#left wing identity politics

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Matt Johnson

Summary

Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today’s left, he’s remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout-a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neo-conservatism after the September 11 attacks. In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important. Over the past several years, the liberal foundations of democratic societies have been showing signs of structural decay. On the right, nationalism and authoritarianism have been revived on both sides of the Atlantic. On the left, many activists and intellectuals have become obsessed with a reductive and censorious brand of identity politics, as well as the conviction that their own liberal democratic societies are institutionally racist, exploitative, and imperialistic. Across the democratic world, free speech, individual rights, and other basic liberal values are losing their power to inspire. Hitchens’s case for universal Enlightenment principles won’t just help genuine liberals mount a resistance to the emerging illiberal orthodoxies on the left and the right. It will also remind us how to think and speak fearlessly in defense of those principles.

--

Introduction

First Principles

In the introduction to his 1993 collection of essays For the Sake of Argument, Christopher Hitchens affirmed his commitment to the left: “Everyone has to descend or degenerate from some species of tradition,” he wrote, “and this is mine.” Hitchens’s political trajectory is often presented as a story of left-wing degeneration. His career was “something unique in natural history,” as former Labour MP George Galloway put it: “The first ever metamorphosis from a butterfly back into a slug.” After Hitchens abandoned socialism and all other formal political allegiances, his critics say he became a fulminating reactionary, a neocon warmonger, and a dreary cliché: the defector, the sellout, the predictable left-wing apostate.

The standard left-wing narrative about Hitchens is that he exchanged his socialism for some species of neoconservatism. After many years as a left-wing dissident in Washington, DC, he took the side of the U.S. government when it launched the most maligned war since Vietnam. Sure, he said a few sensible things about the excesses and contradictions of capitalism in his days as a Marxist, established himself as the most lacerating critic of U.S. foreign policy in the American media, and did more to put an asterisk next to Henry Kissinger’s reputation than just about any other writer. But this long radical resume is now just a footnote in what many on the left view as a chronicle of moral and political derangement—the once-great left-wing polemicist becoming an apologist for the American empire. On this view, if the left has anything to learn from Hitchens, it’s strictly cautionary.

From socialist to neocon. It was an irresistible headline because it’s a story that has been told over and over again—according to many authorities on the left, butterflies have been morphing back into slugs since the dawn of natural history. The novelist Julian Barnes called this phenomenon the “ritual shuffle to the right.” Richard Seymour, who wrote a book-length attack on Hitchens, says his subject belongs to a “recognisable type: a left-wing defector with a soft spot for empire.” Irving Kristol’s famous description of a neoconservative is a liberal who has been “mugged by reality,” which implies a reluctant and grudging transition from idealism to safe and boring pragmatism. By presenting Hitchens as a tedious archetype, hobbling away from radicalism and toward some inevitable reactionary terminus, his opponents didn’t have to contend with his arguments or confront the potentially destabilizing fact that some of his principles called their own into question.

Hitchens didn’t make it easy on the apostate hunters. To many, he was a “coarser version of Norman Podhoretz” when he talked about Iraq and a radical humanist truth-teller when he went on Fox News to lambaste the Christian right: “If you gave Falwell an enema,” he told Sean Hannity the day after Jerry Falwell’s death, “he could be buried in a matchbox.” Then he gave Islam the same treatment, and he was suddenly a drooling neocon again. He called for the removal of Saddam Hussein and the arrest of Kissinger at the same time. He endorsed the War on Terror but condemned waterboarding9 and signed his name to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) for warrantless wiretapping. He defied easy categorization: a socialist who spurned ideology, an internationalist who became a patriot, a man of the left who was reviled by the left.

The left isn’t a single amorphous entity—it’s a vast constellation of (often conflicting) ideas and principles. Hitchens’s style of left-wing radicalism is now out of fashion, but it has a long and venerable history: George Orwell’s unwavering opposition to totalitarianism and censorship, Bayard Rustin’s advocacy for universal civil rights without appealing to tribalism and identity politics, the post-communist anti-totalitarianism that emerged on the European left in the second half of the twentieth century. Hitchens described himself as a “First Amendment absolutist,” an echo of historic left-wing struggles for free expression—from Eugene V. Debs’s assertion of his right to dissent during World War I to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Hitchens argued that unfettered free speech and inquiry would always make civil society stronger. When he wrote the introduction to For the Sake of Argument in 1993, he had a specific left-wing tradition in mind: the left of Orwell and Victor Serge and C.L.R. James, which simultaneously opposed Stalinism, fascism, and imperialism in the twentieth century, and which stood for “individual and collective emancipation, self-determination and internationalism.”

Hitchens believed “politics is division by definition,” but his most fundamental political and moral conviction was universalism. He loathed nationalism and argued that the international system should be built around a “common standard for justice and ethics”—a standard that should apply to Kissinger just as it should apply to Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein. He believed in the concept of global citizenship, which is why he firmly supported international institutions like the European Union. He didn’t just despise religion because he regarded it as a form of totalitarianism—he also recognized that it’s an infinitely replenishable wellspring of tribal hatred. He opposed identity politics because he didn’t think our social and civic lives should be reduced to rigid categories based on melanin, X chromosomes, and sexuality. He recognized that the Enlightenment values of individual rights, freedom of expression and conscience, humanism, pluralism, and democracy are universal—they provide the most stable, just, and rational foundation for any civil society, whether they’re observed in America or Europe or Iraq. And yes, he argued that these values are for export.

Hitchens believed in universal human rights. This is why, at a time when his comrades were still manning the barricades against the “imperial” West after the Cold War, he argued that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should intervene to stop a genocidal assault on Bosnia. It’s why he argued that American power could be used to defend human rights and promote democracy. As many on the Western left built their politics around incessant condemnations of their own societies as racist, exploitative, oligarchic, and imperialistic, Hitchens recognized the difference between self-criticism and self-flagellation.

One of the reasons Orwell accumulated many left-wing enemies was the fact that his criticisms of his own “side” were grounded in authentic left-wing principles. When he argued that many socialists had no connection to or understanding of the actual working class in Britain, the observation stung because it was true. Orwell’s arguments continue to sting today. In his 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism,” Orwell criticized the left-wing intellectuals who enjoy “seeing their own country humiliated” and “follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong.” Among some of these intellectuals, Orwell wrote: “One finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries.”

Hitchens observed that many on today’s left are motivated by the same principle: “Nothing will make us fight against an evil if that fight forces us to go to the same corner as our own government.” This is a predictable manifestation of what the American political theorist Michael Walzer calls the “default position” of the left: a purportedly “anti-imperialist and anti-militarist” position inclined toward the view that “everything that goes wrong in the world is America’s fault.” As we’ll see throughout this book, the tendency to ignore and rationalize even the most egregious violence and authoritarianism abroad in favor of an obsessive emphasis on the crimes and blunders of Western governments has become a reflex on the left.

Much of the left has been captured by a strange mix of sectarian and authoritarian impulses: a myopic emphasis on identitarianism and group rights over the individual; an orientation toward subjectivity and tribalism over objectivity and universalism; and demands for political orthodoxy enforced by repressive tactics like the suppression of speech. These left-wing pathologies are particularly corrosive today because they give right-wing nationalists and populists on both sides of the Atlantic—whose rise over the past several years has been characterized by hostility to democratic norms and institutions, rampant xenophobia, and other forms of illiberalism—an opportunity to claim that those who oppose them are the true authoritarians.

Hitchens was prescient about the ascendance of right-wing populism in the West, from the emergence of demagogues who exploit cultural grievances and racial resentments to the bitter parochialism of “America First” nationalism. And he understood that the left could only defeat these noxious political forces by rediscovering its best traditions: support for free expression, pluralism, and universalism—the values of the Enlightenment.

The final two decades of Hitchens’s career are regarded as a gross aberration by many of his former political allies—a perception he did little to correct as he became increasingly averse to the direction of the left. He no longer cared what his left-wing contemporaries thought of him or what superficial labels they used to describe his politics. Hitchens closes Why Orwell Matters with the following observation: “What he [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that ‘views’ do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.” This is a book about how Hitchens thought—and what today’s left can learn from him.

==

It's still worth saving.

