#Substack Is Vital

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Why Print Books Are Not Dead and How to Be a Successful Author

For Book Authors, Substack Is Vital, & Medium Can Accelerate Your Growth I explain why print books are not dead and they are livelier than before. You can also read this story in my Substack newsletter for free or if you an account you read it on Medium to engage with your writing and reading community there. Inspiration for Book Authors As a seasoned book author who tried both traditional…

[dolphin-diaries]

Detrans Women v. Trans Men, Or: The Sanity Of Sex Change

Originally published on the Dolphin Diaries substack.

Be advised: this essay contains misogynistic, transphobic, and ableist language, especially as it pertains to pregnancy, trans men, and mental disability.

Today the court presides over a very special case, poised to answer a question that has plagued the nation since the dreaded sex wars. Several questions, actually. What are transsexuals? Do they deserve to exist? What about women? If a woman could become a man, why wouldn’t she? Do real women like being women? And when all the real women are gone—who, pray tell, will bear our children for us?

The plaintiff is a sight to behold. She is stern and clearly distressed, because she’s not smiling. She’s dressed with a presentable degree of femininity, not like a whore or anything. But there is a certain mannishness about her. Her jaw and her shoulders—must’ve been a surgery. When she speaks, you can hear she’s not really a woman anymore. Well, no, she is, but—you know. You can just tell by looking at her, she is barren inside.

The defendant is… charming. S—I mean, he, of course he looks like a ‘he,’ but of course he’s also short. Kind of too well-dressed. He has small wrists and his cranium is pronouncedly feminine. If the court looks away for a moment, the court will forget his face, but the court will certainly remember the wrists and the height and the cranium. Can you imagine, that thing can get pregnant? That was an aside, don’t record that.

When the plaintiff speaks, it is with great pain. She bears the scars of her transition with tremulous distress and speaks of tragic self-harm in a futile attempt to escape the patriarchy. She’d been hoodwinked by the trans cult and doctors—they sold her an illusion of a cure. Now she has seen there’s no such thing. The woman-ness has awoken within her and cried for the de-mammaried chest and all the babies she will never gestate. Her question is simple: why was she forced to do this; why was she lied to? Why has no one ever stopped her? Why have her doctors and friends entertained her delusion that she could somehow be a man? It is nothing short of a grave injustice that her woman-ness was allowed to be undermined. That it is now broken and impossible to heal.

When the defendant speaks, he too overflows with suffering. He was—in his soul, his mind—a man, but yet his body was not. His distress over this mismatch was profound and incurable; transition alone managed to mercifully relieve it. And he is dearly sorry for the plaintiff’s pain, but—well, it’s hardly his fault she tried to fool the system, isn’t it? Why must the one truly suffering be held accountable for the delusions of liars? Why must he be punished for the deranged ravings of belligerent, hysterical cunts?

Gender Madness

Now that the jury is well and properly annoyed with me for my inflammatory phrasing—we all have our defects; mine is that I’m a rhetorician—I shall transform from a bigoted judge into a two-headed creature, prosecutor and attorney both. A little unorthodox, you might say? But this isn’t really a courtroom. No, this argument only occasionally makes it that far; we stand most often in the court of private and public opinion.

With that in mind, let us go over the details of the case. We shall start from afar, but do stay with me; the context is vital.

Our crime(s) take place in a very particular world, one in which life is earned with labour. A citizen must perform and provide labour up to a somewhat arbitrary standard, for which they are rewarded with normal treatment. Human treatment, not-Other treatment. What exactly that constitutes depends on time, place, circumstance, and other extenuating traits the citizen holds. How that is phrased also depends, but it’s usually something to the tune of an adequate contribution for the good of something greater and more abstract. In a late-capitalist society, for instance, money is a measure of labour and a vehicle for greater social contribution, and it thus reflects the measure of allowed humanity. Even when that money is inherited, and its holder has not worked for a damn penny of it, it must reflect some great labour done in the past, by themself or an ancestor. They must’ve deserved it, because money is a measure of labour, and labour is a measure of deserving.

Capitalist profit-meritocratic logics are only one of many ways earning life with labour manifests. But this is a court case, not a lesson in history or politics or economics, so never mind that.

What happens when one cannot meet the standard of labour? What is someone who cannot contribute enough to be normal? Every human’s capacity is limited, but some limits lie at or above the arbitrary standard of labour—and some below. Failure to meet standard capacity is, quite plainly, disability. I speak specifically—now and henceforth—of the social construct of disability. Just as sex/gender, it encompasses human features which may exist regardless of social order; just as sex/gender, it constructs archetypes and social scripts that serve a purpose.

What is the social purpose of disability? Of the infirm, the crippled, the wretched? Sometimes it is to make a large performance of helping them—only those that truly deserve it, of course; never forget truly deserving, being truly in pain—but much more importantly, across history disability existed to move the disabled to the margins of society, render them vulnerable and reliant on goodwill when they cannot be cured of being insufficient. They cannot adequately contribute, which makes them dead weights on the finite resources earned by other people’s labour. That’s why deserving is so important, you see. Because, you know, all people are constantly trying to shirk their fair share of labour, don’t they? Wouldn’t we all not work if we could choose not-working? If we granted this sort of charity to just anybody; if we kept encouraging this sort of behaviour—think of the finite resources! You and I—real, honest, hard-working people—will be the last Atlas shouldering humanity! Oh, it’s unthinkable. No-no, we have to ensure the disabled demonstrate real, provable pain that renders them utterly and definitely incapable of working as much as we do. Otherwise the world will end.

The function of the social construct of disability is to draw a line as to how much labour must be performed, and how much accommodation a normal citizen requires to do it. Disability then makes it hell to seek more accommodation for less labour—in broad strokes.

But you might say, prosecutor/attorney ma’am, what does this have to do with being trans? Or with women? Or with gender, or sex, or whatever you kids call it these days?

Well, dear jury, I know it is uncouth and uncommon to call it labour, but—by which process do we create new labourers? By what mechanism do we ensure the production of citizens? How do we ascertain that the working bodies are taken care of; that workers’ homes are clean and tended to; that workers are rewarded with something to fuck? Just for now, allow that feminised labour is labour.

