#SOMEONE has to represent lauren nation...

[curseplay]

the way i am the only person so far whos gotten lauren on the which silk member are u quiz...

[xoxogendergossip]

Season 4: Episode 8 - Juliet Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Greetings, Upper East Siders,

Hold onto your pearls and straighten those ties; we are about to dive into the gender dynamics of the most royal affair the city as ever seen. In the episode, "Juliet Doesn't Live Here Anymore", Gossip Girl guides you through a love battle and complications in the Upper East Side hierarchy.

Blair's Royal Dilemma:

Blair Waldorf, our Queen Bee, gets caught in the gentle game of royal love. We see several problems in power, tradition, and constant references to societal norms. She dabbles with the expectations of royal love, but there are various issues between following tradition and living life independently. Her decisions and dilemmas come to represent the larger gendered expectations placed on women in privileged and powerful roles.

Manuela Tremmel and Ingrid Wahl fend for Blair in their article, "Gender stereotypes in leadership: Analyzing the content and evaluation of stereotypes about typical, male, and female leaders". It states, "dominant female leaders are seen to be abnormal, which hinders them from being perceived as leaders (Tremmel and Wahl). For Blair, she has always been Queen Bee of school, but when it comes to royalty, she struggles with keeping the power she has always desired. One thing Blair doesn't put up with is negative behavior. Tremmel and Wahl emphasize that "the misfit of stereotypical feminine characteristics to leadership characteristics results in negative behavior towards female leaders".

Blair's love story with Prince Louis is a one that follows centuries of traditions, but is she going to struggle with not being able to set her own rules?

Serena's Spotlight:

Under the constant observation of the public, Serena van der Woodsen gives a fascinating solo performance. Her character continues to transform and explore societal expectation on women, especially those in the public eye. Makes us question, can Serena authentically express herself while performing in something predetermined by social norms?

Serena finds herself stuck between love and perception. She faces challenges of how women she act in the public eye when it comes to relationships.

In Lauren Michele Reilly's article, "Famous faces, classic stereotypes: female representation in the celebrity gossip magazine", she mentions the stereotypes around women with fame. She quotes, "wild behavior and an extravagant single life are looked down upon, and so is a female star's inability to 'find and keep' a man" (Reilly). Serena faces this fear since she always has everyone's constant attention. It creates pressure for her to express herself authentically and not fall into societal norms.

The Mysterious Duo: Chuck and Blair

Chuck Bass, someone who embodies tradition masculinity through his wealth and confidence, is seen vulnerable when it comes to Queen Bee. Those two have been through it all, makeups and breakups, but still have moments of intense connections.

The National Library of Medicine states "traditional stereotypes about sex and gender present men as assertive, aggressive, sexually adventurous, and emotionally restrained, and women as docile, passive, sexually modest, and emotionally sensitive" (Siegel and Meunier). Throughout the show, these stereotypes defined Chuck and Blair, until this episode. We see Chuck become vulnerable and not so "emotionally restrained" when it comes to Blair. And for Blair, well, Queen Bee makes it known that women are not just accessories to powerful men.

Can Chuck and Blair rewrite the script for Upper East Side lovers?

You know you love me,

XOXO Gender Gossip

[bikerpoliticalreport]

Several House Republican members of the Freedom Caucus have vowed to block key legislation from moving to the floor for a vote in protest of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deal with the Biden White House on raising the debt ceiling last month.

The conservatives blocked bills from reaching the floor on Tuesday and pledged to continue doing so after a dozen voted with all Democrats to defeat a GOP rule to bring four measures, related to gas stoves and regulatory reform, up for a full vote.

The 220-206 vote marks the first time a House rule has failed to pass since 2002, the New York Post reported.

“Today, we took down the rule because we’re frustrated at the way this place is operating,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters after the vote.

“We took a stand in January to end the era of the imperial speakership. We’re concerned that the fundamental commitments that allowed Kevin McCarthy to assume the speakership have been violated as a consequence of the debt limit deal,” he added.

The Post reported that lawmakers who joined Gaetz included Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Bob Good (R-Va.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), and Chip Roy (R-Texas).

“We warned them not to cut that deal without coming down and sit down and talk to us. So this is all about restoring a process that will fundamentally change things back to what was working,” Roy, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said Tuesday.

A member of the Rules Committee, Roy voted on Monday to advance it to the full House.

The Post noted that at the last moment, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) voted “no” on the rule so he could be in a position to bring it up again for a future vote.

The Post added:

Two of the stalled bills would limit the ability of the federal government to regulate or ban gas stoves. A third seeks to authorize federal courts that review agency actions to decide all relevant questions of law without deferring to previous legal determinations by the agency. And the fourth bill would subject major agency actions to congressional approval.

On Saturday, Biden signed legislation that raises the national debt ceiling by another $4 trillion two days before the government was predicted to run out of cash to pay its bills.

The bill signing capped weeks of high-stakes drama on Capitol Hill as negotiators for McCarthy and the White House furiously wrestled with ways to raise the nation’s borrowing limit and cut spending while satisfying members of both parties.

All told, however, McCarthy’s future as Speaker may be in jeopardy.

“I think he should be concerned” about a motion to vacate the chair, Rep. Kin Buck told CNN’s Jim Sciutto last week.

“I’m not suggesting the votes are there to remove the speaker, but the speaker promised that we would operate at 2022 appropriations levels when he got the support to be the speaker. He’s now changed that to 2023 levels plus one percent,” Buck added, according to The Daily Caller.

According to The American Conservative, “Some representatives have gone so far as to float the idea of using the vacate motion to try and remove McCarthy as speaker if this deal manages to go through. GOP sources told TAC that if someone were to move forward with a motion to vacate the chair, there would likely be enough votes to reignite the fight over Speaker of the House.”

Roy and Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) have floated the idea of removing McCarthy as well, in addition to Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). During an appearance on the “War Room” podcast a week ago, she accused McCarthy of a “violation” of his promise to allow amendments in the House Rules Committee.

[nsomniacsdream]

I think America needs some kind of relief mechanism for the political class. For the people, I mean.

When someone like MTG, or Lauren Boebert, or Krysten Cinema or however you spell her name, is elected: it debases the system when such obvious and disgusting bad actors are allowed to participate and, more importantly, flourish. Think of it like this: your company creates a committee to put together a cookout for the employees, so they ask all the departments to send someone to represent that department in the planning. And business office sends someone who is openly hostile to the entire enterprise, makes it their mission to tear every God damn thing down if they don't get their way, and is being cheered on by the entire business office. That person would be removed from the committee. Honestly, they might get fired. Business office definitely wouldn't be allowed to pick their own representative next time.

There is a mechanism for this in the constitution, where a representative can be impeached. But it relies on a congressional majority vote. So it's never gonna fucking happen. You and I both know that. The 2 party system has pretty much made half the constitutional safeguards nothing more than words. The 2 party system is what puts absolutely crazy people in office as long as they have the right letter next to their name.

And here's the thing: you should be voting for your own representatives. No one is disputing that. But you didn't really pick them: the party did most of the time. And this is really important: what your representative does affects every single person in the United States. So there 100 percent should be some way for someone like MTG to be removed, by the will of the majority of the American people. A national vote of no confidence or something, that can be triggered by a petition that reaches 50 million signatures or something.

1. That's a high bar to clear, to prevent petty party fighting.

2. If someone is that polarizing, it shouldn't be just that representatives district who should be deciding if they belong in office. How often is Lauren Boebert et al. going to embarass us on the world stage?

3. National referendums should be a more common thing anyway, let's be honest. No more campaign promises that they don't fulfill, just put that shit on the ballot.

I fully recognize that this will never happen. I'm sure it could still be abused somehow. I'm just so so tired of watching people who we all know for a fact wouldn't even be allowed to become a McDonald's manager because they're huge gaping assholes lashing out at half the country every night on the news.

[lixiehugs]

luca profile

BASICS !!

stage name : luca (hangul : 루카) birth name : luca huelien phan korean name : pan hwi-lin (hangul : 판휘린) nicknames : lukie, lulu, kay, kaka, hwihwi, hue, lin, linnie

birth date : november 11th, 2001 zodiac : scorpio birthplace : san francisco, usa hometown : yen bai, vietnam

ethnicity : vietnamese nationality : vietnamese-american languages : english (100% — native), vietnamese (100% — native), korean (92% — fluent), japanese (55% — proficient)

PHYSICAL !!

height : 178 cm or 5′10 weight : 46 kg or 103 lbs blood type : a

eye color : brown natural hair : black, straight

body modifications : nine piercings & zero tattoos face claim : newjeans hanni  vocal claim : (g)i-dle miyeon rap claim : ex-loona jinsoul dance claim : n/a

CAREER !!

agencies : hybe labels (2019 - present), be:lift lab (2020 - present) training period(s) : 2019 - 2020 groups : enhypen, meraki subunits : n/a positions :

enhypen : vocalist, dancer, rapper, visual, face of the group

meraki : lead vocalist, dancer, maknae

individual fandom : lukies (because of her name “luca”) representative emoji : 🐝 (because she is sweet but she can be scary) social media : @/enhypen_members on twitter

best known for : being the female member of enhypen + i-land. the first vietnamese kpop idol. her duality. her dancing skills. being an ace. her modeling. being a meme.