#Christopher Hitchens #Matt Johnson #How Hitchens Can Save the Left #identity politics #populism #left wing identity politics #right wing populism #liberalism #universal liberalism #universalism #Enlightenment #Enlightenment values #universal human rights #tribalism #tribeless #politically homeless #political tribalism #religion is a mental illness

[monkey-d-ezekiel]

the fact that some people think spy x family is "breeding propaganda by the japanese government" because it features a straight couple and a cute child is insane. how desperate are you to push a paranoid political narrative into everything you see. it might be crazy, but there is actually content in this world that isn't made with the intention of moralizing and virtue signaling or feeding propaganda to people. just because you interact with people and content whose lives revolve around that shit doesn't mean you can project it onto everyone and everything. take your head out of the identity politics rabbithole for once and you'll enjoy your life a lot more. not everything is "systemic" or "propaganda" or "brainwashing".

#politics #left wing politics #right wing politics #identity politics #rabbit hole #spy x family #anya forger #yor forger #loid forger #“breeding propaganda”

[sparksinthenight]

I feel like as long as the proletariat remain divided on the basis of race and gender and stuff, we’ll continue being played by the bourgeoisie. I’m not saying you shouldn’t talk about racism and sexism and all that, because those are very real problems you should definitely talk about. But you should remember the fact that you will always have more in common with your fellow worker than you will with any type of bourgeoise person.

#idpol #identity politics #left wing #left #leftism #leftist #capitalism #anti capitalist #capitalist hell #capitalist dystopia #anti capitalism #eat the rich #eat the fucking rich #kill the rich #working class

[leeme-un-poco]

This is my problem with influencers and the culture around it: we are giving way to much power to people witouth education. And I don't mean that they are stupid or ignorant. No. I mean that the we are giving the power to influence thousand of young vulnerable people to someone who is not educated on the matter just because they are pretty, "aesthetic" or has a pretty feed. I bet being an influencer is hard and demands a lot of work BUT it's a matter of being responsable and ethical to your audience to be educated. And that doesn't just mean to Google for a few hours. Like... You don't expect to go to the doctor and be diagnosed with a Google search, or be treated or have surgery with a few days of research... It takes a professional who has actual studies on the matter... So why is it different when influencers are self diagnosing themselves on Instagram talking about pronouns and gender? It takes a psychologist or psychiatrist to do so first before speaking to a vulnerable audience. Why are we giving them so much power to talk about politics or instert themselves in decisions about politics without actual studies on the matter? Why are we letting so many people without education on the subject be the "voice of a generation"? We are giving so much power to the wrong people.

#opinion #text #gender #pronouns #influencers #left wing #right wing extremism #politics #sorry english is not my first language #lgbtq #social media #Identity #Morality #ben shapiro

[mental-mona]

#lgbt #lgbtq+ #identity politics #politics #lgbt issues #extremes are bad #extremism #right wing extremism #left wing extremism #political analysis #critical social justice

[zindagi-jhandwa-firbhi-ghamandwa]

When it comes to political ideologies, I'm either Bi or Ace.

Like I have my own social, economic and political views and most — but not all — of them align with The Left™️. Some of my views are more liberal/third-way and a few are even right-wing, depending on the society you're talking about.

So, since I'm 98% left-wing, you'd think that I like my fellow lefties, right? Ha. Ha. Haha. Hahaha. Hahahahaha. Hahahahahahahaha. No.

In my experience, left/liberal people have mostly turned out be unbearably elitist hypocrites.

They're always people from a background of greater privilege than me lecturing me about privilege. They use their privilege and advantages to equestrian their moral high horse to the biggest social soapbox around and then decry others who have the same (or in some case, fewer) privileges and advantages. And if I highlight that they attended better schools and universities than I did thanks to being born into a wealthier family than mine, I'm instantly labelled as some kind of hater. No kidding.

They'll attack someone earnestly trying to be left-wing for only aligning on 99.9% of issues and then worship at the altar of some random celebrity who couldn't give less of a fuck about their struggle, simply because it fulfills their desperate need to be a contrarian. "Oh, you think this singer or actor is a vapid, shallow tool of the media establishment, well I think they're the greatest artist humanity has ever known, lol I'm so random."

The fact is that the people on the left are no less idiotic than people on the right and I hate them more than I hate right-wing people because they hold most of the same views as I do, which means they are technically, "my side".

Right-wing people, for all their delusional lunacy and outright evil are generally more grounded in the real world. That's because most right-wing folk are from the working class — the group that the left claims to be speaking for but whom they regularly ignore. And those working class people are exploited, manipulated and hoodwinked by the wealthy elites, who also tend to be right-wing.

Meanwhile the left are a bunch of middle and upper class twits. Too rich to relate to the working class but not rich enough to be a part of the evil right-wing global cabal of billionaires.

#identity politics #because no one hates people on the left as much as other people on the left #i'm woke leftist scum myself #woke agenda #cult of woke #left wing #right wing #life #tumblr is my only social media now #politics #internet culture

[thenighttrain]

Nobody could ever accuse you of not being Fearless about your political oppinions that's for sure even or especially on Tumblr (Which is a place i think of trying to be left leaning mostly)

KJSDFHSJFD living up to my stan album<3 i consider myself left leaning too, it's just that the country i live in is WAY too left wing, to the point where the country is falling apart (obviously other factors influence it but. the bad governance rn isn't helping)

#i always vote for centre parties and in malaysia i vote for probably the most left wing of the major parties lol #nz politics these days is just identity politics. u can't criticise the government without being called racist like ?? #that's like if i dismissed any criticism of me as racism or sexism #anonymous #ask

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ann Krispenz & Alex Bertrams

Published: Mar 20, 2023

Abstract In two pre-registered studies, we investigated the relationship of left-wing authoritarianism with the ego-focused trait of narcissism. Based on existing research, we expected individuals with higher levels of left-wing authoritarianism to also report higher levels of narcissism. Further, as individuals with leftist political attitudes can be assumed to be striving for social equality, we expected left-wing authoritarianism to also be positively related to prosocial traits, but narcissism to remain a significant predictor of left-wing authoritarianism above and beyond those prosocial dispositions. We investigated our hypotheses in two studies using cross-sectional correlational designs. Two nearly representative US samples (Study 1: N = 391; Study 2: N = 377) completed online measures of left-wing authoritarianism, the Dark Triad personality traits, and two variables with a prosocial focus (i.e., altruism and social justice commitment). In addition, we assessed relevant covariates (i.e., age, gender, socially desirable responding, and virtue signaling). The results of multiple regression analyses showed that a strong ideological view, according to which a violent revolution against existing societal structures is legitimate (i.e., anti-hierarchical aggression), was associated with antagonistic narcissism (Study 1) and psychopathy (Study 2). However, neither dispositional altruism nor social justice commitment was related to left-wing anti-hierarchical aggression. Considering these results, we assume that some leftist political activists do not actually strive for social justice and equality but rather use political activism to endorse or exercise violence against others to satisfy their own ego-focused needs. We discuss these results in relation to the dark-ego-vehicle principle.

[..]

General discussion

In two pre-registered studies, we investigated the relationship of LWA with the ego-focused trait of narcissism. Based on existing research (Zeigler-Hill et al., 2021), we expected individuals with higher levels of LWA [left-wing authoritarianism] to report higher levels of narcissism. The results of both studies are in line with this prediction: In particular, the results of Study 1 showed that the LWA subfacet of anti-hierarchical aggression was significantly predicted by antagonistic narcissism above and beyond individuals’ prosocial dispositions (i.e., altruism). While antihierarchical aggression represents the drive to use force to overthrow those in power and who endorse conservative values, antagonistic narcissism is characterized by exploitation of others, lack of empathy, a sense of entitlement, arrogance and manipulative behavior. Accordingly, the results of Study 1 show that a strong ideological view, according to which a violent revolution against existing societal structures is legitimate is rather endorsed by individuals with ego-focused motives. This interpretation is further supported by the results of Study 2 which showed that LWA antihierarchical aggression was predicted by psychopathy again above and beyond individuals’ prosocial dispositions (i.e., social justice commitment). Unexpectedly, neither dispositional altruism (Study 1) nor social justice commitment (Study 2) was found to be related to antihierarchical aggression. Considering these results, we assume that some political activists on the left side of the political spectrum do not actually strive for social justice and the support of underprivileged groups or persons, but rather endorse or express violence for the satisfaction of their own ego-focused, sometimes even antisocial, needs.