Entertain the notion that the organising principle of patriarchy is distribution of feminised labour. Sexing/gendering is then a social mechanism by which labour roles are assigned and maintained—and, within the current and millenia-standing incarnation of the patriarchy, these roles are assigned at birth based on the external appearance of infant genitalia, and therefore expectation of the baby’s future gestational or inseminatory capacity. From there an entire hierarchy blossoms, in which those deemed Men are called to compete for the finite resource of Women—and to split the women among themselves, deciding which women are and are not permissible to possess by which kinds of men—and all those deemed Women are called to negotiate their commodity. If a woman is capable of producing a citizen—because she can bear children, and she is of the right nation and ethnicity and race, and has no defect she can pass down—she may be a wife. A prized personal possession, like a pet that sometimes talks too much. If she cannot produce a citizen, she’s still good for some things. After all, Men are allegedly born lascivious and violent—and also enlightened and important at the same time. So their violent excesses must be tolerated, but if we force the wives to be their drywall and their fuckdoll, it may prove too much for the gentle soul. She may get damaged, and then who’ll bear the children? Naturally, women that cannot adequately contribute to society with their wombs (either because they lack the organ altogether, or for whatever other reason) must provide for men where wives cannot. Their fault, anyway. They’re not sufficiently contributing.

On that note arises a question: what if one fails to meet their birth-destined standard of labour? What if they cannot perform their proper gender adequately? Well, a wife that fails to sufficiently provide for her man is, of course, lazy. And when women utterly refuse to behave as women should, bitches be…

For brevity, let us call that queerness. I will use the word in the broadest of strokes: it is failure or refusal or both to meet the standard of assigned sex; so then, even cishetero women that disobey their husbands are, for the purposes of this courtroom, queer. One way society has tried to grapple with queerness was to seek basis in a physical abnormality, which may then provide justification for the queers’ less-than-human status as well as avenues for cures. Perhaps the foetus was exposed to an excess of the wrong kind of sex hormone in-utero. Perhaps women harbouring lesbian desire hide a secret false penis within. Perhaps it’s the humours. Often though, because queer behaviours do not really have a direct relationship to physical attributes, they are consigned to the realm of mental disability. Of madness.

While it is a kind of disability, it is a peculiar one—so, in terms of social construct, what is the nature and purpose of madness? Dear jury, you likely know the answer, intuitively if not in words. It is to regulate the behaviours and thoughts of normal citizens. When those things breach the line of madness, one is made mad, and to be mad is to be rendered unreliable, unpredictable, and incapable of adequate agency. Once one becomes mad, the sane and the normal are relieved of trying to understand one’s thoughts and needs and desires, for those are made inherently incomprehensible. Once one becomes mad, it is assumed one cannot be trusted to make decisions which the sane make all the time, because the mad are considered consummately and totally incapable of perceiving reality or of making choices that do not harm the self or others. In short, they are a danger to all, including themselves.

What is to be done with the mad? First, they must be removed from society, lest they cause harm. Then we must attempt to make them sane—that is, behaving and thinking in ways that are normal. If that is impossible, we must make them seem as sane as possible, so that their madness is confined to their own head and does not spill over. If even that is impossible, they must be removed from society permanently. Otherwise they will disquiet and disturb the sane, or worse, infect them with madness.

Notably, madness was not made to help those that may suffer from, say, psychoses or hallucinations. The history of psychiatry—and yours truly’s personal experience with it as a transsexual forced to self-inter to access transition—makes it quite clear that its primary purpose is the segregation and normalisation of the mad. At times it happens to address the needs of the mad, but generally only insofar as it can bring about their sanity and make them fit for labour production. If one’s need is irrelevant to that, it is usually neglected. At times doctors are genuinely invested in the well-being of their mad patients, and even respect them as humans—but those doctors are merely individuals acting on compassion. The system itself facilitates the opposite.

So then it becomes abundantly obvious why disobedient women, runaway slaves, homosexuals, and transsexuals either were or are psychiatric diagnoses. Indeed, to return to the court case at hand, in a patriarchal world which constructs sex/gender to be an immutable, unchangeable birth-destiny, to think that it can be changed or that you are not what was destined to you—that is madness. It must be. If it is not, then the entire sex-caste order is thrown into total instability. What if everyone decides they’re trans?! What if the men stop competing to assert manhood; what if the women refuse to be commodity?! Who can we then extract sex from? Who will be forced to take care of our homes? Who will work themselves to the bone and who will serve the nation if we cannot promise they will be rewarded with housemaids and offspring and whores? WHO WILL MAKE THE BABIES?!?!

As you can see, dear jury, obviously all of humanity will die and the world will end. Which is why, although I’m sure not everyone enjoys the patriarchy, we must tolerate it. Just like we tolerate our jobs to survive. At least, like, the core idea. We can jiggle some things around to avoid torches and pitchforks, but the sex-castes must stay. You don’t want to be the last Atlas suffering gender-work while all the kids get surgeries and hormones and don’t want to produce gender anymore, do you? We simply can’t encourage this kind of behaviour.

Within the patriarchal resource distribution system, the trans are sex/gender-disabled, and transition is then akin to an accommodation. Just like any disabled accommodation, it is seen as a resource drain that either must be thoroughly justified—for resources are always limited—or else be deemed a frivolous waste. In an attempt to incorporate trans-ness into the resource distribution system and justify the accommodation, trans-pathology emerges. The key to trans-pathology—whether it is called transsexualism or gender dysphoria or gender incongruence; whether it is considered a matter of biology, psychiatry, or soul—is that transition is justified due to a psychological/psychiatric wound. “I deserve to transition because it is the only thing making me hurt less.” Transition, then, is continuous relief to de facto gender-madness.

But I mean, within such a worldview, wouldn’t a cure always be better than just relief?