PERSONAL !!

mbti : isfp-t

positive traits : happy ! lights up the room. funny. cuddlebug ! playful. cute (only sometimes). scary and intimidating (most of the time). loyal. people want to be around her. independent. friendly but shy. spontaneous.

negative traits : insecure + has self-confidence issues (she’s working on it !). feels like a burden to enhypen (it’s getting better though). self-critical. has anxiety. bottles everything up. selfless (so much that she would harm herself to help another). overworking.

habits : not giving eye contact when talking to someone because it makes her uncomfortable. cracking her knuckles. playing/messing with her hair. pacing. talking to herself (only when alone). faking voice cracks. man-spreading.

hobbies : listening to music. gaming. writing songs. dancing + making dance routines. working out. skateboarding. staying up all night and sleeping all day. drawing and painting. sleeping. shopping.

BACKSTORY !!

luca phan was born on november 11th, 2001 to a vietnamese-american mother and a vietnamese father. her mother, victoria phan (born 1972) is an astronomer, currently based in yen bai, vietnam. her father, andung phan (born 1971), is a neurosurgeon, currently practicing in yen bai, vietnam. 

luca was born in san francisco, usa as the second child of her family, younger than her older sister, jade (born 1996). in 2006, luca’s younger sister, lauren was born. as of current, luca is decently close with her sisters. 

when luca was two years old, her family moved from san francisco, usa to yen bai, vietnam. they met the family who lived next door a few days later, them having a son who was three years older than luca, named hanbin. luca and hanbin became best friends and did everything together from then on. they were on the same performance dance crew called c.a.c when they lived in vietnam. luca was a gymnast and a player on the boys’ football team throughout her school life. luca was a gifted child and skipped her eighth grade year because she was too advanced. in 2018, when she graduated, she was the valedictorian of her year. that same year, she moved to south korea with hanbin, both of them chasing their dreams of becoming k-pop idols.

FACTS !!

luca became a bighit trainee in june 2019.

she was only a trainee for eleven months before joining i-land.

luca has crippling anxiety. she doesn’t have medication for her anxiety.

she also has anemia. she has iron supplements but doesn’t take them all. the time because she forgets. 

her favorite colors are black and white.

luca prefers cats over dogs.

luca is a sneakerhead. 

she is a collecter of jordan 1s. she has them in fifty-six different colors currently but only half of her collection is at the enhypen dorm. the other half are at her parents’ house in vietnam. 

the most expensive pair of shoes that she owns are the dior x nike air jordan 1 og. they retailed for $8,500. she has never worn them out because she doesn’t want them to get creased. she said that she would’ve gotten another pair to actually wear but they were already sold out.

luca was really hesitant to call the older members of i-land “oppa”. it got so bad that when she accidentally called k “hyung” once, she started using it for everyone.

luca can play the piano amazingly well. she can also play the ukulele and guitar but she’s not as good as she in on piano. 

her favorite rappers are juice wrld, post malone, halsey, and the weeknd. she said that she doesn’t really listen to kpop but she likes some bts, ateez, and stray kids songs. 

her favorite TV shows are prison break and stranger things. 

her greeting is : “hello, i’m enhypen’s mediator, luca!”

she is the most active on the enhypen tiktok than any other social media. 

[jckelly]

updated intro / jack 101

Is that JACK KELLY? Wow, they do look a lot like VAN MCCANN. I hear HE is an NINETEEN year old FRESHMEN who are studying AEROSPACE ENGINEERING  at Luxor University. Word is they are an ARISTOCRAT student. You should watch out because they can be PHILOPHOBIC and INSINCERE, but on the bright side they can also be WITTY and IMAGINATIVE. Ultimately, you’ll get to see it all for yourself. [YUNI, 21, GMT, SHE/HER]

 the other two got updated intros n rat man felt left out

basics

full name: jackson noel kelly 

nicknames: jack (does not answer to jackson)

date of birth: december 25, 2001

zodiac: capricorn sun, leo ascendant, sagittarius moon

nationality: dual uk and us citizenship

sexual orientation: straight but will try anything once

course: aerospace engineering

appearance

faceclaim: van mccann 

voiceclaim: van mccann

ethnicity: white (english, irish)

height: 5′8 / 173cm

weight: 58kg / 127lbs

eye colour: blue

hair colour: brown

distinctive features: freckles (many), left ear pierced, scars on his wrists usually covered by long sleeves, northern english accent

clothing preferences: jack prefers to only wear black, or at a push grey, although he’s slowly improving and will Occasionally mix it up with ... navy. his style is pretty basic, usually just a sweater, jeans, and beat up black converse or doc martens depending on how emo he’s feeling. the sheffield united hoodie makes an appearance every time someone forgets precisely which uk city jack is from. 

personality

overview

positive traits: witty, imaginative, perseverant, passionate

negative traits: philophobic, disloyal, insincere, callous

mbti: entp

religious beliefs: atheist

description

the first side most people see of jack is the side he wants you to see. a total asshole. it’s not an exaggeration - he’s pretty much infamous for flirting with everyone, dating anyone and as a serial cheater. he’ll actively try to worm his way into your life, and then just when you start to care, he does something to hurt you. he’s strangely persistent, probably helping him to push people even further, until they snap. there is nothing which satisfies him more than managing to wind people up to the extreme, get them to the point where they give up. adopted parents, friends, nobody is immune to this side - he even tries it on the people he genuinely cares about, as if just to see if he’ll still be able to push them away.

the second side, which most people don’t see, is that at heart jack is a kid. he’s the type of person to ask if owls have ears at 3am, or get some childlike joy out of dumb jokes. of course, this is the side nobody but a very small number of people see. and even if you do see it, it never lasts long. he keeps his true personality under wraps even amongst those he does like, and it only slips out if he’s extremely comfortable with you. otherwise, he’ll go straight back to being a sarcastic, flirty piece of shit.

biography

jackson noel kelly was born in hell on ironically christmas day to his father satan......

jk

jack and his older half brother finn were born in sheffield, united kingdom, to a single mother. a drug addict, she was notorious among social workers for neglecting her children and as a result jack shuffled between foster homes and his mother’s home during his first ten years of life, with finn, less than four years older than him, being his primary carer even when he was back with his birth family. this cycle finally ended when jack was ten and he was permanently removed from his mother’s care, and placed in the first of a series of foster homes which didn’t last particularly long.

the thing was, jack’s remarkably good at pushing people away when he wants to, and as he got older his talents only increased. running away, wreaking havoc, insulting anyone who tried to get close and anything else he could possibly think of meant that for three years he lasted no longer than eight months in any one place. in fact, he frequently took himself back to live with his birth family until social services came to drag him out again. this lifestyle continued until he was fostered by his now adopted parents, claire and george, at thirteen.

much to jack’s dismay, no matter of hell raising would push these newest set of parents away. in fact, they seemed absolutely set on raising him as Their Son, even as his attempts to get them off his back got more and more extravagant. they removed him from his previous school, transferred him to a fancy private school, put him in therapy and tried their best to help him get through all of the issues developed through his slightly fucked up childhood.

the thing was, jack loves his mother. he still refuses to see her as being in the wrong, no matter what people tell him or what he himself recalls, in his mind he has one mother and that’s his birth mother. so he did not take kindly to attempts by his foster parents to become his “new” family, because in jack’s mind? he already had a family. and even though they were actively encouraging him to continue contact with his brother, he couldn’t help but see them as trying to replace his birth family.

jack’s fifteenth year pretty much became the year when all of these issues finally came to a head. he was adopted legally by his foster parents, who had now been fostering him for two years - which should have been a happy occasion, but for jack represented the final loss, the final betrayal to his birth mother and brother. then shortly after his fifteenth birthday his brother went to prison at eighteen for grievous bodily harm, having glassed another boy after an argument.