As a new contribution to the literature on dark personality traits, we interpret the results of both studies as expressions of a phenomenon we term the dark-ego-vehicle principle. According to this principle, individuals with dark personalities – such as high narcissistic and psychopathic traits – are attracted to certain ideologies and forms of political activism. We assume that such individuals use ideologies and political activism as a vehicle to satisfy their own ego-focused needs instead of actually aiming at social justice and equality. For example, a highly narcissistic/psychopathic person may participate in a pro-BLM protest pretending to fight against racism while actually using such protesting activities to meet their own aggressive motives and thrills (e.g., via violent escalations during pro-BLM protests). Further, such individuals might be attracted to pro-BLM activism, because this form of activism can provide them with opportunities for positive self-presentation (e.g., virtue signaling).

Three ancillary points are worth mentioning. Firstly, the dark-ego-vehicle principle does not mean that activism per se was narcissistic/psychopathic. It rather says that some forms of political activism can be attractive for narcissist/psychopaths; however, people also get involved in political activism due to their altruistic motives (Fowler & Kam, 2007). Secondly, the dark-ego-vehicle principle means that involvement in (violent) political activism is not solely attributable to political orientation but rather to personality traits manifesting in individuals on the (radical) left and right of the political spectrum. In particular, we argue that the dark personality correlates of authoritarianism per se might be the driving forces behind the aggression and violence expressed during protests like the attack on the United States Capitol in Washington DC and the pro-BLM protests mentioned in the introduction of this paper. This argument is in line with previous research (Zeigler-Hill et al., 2021) which showed that antagonistic narcissism is not only a strong predictor of LWA but simultaneously predicts SDO – a trait that is clearly related to RWA (Altemeyer, 1998). These results also show that some individuals with high levels of antagonistic narcissism may be motivated to endorse either right- or left-wing ideological attitudes depending on which of these attitudes seems to be more opportune to them given a specific situation. Thus, it is necessary to argue very carefully in each case for what reason a specific dark personality should be attracted to particular ideologies/political activism.

Finally, the present research is not based on an elaborated explanatory theory (cf., Sandberg & Alvesson, 2021) as there is a lack of such a theory. Thus, we refer to a principle and not to a theory. However, we consider the present research as a first step within the complex process of Theory Construction Methodology sensu Borsboom et al. (2021) as our research aimed at the identification of an empirical phenomenon to develop a prototheory.

==

This can hardly be surprising considering the events of 2020, and its mirror image on the right.

#authoritarianism #woke authoritarianism #left wing #left wing identity politics #left wing authoritarianism #dark triad #narcissism #Antifa #BLM #Black Lives Matter #antagonistic narcissism #cancel culture #BLM riots #psychology #dark personality traits #religion is a mental illness

[rthko]

I used to get insecure when reading radical critiques of "born this way" narratives, but I understand it differently now. I'm reading early defenses of homosexuals that concede that their "invert" pathology is worthy of sympathy, and that straight society ought to allow them to have sex (in the right circumstances) so they don't have to be miserable. They go on to claim that while some people who commit homosexual acts are victims of their circumstances, the real perverts are ontologically straight men who commit them by choice.

If I asked every LGBT person I know, "did you choose to be queer," virtually everyone would say no. I have never, to my knowledge, met anyone who would say yes. But if I asked them if they would turn straight/cis if they could, I believe that most, including people who have gone through great hardships on account of their identities, would still say no. The phrase "gay lifestyle" is considered politically incorrect, and indeed there is no one gay lifestyle. But we have also developed culturally distinct circles associated with pleasure as a virtue, creativity, individual dignity and collective care. Many of us learned to look at the straight world not with envy but with relief that we're not part of it.

There are characteristics of our queer identities or behaviors that are a choice. I did not choose to be attracted to men, but I did choose to be promiscuous. I did not choose to be uncomfortable with "male" gender roles, but I did choose to challenge them through gender expression. An emphasis on innateness would imply that the only characteristics of my identity and behavior worth defending are those that are inevitable. It would ask why I still insist on living the way I do when my sexual desires can now just as well be satiated in a legally recognized monogamous marriage.

The subtext of this question, a choice or not a choice, is whether a person is worthy of support. Much like the elusive "gay gene," some trans advocates are searching for the definitive proof of "male brains" and "female brains" that will validate the existence of trans people once and for all. If gender becomes medically or scientifically "provable," perhaps science would then validate trans people. Or, perhaps a brain scan would determine who should or should not consider themselves trans, and create new rationalizations to misgender on "scientific" terms. We need only look back to the sexologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, often gay themselves, who developed scientific rationalizations for queer behavior in good faith only to have them reapplied to nefarious ends.

Many will insist they support LGBT people in the abstract but not the specifics of queer culture. These are the tendencies that don't have a scientific or metaphysical explanation. It is less often we hear claims that one is born to be flamboyant, promiscuous, left wing, kinky or polyamorous, so these tendencies are superfluous. There is a platonic ideal of a lesbian, a gay man, a bisexual or a trans person who follows their natural proclivities and not a step further, and you're not it. So arguments against born this way narratives are not just in defense of those who see themselves as having chosen their gender or sexuality--for what it's worth, I have not knowingly met any. It's that this is a flimsy claim to legitimacy, one that has been used against us, and one that can only be taken so far. I'm not interested in determining who is "faking it." I understand more and more that everyone's body belongs to them, and the steps they take to experience joy and mutual pleasure need no explanation.

[vavandeveresfan]

Holy shit, the New York Times is FINALLY interviewing and listening to detransistioners.

The tide is turning.

Opinion by Pamela Paul

As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.

Feb. 2, 2024

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.

Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy.

“I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex.

Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself.

At 17, desperate to begin hormone therapy, Powell broke the news to her parents. They sent her to a gender specialist to make sure she was serious. In the fall of her senior year of high school, she started cross-sex hormones. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men’s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man.

At no point during her medical or surgical transition, Powell says, did anyone ask her about the reasons behind her gender dysphoria or her depression. At no point was she asked about her sexual orientation. And at no point was she asked about any previous trauma, and so neither the therapists nor the doctors ever learned that she’d been sexually abused as a child.

“I wish there had been more open conversations,” Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told me. “But I was told there is one cure and one thing to do if this is your problem, and this will help you.”

Progressives often portray the heated debate over childhood transgender care as a clash between those who are trying to help growing numbers of children express what they believe their genders to be and conservative politicians who won’t let kids be themselves.

But right-wing demagogues are not the only ones who have inflamed this debate. Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced increased scrutiny in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress.

Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach — including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures — have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.

And while Donald Trump denounces “left-wing gender insanity” and many trans activists describe any opposition as transphobic, parents in America’s vast ideological middle can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine risks or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care.

Powell’s story shows how easy it is for young people to get caught up by the pull of ideology in this atmosphere.

“What should be a medical and psychological issue has been morphed into a political one,” Powell lamented during our conversation. “It’s a mess.”

A New and Growing Group of Patients

Many transgender adults are happy with their transitions and, whether they began to transition as adults or adolescents, feel it was life changing, even lifesaving. The small but rapidly growing number of children who express gender dysphoria and who transition at an early age, according to clinicians, is a recent and more controversial phenomenon.

Laura Edwards-Leeper, the founding psychologist of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States, said that when she started her practice in 2007, most of her patients had longstanding and deep-seated gender dysphoria. Transitioning clearly made sense for almost all of them, and any mental health issues they had were generally resolved through gender transition.

“But that is just not the case anymore,” she told me recently. While she doesn’t regret transitioning the earlier cohort of patients and opposes government bans on transgender medical care, she said, “As far as I can tell, there are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what’s going on.”

Most of her patients now, she said, have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Others refer to this phenomenon, with some controversy, as rapid onset gender dysphoria, in which adolescents, particularly tween and teenage girls, express gender dysphoria despite never having done so when they were younger. Frequently, they have mental health issues unrelated to gender. While professional associations say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, several researchers have documented the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices.

“The population has changed drastically,” said Edwards-Leeper, a former head of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the organization responsible for setting gender transition guidelines for medical professionals.

For these young people, she told me, “you have to take time to really assess what’s going on and hear the timeline and get the parents’ perspective in order to create an individualized treatment plan. Many providers are completely missing that step.”

Yet those health care professionals and scientists who do not think clinicians should automatically agree to a young person’s self-diagnosis are often afraid to speak out. A report commissioned by the National Health Service about Britain’s Tavistock gender clinic, which, until it was ordered to be shut down, was the country’s only health center dedicated to gender identity, noted that “primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.”