Anyway, that is why my defendant has had to prove he really deserves transition. He has suffered greatly for his defect, and although he cannot be made completely normal—that isn’t possible; we’ve tried—he is as normal as he can be. My defendant has managed to prove to the systems built within the patriarchy, beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt, that he is gender-disabled, gender-mad; that he is wholly incapable of producing sufficient feminised labour due to his condition. He is too pathologically miserable—suicidal, even. But now that he has transitioned, he is happy; he has demonstrated he can participate in the production of the family. Kinda-sorta. Close enough; it looks normal enough. Again: we’ll keep trying, but for now, this is the best we got.

Here’s the problem with my defendant’s case, though. The needs of the sane supersede the needs of the mad. After all, the sane are the ones really working and producing the resources which may then be charitably allotted to take care of the mad. The sane deserve the humanity that the mad can only temporarily, fractionally rent with their pain and the compassion that affords them.

Dear jury, have you ever wondered why it has been so pervasive for trans advocacy to state over and over again the in-born-ness of it, the low numbers of it? Only 1%, no, 5%, no, I don’t know—how are we counting? Who are we counting? Regardless, we must insist it cannot spread; that you the sane will not catch trans cooties. But what if that number rises—why, we must find a justification for why it’s actually not and it’s been counted wrong, or maybe, maybe those people would’ve been trans all along, only now they have the opportunity to pursue their trans-ness, or maybe—

Why is the argument for trans existence so entwined with asserting its rarity?

As we’ve already established, dear jury, if all the world went trans, it would end, and we would all die in a horrible extinction event. We must face the truth of sex/gender austerity. So, if trans people are to be permitted to exist more-or-less normally within a patriarchal society, they must prove beyond the shadow of a doubt: they are not contagious. Relief for the mad may only be entertained if it does not impede the sane from performing their labours.

But here stands my plaintiff. A woman, born rightfully a woman, a healthy woman, that caught the madness. She’d been contaminated by the delusion of the sex change, despite constant assurance that sex cannot be changed, and despite all the ways which we’ve devised to make transsexuals prove they aren’t lying about their stupid, ridiculous disability. And so when presented with proof of the transgender contagion, we must ask ourselves a world-endingly important question:

What If All the Bitches Went Crazy?

I mean, we all don’t want to do what needs to be done. The good of the nation—or our feudal lord, or the communist party, or Amazon Stonks Exchange—asks much of us. Some more than others, but it is what it is. Right?

The place of the woman is not terribly enviable. Sometimes we tell them of the joys of being the hand that rocks the cradle, or how much better it is to be a well-kept pet that has no worries nor responsibilities, or how empowered they are in being actually more capable then the men they must tend to—but at the end of the day, no rational individual would enjoy being treated as less-than-human, as commodity, as property. Luckily for all of us, sex is immutable and natural and we’re all just born this way, pre-destined for certain roles and behaviours. Even if we don’t want to do what needs to be done, there’s not much choice in the matter.

Except, ever-awkwardly, there stands my defendant. Very clearly a man. Very verifiably assigned female at birth.

Um.

Well, no, you see, it’s not like you can really change sex. You can just—approximate it. It’s like a costume. It’s not real, it’s ersatz, and we can always tell.

Except, no we can’t. If you saw my defendant in the streets, would you be able to tell? Would you really? What about the fact that trans men’s health concerns largely mirror those of cis men, such as risks of certain cancers and diseases, so long as those trans men are on HRT? What about the fact that they seem to live as men in society just fine?

Uhhhh.

Any attempt at normalisation of female-to-male transition arrives at two core issues at the heart of the patriarchy. Firstly, the limited resource of Woman: woman who can birth a proper citizen; woman who will clean your room and soothe your tears; woman who can be used and fucked. Secondly: who deserves to be Man? If patriarchal relation is instantiated at birth; if sex is immutable and fundamental to human character, then those born as women must be too categorically different from men to ever even slightly approximate them.

Therefore, in order to be normalised—made less-mad, shifted into the liminal space of not-quite-sane—the trans man must demonstrate and acquiesce to two things. One: he will never be a real man. Indeed, the world will not allow him to be totally interchangeable from cis men; no matter how much he looks and acts the part, at some point something will remind him he is less deserving. He cannot perform all the labour of Man, and he owes society the labour of Woman by dint of birth. To be normalised, he must acquiesce firstly to the caste system itself, and then to his precarious place within it.

But here’s the second thing—for this court case, it is more relevant. He must demonstrate the sorts of women that will become him were never good Woman material anyway. They would not birth a proper citizen anyway. They would not make good housemaids anyway. They would be too ugly to deserve getting fucked anyway. And—crucially—that these reject-women are few and marginal. Because even bad material can be utilised by men who aren’t good enough to deserve the wifely and hot ones, or else used and disposed of by men who just feel like it. Any and all waste of a limited resource must be thoroughly justified.

Unfortunately for the trans man, normalising his existence is incompatible with these dogmas in practice. Normalisation means better access to HRT and masculinising surgeries; it also means being able to exist in public as a man. A lesser man, sure—but many men are lesser men. Such is the nature of an austerity-based resource hierarchy; the place of the beneficiary is competitive.

Scandalously, I myself had a stint in trans manhood, in a place more patriarchal and trans-unaware than most Western countries. Like many trans men, I have found that if you look like a man, talk like a man, act like a man, people can’t help but treat you like a man. Even career transphobes seem to force themselves to misgender trans people at times. Modern medicine enables passing as another sex even for people completely un-androgynous by nature—and historically, even before transition was available, some managed to live as a different sex anyway, discovered only upon burial or autopsy.

And then, when the trans man is normalised, it necessarily entails that female-to-male transition becomes—little by little, however fractionally—less dangerous to access. Less unknown. Which means more people will try to access it.

But listen, my defendant says—look at this graph of left-handed people, at how the number increased once we stopped forcing them to learn writing right-handed! And the patriarchy does not care, because unlike the left-handed, he has stolen a resource owed to its men. It does not matter why the number has increased, only that it did. The trans man’s extreme rarity was part of the deal struck with trans-pathology.

But listen, my defendant says, women don’t want to be men. Women are essentially, fundamentally women. No matter how badly they do or don’t have it, they would never attempt to rid themselves of womanhood—it’s just not their nature. And that means anyone attempting to avail of female-to-male transition was never a woman by dint of trying at all.