of course, it would later be revealed that in actuality the assault had been committed by jack. and that finn was simply covering for him. (they looked alike enough that questions were not raised, it had happened so fast.) but in the eyes of jack’s adopted parents, finn was now a dangerous offender and jack had to be protected from him. so he was then isolated from his brother, his mother had relapsed and his continuous guilt over being adopted played on his mind, culminating in a suicide attempt in march 2017. 

of course, he wasn’t successful, but this was the final straw in the minds of his adopted parents. they felt jack needed a fresh start, away from the people who had defined his life prior to that point. so by his sixteenth birthday, jack had been moved to the united states to be near the family of his adopted mother, and subsequently enrolled in luxor academy. 

where he continued to be a menace :))

although it did appear, for some time, that jack was showing signs of improvement. sure, he was still wreaking havoc at luxor. but at home, he had calmed, even showing signs of affection to his adopted family. until his mother overdosed suddenly and died when jack was eighteen and things started to immediately go straight downhill again.

he can’t help but blame himself, for allowing himself to be moved. for the move being his fault, if he’s being honest. and if the honesty continues, jack’s got a whole lot of other stuff to blame on himself. (see: ruining his brother’s life.) so now he’s just taking shit out on everyone to try and make them a fraction as miserable as him. 

npc connections

birth fam

finn kelly / fc: jake bugg / b. may 10 1998 / taurus sun, gemini ascendant, pisces moon

finley, who also refuses to use his full name, is jack’s older brother - same mother, different father.  jack thinks he’s boring because he doesn’t raise hell with every opportunity. finn calls this “being a sane person.” went to prison for jack and regrets it. pastimes include crying over murakami books and trying to look shocked when jack tells him about the newest crisis he’s having. 

lauren kelly / fc: elena tonra / b. february 20 1983 - d. april 1 2020 / pisces sun, aries ascendant, leo moon

jack’s birth mother, who was still a teenager when he and finn were born. she was an on again, off again drug addict and had jack removed from her care when he was ten due to continued neglect. instilled in him a love for oasis and a hefty number of mental health issues. looked pretty much exactly like jack. 

jordan taylor / fc: alex turner / b. october 12 1984 / libra sun, leo ascendant, virgo moon

jack’s birth father, who he knows little about. not for lack of trying on his father’s part, who was prevented from seeing jack as a child by his birth mother and blocked from trying to make contact by jack’s refusal to interact. he keeps trying to message jack and jack is running out of daddy issues memes to respond with. finn thinks jack should give him a chance to redeem himself. jack thinks finn should fuck off. 

adopted fam

claire fielding / fc: julia roberts / b. may 12 1964 / taurus sun, cancer ascendant, leo moon

jack’s adopted mother. loves him very much and is convinced he is a sweet boy who just needs love and help. has written a memoir about adopting jack. jack is mad at her constantly. when he is not mad at her, he is embarrassed by her existence. honestly deserves better.

george fielding / fc: timothy olyphant / b. november 6, 1963 / scorpio sun, capricorn ascendant, virgo moon

is proud of jack, but very deep down underneath a strong layer of calling jack out on his bullshit. has some loud ass shouting matches with jack. also really wishes jack would sort his hair out and maybe not look like a cheap liam gallagher. jack honestly just winds him up constantly and he knows jack is doing it but goddamnit it’s so hard to not be mad at the little rat. 

other

maisie adeyemi / fc: yewande biala / b. january 6, 1997 / capricorn sun, sagittarius ascendant, aries moon

finn’s fiancee. her goal in life is to try to get jack to ruin finn’s life at least 70% less often. she has yet to achieve this goal. her love language is setting finn’s phone to silent when he goes to bed to stop jack from phoning in with some sort of random crisis at four in the morning because the little shit forgot timezones exist. finn will never find out. maisie is grateful that men have no brains. 

[hellomynameisbisexual]

SOME 2 PERCENT of men in the U.S. identify as bisexual. But, for decades, some sexuality researchers have questioned whether true bisexual orientation exists in men.

In 2005, J. Michael Bailey, a sexuality researcher at Northwestern University, and two colleagues showed men who identify as bisexual brief pornographic clips featuring men or women, while measuring their subjects’ self-reported arousal and change in penis circumference. The results, when compared to men who identified as straight or gay, led them to conclude that the men identifying as bisexual did not actually have “strong genital arousal to both male and female sexual stimuli.” This was in contrast to work on sexual arousal in women, which showed that they — whether identifying as straight or gay — were physically aroused by both male and female stimuli.

A New York Times headline covering Bailey’s 2005 study on men declared: “Straight, Gay, or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited.”

But the paper also spurred more research into the subject — some of which has now led Bailey to revise his conclusions. In a paper published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Bailey and 12 colleagues reanalyzed data from eight previously published studies of bisexual-identified men, including the 2005 paper. The new review finds that men who reported attraction to both men and women do in fact show genital arousal towards both male and female stimuli. The data, the authors conclude, offers “robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men.”

The PNAS study has drawn positive coverage and received praise from some activists, who see it as valuable confirmation for an often-marginalized sexual identity. But it has also received backlash from other scientists and many bisexual people, some of whom argue that in attempting to prove, based on genital arousal, that bisexuality exists, researchers are discounting bisexual people’s lived experiences. It has also reignited a broader debate over the ethics of human sexuality research — and about what role, if any, scientists should play in validating the experiences of queer people.

For his part, Bailey defended the research, arguing that the phenomenon of bisexuality ought to be studied in order to be understood. “If we let the possibility that somebody is offended — particularly some identity group is offended — guide us in terms of what research we do,” he said, “we just won’t learn things, including about very interesting and important topics.”

John Sylla, an co-author on the paper and the president of the American Institute of Bisexuality (AIB), a private foundation that funded some of the research covered in the re-analysis, said it was simply part of the process of science self-correcting. “It’s frankly one more step towards making bisexuality cool, assumed, and normal,” Sylla told Undark.

But others don’t find the study so benign. “The word that immediately sprang to my mind was condescending — and unnecessary,” said Greg Albery, a disease ecologist at Georgetown University who identifies as bisexual.

“I worry most about establishing the premise that in order for people’s sexualities or identities of any sort to be valid,” he added, “they need to be first scientifically proven.”

FOR YEARS, SEX researchers have held differing opinions those who report strong attraction to people of multiple genders. “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual,” the pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey wrote in 1948. “The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats.”

But some researchers questioned whether bisexual men actually had substantial arousal to both male and female erotic stimuli, hypothesizing that bisexual-identified men were actually homosexual, and only claiming to be bisexual because it hewed closer to heterosexuality and, as a result, felt more socially acceptable. Starting in the 1970s, some researchers tried to bring concrete data to the question through a technique called plethysmography, which measures the change in volume or circumference of an organ or other part of the body.

In penile plethysmography, researchers typically use a circular strain gauge — essentially a small circle of rubber tubing, filled with a liquid conductor and connected to sensors — to measure changes in circumference of the penis. In the studies included in the new PNAS review, researchers instructed men on how to hook their penises up to a plethysmography device, then showed them pornographic videos and measured their genital arousal.

Critics of this method argue that it produces a highly artificial scenario: A participant is in an unfamiliar setting, with a strain gauge fastened around his penis, watching brief clips of porn that have been selected by someone else. They question how much this setup can tell researchers about real-world sexuality.

“It’s frankly one more step towards making bisexuality cool, assumed, and normal,” Sylla said.

Penile plethysmography also has a fraught history. Immigration officials in some countries have used it to test if gay-identified asylum seekers really were gay, and it’s still used by some U.S. courts to assess sex offenders’ attraction to children.

Nevertheless, some researchers have argued that the technique is useful for quantifying sexual arousal. And some early attempts to apply it to bisexual men suggested that their genital arousal diverged from their reported experiences. In Bailey’s influential 2005 study, for example, even though men reported being aroused by both male and female stimuli, their genitals seemed to prefer one or the other.

The study included just 33 men who identified as bisexual, and among these, only 22 produced sufficient arousal to any erotic stimuli to be included in the final result. Later studies would produce conflicting findings, and Lauren Beach, a research assistant professor studying stigma and LGBT health at Northwestern University and a founding member of the Bisexual Research Collective on Health, said that in making such a strong conclusion from a study with so few participants, the 2005 analysis amounted to “shoddy science.”

By drawing on a bigger dataset than in previous research, the new PNAS paper aimed to offer more definitive evidence than those individual studies. Nevertheless, it almost immediately ran into criticism from other researchers. In particular, many argued that the paper blurred the lines between genital arousal and sexual orientation — a concept that, many experts say, is more complex than a physical response. Sexual orientation “has multiple facets,” said Corey Flanders, an assistant professor at Mount Holyoke College who studies health disparities in gender and sexual minority individuals. “It’s not just this physiological arousal measured by pupil dilation or genital arousal,” she said.