Of the dozens of students she’s trained as psychologists, Edwards-Leeper said, few still seem to be providing gender-related care. While her students have left the field for various reasons, “some have told me that they didn’t feel they could continue because of the pushback, the accusations of being transphobic, from being pro-assessment and wanting a more thorough process,” she said.

They have good reasons to be wary. Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she spoke out in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to pay attention to detransitioners, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been attacked by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her licensing board saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy.

In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children.

“I don’t feel safe having a location where people can find me,” she said.

Detransitioners say that only conservative media outlets seem interested in telling their stories, which has left them open to attacks as hapless tools of the right, something that frustrated and dismayed every detransitioner I interviewed. These are people who were once the trans-identified kids that so many organizations say they’re trying to protect — but when they change their minds, they say, they feel abandoned.

Most parents and clinicians are simply trying to do what they think is best for the children involved. But parents with qualms about the current model of care are frustrated by what they see as a lack of options.

Parents told me it was a struggle to balance the desire to compassionately support a child with gender dysphoria while seeking the best psychological and medical care. Many believed their kids were gay or dealing with an array of complicated issues. But all said they felt compelled by gender clinicians, doctors, schools and social pressure to accede to their child’s declared gender identity even if they had serious doubts. They feared it would tear apart their family if they didn’t unquestioningly support social transition and medical treatment. All asked to speak anonymously, so desperate were they to maintain or repair any relationship with their children, some of whom were currently estranged.

Several of those who questioned their child’s self-diagnosis told me it had ruined their relationship. A few parents said simply, “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.”

One mother described a meeting with 12 other parents in a support group for relatives of trans-identified youth where all of the participants described their children as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. To all questions, the woman running the meeting replied, “Just let them transition.” The mother left in shock. How would hormones help a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression? she wondered.

Some parents have found refuge in anonymous online support groups. There, people share tips on finding caregivers who will explore the causes of their children’s distress or tend to their overall emotional and developmental health and well-being without automatically acceding to their children’s self-diagnosis.

Many parents of kids who consider themselves trans say their children were introduced to transgender influencers on YouTube or TikTok, a phenomenon intensified for some by the isolation and online cocoon of Covid. Others say their kids learned these ideas in the classroom, as early as elementary school, often in child-friendly ways through curriculums supplied by trans rights organizations, with concepts like the gender unicorn or the Genderbread person.

‘Do You Want a Dead Son or a Live Daughter?’

After Kathleen’s 15-year-old son, whom she described as an obsessive child, abruptly told his parents he was trans, the doctor who was going to assess whether he had A.D.H.D. referred him instead to someone who specialized in both A.D.H.D. and gender. Kathleen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her son’s privacy, assumed that the specialist would do some kind of evaluation or assessment. That was not the case.

The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. “In front of my son, the therapist said, ‘Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?’” Kathleen recounted.

Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child’s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail. Proponents of the gender-affirming model have cited studies showing an association between that standard of care and a lower risk of suicide. But those studies were found to have methodological flaws or have been deemed not entirely conclusive. A survey of studies on the psychological effects of cross-sex hormones, published three years ago in The Journal of the Endocrine Society, the professional organization for hormone specialists, found it “could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” In a letter to The Wall Street Journal last year, 21 experts from nine countries said that survey was one reason they believed there was “no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.”

Moreover, the incidence of suicidal thoughts and attempts among gender dysphoric youth is complicated by the high incidence of accompanying conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder. As one systematic overview put it, “Children with gender dysphoria often experience a range of psychiatric comorbidities, with a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders and autism spectrum conditions, suicidality and self-harm.”

But rather than being treated as patients who deserve unbiased professional help, children with gender dysphoria often become political pawns.

Conservative lawmakers are working to ban access to gender care for minors and occasionally for adults as well. On the other side, however, many medical and mental health practitioners feel their hands have been tied by activist pressure and organizational capture. They say that it has become difficult to practice responsible mental health care or medicine for these young people.

Pediatricians, psychologists and other clinicians who dissent from this orthodoxy, believing that it is not based on reliable evidence, feel frustrated by their professional organizations. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have wholeheartedly backed the gender-affirming model.

In 2021, Aaron Kimberly, a 50-year-old trans man and registered nurse, left the clinic in British Columbia where his job focused on the intake and assessment of gender-dysphoric youth. Kimberly received a comprehensive screening when he embarked on his own successful transition at age 33, which resolved the gender dysphoria he experienced from an early age.

But when the gender-affirming model was introduced at his clinic, he was instructed to support the initiation of hormone treatment for incoming patients regardless of whether they had complex mental problems, experiences with trauma or were otherwise “severely unwell,” Kimberly said. When he referred patients for further mental health care rather than immediate hormone treatment, he said he was accused of what they called gatekeeping and had to change jobs.

“I realized something had gone totally off the rails,” Kimberly, who subsequently founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance and the L.G.B.T. Courage Coalition to advocate better gender care, told me.

Gay men and women often told me they fear that same-sex-attracted kids, especially effeminate boys and tomboy girls who are gender nonconforming, will be transitioned during a normal phase of childhood and before sexual maturation — and that gender ideology can mask and even abet homophobia.

As one detransitioned man, now in a gay relationship, put it, “I was a gay man pumped up to look like a woman and dated a lesbian who was pumped up to look like a man. If that’s not conversion therapy, I don’t know what is.”

“I transitioned because I didn’t want to be gay,” Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, “I believed homosexuality was a sin.”

When she was 15, Emerick confessed her homosexuality to her mother. Her mother attributed her sexual orientation to trauma — Emerick’s father was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly when she was between the ages of 4 and 7 — but after catching Emerick texting with another girl at age 16, she took away her phone. When Emerick melted down, her mother admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. While there, Emerick told herself, “If I was a boy, none of this would have happened.”

In May 2017, Emerick began searching “gender” online and encountered trans advocacy websites. After realizing she could “pick the other side,” she told her mother, “I’m sick of being called a dyke and not a real girl.” If she were a man, she’d be free to pursue relationships with women.

That September, she and her mother met with a licensed professional counselor for the first of two 90-minute consultations. She told the counselor that she had wished to be a Boy Scout rather than a Girl Scout. She said she didn’t like being gay or a butch lesbian. She also told the counselor that she had suffered from anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. The clinic recommended testosterone, which was prescribed by a nearby L.G.B.T.Q. health clinic. Shortly thereafter, she was also diagnosed with A.D.H.D. She developed panic attacks. At age 17, she was cleared for a double mastectomy.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m having my breasts removed. I’m 17. I’m too young for this,’” she recalled. But she went ahead with the operation.

“Transition felt like a way to control something when I couldn’t control anything in my life,” Emerick explained. But after living as a trans man for five years, Emerick realized her mental health symptoms were only getting worse. In the fall of 2022, she came out as a detransitioner on Twitter and was immediately attacked. Transgender influencers told her she was bald and ugly. She received multiple threats.

“I thought my life was over,” she said. “I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.”

Today Emerick’s voice, permanently altered by testosterone, is that of a man. When she tells people she’s a detransitioner, they ask when she plans to stop taking T and live as a woman. “I’ve been off it for a year,” she replies.

Once, after she recounted her story to a therapist, the therapist tried to reassure her. If it’s any consolation, the therapist remarked, “I would never have guessed that you were once a trans woman.” Emerick replied, “Wait, what sex do you think I am?”

To the trans activist dictum that children know their gender best, it is important to add something all parents know from experience: Children change their minds all the time. One mother told me that after her teenage son desisted — pulled back from a trans identity before any irreversible medical procedures — he explained, “I was just rebelling. I look at it like a subculture, like being goth.”

“The job of children and adolescents is to experiment and explore where they fit into the world, and a big part of that exploration, especially during adolescence, is around their sense of identity,” Sasha Ayad, a licensed professional counselor based in Phoenix, told me. “Children at that age often present with a great deal of certainty and urgency about who they believe they are at the time and things they would like to do in order to enact that sense of identity.”

Ayad, a co-author of “When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents,” advises parents to be wary of the gender affirmation model. “We’ve always known that adolescents are particularly malleable in relationship to their peers and their social context and that exploration is often an attempt to navigate difficulties of that stage, such as puberty, coming to terms with the responsibilities and complications of young adulthood, romance and solidifying their sexual orientation,” she told me. For providing this kind of exploratory approach in her own practice with gender dysphoric youth, Ayad has had her license challenged twice, both times by adults who were not her patients. Both times, the charges were dismissed.

Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible.

Proponents of early social transition and medical interventions for gender dysphoric youth cite a 2022 study showing that 98 percent of children who took both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones continued treatment for short periods, and another study that tracked 317 children who socially transitioned between the ages of 3 and 12, which found that 94 percent of them still identified as transgender five years later. But such early interventions may cement children’s self-conceptions without giving them time to think or sexually mature.

‘The Process of Transition Didn’t Make Me Feel Better’

At the end of her freshman year of college, Grace Powell, horrifically depressed, began dissociating, feeling detached from her body and from reality, which had never happened to her before. Ultimately, she said, “the process of transition didn’t make me feel better. It magnified what I found was wrong with myself.”

“I expected it to change everything, but I was just me, with a slightly deeper voice,” she added. “It took me two years to start detransitioning and living as Grace again.”

She tried in vain to find a therapist who would treat her underlying issues, but they kept asking her: How do you want to be seen? Do you want to be nonbinary? Powell wanted to talk about her trauma, not her identity or her gender presentation. She ended up getting online therapy from a former employee of the Tavistock clinic in Britain. This therapist, a woman who has broken from the gender-affirming model, talked Grace through what she sees as her failure to launch and her efforts to reset. The therapist asked questions like: Who is Grace? What do you want from your life? For the first time, Powell felt someone was seeing and helping her as a person, not simply looking to slot her into an identity category.

Many detransitioners say they face ostracism and silencing because of the toxic politics around transgender issues.

“It is extraordinarily frustrating to feel that something I am is inherently political,” Powell told me. “I’ve been accused multiple times that I’m some right-winger who’s making a fake narrative to discredit transgender people, which is just crazy.”

While she believes there are people who benefit from transitioning, “I wish more people would understand that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,” she said. “I wish we could have that conversation.”

In a recent study in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, about 40 young detransitioners out of 78 surveyed said they had suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria. Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite evidence that the condition is real. In its guide for journalists, the activist organization GLAAD warns the media against using the term, as it is not “a formal condition or diagnosis.” Human Rights Campaign, another activist group, calls it “a right-wing theory.” A group of professional organizations put out a statement urging clinicians to eliminate the term from use.

Nobody knows how many young people desist after social, medical or surgical transitions. Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so.

As Americans furiously debate the basis of transgender care, a number of advances in understanding have taken place in Europe, where the early Dutch studies that became the underpinning of gender-affirming care have been broadly questioned and criticized. Unlike some of the current population of gender dysphoric youth, the Dutch study participants had no serious psychological conditions. Those studies were riddled with methodological flaws and weaknesses. There was no evidence that any intervention was lifesaving. There was no long-term follow-up with any of the study’s 55 participants or the 15 who dropped out. A British effort to replicate the study said that it “identified no changes in psychological function” and that more studies were needed.

In countries like Sweden, Norway, France, the Netherlands and Britain — long considered exemplars of gender progress — medical professionals have recognized that early research on medical interventions for childhood gender dysphoria was either faulty or incomplete. Last month, the World Health Organization, in explaining why it is developing “a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people,” said it will cover only adults because “the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender-affirming care for children and adolescents.”

But in America, and Canada, the results of those widely criticized Dutch studies are falsely presented to the public as settled science.

Other countries have recently halted or limited the medical and surgical treatment of gender dysphoric youth, pending further study. Britain’s Tavistock clinic was ordered to be shut down next month, after a National Health Service-commissioned investigation found deficiencies in service and “a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.”

Meanwhile, the American medical establishment has hunkered down, stuck in an outdated model of gender affirmation. The American Academy of Pediatrics only recently agreed to conduct more research in response to yearslong efforts by dissenting experts, including Dr. Julia Mason, a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal.”

The larger threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections. But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.

“I was always a liberal Democrat,” one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. “Now I feel politically homeless.”

She noted that the Biden administration has “unequivocally” supported gender-affirming care for minors, in cases in which it deems it “medically appropriate and necessary.” Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR in 2022 that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”

Of course, politics should not influence medical practice, whether the issue is birth control, abortion or gender medicine. But unfortunately, politics has gotten in the way of progress. Last year The Economist published a thorough investigation into America’s approach to gender medicine. Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor, put the issue into political context. “If you look internationally at countries in Europe, the U.K. included, their medical establishments are much more concerned,” Beddoes told Vanity Fair. “But here — in part because this has become wrapped up in the culture wars where you have, you know, crazy extremes from the Republican right — if you want to be an upstanding liberal, you feel like you can’t say anything.”

Some people are trying to open up that dialogue, or at least provide outlets for kids and families to seek a more therapeutic approach to gender dysphoria.

Paul Garcia-Ryan is a psychotherapist in New York who cares for kids and families seeking holistic, exploratory care for gender dysphoria. He is also a detransitioner who from ages 15 to 30 fully believed he was a woman.

Garcia-Ryan is gay, but as a boy, he said, “it was much less threatening to my psyche to think that I was a straight girl born into the wrong body — that I had a medical condition that could be tended to.” When he visited a clinic at 15, the clinician immediately affirmed he was female, and rather than explore the reasons for his mental distress, simply confirmed Garcia-Ryan’s belief that he was not meant to be a man.

Once in college, he began medically transitioning and eventually had surgery on his genitals. Severe medical complications from both the surgery and hormone medication led him to reconsider what he had done, and to detransition. He also reconsidered the basis of gender affirmation, which, as a licensed clinical social worker at a gender clinic, he had been trained in and provided to clients.

“You’re made to believe these slogans,” he said. “Evidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled — and none of that is evidence based.”

Garcia-Ryan, 32, is now the board president of Therapy First, an organization that supports therapists who do not agree with the gender affirmation model. He thinks transition can help some people manage the symptoms of gender dysphoria but no longer believes anyone under 25 should socially, medically or surgically transition without exploratory psychotherapy first.

“When a professional affirms a gender identity for a younger person, what they are doing is implementing a psychological intervention that narrows a person’s sense of self and closes off their options for considering what’s possible for them,” Garcia-Ryan told me.

Instead of promoting unproven treatments for children, which surveys show many Americans are uncomfortable with, transgender activists would be more effective if they focused on a shared agenda. Most Americans across the political spectrum can agree on the need for legal protections for transgender adults. They would also probably support additional research on the needs of young people reporting gender dysphoria so that kids could get the best treatment possible.

A shift in this direction would model tolerance and acceptance. It would prioritize compassion over demonization. It would require rising above culture-war politics and returning to reason. It would be the most humane path forward. And it would be the right thing to do.

*~*~*~*~*~*

For those who want tor ead more by those fighting the cancellation forquestioning, read:

Graham Lineham, who's been fighting since the beginning and paid the price, but is not seeing things turn around.

The Glinner Update, Grahan Linehan's Substack.

Kellie-Jay Keen @ThePosieParker, who's been physically attacked for organizing events for women demanding women-only spaces.

REDUXX, Feminst news & opinion.

Gays Against Groomers @againstgrmrs, A nonprofit of gay people and others within the community against the sexualization, indoctrination and medicalization of children under the guise of "LGBTQIA+"

#detransitioners #detransition #gender critical #New York Times #gays #lesbians #trans #trans insanity #long post #article #detrans #transgender #post trans #desisted

[xclowniex]

why do you only criticize the left on your blog. Aren't nazis and white supremists also bad.

The reason why I criticize the left so much is for two reasons.

1. I am a leftists

2. The left is being very hypocritical about jews

To elaborate on those points, you should always call out those within your own political side. You can't just go "right wing people don't care about minorities" whilst not saying anything about the people on the left don't care about a minority.

It's hypocritical to criticize others when your group does the same thing.

All that does is say one of 3 things about you. That you either think that being bad towards a minority is excused because of your political opinion, the minority at hand and the discrimination they face is not as important as other minorities or isn't bad or that you just don't care about the minority at hand.

Going into how the left is hypocritical about jews, the left frequently is against civilians being held accountable for the actions of their government. Yet Israelis are being held accountable by them for their governments actions. Diaspora jews aka jews outside of Israel also get frequently held responsible for a government which isn't even theirs.

Leftists are against the collective punishment of Gazan citizens yet collectively punish Israeli and Jewish folk socially.