Here we arrive at a contradiction. If trans-pathology justifies transition via an incurable ill or an innate quality, then transition cannot be justified by itself. Transition is the action in need of justification; it is not itself proof of anything. Moreover it makes all my defendant’s attempts to argue for either gender-expansiveness or feminism rather laughable. In order to assert that no True Woman would ever attempt to transition to a man, he must either claim that women aren’t really suffering due to their gender all that much, or else that they are too fundamentally different from men to even consider the option. Too incapable of shifting their self-perception of gender, and altogether too committed to having boobs.

Sooner or later in the process of trans-normalisation, no matter how pathologic its framing, it arrives at the simple truth that those born as women can live as men. And the fact women are a patriarchal commodity is hardly news or a secret. Therefore it is possible that someone—arguably—‘gender-sane,’ and thus perfectly suitable for feminised exploitation, would attempt to avail of transition. It only makes rational sense.

And after all, what about my plaintiff? Is she not a woman?

Ah, argues my defendant, but exactly. She’s a woman, and for whatever reason she decided to dabble in real disorders. And now she’s crying about the consequences. Boo-fucking-hoo. She stands here lying she was forced to do it, but he knows better—he knows how difficult transition is to access, how gatekept it is. No one is scouting vulnerable young women to pump them full of testosterone. With that I could only agree—the patriarchy does not simply let go of its resource. My defendant is none too pleased with me, though, perhaps because I have alluded his transition constitutes a kind of ‘escape plan’ for women. But: clearly fucking not. She’s here, isn’t she? Not too escaped, is she? She wasn’t really trans! And anyway, what does that highfalutin stuff matter. She’s brought us all here today because she regrets a choice she made. If she supposedly ‘escaped’ misogyny with transition, why isn’t she still a man? What kind of woman would choose to become a man, only to come crawling back?

A crazy one.

Competitive Sanity

Dear jury, I do confess: my plaintiff is, some might say, full of shit. We all are in this courtroom, but she’s directly lying more than most. Demonstrably, factually, ideologically, there simply isn’t great social incentive to force women to transition to men. On the contrary, there is great incentive to stop them from doing it. In most countries you need permission to legally transition, and that permission is secured with going through a lot of motions to ensure you really really need it. If you’re transitioning outside the legal procedure, it is even harder to argue you were forced to transition or never prevented from doing it. No, there would’ve been a lot of forces hindering the detrans woman’s alleged self-mutilation. This whole story is incredibly easy to poke holes in—and she would know that.

So why is she saying it anyway? What is she trying to get, and why does she think this is how she gets it?

Her plea, as stated, is for cessation of trans accommodation—medical transition firstly, but eventually all of it. Why? Because she bears a psychological wound. She suffers dysphoria from the results of her transition—she’s been rendered sex/gender-disabled by it. So the request is in essence a request for accommodation. Indeed, due to a total lack of detransition procedures and thus state or insurance coverage, the courts are some of the only avenues through which costs of sex-altering detransition procedures may be covered. It is not an unreasonable question: if I received a double mastectomy on insurance/government funding, so why can’t I receive breast reconstruction in the same manner?

And the answer is: because that’s not how trans-pathology works, sweetie. This isn’t a fair exchange sex/gender marketplace. Transition is a barely-granted accommodation—and a crazy thing to do.

Voluntary detransition necessarily arrives at a different issue at the heart of patriarchy: that sex/gender are supposed to be immutable and eternal, and that natural sex is inherently preferable and superior to artificially modified sex. Trans-pathology seeks to frame trans-ness as an essential attribute which causes a psychological wound that must be relieved, thereby violating the immutability dogma as little as possible and assenting to the superiority of natural sex. But to detransition is, truthfully, to transition again at least once; multiple sex changes cannot be justified within this paradigm. And, the nature of transition access ensures that in the overwhelming majority of cases, going through it is a choice made on purpose. Therefore, desiring detransition under the framework of immutable sex/gender means you transitioned by frivolity, delusion—mistake. And not just any mistake; a mistake in which you pilfered a limited-resource accommodation. Willingly destroyed your ability to adequately perform feminised labour. And, according to the naturalistic fallacy, wasted a superior version of your sex for no justifiable reason.

Just like it is insanity to think you can or should change your sex, it is madness to imagine you can just walk back and forth willy-nilly.

So if that’s the case, how does one normalise detransition? What framing is needed? How does my plaintiff place it in the realm of sanity?

Just like the trans man acquiesces to some of the patriarchal claims about him in order to shift others, so does the detrans woman. She agrees that yes, her natural sex is superior and unrecoverable. Yes, it was a mistake. What she can’t acquiesce to is the idea that she transitioned on purpose, willingly. Because if that is so, she violated the caste system in the most grievous of ways, and she stole labour and accommodation. If you know anything about the treatment of the disabled—or the homeless, or any vulnerable category that requires more accommodation than average—you would know that to admit such a thing is to cut yourself off from any further help. If the detrans woman agrees she was a rational agent when she transitioned, she agrees she is a parasite and a resource-eater. Within the patriarchal framework, she cannot argue for the right to change sex again.

If she does not present her transition as an insanity and her detransition as a cure, then that means she is mad and has been the whole time. Mad: meaning, unworthy of autonomy. She must self-denigrate and totally disavow her past self—or else be denied autonomy not only then, but also now.

She makes the claim she was mad. She finds every way in which her agency could’ve been compromised and exaggerates them until her past self appears completely incapable of making choices. All our agencies are always at least somewhat compromised, of course, for we are not totally rational agents and we are not omniscient—but that doesn’t matter, because mad choices will always be simple to present as delusions, and the sane ones will always be assumed perfectly-agented by default. And so, for instance, it may be true that the detrans woman’s doctor had a poor grasp on the mental health of women while knowing how to follow basic transition guidelines. But this is not presented as one of many circumstances which enabled the detrans woman to rethink her gender and consider transition—rather, it becomes a total superimposition of the doctor’s will upon the detrans woman’s, erasing her own decision-making capacity entirely. It becomes brainwashing.