“Sexual orientation is a really broad and rich construct,” she added.

Jeremy Jabbour, a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at Northwestern University and a lead author on the paper, said that he sympathizes with those criticisms. Jabbour, who himself identifies as queer, said that there was some disagreement between himself and the more senior authors about how the data should be presented. “There was a little back-and-forth about how we wanted to frame the paper, what the title should be, what kind of terminology we should use,” he told Undark. “I lost that battle.”

The use of the term “sexual orientation” in the paper, Jabbour said, was meant only to indicate patterns of genital arousal, and he thought it would be “very clear that we’re not talking about sexual orientation as a broader phenomenon.” But, he acknowledged, “that very clearly wasn’t the case.”

Bailey, who is no stranger to controversy, defended the team’s choice of terminology. “If a man produces a clear arousal pattern in our procedure, I trust that result more than I trust what that man says about his feelings,” he said, adding that he believes “that for men, the best understanding of sexual orientation is a sexual arousal pattern.”

To explain the rationale for physiological studies of arousal in bisexual men, Bailey invoked an old saying about bisexual men. “My gay friends, some of them, would say that you’re either gay, straight, or lying,” Bailey said. “I think that they often said this because they themselves went through a stage where they said they were bisexual, and they weren’t really.”

Other sex researchers, however, questioned whether measuring arousal can be used to confirm a person’s sexual orientation, noting that sexual orientation is complex and multidimensional. “We know that peoples’ attractions aren’t always conventional, and different things pique different peoples’ interests,” said Brian Feinstein, another sexuality researcher at Northwestern.

Beach, who uses they/them pronouns, agreed. “Who decides what is arousing?” they asked. “Like ‘you must be turned on by this video and if you’re not, you must be gay?’”

THE BACKLASH reflects a long history of debate over the role that scientific research should play in advocacy for queer communities.

Historically, advocates have drawn on the idea that an LGBT identity is innate to argue for marriage equality and against conversion therapies that claim to change sexual orientation — and that, experts say, are both fraudulent and deeply harmful. Surveys have suggested that people who believe sexual orientation is biologically determined are more supportive of gay rights than those who believe it is a choice.

Sylla and the American Institute of Bisexuality, which was founded by the human sexuality researcher Fritz Klein in 1998, have embraced that approach. The foundation focuses on research, education, and community building, and it runs websites such as Bi.org and Queer Majority. Sylla first reached out to Bailey after the 2005 study, and he told Bailey that AIB might be interested in funding further research. Six of the eight studies in the new PNAS analysis received funding from the organization.

“Who decides what is arousing?,”Beach asked. “Like ‘you must be turned on by this video and if you’re not, you must be gay?’”

“Sexuality has had such a bumpy ride with politics and morality,” Sylla said. “And some people thinking that orientation is a choice. It can perhaps be helpful to show people non-judgmental evidence that, in terms of science, people just have different appetites.”

In recent years, though, as LGBT people have gained wider rights in American society, more advocates and researchers have questioned why they need scientific evidence to validate their experiences of attraction and arousal. “I can understand the desire for AIB and for other bisexual people broadly to want to correct that narrative, to be like, ‘Oh, this research exists and I think it’s wrong, and I have the means and resources to try to step in and help generate a different narrative that more accurately reflects my existence, my truth,’” said Flanders of the AIB response to the 2005 study.

But Flanders is skeptical of the value that the research has for the bisexual community in 2020. “I think I feel similarly to a lot of other bisexual people and bisexual activists around the idea of: Is this a question that we actually need to ask in this way?” she said. “Can’t we take people’s word for it that an individual who identifies as bisexual is bisexual, and therefore bisexual men exist? It’s pretty simple and straightforward.”

Even though the study concluded that male bisexuality existed, “just by deeming it a necessary question, you’re immediately undermining the status of a massive group of people,” said Albery, the Georgetown researcher. Increasingly, Beach, Flanders, and Feinstein all said, human sexuality researchers take it as an accepted premise that bisexuality is a sexual orientation.

And, Beach argues, research questions that seem to doubt bisexual experience can themselves be harmful. “There are psychological studies that show denial and erasure of bisexual people’s sexual orientation,” they said, “causes direct psychological harm to bisexual people.”

“Can’t we take people’s word for it that an individual who identifies as bisexual is bisexual, and therefore bisexual men exist? It’s pretty simple and straightforward.”

Bailey, who has faced such criticisms before, continues to defend his research. “I inhabit a different world. And my world is the world that knowledge is good,” he said.

His research, he added, “has done a lot to de-stigmatize various groups over the years.” Groups expressing offense, he argues, have harmed the field: “I’ve been an academic since 1989. This is the worst time I have ever experienced as a scientist.”

Other researchers think the picture is less bleak. In a follow-up email to Undark, Flanders argued that, when people express offense at research, it can actually make science better, by pushing scientists to account for “a greater array of experience and perspectives.” Some sexuality research, she argued, seems mostly concerned with questioning whether some fundamental part of a person’s identity is real — an approach, she said, that forces queer people “to engage in an academic debate about their personhood.”

Instead, Flanders said scientists should question traditional assumptions about sexuality and center the lived experiences of marginalized people. “I do not believe that people being offended has made the world worse,” she wrote. “I believe people speaking out against systems of oppression is, again, essential to scientific progress.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 2, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today news broke that Anthony Aguero, who was in the Capitol on January 6 and who is close to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), joined Republican members of the right-wing Republican Study Committee when they traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday night.

Aguero interviewed, chatted with, translated for, and gave a ride to one of the lawmakers, there. Those included Representatives Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Thomas Tiffany (R-WI), Chris Jacobs (R-NY), Michael Cloud (R-TX), John Rose (R-TN), and Mary Miller (R-IL). The Republican Study Committee’s deputy communications director, Buckley Carlson, who is Tucker Carlson’s son, said Aguero's presence with the group was "purely incidental."

The association of sitting Congress members with someone who was apparently part of an insurrection is particularly audacious at a moment when the House of Representatives is in the process of forming a select committee to investigate that series of events.

Once before, in 1879, a political party behaved in a similarly aggressive way, trying to destroy the government from within. Then, too, Congress members took an extremist position in order to try to steal the upcoming presidential election. They hoped to win that election by getting rid of Black voting.

Still angry after the votes of Black southerners tipped the contested election of 1876 to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, Democrats set out to stop government protection of Black voters before the next presidential election. In 1879, they attached to appropriations bills riders that prohibited the use of the army to guard southern polling places (it is a myth that federal troops abandoned the South in 1877) and eliminating federal supervision of elections. The punishment for holding federal troops at the polls was a fine of up to $5000 and imprisonment at hard labor for 3 months to 5 years, that is, an express ride into the convict labor system that was brutalizing formerly enslaved people.

Republicans refused to accept the terms of the appropriations bill, and Congress adjourned without passing it. Hayes immediately called the new Congress into special session. In this Congress, though, Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate, for the first time since before the Civil War. And, since the senior members of the party were southerners, former Confederates quickly took over the key leadership positions in Congress.

Once there, they ignored that voters had put them in office in a reaction against Republicans’ economic policies and Hayes’s contested election. Instead, they insisted that the American people wanted them to enact the extreme program they had advocated since the war, overturning the federal policies that defended Black rights and reinstating white supremacy, unchallenged. They took their fight to end Black voting directly to the president.

The House Minority leader was a Union veteran from Ohio, James A. Garfield. He explained to a friend the Democrats’ plan: if Hayes vetoed the bills and the Democrats were unable to pass them over his veto—“that is, if he does not consent or 2/3 of the two Houses do not vote on these measures as the Democratic caucus has framed them,” Garfield wrote—“[t]hey will let the government perish for want of supplies.” “If this is not revolution,” he concluded, “which if persisted in will destroy the government, [then] I am wholly wrong in my conception of both the word and the thing.”

Democrats tried to argue that they were fighting for free elections, for liberty from a tyrannical national government. But they also listed the virtues of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, whom they compared to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and U.S. Grant, and celebrated the former Confederates who had been elected to make up their new majority. Just like Davis, they claimed, all they asked was to be left alone to run their states as they wished. One ex-Confederate told the New York Times that leaving Congress in 1861 had been “a great blunder.” Southerners were far more likely to win their goals by controlling Congress. Southern Democrats urged their constituents to “present a solid front to the enemy.”

