is what you’re supporting. THAT is what you’re helping PAY FOR. And every one of you not a fascist? Every one of you who lying to yourself about “fighting back” in a bullshit game you cannot win because he controls the outcomes?

He’s laughing at every single one of you, as you help him bring in eyeballs and money, and as he works to make a lot of us die.

Do you get it now? Finally? Now that he’s personally using Twitter to personally throw not just his own but other people’s professionally produced hate propaganda into the faces of millions and millions of people? Do you get it?!

Are you finally fucking done with Twitter?

Or are you just going to throw back another fucking Chick-Fil-A sandwich and laugh along with the rest of the Nazis at the hate he’s strutting around with up on stage?

eta: Elon Musk – the richest man in the world – now says he is going to ACTIVELY WORK TO CRIMINALISE AND IMPRISON THERAPISTS HELPING TRANS CHILDREN.

If you choose to keep using Twitter after this, we are no longer friends.

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(This is the other one that wouldn't crosspost for unknown reasons yay. Don't know why.)

This is the one I'm posting because I want to reference it in a Fascism Watch, because it has data from what happens if you don't let trans people transition. In particular, the person I was talking to was going on about irreversible damage from puberty blockers (not real) and that there are no long-term studies on puberty blocker effects. That last one's extra not true, and they moved the goalposts when provided with examples of 25-year-studies and 40 years of clinical use, declaring all of that "not long term."

In part, they claimed that there were vanishingly few cases of precocious puberty so studies of those cases weren't enough to matter and didn't count. I started by calculating the numbers. Spoiler: it is not vanishingly small.

They also posted an undersourced graph showing as many as 11 hysterectomies a year nationally supposedly for gender identity reasons. I took that as 100% real, then went into what happens when trans people are not allowed to transition, and drew a comparison. Spoiler: it's mass death.

Details under the fold.( Read more )

After that, the other person went off in ways that really made me explode, because it showed me they hadn’t been listening to me, not actually, not for years, and that if anything, they’d come in with an agenda and intent to win, not have a conversation.

And it wound me up so much that I mostly just screamed at them and told them to leave.

I’m including it for completeness, though. I’m not including an incomplete and un-posted reply I’d been working on before this happened, because it’s super rough and speculative, and there’s no real point. But the gist of it was following up on the previous post, nr. 3 – there are more trans people now than there used to be because they aren’t all dead. Along with other, more speculative reasons.

But this final part is all in reaction to that rightist propaganda going around about how “even Europe is backing off” puberty blockers and trans-affirmation and pointing to the Tory-controlled NHS, and a couple of exaggerations about changes in two other countries which were, surprise, also forced by the right. Because that’s what shows medical concern: bowing to hate and pressure campaigns from international authoritarians.

And now I’m already getting angry again, so here’s the last part, under the fold.

( Read more )