Then you have people talking about how a minority doing a bad thing doesn't take away from the need to respect their identity. Such as how you shouldn't misgender a trans person if they do a bad thing as that's transphobic but as soon as they find out that a Jewish person is a zionist, antisemitism is now okay.

You've got jews currently who have seen the lefts ideas and agreed with them. We agree that collective punishment is bad. We agree that a minority doing something bad doesn't take away from the respect they deserve for their identity. We have supported land back movements for the native folk of whatever country we live in.

Yet none of those actions are happening for us. Instead antisemitic tropes are used to blame us for everything.

I could go on about how the lefts actions in the West further fuel the right wing parties in Israel. How they view it as "see no jews are safe outside of Israel. We need to be more violent to secure Israel's safety for jews internationally.

I could go on about how the lefts actions are forcing jews out of the left and are making jews more likely than before to become right wing.

But none of that matters because what should be in the forefront, is a leftist ideal of discrimination based on religious, ethnicity/race, sexual orientation or gender, is bad.

Yet that completely escapes people when it comes to jews and antisemitsm.

#antisemitism #israel #palestine #i/p war #gaza #i/p #ask clownie

[catws-anniversary]

Today is exactly 10 years since the LA premiere of CA:TWS! As good a day as any to release all of our prompts so you can plan for the anniversary event.

Kicking off on March 26th, we'll be celebrating a decade of CA:TWS with 8 daily prompts to choose from, ranging from thematic prompts and quotes, to more general prompts and character-specific ones. These can be interpreted in any manner you choose and do not need to be linked to the daily theme.

As a reminder: this is an open event (see rules and FAQs - content does need to relate to CA:TWS), and the use of our daily prompts is entirely optional. They’re there to inspire, not to put up restrictions.

You can always contact us if you have any questions. We're so excited to see your creations!

MARCH 26 THEME: ON YOUR LEFT

The Smithsonian

First Meetings

Endurance

Mission

PTSD

"I'll put it on the list"

Favorite quote

MARCH 27 THEME: STEVE ROGERS

Camp Lehigh

Elevator

Motorcycle

Steve's list

Guilt

"It kind of feels personal"

Favorite Steve quote

MARCH 28 THEME: SHIELD

The Triskelion

Compromised

Surprise Visit

Neighbor

Weapons

"It's called compartmentalization"

Favorite scene

MARCH 29 THEME: NATASHA ROMANOFF

Mall

Disguise

Redemption

Matchmaking

Trust Issues

"Did I step on your moment?"

Favorite Natasha quote

MARCH 30 THEME: TWS CAST

Press Conference

Character Bleed

Photoshoot

Social Media

Stunts

"I'll take this one"

Favorite cast member

MARCH 31 THEME: SAM WILSON

Department of Veteran's Affairs

Partners

Soundtrack/Music

Wings

Missing Scenes

"I never said 'pilot'."

Favorite Sam quote

APRIL 1 THEME: HYDRA

Lemurian Star

Project Insight

Politics

STRIKE

Post-Credit Scenes

"Order comes through pain"

Favorite fight

APRIL 2 THEME: BUCKY BARNES

Bank

Metal Arm

Memories

Ghost Story

Revenge

"But I knew him"

Favorite Bucky quote

APRIL 3 THEME: CAP QUARTET

Washington DC

Breakfast

Bedside Vigil

Uniform

Found Family

"When do we start?"

Favorite duo

APRIL 4 THEME: TO THE END OF THE LINE

Helicarrier

1940s

Devotion

Identity Porn

Reunion

"Schoolyard and battlefield"

Favorite Stucky scene

Happy creating!

#catws #catws10 #marvel events #ca:tws anniversary #fandom events #trackmarvel #captain america #steve rogers #sam wilson #bucky barnes #natasha romanoff #cap quartet #captain america: the winter soldier

[justiceamberheard]

''Who Trolled Amber'' podcast

The highlights of each episode from the podcast. You can listen to it on Spotify, Youtube etc. EPISODE 1.

The outcome of the trial definitely damaged #METOO movement;

There were 80k of anti Amber Heard tweets, more than anti JD tweets even though AH was the one who accused him of abuse;

There's no way it was all organic, they either bought bots or those were real people pretending to be JD's supporters;

According to Jennifer Robinson, one of AH lawyers from the UK trial, Amber'd never wanted to relieve what had happened to her during the relationship;

Jennifer thought it'd be easier to win the US than in the UK;

The information about bots were thrown out way before the trial hence Ron Shnell couldn't talk about in the courtroom; EPISODE 2.

According to Ron Shnell there was a bot campaign against AH but he wasn't 100% sure because the judge struck out that research;

Kathryn Arnold shared that AH wasn't allowed to be a part of Aquaman 2 promotion tour and was banned from posting anything Aquaman related;

KA also said that AH couldn't audition, no one would hire her and that the agents were told not to touch her[AH]; EPISODE 3

The podcast creators asked experts(Kai-Cheng Yang) to check the date that was given by Ron Shnell;

According to the data: many accounts with no followers had tweets with more than 5k retweets/likes; hundreds of identical tweets were posted in one day; many accounts liked 400k tweets; 10k of identical comments were left under AH youtube videos; many accounts change their tune(from right wing Chile politics) and out of nowhere started to post pro JD tweets; half oh the data/accounts/tweets were generated by inauthentic accounts and then the real accounts started to engage with those tweets etc. it all started in November 2020 when JD lost the UK case and was fired from Fantastic Beasts; EPISODE 4

Cameron Herrin case was mentioned, more specifically the sudden interest and pro CH posts on TikTok asking to reduce his sentence and that he is innocent. Most of the accounts that were spreading those posts were from Middle East; EPISODE 5

Some Arabic twitter accounts suddenly started to tweet Pro JD tweets in English during and after the US trial;

The friendship betweet Johnny Depp and prince Mohammed was mentioned(him financing JD directorial movie Modi); EPISODE 6

Adam Waldman worked for Lavrov as a consultant for years(2010-2017);

During the deposition Adam Waldman refused to answer more than 70 questions;

Alexi Mostrous tried contacting ''the internet journalists'' aka TUG and ThatBrianFella but they didn't answer; he also pointed out that the audios that were posted by ThatBrianFella were clearly edited(we know);

Mostrous also tried to call Adam Waldman but he didn't pick up the phone and 25 minutes later posted a tweet:

“He[Adam Waldman] attacked witnesses, he attacked us (legal team)..unlike anything I have ever seen from a lawyer” said Jennifer Robinson. ''Amber Heard wrote an Op-ed for Washington Post which is a very respected publication and Johnny Depp's name isn't in it. It told to survivors if this can be done to a woman whose actually well-known and well-established person in the industry, it's gonna be even worse for you.'' All-in-All, it's clear as day that Waldman was behind the bot campaign against Amber. We've known that but it's good that a popular podcast researched about it and shed a light on it. Plus it's always great to see JD fans being nervous and panicky.

#amber heard #i stand with amber heard #anti johnny depp #johnny depp #adam waldman #who trolled amber #highlights

[tanadrin]

But Germany’s performances of repentance have their limits. They do not extend, for example, to the genocide the German colonial army committed in Namibia against Herero and Nama people between 1904 and 1908, killing tens of thousands. Germany did not officially apologize for those bloody acts until 2021 and has not agreed to pay meaningful reparations to descendants of the victims. If the new German identity relies on isolating the Holocaust as a shameful aberration in national history and nullifying it via solemn remembrance, there is little room for the memory of colonial violence in the nation’s self-mythology. Genocide scholar Dirk Moses named this approach the “German catechism” in a 2021 essay that sparked heated debate. “The catechism implies a redemptive story in which the sacrifice of Jews in the Holocaust by Nazis is the premise for the Federal Republic’s legitimacy,” wrote Moses. “That is why the Holocaust is more than an important historical event. It is a sacred trauma that cannot be contaminated by profane ones—meaning non-Jewish victims and other genocides—that would vitiate its sacrificial function.”

Accordingly, Germany now sees its post-Holocaust mandate as encompassing not a broader commitment against racism and violence but a specific fealty to a certain Jewish political formation: the State of Israel. Germany has relied on its close diplomatic relationship to Israel to emphasize its repudiation of Nazism, but its connection to the Jewish state goes even further. In 2008, then-chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Israeli Knesset to declare that ensuring Israel’s security was part of Germany’s “Staatsraison,” the state’s very reason for existence. If asked why it is worth preserving a German nationalism that produced Auschwitz, Germany now has a pleasing, historically symmetrical answer—it exists to support the Jewish state.