With Garfield stiffening the spines of nervous Republicans, Hayes vetoed the bill with the riders five times, and as popular opinion swung behind him, the Democrats backed down. They had badly misjudged their power. The extended rider fight kept the story of their attack on the government firmly in front of voters, who despised their behavior and principles both. In the next presidential election, voters turned away from the Democratic candidate and to Garfield, now famous for his stand against the riders and for his wholehearted defense of Black voting.

The 1879 overreach of the Democratic extremists marked a sea change in the Democratic Party. Scorched by their 1880 defeat, Democratic leaders turned away from ex-Confederates and toward new urban leaders in the North. Eager to nail together a new constituency, those leaders talked of racial reconciliation and began to lay the groundwork for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was born in 1882, just two years before New York Democrat Grover Cleveland would win the White House on the party’s new platform.

The story of Garfield’s rise to power has been much on my mind today, partly because it is the anniversary of the day in 1881 when assassin Charles Guiteau shot the president, although he would live until September 19, when he finally succumbed to horrific infections caused by his doctor’s insistence on probing the bullet wound without washing his hands.

But I am also thinking of this story as I watch Senate Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) try to figure out how to respond to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to suggest five members for the new select committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection. Senate Republicans killed the bipartisan select committee on which Republicans would have had significant power to limit the investigation both in scope, by refusing to agree to certain subpoenas, and in time, because Congress had required that committee to report before the end of the year. Now, Republicans are facing a committee dominated by Democrats who have subpoena power and no time limit, all while Republican extremism is on increasingly public display.

Forcing the creation of this select committee, rather than taking the offer of an independent, bipartisan committee, was a curious decision.

In 1879, when voters spent several months watching extremists of one party try to suppress the vote and take over the country, they rejected that party so thoroughly that it had to reinvent itself.

—-

Notes:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/02/politics/kfile-anthony-aguero-accompanied-members-of-congress-to-border/index.html

https://www.journalgazette.net/article/20190731/WEB/307319646

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

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[taissaifarmiga]

30 QUESTIONS TAG GAME

TAGGED BY: @neillblomkamp (Thank you so much gill <3)

TAGGING: @samaraweaving @rhysmeyers @anthonyshopkins @chloedeckr @the-darkling @cravenwes @german-lauren @peterbparkers @robintunney @jackmans @cantfightfatetoo @charliegrimille @miranda-croft @rainofbrasspetalss​ (someone wants to play is also at ease)

Rules: Answer 30 questions and tag 20 blogs you are contractually obligated to know better.

1. Name/Nickname: Marielle, Mary, Ma 2. Gender: Female 3. Star sign: aquarium 4. Height:   5'3" 5. Time: 08:14 am 6. Birthday: February 17 7. Favorite Bands: red hot chili peppers, blink-182, coldplay, simple plan & paramore 8. Favorite Solo artists: Dave Grohl , Tom DeLonge 9. Song stuck in my head:  The Weeknd - Blinding Lights 10. Last movie: No Good Deed 11. Last Show: Cold Case 12. When did I create this blog: April 2020 13. What do I post: I actually started with horror movie gifs, now I'm posting most of the movies and series that I like. 14. Last thing googled: Search about horror legends 15. Other blogs: I have my first tumblr when I created it in late 2012, but it is disabled, I use this one. I am a member of @tvandfilm , @dailyflicks , @dailynetflix I am the owner of the blog @horrorgifs, you are passionate about terror as much when you visit and I followed it too lol 16. Do I get asks: Not much lol 17. Why I chose my url: I love the joker, although I haven't posted so many things about him in the last few days, but I was always connected to the character, but when the heath ledger gave a show to represent the character! 18. Following: 287 19. Followers: 3.225 20. Average hours of sleep: I suffer from insomnia, so I sleep very little, I don't even get an average of 6 hours of sleep. 21. Lucky number: 17 22. Instruments: I learned to play the violin, but forgot how to play it because I haven't picked it up in a long time lol 23. What am I wearing: PJs 24. Dream job: Investigative journalist 25. Dream trip: New Zealand 26. Favorite food: pork cracklings 27. Nationality: Brazilian 28. Favorite song: 3 Doors Down - Here Without You 29. Last book read: The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides 30. Top three fictional universes I’d like to live in: Neverland: you never but need to grow would be cool lol, Wonderland and the Country of Mirrors: in fact, this world of alice has never left my head since I watched the movie when I was little.

[ledenews]

A State Judge, A Texas Attorney, and a Colt 45 – One Year Later

She still doesn’t know what was more shocking. Was it that a state judge had a Colt 45 on his bench during a trial in Wetzel County? Or was it that no one in Wetzel County seemed to care? Was it because those folks knew Lauren Varnado was a native of Georgia who lives and works in Texas? Maybe they thought she should be fine with guns, right? Even in a courtroom, of course, because it is West Virginia, right? “I didn’t know what anyone was thinking,” she said a year after representing EQT Corp. in a royalties case. “I had not experienced anything like that, and yes, I do live in Texas.” According to a July 15, 2022 article written by journalist Chris Dickerson of the West Virginia Record: Second Judicial Circuit Judge David Hummel was overseeing a trial in a case styled Huey et al. v. EQT regarding royalty payments to landowners. Houston-based attorney Lauren Varnado was leading the legal team representing EQT. The incident in question occurred March 12 during a rare Saturday hearing involving only trial counsel. Varnado was representing EQT Corp. in a jury trial in Wetzel County in March 2022. (Image: Google Earth) And then, four months later, Derek Redd, managing editor of Wheeling’s morning and evening newspapers, reported on Dec. 3, 2022: Former Second Judicial Circuit Judge David Hummel, who resigned last week, also agreed to never again seek judicial office and accepted a public admonishment from the West Virginia Judicial Investigation Commission following several complaints against him. The complaints against Hummel paint a picture of a judge who belittled children who came before him, who improperly used funds meant for the court and also one who violated his own rules concerning handguns in the courtroom. Varnado’s truth, and the fact video proved the Texas attorney's claims against the judge, gained national attention. “It was crazy, but it was OK at first because people found out I was telling the truth the whole time and  I really didn’t mind the attention that came from the article in People because that publication reaches a lot of different people, and I believe everyone should be aware of what does and can take place in our courtrooms,” said Varnado, managing partner of Michelman & Robinson LLP in Houston. “I would hope what happened to me in Wetzel County was an isolated incident, but I’m already hearing that there have been more locally, and more across the country involving other people on the bench. And that’s crazy to me. “So, if someone read the People Magazine article and decided to do the same things I did to correct the situation, good for them. That’s exactly why I agreed to do that interview,” she continued. “But I’ve been asked by other publications that I’ve turned down because I’ve never been involved with this whole thing because of the attention. Trust me, I could have done without any of this.” The Daily Beast, an online news website, was the first to report the incident that took place just over a year ago. March to March Varnado has been interviewed by print and radio media outlets in the Upper Ohio Valley, and last week was a guest on River Talk-Ohio Valley. The Texas attorney was back in the region handling matters in western Pennsylvania. She’ll return to the Mountain State, too, whenever necessary. “I’ve really come to love West Virginia because it’s beautiful here, and I love the people, too,” Varnado said. “The people are the best part every time I travel back on business. “I’m sure I’ll continue getting a lot of the phone calls because those have not stopped coming in since all of this went national, but otherwise, I’m done with it,” she said. “Professionally, I moved on immediately, and now that’s taking place on every other level. I’m good.” The Daily Beast, a popular digital media website, was the first to publish Varnado’s story, and since the news has spread across the world. “I don’t mind when people ask me if I’m ‘that attorney’, and I do answer their questions when they ask. But that’s the kind of person I am, too,” Varnado said. “One of the first things I do, though, is crack a joke by saying, ‘Oh, you saw those reports?’ That usually gets a chuckle out of them, but then we always move to their questions and what they want to know. Varnado was raised in Macon, Georgia, but went to law school in Texas and now practices in Houston. “I tell everyone who asks that this kind of corruption is everywhere and not just in West Virginia. It’s actually rampant in state courts across the country,” she insisted. “If there is something good that can come from my whole experience, it’s that people will not be afraid to report the issues they experience instead of being afraid of a judge or afraid of the system. It’s very tough in rural areas because everyone knows everyone in those communities, and if you don’t know the right people it’s very difficult to get justices in a lot of cases.” Along with her complaint, Varnado said the state Judicial Investigation Commission also heard from several residents who expressed concerns about cases involving children.   “When people speak their truth it can inspire others to do the same thing,” Varnado said. “That’s what we saw happen in my case because most people don’t want to be the first person to speak up. That’s really, really common in situations like these and usually, nothing opens up until after the first person speaks up. You see it takes place that way all of the time. “Plus, when my situation broke loose, I had some lawyers in this area contact me and thank me because of what they say they have experienced in the past,” she said. “Because of them, the resignation and the admonishment were what needed to take place, in my opinion.” Read the full article

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Between a suddenly competitive Senate race in Kentucky and the possible ouster of four entrenched incumbents in New York, Tuesday’s primary elections feature the largest-scale confrontation yet between the Democratic establishment and the party’s progressive wing. In New York especially, the primaries will test the political muscle of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has thrown her weight behind several progressives running for Congress and state legislature.

