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man, weve gotta find a way to talk about big tobacco from an anticapitalist lens bc i cant stand to watch successive generations get addicted to their bullshit and just keep pretending its normal. i dont think condescending to smokers is productive but theres gotta be some respectful way to say that not paying a signficant portion of ur income to some of the most straightforwardly evil corporations in the world in exchange for addiction and sickness and death should be an obvious goal for anyone who considers themself anticapitalist

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not to sound like a weak, morally impure centrist over here, but i think online leftist communities need to be a little more accepting of the concept that most people are just. not that well informed. we live in a society that provides access to an overwhelming amount of information and yet which discourages actually diving into much beyond the surface level. Most of the people you meet out in the world are just not gonna know much about a lot of what you care about, but that's not the same as being against those things, or being unwilling to learn, or being unnamenable to those ideas. Our modern society is an unending cascade of information and misinformation and disinformation and filtering through that shit enough to actually have a solid grasp of a subject, let alone a nuanced antiestablishment political take, is a skill that takes time and effort to develop, time and effort that is in very short supply. It really bothers me when I see leftists talk about how capitalism keeps us down by taking up all our time and energy and making recovery, both physical and emotional, cost what little we can afford, and then turn around and get upset that people are politically uninformed. On some level, you gotta meet some people where they are, and have a little faith in them to be open to new ideas and information. Ignorance is not inherently intentional, and it's not the same as antipathy.

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My ethics professor once told our class that society justifies hating fat people by saying they overburden the healthcare system but no one uses that excuse to hate high level athletes who also disproportionately use the healthcare system

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Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

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There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

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if people are mean to me i do not want you to tell them to commit suicide/suffer grievous bodily harm. this is because i am not insane like that

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I wish age gap discourse hadn't spiraled the way it has because I want there to be a safe space to say "Men in their 40s who date 25 year olds aren't predators, they're just fucking losers"

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The thing that abled people who advocate for the disabled community don’t get is that there are times when disabilities/accommodations clash. Horribly.

Like I spent years having to come up with a solution to get therapy dogs into a series of residence halls. Why years? Because we had to decide who got to stay and who got to leave: the people who needed therapy dogs or the people with severe allergies to animals. Who got the alternative housing? 

Things like fidget toys might seem great for some disabled people but having them in the room could be distracting/overstimulating for others. The same goes with stimming. It can’t be helped but neither can the anxiety that another person in the room feels as they watch/hear it. Additionally, something like a weighted blanket might immediately calm one kid down and send the other one into a panic attack due to the claustrophobia it causes. (*Points to myself*)

Every Metro bus in New York City has a series of seats at the front that can be lifted up to accommodate people in wheelchairs but if I’m in one of those spots then someone with a cane/walker has to journey even further to sit down.

The flashing lights of a fire alarm are there to help deaf/hearing impaired but if they’re not properly timed, they can also cause a person to have a seizure.

The worst part about all of these is that there is rarely a concrete solution that makes everyone happy/safe. And I’m not here to offer any because I don’t know them. I’m just here to remind you all that as you’re taking your education/health classes, as you’re reading your textbooks, as you’re preparing to go be an advocate, just remember that there is rarely ever such a thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to advocacy and that something you do that can help one disabled person might actually hinder another.

Food for thought.

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This Man Did Something That’s Already Expected Of Women But He Gets Extra Praise Cause He’s A Man

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I am finding out that a lot of things I thought were common knowledge about Christian Fundamentalism are not in fact common knowledge.

Like with the aid freeze, people were like why would they do this? And I was like cause they want churches to be the only option for aid.

And people were shocked. And I was also shocked that this wasn't like...more well known. I grew up with people who were anti-aid because they felt that belonged to the church and made people behave more worldly if they could get it elsewhere. It was so well known it was a debate topic in my Philosophy of Religion course in high school.

I'm just...I'm concerned at how little some groups seem to know about Christian Fundamentalism. I wish I could help translate more.