Or let us return to my favourite topic: the patriarchy. While it is absurd to suggest the commodification and dehumanisation inherent to being a woman under patriarchy could never cause anyone to alienate from ‘woman’ altogether, it is likewise absurd to present transition as an ‘escape’ from patriarchy. The only escape there is from an all-encompassing regime is leaving for the woods. Moreover, the sex-essentialism of its caste system ensures trans men’s lives are made especially precarious, their trans status impossible to totally conceal, and any and all reveal of it threatening dehumanisation and womanisation. You can become a man—but only a queer one, and queerness is automatically degendering and unstable.

(Recall our bigoted judge. He is merely a distilled substrate of my own experiences with how trans-ness undoes humanity, disassembles one’s body into parts to be undressed and examined in the town square, and assiduously regendered.)

As is abundantly clear to anyone that’s ever transitioned, transition results in a re-negotiation of one’s status within the patriarchal caste system—with a heavy penalty. It is as silly to say ‘man’ confers no immense advantages over ‘woman’ as it is to say ‘cis’ confers no immense advantages over ‘trans.’ Both claims are brazenly, demonstrably absurd—mad, even.

So why is the trans man stating the former while the detrans woman states the latter? Why are they making absurd claims while poking at the absurdity of the other’s claim?

The fact of the matter is, both transition and detransition are fundamentally incompatible with patriarchal logics. Bioessentialist sex-destiny at birth and the naturalistic fallacy of sex are its foundational building blocks. Ability to perform sex/gender up to an arbitrary labour standard is the measure of one’s place in the hierarchy, and that hierarchy is supposed to have no mobility. Therefore patriarchy is incompatible with providing accommodation for changing sex, at all, ever. Desire for this accommodation is madness, undergoing it is disabling, and both madness and disability are utterly undesirable within resource austerity.

Then it follows that attempting to justify either transition or detransition care within a patriarchal system generates fallacies, omissions, distortions, and outright lies, because true justification—true equity with those that do not change sex/gender—is impossible. Moreover, sex/gender austerity forces accommodation requests of the trans and the detrans to become antagonistic. If the trans deserve accommodation, that makes the detrans lying and crazy resource-eaters. If the detrans deserve accommodation, that makes the trans crazy mutilators of the sane. Therefore the trans and the detrans must compete for the title of least-mad to be granted anything at all. The needs of the more-sane supersede the needs of the less-sane, because the saner you are, the more likely you are to almost-meet the arbitrary standard of labour. You are more worthy of having a finite resource spent on you.

So: poke holes in the inevitable flaws in each other’s reasoning, and whoever pokes best, wins.

And The Winner Is…

In the realm of pure logic, obviously no one. We’re all mad here. But this isn’t pure logic—this is the court of patriarchy, and the logics we’re operating under are patriarchal. Primacy in a hierarchy is won with obedience.

And in that sense, the case was rigged from the start.

You see, dear jury, you were never needed here, and your votes will not be counted. Of our plaintiff and our defendant, there is a self-evident winner in the ‘most obedient to patriarchal logics’ competition. Look how she cries for her lost womb. She’s obviously very sorry for betraying her labour function, and she says she’s been disabled—mutilated!—by those pesky resource-eaters, those burdens. Well, we certainly don’t need to be asked twice to care less! Reduced accommodation approved!

Ah, but what she really wanted was accommodation for her gender and sex. To be a woman again.

Too bad.

It is curious, isn’t it, how rarely you see allegedly pro-detrans conservative pundits advocate for detrans healthcare. No fundraisers for breast reconstruction, no calls to include voice training in subsidised procedures, no requests to incorporate legal detransition into gender marker change pathways. You’d be forgiven for thinking no such thing as ‘detrans healthcare’ even exists. Yes, yes, they’re campaigning for the benevolent extermination of detrans people as a category via extermination of transition—but what of the ones currently living? Even if they’re supposedly irreversibly damaged, don’t they deserve at least relief?

Seems like the only thing detrans women deserve is pity—not accommodation. All their pain buys them is a lack of direct violence. But in order to have that non-violence bought with pain, they must continue to be in pain; they must remain destitute. We can’t keep encouraging this sex-changing behaviour, after all. If detrans women aren’t destitute, who knows what kind of ideas the gender-obedient will get in their as-yet sane heads.

That is, in the end, the issue with trying to earn humane treatment with pain against a system that claims you have not contributed enough to deserve humane treatment in the first place. It is a continuously defensive position, with shifting boundaries you do not get to set or control—because you’re defensive. You don’t get to decide how much pain constitutes enough payment, nor how much your pain is worth.

Consider trans-pathology. Whether we call it transsexualism or gender dysphoria or gender incongruence, transition is presented as a form of relief to a psychiatric or psychological ill—that is, it is an accommodation bought with pain. Then remains a thorny question: what if the source of pain could be eliminated? Conversion therapy is deemed in poor taste chiefly because it does not work. But a total cure is always preferable to a relief. Therefore, under this logic, it must be pursued. So long as gender is what it is, and so long as madness is what it is, the search for working conversion therapy cannot cease. You can spend countless hours proving the ‘true cure’ to trans-ness is impossible, but with enough push, some hack will publish something credible-looking and science-seeming that asserts otherwise—and they’ll be more useful to the system than you.

Just look at the Cass Review.

When Abigail Thorn in her Why I Don’t Like The Word ‘Dysphoria’ essay suggested the basis for the right to transition ought to be her will—that the only justification sex-changing and gender-shifting needs is “because I want to”—she received quite some pushback on the idea. It is a common critique, one I received myself over many years, and it comes in two forms. One is an accusation of pain-ignoring. That we do not recognise the suffering of trans people, perhaps even attempt to override their stories. It’s valid that you’re not hurting, but you have to recognise that I do!

And I ask: why should the freedoms permitted to you depend on how much pain you’re in? Does this not entail that, once you’re not hurting anymore, you no longer deserve them—meaning, your destitution must in some way remain eternal?

The second critique is pragmatic: if we push this weird frivolous agency line, we won’t get what we want fast enough. We’ll die on this hill arguing we deserve autonomy while getting no help at all, when we could have at least some benefit now.