In addition, four other states (Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia) will hold their primaries or primary runoffs, but there are no special races of note that we’ll be watching closely. Regardless, don’t wait up late tonight for results; because the coronavirus has forced most states to conduct elections predominantly by absentee ballot, it could take more than a week to learn who won the day’s biggest races. New York won’t start counting its absentee ballots until June 30, and at least a third of Kentucky counties, including the two biggest, will not release any results until that date either.

Kentucky

The highest contested office on the ballot today is the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in the Bluegrass State. For months, Amy McGrath, a former Marine who gained national attention for her strong but unsuccessful House run in 2018, seemed like a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination to take on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Helped by her own national following, an intense Democratic desire to defeat McConnell and the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, McGrath raised massive sums of money for the race — $41.1 million as of June 3, even more than McConnell. But locally, there were some signs of resistance to McGrath. A few Democrats in Kentucky’s state legislature have backed state Rep. Charles Booker, while some progressive activists support farmer and former Marine Mike Broihier.

Recently, however, Booker — who would be Kentucky’s first Black senator — has gained attention for speaking out about racial inequality at local protests against police violence, which have carried special meaning in Louisville as the hometown of Breonna Taylor, a young Black woman whom police shot and killed at her home in March. Booker’s leadership impressed the state’s two biggest newspapers, which endorsed him, and even galvanized progressives nationally: Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorsed Booker in the final weeks of the race. Now, polls show a tight race between McGrath and Booker, and it’s not clear which candidate will come out ahead. Either way, though, McConnell will remain a heavy favorite in November; he leads both McGrath and Booker by double digits in hypothetical matchups.

New York

The Empire State has 10 House races we’re watching, including eight matchups between establishment and insurgent candidates and five incumbents who could theoretically lose their safe seats.

The most direct clash between the two wings of the party is in the 16th District, where 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel is being challenged by former middle school principal Jamaal Bowman. Unlike some other Democrats who have faced progressive primary challenges this year, Engel is pretty liberal (according to DW-Nominate, he’s more liberal than 64 percent of the current House Democratic Caucus), and he has the support of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. However, Engel has been criticized for neglecting his district; he rode out the first two months of the pandemic in Washington, D.C., even as his Bronx- and Westchester County-based district became a coronavirus hotspot, and a hot mic caught him pleading to speak at a press conference about the anti-police-violence protests by saying, “if I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”

That gaffe, plus another progressive challenger dropping out and endorsing Bowman, gave Bowman momentum; the Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party had been backing Bowman for months, but he also now has the support of Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and The New York Times editorial board. Bowman’s campaign says it also raised more than $600,000 from June 1-12, although Engel had spent more and had more cash on hand as of June 3. And a Data for Progress poll conducted for Bowman gave the challenger a surprisingly wide 10-point lead, although Engel’s campaign claims that its internal polls show Engel ahead.

A few of New York City’s other incumbents also face notable challenges, though a lack of polling means it’s hard to gauge how serious they are.

In the Brooklyn-based 9th District, community organizer Adem Bunkeddeko is back for a rematch with seven-term Rep. Yvette Clarke after losing to her just 53 percent to 47 percent in the 2018 Democratic primary. Ideologically, both Clarke and Bunkeddeko are staunch progressives, so this contest is more about approach — for instance, Clarke is willing to take PAC money; Bunkeddeko is not. The addition of two new candidates this year — one progressive, one conservative aiming to appeal to the district’s Orthodox Jewish community — adds even more unpredictability.

In the tri-borough (Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens) 12th District, 14-term Rep. Carolyn Maloney also confronts a familiar face: attorney Suraj Patel, who lost to Maloney 60 percent to 40 percent in 2018. However, democratic socialists Lauren Ashcraft and Peter Harrison are also running this year, threatening to split the anti-incumbent vote. As of June 3, Maloney, an ideologically median Democrat and chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, had outspent her three challengers combined, $2.0 million to $754,186.

In the 10th District, which zigzags across Manhattan and Brooklyn, Rep. Jerrold Nadler faces two challengers: former New York Deputy Secretary of Economic Development Lindsey Boylan and former Andrew Yang staffer Jonathan Herzog. Although Nadler, who played a starring role in President Trump’s impeachment proceedings as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has a pretty progressive voting record, Boylan and Herzog have argued he is all bark and no bite. As of June 3, Boylan had spent $749,902, almost as much as Nadler’s $1.1 million. That said, in Nadler’s nearly 30 years as a congressman, he has never come close to losing renomination, so it might be an uphill battle for Boylan or Herzog to dethrone him.

Finally, there’s one place anti-establishment forces are playing defense: Ocasio-Cortez’s 14th District in Queens and the Bronx. Former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a fiscal conservative, says “AOC is MIA” in the district and blames her for scuttling Amazon’s plan to build a second headquarters in New York City. With the help of deep-pocketed business executives and more than a few Republicans, Caruso-Cabrera has raised an impressive $2.0 million in an effort to unseat the first-term incumbent. Of course, Ocasio-Cortez has raised a whopping $10.5 million, so it seems as if the 14th is still safely Ocasio-Cortez’s.

In two other dark-blue open seats, many liberals are fighting to prevent the nomination from going to someone who might actually vote with Republicans. In the South Bronx 15th District, New York City Council Member Rubén Díaz, Sr., is a conservative Democrat who opposes abortion, has claimed that city government is “controlled by the homosexual community” and is openly considering a vote for Trump this fall. But as the patriarch of a Bronx political dynasty — he represented the area in the state Senate for 15 years, and his son is now borough president — Díaz has enough of a base to be a front-runner in the fractured, 12-candidate field.

Liberals are split on their preferred alternative: Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders endorsed affordable-housing activist Samelys López, while the Black political establishment has rallied around Assemblyman Michael Blake. And symbolic of Democrats’ indecision, the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is backing New York City Council Member Ritchie Torres, but the caucus’s chair, Rep. Joaquin Castro, has endorsed former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. Torres, the Bronx’s first openly LGBT elected official, may be the candidate best positioned to beat Díaz. As of June 3, he had spent the most money in the race, at $856,531 (although Blake was not far behind at $705,648). And a Data for Progress poll in May found Díaz with 22 percent, Torres with 20 percent and no other candidate above 6 percent. However, 34 percent of likely voters were still undecided.

Up the Hudson River, in the suburban 17th District, state Sen. David Carlucci is likewise a top contender for the Democratic nod — despite his seven years as a member of the Independent Democratic Conference, a breakaway group of Democrats who handed control of the state Senate to Republicans. But after multiple polls showed Carlucci in strong position, progressives (including Ocasio-Cortez) united behind attorney Mondaire Jones, and Jones took 25 percent to Carlucci’s 11 percent in a more recent Public Policy Polling survey. However, at 14 percent each in the poll, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Schleifer are still in the hunt as well. Schleifer in particular has one big advantage: millions of dollars in pharmaceutical stock. He has invested almost $4 million of his own money in his campaign, allowing him to spend four times more than any other candidate.

All the seats above will almost certainly remain in Democratic hands this fall no matter who wins the primary. But upstate, in the Syracuse-based 24th District, Democrats’ choice of nominee could affect their chances against vulnerable GOP Rep. John Katko. The two main Democratic candidates, professor Dana Balter and Navy veteran Francis Conole, disagree on only a few things: health care (Balter supports Medicare for All, Conole a public option) and who is more electable. (As the Democrats’ previous nominee, Balter lost to Katko by 5 points in 2018, even though the district had voted for Clinton by nearly 4 points two years earlier. However, that was a stronger performance than Katko’s 2016 opponent, even after adjusting for the national environment.) As of June 3, the two had spent similar sums of money (around $700,000), but Balter’s name recognition may carry the day: According to a GBAO Strategies poll for her campaign, she led 60 percent to 31 percent as of early June.

The parties will also decide their nominees in four other New York swing seats: the 1st, 2nd, 11th and 22nd. Of these, only the Democratic primary in the 1st District, which covers eastern Long Island, is in any real doubt. The initial front-runner seemed to be businessman Perry Gershon, who lost to GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin here by 4 points in 2018. But self-funding chemistry professor Nancy Goroff outspent him $1.6 million to $979,063, and as of late May Goroff’s internal polling showed the two roughly tied. Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming then responded with her own internal poll giving herself and Goroff 29 percent each, with Gershon at 22 percent. Fleming spent just $598,608 but earned a notable endorsement from progressive actor Cynthia Nixon.

