🔥

FWIW, I just emailed NYT's standards editor to ask about the paper's policy on this. Will update if I get a response.

What Epstein reveals is the ubiquitous sexual abuse of women & girls as a way for men to cement their friendships and demonstrate their status. It happens among billionaires, it happens among frat boys, it happens among preachers and tech workers and union contractors, because it happens among men.

It is absolutely a choice.

I did file a bit rewrite today after a tremendous push the last several days especially and feel like I'm floating.

HELLO I WAS A QUEER TEEN IN THE 1990s AND THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST SOCIAL TRANSITION NOW ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST "LETTING" US BE (at the time, for me) GAY OR LESBIAN THEN. They all rest on the belief that it's inherently better to be straight (then)/cis (now) and that's BS.

Hilary Cass here arguing for children to be prevented from being known by a preferred name or getting a haircut in case it encourages them to continue later in life to transition. Hilary Cass acts like gender variant children should have the transness hazed out of them.

our society's cruelty towards trans children continues to break my heart, every day. re-sharing this one, as I do ... www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a4...

Pure moral panic. How, precisely, would a child who experiments with a different haircut or pronouns get “locked in” to a trans identity? The parents who had no problem letting her identify as trans suddenly restrict her from identifying as cis? It makes no sense.

This entire narrative depends on a willful blindness to the basic realities of trans life in America. Being trans, especially as a child, is hard! Kids are not getting hoisted on their classmates’ shoulders the minute they put on a dress. There are huge pressures to be cis, not to stay trans.

People will be like, "oh, you need someone to be PERFECT for you to vote for them?!?!" and buddy, what I just described is in no way what I'd consider "perfect." That's me compromising.

I don't think these are unreasonable asks

Sometimes I get a little upset when I live in a collapsing dystopia for many years

In general, I just keep thinking about how this is so similar those anti-trans "science journalists" who've become devoted to spreading myths about like, what if some kids were to get hurt while their misguided efforts are abetting in hurting actual children.

Cass met with people here in NI at the end of last year. This is how she introduced herself to trans people and their allies...

👀👀👀

You mean to tell me that the anti-abortion woman is worried about a kid that isn’t even real?!

cant believe i ran out of jest i was told it was infinite

Just got off the phone with the President of Antifa. They said they have a cell in Florida that set up a fake tailoring shop, where they created this custom garment to humiliate Michael Flynn.

They are literally doing the thing they have been supposedly terrified of for decades

Can this myth please die already? Take it from a therapist who works with tons of trans youth (and has many colleagues who also do so), kids aren't ending up in our office because they're mistaking normal gender-nonconformity for being trans.

Really can't stand having to see this person's face

My main thought I'll add: The works of the most devoted anti-trans "science" journalists, who lean heavily on certain sources to advance whatever point (mostly the transes have gone too far), their works are similarly fictions, hypotheticals, inventions that spring mostly from their fantasies.

agreed, it's incredibly bizarre.

However, emails from Botstein to Epstein show that Botstein was aware of media coverage of Epstein's sexual abuse and trafficking of children, and offered Epstein moral support following such coverage on at least two occasions.

However, Botstein wrote warmly and repeatedly to the pedophile about the men's "friendship." In 2013 he wrote "I greatly cherish this new friendship." In 2015, he wrote, "I value our friendship." In 2016, he wrote, regarding a possible donation from Epstein, "Friendship, not money, is important."

Well it's exactly the issue — rather than somehow find a source willing to work with her for this piece, she evidently decided to just imagine what this experience would be like. Again this is what's called "fiction". Fiction that's good is often is deeply researched, as others are indicating too.

My main thought I'll add: The works of the most devoted anti-trans "science" journalists, who lean heavily on certain sources to advance whatever point (mostly the transes have gone too far), their works are similarly fictions, hypotheticals, inventions that spring mostly from their fantasies.

this is my point, exactly.

Readers shouldn't be tasked with this. Reporters being flip about these lines also makes life harder for all literary nonfiction features writers who do follow the rules.

This is exactly it, *the* issue with (lazy) journalists writers passing fiction off as "creative nonfiction."

yeah I mean, I don't *know* what happened but my guess would be the reporter didn't get enough to create sufficient creative nonfiction and got lazy, decided to invent instead. and that the publication just didn't care.

Between this and their obsessive anti-trans propagandizing, I'm sitting here wondering does the Atlantic have no fact checking at this point? What's going on over there? It's depressing to watch a once great publication truly ... fall to shit.

great stuff

I have (alas) two degrees in creative nonfiction and can assure: No. This is a work of (researched) fiction, is what it sounds like.

how your email finds me

You want to defend this jabroni? YOU go back to twitter.

y'all gotta stop placing all your hopes and dreams in the hands of bitchass white men—which is what Gavin Newsom is.

Why am I never going to shut up about how terrible Gavin Newsom is? Because I don't like this cross-platform inorganic effort to shut people up about how he much he sucks. I'm not letting a bunch of bots tell me what to do. It's pure oppositional defiance. Lol

i did chuckle at the notion i've not been defeated before AND i appreciate the sentiment

wanna just say aloud into the void i'm drafting a piece right now that's like, i dunno, one of the more challenging drafts i've ever built (one of two I'm overhauling rn). shoutout to like, my friend of 20 years who sat on the phone with me yesterday and like, commanded me to tell him the story.

Calm and reassuring

like, relieved I suppose, that they didn't let this pass ... Also not the point at all, but is the Kansas flag like, a screenshot from Oregon Trail? what's even going on here?

This is LITERALLY just taking Mike Johnson’s lie and presenting it as fact.

Life must be so easy if you just have absolutely no ethics, can you imagine

This entire 'debate' is so maddening. We have been promised that a groundswell of rushed, dissatisfied detransitioners was about to emerge for nearly a decade. Not only have they never materialized, but academic research continues to show small numbers, long assessments and miniscule regret rates.

we live in a country where the secretary of HHS declaring that he snorts cocaine off toilet seats isn't even a news item

Every single time a story like this is reported, we must assume that there are many many more that do not.

i hear it