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The Specter of the Trans Activist

The Specter of the Trans Activist

The specter of the “male-to-female transactivist” has been allegedly haunting the contemporary Western world, we’ve been accused of attacking free speech, contaminating children with trans ideology, and ruining science by insisting on the fact that we are women and deserve to use the woman’s restroom. Proponents across the political spectrum have been actively working to rebrand trans feminism in…

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“Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” and transphobic science: the case of fraught objectivity

“Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” and transphobic science: the case of fraught objectivity

With the recent and tumultuous controversy concerning “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” (ROGD), the science, and what counts as science, has been muddied by researchers who are explicitly hostile to the rights of transgender folks. A few weeks ago, behavioural scientist Lisa Littman published an article claiming to have empirical evidence for the existence of a new form of gender dysphoria that…

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The manufactured free speech crisis and how we should respond On the heels of the academic new year, as students are preparing to return to class and instructors are scrambling to put their syllabi together, Ford decreed that colleges and universities must implement free speech policy, or risk losing public funding.

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Ford’s Snitch Site and the chilly climate of surveillance culture

Ford’s Snitch Site and the chilly climate of surveillance culture

In the past week the Ford administration has been increasing the political stakes around their discriminatory sex-ed repeal. In order to impose punitive measures to ensure compliance to their repeal, they rolled out a snitch site for parents to file complaints if they believe that their teachers aren’t following the newly reinstated 1998 sex-ed curriculum. In his statement to the press, he…

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Stumbling into trans dykehood: the making of a queer love story

Stumbling into trans dykehood: the making of a queer love story

CW: Gender Dysphoria, Cheesy Story

I met my life partner at the Reelout Queer Film & Video Festival in Kingston, Ontario. It was this event that would foreshadow our future together as a queer lesbian couple. At the time, I was still identifying as a cisgender man and had hidden my gender identity under a thick layer of masculinity, muscles, and ginger red beard. None-the-less, I felt queer in my…

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The DIY Gender Police: doxxing through visibility and ubiquitous presence

This is the second post of a small series on DIY gender police, or anti-trans activists who take it upon themselves to police and harass trans writers, advocates, and scholars in order to reverse our access to human rights, public space, and pride and dignity.

Read part one here: The DIY Gender Police: the surveillance of trans folks by anti-trans activists.

CW: transmisogyny, harassment,…

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The DIY Gender Police: the surveillance of trans folks from anti-trans activists

The DIY Gender Police: the surveillance of trans folks from anti-trans activists

This is the first post of a small series on DIY gender police, or anti-trans activists who take it upon themselves to police and harass trans activists, writers, and scholars in order to reverse our access to human rights, public space, and pride and dignity.

Part one: DIY Gender Policing

To be transgender is to be exposed to constant surveillance. Much of the scholarly work exploring the…

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The Case of Media Manipulation and the CSIS Agenda

The Case of Media Manipulation and the CSIS Agenda

CSIS report on media disinformation conflates activists with conspiracy theorists

Accusations of fake news across the political spectrum have transformed a very concerning issue into a weapon of delegitimization. A recent report published by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) titled Who Said What? The Security Challenges of Modern Disinformationhave conflated anti-globalization…

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Free speech, messy epistemologies, and the reframing of the WLU controversy

A trimmed down, edited version of this article was published in The Conversation. Free Speech rally at Wilfrid Laurie University The Lindsay Shepherd controversy has opened the Pandora’s Box once again on the notorious, vitriol-ridden “free speech” debate across Canada. It has largely consisted of tired arguments penned up in op-eds advocating that the university has become home to left-wing…

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The politics of facts: why the Sociology of Knowledge is important in the 'post-fact' era

The politics of facts: why the Sociology of Knowledge is important in the ‘post-fact’ era

It’s been a couple of weeks since Kellyanne Conway excused her political deceit as “alternative facts” off the cuff on a live NBC interview. This concept is exemplary of a shift in how political institutions produce and share knowledge to a hungry and divisive public. Alternative facts have signified a shift in the relations between the press and the White House that has set fire to journalistic…

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Musings of an (a)social collective: Anonymity and Community

Musings of an (a)social collective: Anonymity and Community

Anonymous communities can easily be mixed up with as a thick mess of senseless social interactions. At least, that is how I saw this world when I first decided to study anonymous communities for my Master’s thesis. I thought I would study how surveillance operates in anonymous social media applications—specifically, a very popular (at the time) application called Yik Yak. Just a side note: Yik…

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Xinjiang: A Pokemon Journey to America (Part Three)

Xinjiang: A Pokemon Journey to America (Part Three)