To that end, in recent years, Germany’s laudable apparatus for public cultural funding has been used as a tool for enacting a 2019 Bundestag resolution declaring that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel is antisemitic. Although the resolution is technically nonbinding, its passage has led to an unending stream of firings and event cancellations, and to the effective blacklisting of distinguished academics, cultural workers, artists, and journalists for offenses like inviting a renowned scholar of postcolonialism to speak, tweeting criticism of the Bundestag resolution, or having attended a Palestinian solidarity rally in one’s youth. A network of antisemitism commissioners—a system explored in this issue in a feature by Peter Kuras—has been deputized to monitor such offenses. These commissioners are typically white, Christian Germans, who speak in the name of the Jews and often playact Jewishness on a public stage, posing for photo ops in yarmulkes, performing Jewish music, wearing the uniform of the Israeli police, and issuing decrees on who is next in the pillory. When they tangle with left-wing Jews in Germany, canceling their events and attacking them as antisemites in the pages of various newspapers, they suggest what Germany’s antisemitism commissioner Felix Klein has said directly: That the Jews are not being sensitive enough to what antisemitism means to the Germans—that, in fact, these Jews do not understand antisemitism at all. In a perverse twist, the fact that the Germans were the most successful antisemites in history has here become a credential. By becoming the Jews’ consummate protectors, Germans have so thoroughly absorbed the moral lessons bestowed by Jewish martyrdom that they have no more need for the Jew except as symbol; by the logic of this strange supersessionism, Germans have become the new Jews. This is not only a matter of rhetorical authority on Jewish matters but is also often literal, as this self-reflexive philosemitism has led to a wave of German converts to Judaism. According to Tzuberi, “The Jewish revival is desired precisely because it is a German revival.”

If Jews are negated by this formulation, Palestinians are villainized by it. Last year, when the German state banned Nakba Day demonstrations, only days after the murder of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, police justified this suppression by claiming, in a familiar racist trope, that protesters would not have been able to contain their violent rage. Indeed, in Germany Palestinian identity itself has become a marker of antisemitism, scarcely to be spoken aloud—even as the country is home to the largest Palestinian community in Europe, with a population of around 100,000. “Whenever I would mention that I was Palestinian, my teachers were outraged and said that I should refer to [Palestinians] as Jordanian,” one Palestinian German woman speaking of her secondary school education told the reporter Hebh Jamal. Palestinianness as such has thus been stricken from German public life. In The Moral Triangle, a 2020 anthropological study of Palestinian and Israeli communities in Germany by Sa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor, many Palestinians interviewed said that to speak of pain or trauma they’ve experienced due to Israeli policy is to destroy their own futures in Germany. “The Palestinian collective body is inscribed as ontologically antisemitic until proven otherwise. Palestinians, in this sense, are collateral damage of the intensifying German wish for purification from antisemitism,” wrote Tzuberi.

July 5, 2023

#sorry for the long quote #hard to pick just one or two paragraphs #Germany #politics

[embroid-away]

What If: Captain America Were Revived Today? #44 (April 1983) by Peter B. Gillis and Sal Buscema; Original Image by John Romita Sr.

In this What If? Marvel tale, Captain America is unfrozen in 1983 rather than the 1960s. Without the leadership of Steve Rogers, The Avengers disband. Meanwhile, a Captain America imposter, who calls himself a "real American," has decided to use his newfound influential media status to publicly support a National Identity Card to "deal with illegal aliens,” to suggest that members of civil rights groups "ought to think seriously as to whether or not their actions contribute to the strengthening of communist enemies," and declare that if those groups tear the country apart with protests, martial law is justified "for the peace to find a solution.”

Neighborhoods with large black populations (e.g., Harlem) are walled off and forced into poverty, and one character even mentions that Jewish people are being “put back into camps.” The right-wing politicians make sure that things like this aren’t shown on television, keeping the majority of the American public ignorant of the horrors committed with their indifferent support. The public are simultaneously told that with some sacrifices, America can be free once again. The fake Captain America confronts a group of peaceful protestors, and he is shot by a sniper (in what reads like an inside job), allowing the police to have “reason” to attack the protestors. The imposter does not die and instead uses the attack to provide more reason for the violent crackdown against protesting groups.

When the true Captain America is unfrozen, he is horrified to see what America has become, especially with his emblem stamped all over it. He immediately seeks out the resistance forces (who clearly represent the Black Panther Party) and joins their cause, stating that "the wrongs [he's] seen will take much more than one man to right -- but [he's] got a name to clear, a costume to unsoil-- and a country to die for!!"

By the time Steve joins them, the resistance only has one chance left to stop the American downfall: a political convention where the "America First" party will be able to secure its support to sweep the national elections and allow them "to return America to the pure and great nation [the] forefathers envisioned."

The resistance strikes just as the convention begins. The Captain America imposter is no match in a fight against the true Captain America -- especially against a Steve Rogers who's fucking pissed. ("Get up so I can knock you down!!")

With the imposter knocked unconscious, Captain America addresses the convention crowd, warning that an America that does not represent all its people does not deserve to exist at all; that liberty can be "as easily snuffed out [in America] as in Nazi Germany" and "as a people, we are no different from them."

The crowd realizes that the man speaking before them is the true Captain America and cheers. Captain America holds his hand up and silences them, stating that he will not allow them the chance to simply replace one idol with another. He alone can’t undo the horrible damage, and he pleads that there’s still a chance for the people to “find America once again.”

Fascism doesn’t change its tune, just its singers.

A 2021 Marvel Trumps Hate ( @marveltrumpshate ) commission, completed on 22-count aida cloth with embroidery floss and watercolors on a 9" diameter bamboo hoop.

#captain america #Steve Rogers #hand embroidery #fuck fascism #if you don't think cap says 'trans rights' then you're a fascist #i reread the issue to write the summary and it is a powerful stand-alone story #40 years later and still relevant #a part of me was worried that it wouldn't translate well to current events and.... welp #the commissioner asked that i make one minor change of 'freedom of all men' to 'freedom of all people' #i think that is a very appropriate update and i think 2023 cap (and good cap writer) would support the change #i know this is a super long post with a lot of image text -- if someone wrote Image ID text for me I'd be super grateful and i'll reblog it! #embroidery art #textile arts #embroidery #needlework #needlecraft #comics #mixed media #my work #also just let it be known that the first thing steve rogers says when he wakes up is: #'all right nazis! what have you done with Bucky?!' #(the Bucky in the issue is a fake too) #(the real Bucky will still be dead for another 20 years :(((((( )

[shadebloopnik]

Angelic Alastor AU

"Al!"

The angel turned to the voice and the sound of flapping wings just in time to see the two Archangels land behind him. The smaller of the two- with porcelain skin, rosy cheeks and an otherworldly beauty, bounded towards him full of energy. Golden eyes peered up at him as he spoke.

"Just finished with our spar, and Michael said he loved the hat! I told you it was a good idea!", Lucifer spoke, deep chuckles seeming to brighten the area by its mere presence. He punctuated his words by adjusting the top hat on his head, replacing the usual golden crown, a prideful smile on his face.

"Your brothers clearly love you too much.", Alastor snipes before facing the taller angel, and giving a polite bow. "Your Highness."

Michael gives a solemn nod, adorning a small soft smile. "Always good to see you, Altruist. I had ample time before my next meeting, so I figured I'd accompany my brother on his way to your little appointment."

Michael bore nearly identical features to his younger brother, possessing the same blonde locks, white skin, and golden eyes, albeit being considerably taller. What he lacked, falling a bit behind Lucifer's beauty, he made up for with his dignified grace, a regal authority that rivalled no other. He reminded Alastor of a frozen tundra amidst the plans for the creation of life, as precise as every detail on each snowflake.

"Very well that you did, your Grace, as your brother appears to need it quite a lot."

"It was ONE time! And your directions were very unclear!"

"I fail to see how 'meet me at the gates' translates to 'circle the entirety of heaven for 3 hours', my friend."

"There are a lot of gates in heaven! No matter! They just finished constructing the new nebula! We gotta check it out Alastor! Come on!", Lucifer said, practically bouncing on his feet in excitement and circling the other in flight before dashing off in a burst of speed.

Michael let out a rare chuckle as Alastor sighed in seeming annoyance.

"Always so sprightly, makes me wonder how you keep up with it all, Altruist.", the Archangel spoke, stepping to stand beside the red eyed angel.