But neither Thorn nor I argue against pragmatism. I lied my way through the masturbation quizzes in the psych ward just fine. The argument made in both this essay and hers is not, as the critique fears, for the rapid dissolution of current trans healthcare and for dying on the vanguard of pipe dreams, but rather for a gradual shift of the patriarchal sex-caste construction—for rethinking sex. And there are pragmatic reasons to argue this; we can observe them right now, as fascism builds its momentum around restricting whatever trans freedoms were won with trans-pathology.

Because, I repeat: transition is fundamentally incompatible with patriarchal logics. It cannot be assimilated. Its normalisation jeopardises the basis on which it is allowed a sliver of assimilation. Thus trans-pathology is locked in a cycle whose only variable is the intensity of its eugenic extermination.

It is also a cycle in which I cannot exist with dignity (not that anyone does.) At the height of trans-pathology, I am a crazy resource-thief; at its nadir, I am a mutilated and fallen woman. So I reject this samsara, not just as an ideological dead end, but also a practical one. I reject the austerity of feminised labour; I reject that a hierarchy of resource-consumption is necessary and that no better world can exist. I reject pathetic flailing in front of impassive juries and judges, trying to prove I’m not really crippled or mad—that I don’t deserve to be treated like them. I reject that some people deserve living more than others, or deserve participation in society more than others. I reject being taxed with pain for failing to be a good-enough resource site. I reject the need for performance of justification.

And I hope you do, too.

Recommended Reading

On mad justice: Micha Frazer-Carroll, Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health.

On the treatment of the disabled as an economic and eugenic burden: Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Verkant, Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto.

[togglesbloggle]

The worst part of losing Tumblr, of course, will be the many broken connections with all of you guys. 'Tumblr mutual' is a peculiar and lovely kind of friendship that can't be replicated elsewhere, and the quality of audience I've found here has been really excellent in a way that I don't expect to find again.

But I've always been a creature of fragmented identities, and so the second worst part of losing Tumblr will be the fact that the "Toggle"-sona might not last very long without it.

It's one of those strange advantages that comes from hanging out on one of the last great pseudonymous sites on the internet, you know? Being Toggle means something pretty specific for me- nothing unfamiliar if you've been following me for a while. It's structured as a syncretic mix of LessWrong-isms and empirical sciences, with connective tissues of epistemology and active curiosity. Toggle turns out to be a headspace that I deeply enjoy, and developing it has allowed me to move through the world in unique and special ways.

But it's an identity that hasn't grown as energetically as other parts of my life, at least not in the years since I left grad school. I don't meet new people through this face as often any more, or extend my social graph strongly in this direction, even though it's been an exciting and dramatic period in my life otherwise. And so Toggle is going to heal more slowly when injured, and take longer to recover from dramatic shocks.

Tumblr isn't the only place where I can express myself under this identity (it's got its own discord account and email address, among other things), but the long-form writing style is disproportionately important. "Writing is thinking" and all that; the particular Toggle-way of seeing the world requires space to work out and polish ideas. Without this jumble of essays and longposting, it starts to feel like there's a vital organ or two missing, and it's an open question whether Toggle has the vitality in it to recover from that.

It's theoretically possible to switch my writing over to Substack or something, though I'm fairly doubtful that this kind of writing could survive as a blog as opposed to a micro-blog, if only because this really is more of a sketchbook than a mature product as such. And if I stumble in to the right job, one in either physical sciences or in rationalist/EA spaces, then it would probably kick the identity back in to high gear. Toggle isn't entirely doomed, but it probably needs a stroke of good luck, a change in circumstance to align my incentives behind it, or both.

In the meantime, I'm anticipating Tumblr's closure by thinking about ways to be a little more proactive about porting the best parts of Toggle in to other parts of my life- upwards to the light of wallet names and face-to-face networks, and outwards to other constructed identities and other diasporic online communities. Even so, it's going to be a terrible loss.

[elk64]

JOIN MY NEWSLETTER MAILING LIST -> https://elk64.substack.com/ Hello everyone ! I'm moving my mailing list to substack; if you have already joined you don't need to do anything, but if you haven't, newsletter is best way to stay in touch and not miss anything important!

Why subscribe? In this day social media age have turned into a full dystopia, granting us artist both autonomy and dependance. As years goes on, it get harder and harder for independent creative and their communities to keep in touch by a nebulous plays of algorithms and luck. To ensure to not rely exclusively on tier owned space, newsletter appear itself as a key option. This more intimate space give me the option for free content, more complex thought and also vital communication like shop opening, product evolution or commission availability.

No spamming as this newsletter will be limited to a monthly update. It will be a good general way to follow both project, life and product in case you're interested to buy print or other derivative.

- Never miss an update anymore.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Olga Lautman at Substack:

America has entered uncharted waters. With Trump’s victory, a leader who openly disregards democratic norms and embraces authoritarian tactics will soon hold power. This forces us to confront a sobering question: what happens next? Drawing from Russia’s repression under Vladimir Putin, we can anticipate a chilling blueprint for America’s future. If history is any guide, a Russian-style system could quickly take hold, reshaping the nation in ways few could have imagined. I never imagined having to write this about America but here we are.

1. The Erosion of Democratic Institutions

Although Russia, for centuries has been plagued by corruption and repression, Putin's rise to power marked a decisive shift toward consolidating authority and dismantling even the minimal democratic structures that existed. He systematically undermined the judiciary, legislature, and media to entrench his rule, while filling key positions with loyalists—many of whom lacked experience and carried criminal backgrounds. This ensured that every lever of power served his interests rather than the public. A similar playbook will be employed in the U.S., targeting key institutions to erode checks and balances and concentrate power in the hands of a select few.

Judiciary: Judges who stand against the regime will face political attacks, threats, or attempts for outright removal. Loyalists—regardless of qualifications—will be installed to ensure the legal system becomes a tool of the regime, rubber-stamping its priorities and suppressing dissent.

Congress: Opposition voices in the legislature may be neutralized through disinformation campaigns, weaponized investigations, or targeted harassment, creating an institution that offers little resistance to executive overreach.

State Governments: Federal overreach will likely target states that resist centralized authority. This could include withholding funds, filing legal challenges, or deploying federal agencies to strong-arm compliance, undermining state autonomy.

