A thorough smackdown at @theunpopulist.net by the brilliant @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com of Helen Andrews' recent anti-woman (not just anti-feminist) screed: open.substack.com/pub/theunpop...

...it's *easy* to imagine how horrific it might be if you, or perhaps your child, were forced to endure an unwanted puberty, one that contradicts your fundamental understanding of yourself. if you can't apply this to trans kids' realities you're a f-ing monster juliaserano.medium.com/the-cass-rev...

just got my first "do you play basketball?" from a stranger in the wild. i was kinda starting to worry that it had never happened to me

my boobs hurt

Going through my early transition photos is so painful, my god. It's so much worse than looking at my pre-transition self! She was trying but she was also completely clueless. And I really have no idea how I had the confidence to go full time just 6 months in.

I'm fender-critical. I'm bad at parallel parking.

The older I get, the more my politics mature from childish, naïve beliefs like "the world is complicated and leaders have to make hard decisions" to more serious, adult principles like "hurting people is bad and helping people is good."

I think the phrase "reactionary camp" (camp like as in drag shows) in this article captures something real.

The list of terrible destructive decisions by the Roberts court is endless, but the one striking down the federal ban on internet sports betting is particularly stark in terms of how quickly, directly, and widely it has affected our society for the worse.

I'm offended at the idea that Ben Ryan should be considered a journalist

"Sometimes they do it with spells. Sometimes with potions. Can you believe it? A potion that turns a bad boy into a good girl. Many people are saying there's a genie that grants a wish that doesn't turn out the way they expect. Unbelievable."

i asked chat gpt to fact check an article for me

This court ruling says: (1) UK law does not blanket ban trans women from toilets; and (2) trans women sometimes must be banned but also sometimes must be allowed to use the toilet. #2 involves a balancing test involving how well the trans woman passes and if she's had The Surgery. Yes, really.

as someone raised conservative and who grew up watching Fox News and listening to talk radio with my dad, it's just wild to see the pejorative use of "the left" as if that is a coherent category by anyone who thinks it doesn't immediately out them as a reactionary

I’ve said this for many years and I’ll keep saying it: for all that I believe trans women are women, we would matter even if we weren’t. We would belong in feminism even if we weren’t. We would deserve to have others stand with us even if we weren’t.

“Are Mormons more Christian than Catholics” - the greatest thread in the history of Baptist forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate

Sorry, I've been a spice enjoyer my whole adult life. Want seasoning? USE PEPPER, and this doesn't include putting it in your food. Ps. I was at the Goa. Come at me. Pepper was COOPTED into mainstream cuisine just as surely as the 'salt' was. Target market and EVERYTHING.

No, next question

This is why I can never teach again now that I'm out as trans. Why would you ever teach if you can't give zeroes to shitty essays that deserve it? Literally the biggest perk of the job.

My theory on this is that Millennials old enough to remember the Before Internet/Cell Phones times reported lower loneliness because they *knew* the tech let them talk to their friends more easily than before. The kids that grew up with it are just working from a different baseline.

people are actually very susceptible to just-so stories about human origins because listening to bullshit helped us survive on the savanna

@radiofreetom.bsky.social hardest hit.

YouTube should not put how long ago a video came out. I was about to go on an epic rap battles of history binge because one of their bars got stuck in my head, but there's nothing like "you first saw this video 13+ years ago" to scare me off 🙈

Nothing shoves how racist and sexist our society still is home like scheduling a doctor's appointment. The white male dermatologist I saw last time's next opening is in JULY. But if you're willing to see a dermatologist in the same practice who is a black woman, they can get you in immediately.

LRT: since he's in the news for Epstein-related reasons, thought I'd share this excellent 2006 essay from trans scientist Ben Barres about the "Larry Summers Hypothesis" (Summers' claim that women are bad at STEM because of innate ability) PDF link: sci-hub.st/https://doi....

In my forgotten fantasy novel manuscript there's a city state governed by an ideology that literally thinks that the core of good governance is making everything look good (mainly by putting gold everywhere) I wrote this in 2014 and I cut it because I thought it was too ridiculous

i’d be more comfortable with the olivia nuzzi coverage if every story was headlined something like “seduced by a guy who eats roadkill: the story of an extremely stupid lady”

Trans women are biologically female and our medical needs make a lot more sense if we are conceptualized as having essentially an extreme form of hyperandrogenism

no more Britain

Transgender for everybody. Seriously, we should aggressively inform kids about trans people and the availability of transition, and screen kids to help identify who would benefit. The goal must be to ensure everyone experiences the puberty of their choosing.

guys like this are the ones who make me ask "why would men ever choose to be ... that?"

Arguing with a friend with whether it's misgendering to call trans woman "fratty." Personally, if someone called me fratty, I'd chug my beer and then break the bottle on their head

I mean I know all about the rich guy contempt for MeToo, but there's something about seeing their actual words about it behind closed doors that may make me stop being feminist and start being female-supremacist

next big protest i'm definitely taking a NO KINGS, NO NAZIS, NO PEDOS sign. The symbol for pedos will be the Republican elephant.

Can you grow a beard and want to? You're out. Can you not grow a beard? You're out. Can you grow a beard but wish you couldn't? You're out. Only those who can grow beards but are happy to forever shave them are qualified to be soldiers. That is what makes the American military great.

My family has been without half our income for 40 days. It has been.. very hard. We are willing to feel that pain so people can have health care next year, or to undo these illegal recissions. We are not willing to have been put through this for NOTHING.

a bigger essay on this is coming soon but i do think that hallucinated nostalgia is probably the biggest explainer of the current populist surge, both left and right-wing people genuinely think they are poorer than their parents despite it being false by every possible measure

LET'S GOOOO

I think a number of press outlets badly want there to be a groundswell of anti-trans feeling, because the ownership/senior editorial of those papers have absolutely cooked their own brains on transphobia. It seems to be largely an elite psychosis!

A List of Things Said to Have Been Ruined by Women 🧵

Today in "trans women really are women"

Did you ever doubt that Paradox grand strategy = real life? Naturally, one only needs decide on the casus belli and war goals after deciding to go to war.

AG Sulzberger temper tantrum that turning the NYT into a stealth propaganda rag isn't working

Has New York Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs resigned over Mamdani yet? I hope he hasn't, so that he can instead resign over *improving Republican margins over Trump 2024 in an anti-Republican wave election*. Trump won Nassau by just 4%—now look at this bloodbath

My MattY derangement is tidily explained from my being an ex-FedSoc, ex-evangelical from a Southern, ancestrally white trash, barely middle class family, who got so disgusted by R's it made me trans. Totally laughable to think he knows more than me about political persuasion and median voters.

That’s Right