This is the third and final post in a brief, un-academic series about my personal experience of living in China’s troubled Xinjiang region, and the censorship both online and offline that it entailed. This functions largely as a final whimsical anecdote and a conclusion. You can read the background information here, and several other anecdotes from my time in China here. I previously wrote about…

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Xinjiang: Several Anecdotes (Part Two)

Xinjiang: Several Anecdotes (Part Two)

This is my second post to Socionocular on the topic of Xinjiang, a far-western region of China where I lived for 18 months. For a very basic overview on Xinjiang and China’s internet and social media landscape, please see here. What follows are several anecdotes from my year and a half in China regarding the topic of internet (and other) censorship and the atmosphere of distrust and paranoia it…

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Flight of the Drones: UAVs and public space

Flight of the Drones: UAVs and public space

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), otherwise known as ‘drones’ have increased in popularity over the past decades for recreational and commercial purposes. The amount of drone purchases has risen dramatically and it is projected to continually rise in the years to come. And this is due in part of the technology being affordable for purchase, ranging anywhere from $20.00 to $1000.00 depending on the…

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Xinjiang: Internet Censorship Laboratory (Part One)

Xinjiang: Internet Censorship Laboratory (Part One)

I recently completed eighteen months of living in China’s far-western province of Xinjiang. As part of the coming-home process I contacted Kyle and offered to write a brief account of my experience in the ‘internet censorship laboratory of the world.’ What follows is a whirlwind of thoughts, opinions, and personal anecdotes that I will be the first to admit require much fact-checking and…

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Things I Dislike About Studyblr

I am a member of the studyblr community. So I obviously think it’s a positive enough experience to remain in the community. But here are a few things I personally don’t like about it that I think need to be discussed more often.

Studyspo overload. This particular point I’ve actually discussed plenty. So much in the past. But I don’t think it can ever be said enough. Studyblr should not be about studyspo. For many reasons. It makes the community about aesthetic rather than education and learning. And it’s typically classist; not everyone can afford pretty stationery. Among other reasons, but those two are up there. And I know that’s not going to change the fact that dashboards will always be clogged with studyspo.

The “everything is rainbows and butterflies” attitude. That’s not how it actually is to be a student. And I think we all know that in our own ways. The most successful students don’t thrive off of purely good vibes and positive thoughts. Sure, those things make it more bearable, and that’s important in its own right. But success is made through hard work, and oftentimes, failure. Shoving those real, negative thoughts and experiences aside for sugar-coated motivational quotes and pretty pens gives an unrealistic expectation of what it’s like to be a good student.

Click bait study tip posts. These really grind my gears. Posts that have titles involving buzz words such as “4.0″, “Straight-A”, or “Best Students”. Frankly, a lot of those posts have the most basic advice out there. The same advice over and over again that I’ve seen in so many posts. Advice that seems reasonable but, in my experience, don’t actually fit what real students who get 4.0s do. Or at least skip over the actual reasons they get those 4.0s (which doesn’t boil down to a list of quick tips, but is, rather, a type of mindset or approach to studying).

Original studyblr blogs are hard to find. I like a decent dose of studyspo like anyone else, but at some point, following studyblrs means getting the same material over and over again. Personally, I’m much more interested in hearing about others’ academic journey and seeing original posts. To each their own, but I think the real experience of being a student is lost amongst a dash filled with pictures of pretty notes.

How afraid studyblrs seem to engage in academic discussion and constructive criticism. This relates to my second point. People here are nice. Which is great. But at the same time, it seems to discourage any type of discussion that might run close to offending anyone through disagreement. In academia, people disagree. And that’s okay! We can still have conversations about these things without the intent being to personally offend anyone. If we just assume that everything any studyblr says is correct… We’re going down a slippery slope of blissful, self-imposed ignorance. And, frankly, a lot of you studyblrs are young, impressionable high schoolers. You should learn now to question what you read. Don’t take peoples’ word just because they seem reliable. Myself included.

I hope this starts some good discussion. If you disagree, feel free to add your own commentary. This isn’t about the “right” or “wrong��� way to be a studyblr. It’s about encouraging discourse.

Everyone has an opinion. You should be allowed to defend it. And even more importantly, you should be allowed to change it without the shame of being “wrong”. That’s what learning is all about.

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Data & Privacy Policy: An Unlikely Avenue for Advertising

Data & Privacy Policy: An Unlikely Avenue for Advertising

There was a time when it was difficult to sift through or understand the Terms of Use or Data/Privacy Policy of organizations online. The difficulty was double edged, on one end, it allowed for a specificity of rights (for both the user and the corporation) and on the other end it was damn near impossible for the consumer to decode. In recent years, there has been a miraculous shift from this…