Department of Justice (DOJ): Expect the DOJ to be weaponized to serve regime interests, targeting political opponents with investigations and prosecutions while shielding loyalists from accountability. This shift will transform the DOJ from a guardian of the rule of law into an enforcer of authoritarian priorities and a silencer of dissent.

Military: The armed forces will see an infiltration of loyalists in key leadership positions, prioritizing loyalty over expertise. The regime will co-opt the military for domestic purposes, deploying troops to intimidate or suppress opposition under the guise of maintaining order.

Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies: Federal agencies like the FBI and CIA may be purged of independent leadership and repurposed to surveil, intimidate, and target political adversaries, activists, and journalists while overlooking crimes committed by allies of the regime.

Election Commissions: Agencies responsible for overseeing elections will further be restructured or staffed with loyalists to undermine free and fair elections, introducing more barriers to voting, and attempting to manipulate electoral outcomes.

Through these methods, authoritarian regimes systematically seize control of institutions vital to democracy and try to quell all avenues for effective resistance.

2. Media Suppression and Propaganda

In a Russian-style system, independent media becomes an endangered species. Expect a multifaceted approach to suppressing dissent and controlling the narrative:

Hostile Takeovers: Major media outlets critical of the regime may face buyouts by regime-friendly oligarchs, hostile regulatory scrutiny, or outright closures. These takeovers allow the regime to repurpose once-trusted news sources into tools of propaganda.

Censorship: The flow of information will be tightly controlled. Social media platforms will be pressured to suppress dissenting voices through legislation targeting “disinformation,” often a thinly veiled pretext for stifling criticism. Algorithms will be manipulated to deprioritize independent reporting and amplify regime-friendly content.

State Media Expansion: Regime-funded outlets will flood the airwaves and online spaces with propaganda, often disguised as legitimate news. This will foster a cult of personality around the leader and rewrite inconvenient truths, framing opposition voices as enemies of the people.

Media Self-Censorship: A climate of fear can be just as effective as direct government intervention. Expect the regime to create an environment where media outlets self-censor to avoid legal repercussions or physical harm. Journalists may shy away from covering controversial topics or investigations to protect their staff and avoid punitive measures like fines or asset freezes.

Intimidation of Journalists: Journalists who persist in reporting the truth will face significant personal and professional risks, including:

Harassment and Threats: Online trolling, smear campaigns, and physical intimidation will be carried out to silence reporters.

Surveillance: Journalists will become targets of state surveillance, with private communications intercepted and leaked to discredit or endanger them.

Arrests and Detention: Those who cross the regime’s red lines may face arbitrary detention or charges like espionage or sedition, echoing Russia's imprisonment of investigative journalists.

License Bans and Revocations: The regime may also weaponize licensing and accreditation requirements, threatening or revoking the credentials of outlets that refuse to conform. In Russia, this tactic has driven many independent voices underground or into exile. In the U.S., similar actions could manifest as government agencies tightening broadcast or publishing regulations to target dissenters, while regime-friendly outlets flourish under lenient oversight.

The result is a chilling effect: a public increasingly deprived of accurate, independent information and a society incapable of holding power to account.

[...]

Ways to push back

While the outlook is bleak, resistance is not futile. America’s deep democratic traditions and resilient civil society offer hope, but pushing back will require collective effort and strategic action. Support independent media by subscribing to and amplifying credible outlets that challenge the regime’s narrative. Organize locally to strengthen grassroots networks that resist authoritarian policies and foster community resilience. Strengthen ties with global democratic movements to share strategies and resources. Stay informed, as understanding authoritarian tactics is key to countering them. I’ll be putting out a comprehensive resistance guide very shortly to help navigate this critical fight. Stay tuned.

Olga Lautman wrote a solid column on her Unmasking Russia Substack on how Donald Trump’s dictatorship could very well unfold, like what happened when Viktor Orbán came back to power in 2010 in Hungary.

Trump’s dictatorship plans are a solid reason for blue states to consider secession.

[russburlingame]

Phil Ochs is A Complete Unknown

While Bob Dylan became a living legend, the era's most earnest folksinger has been largely forgotten

Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced eight Academy Award nominations for A Complete Unknown, a biopic about one of the most exhaustively-documented artists of the 20th Century.

Okay, that’s a joke. I like Bob Dylan as much as the next guy (provided The Next Guy isn’t Ray Padgett, who writes the terrific Substack Flagging Down the Double Es). “A complete unknown” is obviously a lyric from Dylan’s seminal hit “Like a Rolling Stone,” and it’s a clever title.

(Also, the other obvious choice — No Direction Home — is already a book about Dylan by Robert Shelton and a documentary by Martin Scorsese, so it’s pretty well spoken-for.)

But making fun of the title plays nicely into my premise here.

That’s because while I like Dylan as much as the next guy, I like Phil Ochs considerably more than the next guy. And A Complete Unknown has had me thinking a lot about Ochs, and his relationship to Dylan. Not so much their personal relationship — which was tortured and mostly one-sided — but their cultural relationship. While I hate it, it’s objectively true that almost every conversation about Ochs eventually drifts to Dylan.

For those who haven’t looked too much into it — it’s difficult to overstate the impact that Bob Dylan had on the folk movement in the 1960s. He was to folk music what Gretzky was to hockey or Jordan was to basketball — not only widely considered the best, but also seen as someone who completely redefined the “game.”

He did that again in 1965, when — at the event which wraps up A Complete Unknown — Dylan “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival, polarizing folk music fans but setting himself up for more and bigger successes in the broader music industry.

Following Dylan’s explosive folk-rock success, he became increasingly detached from the protest music that drove the New York City folk scene. The scene itself remained vital for years, but it was forever fractured by the departure of its biggest star, and by the changes he left behind. There is, in fact, an argument to be made that a movie picking up where A Complete Unknown leaves off might be more interesting than the one we got.

While Dylan got increasingly enthusiastic about drugs and heady songwriting, he largely left activism and topical music behind. While there was always an undercurrent of criticism — even hostility — from those in the folk movement and from the activists who felt he abandoned them, those voices were in the minority.