If you’ve read this far, you might also be interested in one non-primary election happening Tuesday. Nine months after ex-Rep. Chris Collins resigned and pleaded guilty to insider trading, New York’s 27th District is finally holding a special election to replace him. The GOP tapped state Sen. Chris Jacobs as its nominee in January, while Democrats are fielding former Grand Island Town Supervisor Nate McMurray, who came within 1,088 votes of unseating Collins in 2018. However, Jacobs is a far less damaged candidate than Collins was, and Trump carried this Western New York seat by 24 points. Therefore, Jacobs is a heavy favorite to win, but the exact margin will be worth watching as a barometer of the national mood. So far this cycle, despite wide Democratic leads in presidential and congressional generic ballot polls, special-election results have not indicated a consistent Democratic overperformance.

[selenalim-blog]

Week Ten: Desire

According to a website I had recently found called City Flowers...

“A blue flower stands for desire, love, and inspiration. It is a flower that represents the metaphysical striving for the impossible and infinite.”

Desire is often defined as a feeling of strong urgency, whether this feeling is directed towards a goal or a person it has the ability to drive people. In addition to this, a common synonym for the word desire is love.

My understanding of the words desire and love is based off of two things: what I have seen or read in books and the media and my own personal experiences. I believe that desire is often mistaken for love as many people tend to rationalize their actions through a false pretence of love. Although in my opinion love should not be motivated by greed or desperation but by selflessness and genuine care. In spite of this many people are still unable to differentiate between the two. My statement regarding what love should be, does not always hold true. Seeing as both desire and love tend to create this unsaid promise of happiness and other things that is often left unfulfilled thus bringing about utter despair. 

In this week’s reading Desire/Love by Lauren Berlant one of the arguments that she states is that love for many becomes the singular pursuit of life out of necessity for sameness. It deceives our expectations of what life should be and can bring immense happiness or sadness. She quotes, “To the phobic — those who fear instabilities of privilege and embrace the social as a site of sameness, non-normative sexualities threaten fantasies of the good life that are anchored to images of racial, religious, class, and national mono-culture.” Here she is elaborating that heterosexual relationships are what creates emotional stability for the general population. And that there is importance in creating normalcy around homosexual relations due to our overall dependency on love. One cannot choose who to love and our reliance on finding love in a heterosexual relationship extends upon homosexual relationships and more. In summary we fear the inconsistency that comes with living a life without love and desire. I am also a blind follower to this fear of life without normalcy in sense where I desire a life with companionship. Although I am conscious of the fact that one does not truly need love or desire to live, life is made more meaningful with a drive. Life is made more meaningful with love and desire. Berlant continues on by stating what she believes to be crucial points about desire. 

“... desire is memorable only when it reaches toward something to which it can attach itself; and the scene of this aspiration must be in a relation of repetition to another scene. Repetition is what enables you to recognize, even unconsciously, your desire as a quality of yours. 

Desire’s formalism — its drive to be embodied and reiterated — opens it up to anxiety, fantasy, and discipline.” 

As a person begins to “love” some else, their initial feeling would be one of desire. Whether that desire is linked to another emotionally, physically or both, it all begins with repetition. Here I believe that the author explaining that the feeling of desire arises after a situation is repeated enough times for our feelings to be connected to something or someone. And that once this feeling of desire is established, new doors are opened leading to other foreign emotions such as: Anxiety, Jealousy, Self control etc. My understanding of this reading varied as I read on I interpreted that love is a guise of desire. Love and desire fall upon people unconsciously as a result of our desperation for normalcy and routine. This is shown throughout history and used as an excuse for many behaviours. Love or the feeling of it can be both good and bad as it also acts as an outlet for our inward and outward desires. Berlant quotes that “Love enables the pressure of desire’s aggression to be discharged within a frame of propriety.”. Love is what allows us to fit within our ideals of normalcy and desire is what drives many of us to live. Put together, ultimately it may not be necessary in the grand scheme of life but it is favoured by the general population as shown over the course of time through our human behaviour. 

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Dr. Lauren Beach was 14 years old when she/they first came out as bisexual. Beach revealed the truth to friends and curious classmates at her/their suburban Michigan high school. The reactions varied, but not many were affirming.

"I experienced a lot of people who eroticized my attraction to femme people. It's like, 'oh, you're bi. That's so hot,'" says Beach, who has a Ph.D. in molecular, cellular, developmental biology and genetics.

Other friends asked Beach if she/they were doing it for attention. Beach says only three people, including Beach, at her/their school were openly out as queer. Instead of being embraced by them, Beach received flak for her/their sexuality.

"One of the other people there who was queer was like, 'You're a fence sitter! You're a switcher. You can't be trusted, you might date men after dating me," recalls Beach.

This kind of biphobia, which perpetuates stereotypes, hatred, and prejudices about bisexual people, is not uncommon — even (or sometimes especially) within the queer community. Stigma against bisexual people stems from a larger culture of homophobia, Rory Gory, digital marketing manager of the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, wrote in an email to Mashable.

"Since bisexuals often move between straight and queer spaces, they are subjected to both homophobia and biphobia," Gory explains.

Bisexual people make up a sizable population within the LGBTQ community, given more than 50 percent of queer people in America identify as bisexual, according to the Williams Institute. The think tank does research on sexual orientation and gender identity to ensure stereotypes don't influence laws, policies, and judicial decisions. To be clear, bisexuality means a person is attracted to more than one gender. It doesn't mean bisexual people are more sexually active than others or going through a phase (two common myths).

As a teenager, Beach bought into stereotypes about bi people. But now 22 years later, she/they are a professor at Northwestern University where she/they focus on the health of bisexual people and works to dispel myths about them. Additionally, Beach co-founded the Chicago Bisexual Health Task Force, a coalition that advances the heath equity of bisexual people.

Mashable spoke with Beach, and representatives from advocacy organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), GLAAD, and the Trevor Project to learn about the unique challenges bisexual people face and how to be an ally.

1. View bisexual people as individuals

It's easy to lump a single group together but resist that trap. Like anyone else, bisexual people are individuals and their personalities and preferences vary. As Beach says, "there's not one single experience of bisexuality."

For example, Beach is asexual or ace. This means Beach doesn't experience sexual attraction, but she/they are romantically attracted to people across the gender spectrum. One can be both asexual and bi, with some asexual people preferring to identify as biromantic. Although many asexual people are not interested in having sex, some may choose to engage in sexual activity; asexual people can have varied preferences and experiences. Beach's experience doesn't mean all bisexual people feel the same way.

Getting to know more bisexual people can help scrub away your pre-conceived notions. You could already have friends who are bisexual and not know it. Be open about your intentions to learn so you can tear down your misconceptions about bisexual people, Beach recommends.

"You'd be surprised by how many people are like 'Oh, I'm actually bi. Let's talk," says Beach. "From understanding the breadth of experience, you personalize people."

2. Challenge negative stereotypes

As you expand your knowledge about bisexual people, speak up when you hear people perpetuating harmful misperceptions. Sometimes we don't even know we've absorbed negative stereotypes if we're not informed, says Mackenzie Hart, coordinator of GLAAD's Media Institute, which advises media, television, and film professionals on accurate LGBTQ representation.

An easy way to interject when you hear a myth about bisexual people is to say, "Actually, that's not true, my friend who is bisexual does not fit that stereotype," suggests Hart. It can also help to arm yourself with accurate statistics to further back up what you're saying, says Madeleine Roberts, HRC's assistant press secretary. HRC is a helpful resource for these stats.

"Barsexual" is a hurtful label often used to demean bisexual people. It refers to the incorrect belief that bisexual people will only interact with certain genders when they are intoxicated, explains Hart. It upholds the myth that bisexual women are actually straight as it implies they only flirt or make out with women when drunk. It also contributes to bi erasure, which GLAAD says happens when "the existence or legitimacy of bisexuality (either in general or in regard to an individual) is questioned or denied outright."

You should also push back against the harmful stereotypes that bisexuals can't be trusted to commit to a relationship, says Gory. "Embrace bisexuals as valid members of the [LGBTQ] community, rather than referring to them as 'allies' of the community."

Additionally, you can be an ally by understanding certain words and promoting proper usage. For example, you can clarify the difference between bisexual and bi+. Bi+ is an umbrella term inclusive of people who are pan, queer, fluid, and those who don't prefer labels. Use the full acronym of LGBTQ rather than gay as an umbrella term for queer people, explains Roberts. By taking these steps, you can "create spaces where people are hearing these words," says Hart.