"Trust me Sire, its tempting not to follow.", Alastor replied, deadpan as he set his gaze to the direction the Morningstar set off on. Left alone with the other Archangel, without Lucifer with him, Alastor couldn't help but feel a bit insecure. Shuffling his mismatch wings, he subtly moved the upper white set to cover the red and black wings below, his hold on his cane, tightening ever so slightly, though not enough for Michael to notice.

Michael smiled, finding no offense whatsoever from Alastor's words and the casualty of his jabs towards Lucifer. Despite his words, Michael could see the fondness Alastor possessed for the shorter angel, clear as day. Alastor was powerful, only ranking below the Archangels themselves in sheer strength, and would be of higher standing if not for his reclusive nature.

He always wore a smile wherever he went, but it was different for Lucifer, softer, fuller. Alastor shied away from any interaction with his angelic kind, but fully welcomes Lucifer's presence, seeking it, even. It was without a doubt that Alastor cared for his younger brother, his loyalty and selflessness when it came to the younger angel was palpable, fitting of his title, and for that, he had Michael's complete and utter respect.

"But you will, you always do.", Michael turned to face the angel, golden eyes meeting peculiar red. "Its why I trust you with his life."

Its a bit ridiculous perhaps, considering Lucifer was far more powerful than Alastor could ever be, but in the end, it mattered little. Alastor held his brother's heart, and Michael could guess it rang true vice versa.

Alastor's smile froze on his face, his sharp tongue silent as he gazed into the Archangel. A bout of silence passed, broken only by the Morningstar barreling back into Alastor at high speed.

"Alastor come on slow-wings! Hah! Get it? Slow? Wings? Come on, its hilarious, lets goooo!!", Lucifer bounced, gripping at the taller angel's arm, making a show of pulling him along. Evidently he didn't use much force, seeing as how Alastor wasn't immediately carried off, but it was enough to drag the angel rather quickly still.

"Later Michael!", the star spoke with a cheerful wave, before speeding off, dragging a squawking Alastor behind him as the other hastily flapped his mismatched wings, as he struggled to keep up.

Michael smiled at the scene, before turning to leave for his meeting.

Protect his heart, Alastor, it's all I ask of you.

_________________________

The wind roughly brushed the trees around them, as 3 pairs wings fluttered to land, every flap bringing forth powerful gusts. Michael surveyed the area as he went down to Earth, a mossy swamp littered with fireflies, blues and greens seeming to glow under the night sky. He wrenched his eyes down. He couldn't bear to look at a star right now, not after....

He shook the thought away, marching to look for the angel he was looking for. He'd been searching for hours, burning through the whole day. Alastor truly was a recluse, he was impossible to locate when he didn't want to be found. This was the last place he didn't look yet. They'd let Alastor design these swamps, letting him have at least a little hand in the creation of Earth despite his numerous refusals.

There at the edge, he could see him, standing at the edge of the water, mismatched wings cocooning him, the white set covering his entirety until his black wings were nearly out of sight.

"Altruist."

Alastor remained silent, his back to the Archangel. It was perhaps the most disrespectful thing Alastor's ever done to him, what with all his usual obsession with propriety.

"Altruist.", he called again, voice growing desperate, frustrated.

Still, there was no answer.

Michael clenched his teeth, the day's proceedings catching up to him, leaving him with far, far too many emotions.

"Alastor-"

"Don't."

Alastor's voice was cold, an icy tone that rivalled his own. It made Michael angry, frustrated and bitter. Can't Alastor see that he's hurting too? That he's also grieving?

"I lost him too, Alastor."

His voice was filled with emotion he wouldn't dare name. He had to be strong and steady for his brothers, for the rest of heaven. Im front of Alastor though? In matters regarding Lucifer? There was no one Michael could relate to more.

So why can't Alastor see? Did he think this was easy for Michael?! He lost his brother too! He's not the only one suffering!

But deep inside, Michael knew. It wasn't the same. He knew how deep the bond between Alastor and Lucifer ran, perhaps deeper than he ever had with his brother.

Michael's heart was already given to Heaven as a whole, but Alastor's only belonged to one.

"Tell me Michael, whose life did you entrust to me, again?", Michael felt ice crawl up his spine, his heart growing heavier with each word. Alastor spun around, unfurling his wings to face the Archangel. His crimson eyes were redder than usual.

"How, pray tell, am I supposed to do what you asked, when you cast down the one I was supposed to protect? Tell me how can I protect him from the fiery pits you all threw him into? How, am I supposed to GO ON WITHOUT-!"

'Without them', he almost said. No, he couldn't be reckless, couldn't let his emotions get the better. They couldn't know about his own relations with Lilith, he promised the two he'd stay safe. No matter how much it ached, he couldn't go against them.

Michael furrowed his brows in understanding, letting the accusations wash over him. If it were anyone else, he'd have already smote them down for the audacity, but this was Alastor. This was the angel who held his brother's heart; angry and emotional and dreadfully loyal to the star even now. If anything, in respect for his brother, he could endure this.

Schooling his expression, he'd gaze back at the fuming angel before him, his face a blank slate.

"Lucifer's actions were reckless and destructive, with severe consequences. His reckless disobedience, his affiliation with the first woman, its shattering the very foundation of order we worked so hard to maintain. Such crimes cannot go unpunished."

His voice was cold, adopting the mask of a ruthless prince. Right now, he wasn't a brother, he was Michael, Sword of Justice, Protector of Heaven. He had to learn to separate each title, it was the only way to ensure he did his role right. He can't be a brother right now. He won't, not for this.

He wishes it made it hurt less.

As emotionally compromised as he was, Alastor couldn't mask the pain in his face as he squeezed his eyes shut at Michael's tone, knowing he was now speaking to a soldier, not a friend. The sight of it almost made Michael want to break down the mask. Almost. Not nearly enough to actually do so. He was able to bear casting down his own brother, this was nothing.

The thought sent another pang to his heart, and he pushed it to the back of his mind.

"I love him too..", his voice was low, resigned, all energy leaving him as he looked away from the angel before him. Michael was so so tired. "It had to be done."

The swaying of the leaves and the buzz of nearby fireflies were the only things breaking the deafening silence. Now that he thought about it, didn't Lucifer help make these? Little bursts of light flying amidst a darkened swamp...

Why must everything hurt Michael today?

He heard the other take a deep breath, and turned to see the other adopt a smile. It didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Thank you for your visit, your Highness. You may take your leave now."

Alastor always smiled, even when he didn't mean it, but none of those ever felt as wrong as this one.

"Alas-"

Michael cut off his own words at the other's glare. Alastor's eyes glowed a deep red, his sclera giving its own crimson glow. His glowing wings seemed to curl closer around him. All this while still keeping on that damned smile. It was uncomfortable. It served little to intimidate someone as powerful as Michael, but this wasn't about power.

He's never seen Alastor look so broken.

He may be set apart from the other angels, but he always looked so happy with Lucifer.

......but Lucifer isn't here anymore, is he?

Suppressing a sigh, Michael kept his voice level. ".....Altruist."

Alastor's smile only seemed to widen, contrasting with how his wings curled tighter around himself in a cocoon.

"I wish to be alone. Now.", the deceptively cheerful tone made Michael sick.

Without another word Michael turned around. There was no fixing this. Alastor looked as though a single action would cause him to flee. If Michael didn't take his leave, he'd have left anyway. All Alastor wanted was Lucifer, and Lucifer was condemned in Hell. There's nothing he could do.

As he spread out his wings, he took one last glance at Alastor's smiling face, before taking off, ignoring the muffled sounds of sobbing he left in his wake.

It was the last time he's ever seen Alastor smile.

#Angelic Alastor AU #google: how do you tell the person in love with ur brother that you sent said brother down to hell- #YES Michael's in this AU i CANNOT have a Lucifer without a Michael #the frozen void to his morning star #michael #hazbin hotel michael #bloopnik writing #alastor #alastor hazbin #alastor hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #angel alastor #radioapple #radioapplith #appleradio #lucifer x alastor #alastor x lucifer #hazbin hotel alastor #lucifer morningstar #lucifer #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin hotel au #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel 2024 #fic #fanfic #this might be a snippet to a fanfic im working on rn #its still in its worldbuildin stage bc life is busssyyyyy but this is one kf the scenes im planning out for it #hell's greatest throuple #hazbin au