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someone else could probably write this more thoroughly, but I think a lot of people seemingly don’t comprehend that WWII and the Holocaust were two separate events which overlapped. WWII was not fought because of the Holocaust, and in fact sometimes I wonder, if a bunch of fascist despotism hadn’t converged at the time, and if instead of worldwide domination Hitler had only focused on restructuring Germany and exterminating whichever of Europe’s Jews he could get the industrialized death machine to murder, if much would have been done about it at all. nobody was protecting the Jewish people, in fact quite the opposite given there were quotas and resolutions passed that stopped them from being saved. the Allies each hesitated a very long time before entering the war. a lot of the US was quite firmly isolationist and even had burgeoning support for Hitler (across academia and the political spectrum) until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which, again, had nothing to do with the Holocaust. the idea that any allied nation entered the fight to save Jews is a myth.

what is frightening about this is the fact that it also means people fail to recognize the part that Jew hatred played in what ultimately happened. tens of millions of people died in WWII. the Pacific theatre can perhaps be separated from the European battlegrounds (though the staggering scale of atrocities that happened in places like Nanjing and Unit 731 are closer to places like Auschwitz and Dachau than many realize), but the Nazi regime was founded wholly on antisemitism. it was created by it, fueled by it, and enriched by it. the immense horror that transpired in Europe did not happen solely to Jews, but it happened BECAUSE of Jew hatred and the desire to eradicate an entire people deemed subhuman, to make Europe judenfrei. this is why it was very easy for so many of these nations to join in the massacres and rounding up of their Jewish populations. you’ll find mass murder sites and pogroms committed against Jews scattered all over Europe. you walk the streets and forests and you’re walking through their graves. it’s not limited to the concentration camps. it’s not limited to Germany or Poland. there were many people - nice, ordinary, every day people, “civilized” and “educated” - who were more than happy to help send their Jewish neighbors to their deaths, or at least to blithely look away from it happening in the hopes it wouldn’t affect them.

there were roughly 500 million people in Europe at the time. Yad Vashem recognizes 28,217 people as Righteous Among the Nations. do the math and realize that’s like…half of 0.01%. 0.005%. that’s it.

and all of this, all of it, started with rhetoric. it started with words and conspiracies and propaganda against Jews. it started with whispers about (((them))) - they’re not like us, they’re too powerful, they’re sneaky, they’re corrupt, they’re not quite human, they’re impure, they’re polluting the true goodness and honor of society. and then it was quietly, let’s ostracize them from our communities. let’s kick them out of schools. let’s vilify their businesses. let’s demonize their art, in fact, shut them out of the arts altogether. let’s burn their books. let’s steal their property. it was very easy for that to become - let’s make it easier on ourselves, cleanse our society, and kill them all.

this engine of hatred rolled ahead swiftly with no real intervention until other countries started to be affected in broader ways. the Jew hatred was the Nazi motive, but preventing it was not the motivation to get involved.

the reason why we are now so alarmed and so hurt by what we are witnessing is because it’s, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same. there is no material difference between those early days of vilifying Jews then and the moment we are living in now as far as the rhetoric goes. it may be hiding itself behind a new mask and a few new shiny buzzwords, but make no mistake, the underlying hatred and danger is the same.

and it isn’t only a danger to us. it arrives with the scythe at our door first, yes, but it is a danger and threat to everyone in the end. and yet again not enough people are listening, and far too many are gleefully joining in. this is why it’s triggered many Jewish people’s generational trauma. we know where it leads, it’s happened repeatedly. we shouldn’t always have to beg for others to listen.

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In a continuation of Things I Shouldn’t Have To Say, But Here We Find Ourselves:

Israel did not cause the wildfires currently ravaging Southern California.

No, really, whatever your opinions are about how Israel is conducting itself, whatever your political beliefs are about the ongoing crisis in the Levant, Israel did not cause wildfires in California.

Take off your tin-foil hat, MTG, Israelis do not control the weather. Jews outside of Israel also do not control the weather, just so we’re clear.

Before you start talking about the devastating ecological impacts of Israel’s actions in Gaza (and military action is, of course, destructive to the environment), California has experienced worsening fire seasons for the past 30+ years. This year, although horrific in its tragedy, is not unforeseen. This has been happening in California with more and more frequency. And that is awful! We need to address climate change! But that is a negative trajectory that predates what is happening in Gaza.

“Israel caused the wildfires in California,” is not a big-brain take, it’s a conspiracist’s take that isn’t anymore true when it comes from the left than it is when MTG says it on the right.

Aid to Israel has almost no impact on funding available to help the people impacted by the fires or disaster response.

This is not a question of whether or not you should or shouldn’t support the United States giving military aid to Israel. That is a different issue. However, the military aid being given by the U.S. to Israel has essentially zero impact on the disaster response in California.

