Apparently written by Jesse Singal. 🙄 Glad I canceled my subscription last year.

so the Economist article isn't attributed an author. but someone in the replies of this 🧵 tipped me off that it was Jəsse Singal. & it turns out that it was, which in retrospect isn't surprising (as he's one of the ppl who would never answer this question):

It's actually super important to understand negativity bias. We are so determined to place blame, even when we don't understand things.

There's a wrong way and a right way to report this

so Tylenol supposedly causes autism, but so does MMR, despite autism predating either of them – how could this be? negativity bias! this is why when ppl consider something to be "bad" they can invent hundreds of causes w/little evidence & ppl will believe it... juliaserano.medium.com/what-covid-l...

re: that Economist article that's making the rounds 🧵

Besides the point that "irreversible medical intervention" is a weaselly, dogshit framing, the takeaway from these things is always going to be that the people these articles are targeted to can only see themselves in the person who turned out not to be trans, and therefore only they matter

OFC "This medical intervention has an 80% success rate" is being framed as something bad.

They consider being trans to be a disorder, so anything that facilitates the survival of persistently trans people is also bad to them.

A therapy or intervention with an 80% success rate would be considered a medical miracle in pretty much any other field, but when it comes to expressing one's gender identity apparently it's an unacceptable low. For, uh, reasons.

Can't wait to see the mental arithmetics used by Streeting et al to ignore another study in support of gender-affirming care 🙈

ICYMI

re: that Economist article that's making the rounds 🧵

Other things that will probably cause autism after they try to ban Tylenol: -seed oil -pizza toppings other than pepperoni -trans people -woke -women’s suffrage -late night TV hosts -empathy -windmills -Canada

I've seen multiple ppl share the "some podcasters shouldn't do video podcasts" skeet going round, but I think there's an obvious reason for it:

An older relative recently expressed concern about transition “regret”, and I asked what his doctor had promised him about his knee and hip replacements - depending on the studies, those surgeries can have anywhere from a 5% to 30%(!!!) regret rate, but no one is scraming to put a halt to them.

ICYMI

As CNN offers daylong saturation coverage of the podcaster’s funeral, I went back and checked to see how CNN covered Melissa Hortman’s memorial on 6/28, where Walz spoke and Biden/Harris attended. It got about four minutes during the hours it was happening—less than Jeff Bezos’s wedding that day.

many ppl highlighting flaws in this article. but having fought in the "80% desistance" wars of the mid-2010s, I remember asking anti-trans activists if they'd be ok if 80% of youth were helped by gender-affirming care (flipping their argument). & they *never* answered. b/c they want *zero* trans ppl

if you haven't read Sexed Up yet, perhaps you should!

if you're concerned about the pervasive sexualization of women, & also the various ways in which other marginalized groups (POC, PWD, LGBTQ+) are sexualized (often overlooked in feminism), & dislike "sex-negative" framings of this issue, Sexed Up is for you! juliaserano.medium.com/sexed-up-a-c...

"Neither Trump nor the MAGA right wants to discuss or deliberate; it wants to dominate. American politics is no longer a fight over policy; it is a fight... [to defend] a more democratic and egalitarian American republic — not hope that one can avoid the fight by having the right conversation."

...dear Dem politicians & pundits, 1) the sports debate was never a serious issue, it was merely a wedge to launder in anti-trans policies (see: juliaserano.medium.com/trans-people...), 2) they are now going after trans ppl's *rights to exist* – that's where the battle is now! take a side in that!

"Neither Trump nor the MAGA right wants to discuss or deliberate; it wants to dominate. American politics is no longer a fight over policy; it is a fight... [to defend] a more democratic and egalitarian American republic — not hope that one can avoid the fight by having the right conversation."

Media execs have fallen prey to a propaganda and harassment campaign that has completely divorced them from what people actually want right now. Both their insular information environments (group chats, podcasts) and ambient noise (Twitter reactionaries) have put them in a very stupid bubble.

Anyone who signs this pledge is not a journalist.

💯 this. At a bare minimum maybe they could STFU about sports.

the sheer fucking gall of Dem politicians who now – in September 2025, as the Trump admin is taking away trans ppl's healthcare & passports & baselessly labeling us as "terrorists" – express their "concerns" about trans ppl & sports. they are trying to eradicate us! maybe be "concerned" about that!

I genuinely cannot believe that Ezra Klein said we should run pro-life candidates in Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri; three states that recently held abortion referendums where the pro-choice side won!

conservatives have openly discussed using age restrictions to censor all LGBTQ+ content (eg, juliaserano.medium.com/kosa-a-natio...). ppl promoting age restrictions (some of whom l mostly agree with on reining in tech companies) need to take this threat seriously!

95 democrats, including @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social voted to "honor" the life of charlie kirk, who called for joe biden to be killed and said black women like justice ketanji brown jackson are unqualified affirmative action hires. shame. clerk.house.gov/evs/2025/rol...

If you wrote a "Trump distances himself from project 2025" story in 2024 you are either a dupe or one of our enemies. They are cackling with laughter that the media they're now destroying enthusiastically helped them dupe the voters

In the 2010s, this country's elites were thrown onto social platforms with everyone else and could finally read what we all think about them and it caused them so much psychic damage that they decided to destroy both the internet and democracy to make sure nothing like it ever happened again.

Y'all realize, of course, that if they do this successfully, there's absolutely nothing stopping them from listing gay people, Black people, or people under 5'6" as violent extremists, right? This lets them brand entire demographics as terrorists under FBI labeling if it is not stopped.

if they're going to do this, then we should all take the day off & refuse to buy anything. tell your boss you can't work out of respect for this national day of remembrance...

we wrote about this WH tactic recently. they’re asking journalists for expert source names and then using them to look up political donations in FEC records to try to discredit those sources as biased. www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...

@evangreer.bsky.social I'd be interested in your thoughts about this (if you have time). if not, thanks for everything you do with EFF!

the skeleton key to understanding these people is that they genuinely think you are a drone who will do what you’re told if the TV says it

question for those familiar with "age verification" legislation: I know these bills/laws can vary & that centralized platforms (especially social media sites) may feel compelled to comply with them. but how does said legislation typically handle decentralized content such as emails & podcasts?

I signed the Harper's letter to show I was brave enough to stand up to the left on free speech. But I've decided that I'm not brave enough to stand up to the right about it.

if the democratic party were led by van hollen instead of chuck schumer or hakeem jeffries right now democratic party approval rating would fly through the roof

Boycott Disney.

Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.

if Jimmy Kimmel's political humor is too hot for you to handle, I'm not sure "snowflake" even cuts it as a term of derision for the level of fragility you've achieved

This is all he said?! This is why ABC (in response to threats from Trump's FCC) is taking Kimmel off the air?!

Now would be a great time for Dem donors to fund new media instead of consultants who are practically Republicans

YO CALIFORNIA our state was recently downgraded among safest states for trans people and trans youth YOU can help make it better right now follow the quoted link, established by @lalgbtcenter.bsky.social, and tell our elected officials to sign these bills into law ASAP 👇

Sorry I was late to your wedding, my flight was canceled because my pilot posted a Charlie Kirk quote verbatim in the comments of an Instagram Reel.

As I've said, it was possible to tell oneself from ~1975-2000 that politics was just a debate about policies, but this was an unusual period of our history. Leaders in politics and media didn't grow up in a world where deep factionalism was normal and don't know how to handle our return to it.

This is really really not good.