3. Healthcare providers need to educate themselves

One time, a clinician asked Beach how many sex partners she/they had.

"I was like, OK, what do you mean by sex?" says Beach. The practitioner questioned why Beach would ask this. Beach told the clinician she/they are bisexual and, therefore, needed clarification about what sexual behavior she was referring to.

"She got really uncomfortable and said 'deep vaginal penetration,'" says Beach. "She started off guessing. She said, "you seem like a nice girl. So what is it, like one or two people?"" says Beach. The provider then said, “So, what you’re saying is more than 30 or 40 people.”

"It shows how someone [in a healthcare setting] can make this jump based on biphobic stereotypes of what my sexual behavior would be,” explains Beach.

After that encounter, Beach never went back to that doctor. To this day, Beach doesn’t have a designated primary care provider.

“I have to work up the emotional energy to want to go put myself through that potential experience," Beach says about seeking out healthcare.

Beach's experience isn't uncommon. Biphobia may discourage bisexual people from going to the doctor, with 39 percent of bisexual men and 33 percent of bisexual women reporting that they didn't disclose their sexual orientation to any medical provider, according to a 2012 study by the Williams Institute. Comparably, 13 percent of gay men and 10 percent of lesbians did not share their sexual orientation with a doctor.

Providers shouldn't presume anyone's sexual behavior because they know their sexual identity, says Beach. Hart echoes this advice. A doctor once asked Hart, "Are you seeing anyone?" Hart said no. She then asked, "If you were seeing anyone, would you be seeing a woman, a man, either, or other?" It wasn't perfect, Hart says, but asking open-ended questions that are inclusive of gender nonconforming people made Hart comfortable enough to see her again.

"Even if you aren't sure of certain words... you can make it clear you aren't going to be judgmental and you understand there's a wide array of experiences," says Hart.

4. Uplift bisexual people of color

Roberts recommends following prominent bi+ people of color on social media such as singer and actor Janelle Monáe, NFL player Ryan Russell, writer and transgender rights activist Raquel Willis, and politician Andrea Jenkins to become familiar with their lives. The next step is to share their stories with your friends and family.

At last year's Academy Awards, actor Rami Malek won Best Actor for his portrayal of British singer Freddie Mercury. Malek described Mercury as gay during his acceptance speech but Mercury was actually bisexual. Willis called out the bi erasure in a tweet.

Of the four people Roberts listed, two (Willis and Jenkins) are transgender. Just like one can be asexual and bi, one can also be transgender and bi. In 2015, the National Center for Transgender Equality surveyed 27,715 transgender people from every state and D.C., U.S. territories, and U.S. military bases abroad and 14 percent of respondents described their sexual orientation as bisexual.

To ensure you're not erasing transgender bi+ people's identities, always use inclusive language like "siblings" instead of "brothers and sisters," says Roberts, when addressing people as if they're family. This guarantees you're not assuming every bi+ person (or anyone generally) identifies as either male or female.

Taking into account the role intersectionality plays in the lives of bi+ people is important — especially when you're looking to amplify their voices.

[randomceleste]

My questions that will never be answered about "Voltron: Legendary Defender" and some thoughts

Why were the interactions between Lance and Keith romance coded? If they wanted to make them buddies, why didn't they animate it like actual friendship?

Why are there so many scenes where the blue and red stars are together? It happens so many times that it doesn't seem like a coincidence anymore. And if it is to represent Allura (blue lion) and Lance (red lion) who is the pink star?

Why did they make their only latino character a farmer?

Why did they have to kill Allura, a POC woman victim of a genocide, only to redeem the ones that slaughtered her race?

What was the point of putting emphasis on Lance's broadsword when he only uses it against Alfor for two (2) seconds?

Where did the giant cannon Keith unlocked come from? Why didn't anyone talk about it?

Why didn't they develop Lance's character? His only developement is that he loves Allura...

The only "real developement" Lance gets (and that's exaggerating) is when he talks about his insecurities with Keith, and they never tried to continue, they just made Shiro call him "sharpshooter" and poof, his insecurities are resolved?

What was the point of showing Allura unsure/sad when the mice told her that Lance was in love with her? Unless Allura never truly loved Lance and stayed with him only to "fix" her loneliness... So Lance loved her so much, had to see her die, lives the rest of his life in a state of sadness and grief, farming flowers representing her... when she didn't love him?

Why aren't the interactions between Lance and Allura romance coded? The only "romance" moment there is between the two is when they blush because Allura says good luck to him before the mission... everytime they talk to each other they're sad, the colors are cold, you almost feel sorry for them.

So the fact that Lance was going to be someone's first choice was a lie? Just like the fact that he would get an endgame? Because I wouldn't call a dead lover an endgame.

Why did they insist on talking about klance in the interviews? Didn't they make an interview with Lance and Keith as a thumbnail, where they talked about "klance"? What was that for? This is clearly queerbait...

What was the point of garfle warfle snick?

What was the point of hyping Adam only to kill him?

Are Ezor and Zethrid together? Is it confirmed?

Why didn't they develop more Hunk's character?

Why didn't they take the opportunity of making Pidge trans or non-binary?

Why is this a 7+ show? Why is it not more? You can litteraly see Lotor decomposing in his seat! The show talks about so many important and dark themes, and it's only 7+?

What about the altean colonies, were they really only a battery stock for Lotor? But they tried to make him a good guy in the end?

Why was Allura so overpowered? She could litterally bring back to life dead people/planets? How is Altean magic so powerful and why does she have it all?

Why didn't they talk about the fact that Lance died?

Why did they tell us "we are keeping it for later" or something like that when we asked what was Keith's other half except galra? Why is his surname Kogane when his dad is a white guy? It would have been so easy to make him asian?

What is Keith's dad name?

Why were the mice so important in the first seasons, and then appeared only in one episode of season 8?

Why did they develop so much the side characters? Except the one that Shiro married in the end?

What was the point of showing Veronica trying to become friends with Axca? They never tapped into it after Veronica saved Keith from Zethrid...

I understand the need to make the 2 year time-skip with Keith and Krolia, but wouldn't it have been better to do it like "Avatar: the last airbender" did it when the characters were in Ba Sing Se? A series of little anecdotes of Keith and his mom? They had so little screen time together... And then she left him again?

What did Krolia and Keith see in the "you can see the past the present and the future" flashes during the 2 year time-skip? They could have done so much more with that...

Why did they put emphasis on Chip on twitter when we don't even see it operational? (Or maybe it was only the fans, idk)

Couldn't they explain a bit more what the entity was?

Why did they set up a rivalry between Keith and James just to not resolve it later on? They just work together as if nothing happened?

Were Keith and Lance really rivals? Did they even talk during their time at the garrison? Did they really think that it would be plausible to make Lance create that on his own? He has so much sensibility and is really good at understanding people's feelings, but he creates a fake rivalry in his head? That Keith picks up when they meet? That doesn't make any sense.

Other lie: "Lance won't get what he wants, he should think about what he needs" or something like that. He wants Allura since day one, and gets Allura in the end. Where is that person he needs?

Why does Allura's mom just look like her but +pink and breasts? None of the other parents look that much like their children?

I didn't put this in any particular order... feel free to add any other questions you might have.

I think that most of the "character developement" question can be answered by the fact that Voltron is a very plot-driven show, that wants to talk about war, racism, nationalism... but I think they didn't give enough space for the characters to grow, and so we didn't get attached enough to them to enjoy their bond and their teamwork in the battles.

Also, I think one of the reasons the fandom has become so "toxic" is because of the way the show portrays romance. They insist on Lance loving Allura, and I personally think that, even if I do think they could look cute together, they have one of the most useless romances. The "romance" between Hunk and Shay, for example, makes more sense, just like Klance, because they have a progression, and because the characters are developped individually, not one depending on the other like Lance and Allura, where the developement is extremely unbalanced. Because of all these romantic subplots, the fans are distracted by the ships and don't concentrate on the plot, that was actually pretty good at first!

I know that the LGBT questions can be answered by the fact that dreamworks doesn't let a lot of representation get through, but they didn't have to bait us and lie like that...

Maybe they rushed because they didn't have enough money, maybe Dreamworks asked for a different ending and they had to stop everyting they were preparing, maybe everything they did was just for money. We'll probably never know unless we ask Lauren Montgomery and she answers honestly.

Unless they try to make an epilogue, or something like that, I think that "Voltron: Legendary Defender"'s end was horribly done and incomplete.

And I feel really sorry about it.