Foreign aid makes up 1% or less of the federal budget. Foreign military aid is less than half of that amount. And of foreign military aid, only a portion goes to Israel. That’s a fraction of less than half of one percent, for those keeping score. In the scheme of “where did my taxpayer dollars go,” aid to Israel is not even a bit player even if you disapprove of providing that aid.

Moreover, American Jews very much do not control Congress, and Israel even less so, which is who passes the federal budget each year. That’s some Protocols nonsense.

FEMA is underfunded though, so call your representatives in Congress to demand they pass supplemental appropriations for FEMA and AmeriCorps (which is where FEMA Corps is housed, administratively) so that people hit by the ongoing natural disasters can get the help they need.

Beyond that, California’s disaster response is also based on funding allocations made by the state of California. Again, this is not controlled by either Israelis or American Jews, and if you think it is please put down the Protocols and go outside for a nice walk and silent contemplation. But if you’re Californian, by all means please call your legislators to ask what more can be done for the folks in Southern California.

This isn’t karma or divine justice.

Yeah, that one is just the GOP blaming the gays for hurricanes but wearing a leftist hat. It’s no more true now than it was then.

Good grief, folks, c’mon!

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I genuinely think Mouthwashing fandom is a good example on how real life misogyny is very wired on people brains and influenced how they engage with fictional misogyny.

You have a story about a woman being assaulted and telling a man he trusted but being dismissed because he is friends with the attacker, and people fixate on shipping her with either of those men.

You have a story about how men that downplay their male friends violence, assume neutrality is the safer option, unintentionally help create an environment that's unsafe to vulnerable people, at a risk becoming a victim themselves. And people make it about toxic yaoi.

You have a character kill herself because she didn't want birth the child of her abuser. And people make AUs where she happily keep the baby.

Misogyny isn't just "I hate this women", it's also downplaying their trauma, defending those who caused it, and reducing them to mothers or wives against their wished under this idea of what womanhood is about.

I don't think we can separate fandom misogyny from it's real world influence, not yet.

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Love seeing something from TikTok and going “girlie that is literally what led to the downfall of the Papal States”

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it's extremely critical that you see the photo of the perp walk for luigi mangione as being propaganda. i've seen so many people wave it off and instead fawn over his looks. and trust me, i know it ended up being kind of pathetic and weird - but please don't brush it off as a "modelling opportunity" for him. it's a fucking terrifying message the police are sending.

i want to make a few comparisons here, in case you're not from the US or familiar with why the perp walk thing is something to pay attention to. just to set the groundwork for why this is a purposeful, unusual, and cruel act by the nyc police - for why this is not a common occurrence and for why that matters.

the prosecution alleges the show of force is due to the charge of "terrorism." for comparison, in june 2015, tsarnaev was found guilty for the boston marathon bombing, which killed 3 people and injured hundreds. his actions are considered to be an act of domestic terrorism. i have spent the last hour looking through google for pictures of similar to mangione's perp walk - and so far, i have found zero. i also just do not personally remember a moment like that, despite living in boston at the time.

they allege that luigi is a stone-cold killer who carried out a longterm plan, making him particularly dangerous. again for comparison: in nyc, recently cory martin was found guilty of the killing of brandy odom. the murder was planned and premeditated to steal insurance money. and yet no staged perp walk. why didn't her life matter enough for a "show of force"?

but mangione gets paraded by a veritable army of police officers as if he is a rabid animal. for a single citizen who allegedly killed one other single citizen, the "largest perp walk ever" occurs.

so what is the "strong message" that the mayor and the police were trying to send here? the mayor speaks as if mangione is already convicted of terrorism. there is a very thin number of people who feel threatened by the CEO's death. none of us felt like mangione needs to be under massive armed guard.

the message is that you shouldn't resist. they are trying to "make an example" of him - that if you behave badly and kill a single rich person, you'll be treated as if you killed hundreds of people. you will be treated worse than a man who was found guilty of terrorism. you will be considered guilty without trial. the message is that the rich are a protected class, and you cannot touch them without massive punishment. they are trying to prevent a revolution by showing dominance and force against you.

the message is that the police are a puppet of the wealthy and that the law is not equally applied across class disparity. it is "some are more equal than others." it is "one life is more precious than another."

the show of force wasn't for luigi. it was for us. it was a warning. they are trying to remind us who is really in control.