This is a story about Phil Ochs, but it’s opened up with…what, 500 words?…of framing about Bob Dylan. And that’s kind of the point. I prefer Ochs to Dylan, and I think he’s the best topical singer-songwriter of the era (except possibly Joan Baez, who covered Phil’s great song “There But For Fortune”).

If you happen to be one of the 50 Phil Ochs fans on the internet (word is, we can’t be wrong!), you’ve likely seen quite a bit of discourse around A Complete Unknown. There were quite a few fans who were upset to hear that Phil wouldn’t make an appearance in the film, which is set in and around the Greenwich Village folk scene at the same time as Ochs and Dylan were friends.

I wasn’t one of those people, for a simple reason: Ochs deserves better than to be treated like some angry weirdo on the fringes of Dylan’s orbit…especially since, the long run, Phil held onto his principles and was defined by them, while Dylan largely gave up on politics to focus on getting high and making cool, weird art.

There is, of course, a constant struggle between art and commerce. Dylan and Ochs are a fascinating way to view that struggle, because while Dylan is a great artist, he’s also a pioneer of making yourself a “brand.” The idea that Dylan is all art and no commerce is nonsense, and you can actually see that through the lens of an anecdote that is constantly shared about the two.

In late 1965 or early 1966, not long after the success of “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Positively 4th Street,” Dylan was on top of the world. His next single, “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?,” failed to crack the top 40 on the charts, and Dylan appears to have been a lot more frustrated by this than he would have liked to let on.

According to a story Phil Ochs used to tell, Dylan previewed his next single — “One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” — for Ochs and another friend, David Blue, expressing enthusiasm and thinking it was the kind of song that was likely to be a big hit. While Blue praised the song, Ochs was lukewarm on it, and didn’t think it was likely to be a hit. Dylan reportedly took it quite personally and, when the time came for the trio to move to their next location, Dylan told Ochs to “get out” of his limousine and find his own way.

This story has been conflated with another one numerous times, including in a couple of Ochs biographies, but there’s actually a pretty great Reddit comment that provides a pretty credible account of it that seemingly dispels some of the myths.

This story is an interesting one to me. In most cases, it’s reported that Dylan kicked Ochs out of the limo mid-journey, and that he told him, “You’re not a writer, you’re a journalist,” supposedly disparaging Phil’s commitment to activism and topical music. The latter is something Dylan did say to Ochs once, but not in the limo, and in a context where Ochs supposedly didn’t take much offense.

The story is often used to frame their relationship, illustrating the power imbalance between Dylan and Ochs. And there’s definitely that aspect to it, but I think this version — which more closely matches the story as Ochs told it during his lifetime — reflects more on Dylan’s insecurities and the fact that he felt Ochs might have been right about the song. The more traditional version shows Dylan as an egomaniac who doesn’t respect Phil’s opinion, and that doesn’t really seem to track.

“I just can’t keep up with Phil,” Dylan told the folk magazine Broadside in 1964. “And he’s getting better and better and better.”

That doesn’t sound like somebody who doesn’t value Phil’s input. Granted, a lot can change in a year and a half, particularly after Dylan’s controversial appearance at Newport and the rock-star levels of success that followed. Nevertheless, the version of this story that has become folklore (no pun intended) to many Ochs fans never really rang true to me.

Phil, meanwhile, is an interesting character himself. He was desperate for the kind of critical and commercial success Dylan had, and he never got it. Ochs was, by most reckonings, a great songwriter who lived in the shadow of one of the all-time greats. The fact that they happened to move in the same circles and consider one another friends likely complicated the dynamic.

It’s basically undisputed that Dylan was reportedly often cruel to Ochs, and that he took for granted Phil’s loyalty and admiration. Young Dylan was mercurial, sarcastic, and self-centered — something that contributed to the love triangle that plays into A Complete Unknown.

(To his credit, Dylan reportedly asked for Suze Rotolo’s name to be changed in the movie, so that she wasn’t even further dragged through the mud by her relationship with him.)

Something I really hate as an Ochs fan is the prominence that the “limo story,” and Dylan in general, tends to have in Phil’s story.

There’s an obvious reason — Dylan loomed large over that whole era, and Phil was clearly envious of his success — but viewing a great artist exclusively through the lens of how they relate to another artist is…gross. You see it a lot with marginalized groups who are viewed through the lens of their relationship with prominent white, male artists, which makes the practice doubly suspect (although that’s obviously not the case with Ochs).

Phil’s envy of Dylan was clear, and so he is at least partially responsible for inviting these comparisons. While Dylan spoke highly of Phil as a songwriter, it doesn’t seem like he was a very good friend to Phil, but Phil took it because, like everyone else in the scene at the time, he wanted to be friends with Bob. Not that Phil didn’t occasionally take his own shots…

I would never say that the relationship between the two isn’t important. Dylan even came through for Ochs in a big way toward the end of Phil’s life. After the U.S.-backed coup in Chile, which led to the deaths of both Salvador Allende (the democratically-elected leader of Chile) and Victor Jarra (the country’s version of Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan, and a friend of Phil’s), Ochs put on a fundraiser for Chilean refugees, and Dylan showed up to play — effectively helping the concert meet its goal simply by being there. The relationship was important — to Phil, to his music, to his reputation — and it was complicated, messy, and emotionally taxing for Ochs.

But I’m tired of seeing Phil through Dylan’s lens. The man deserves to have his story told…as his own story.

I’ve been (very slowly and) quietly working on writing a script for a nonfiction podcast that will delve into Phil’s life. This isn’t to promote that script, which is still not done and which I won’t get paid for, but that’s how strongly I feel about telling a version of this story that isn’t “hey, look! We got to pick a guy in a hat out of a crowd in a Dylan movie!”

There are a couple of definitive Ochs biographies, although hardcore fans have pretty serious critiques of both of them. There’s a fairly new one, which people seem to quite like, although it appears to be primarily centered on Ochs’s mental health. I’ll include links to all three below. There’s also a documentary film, which is great but also difficult to find these days. Last I checked, you can stream it on Kanopy (using your library card), or buy it on DVD.

Before the links, enjoy one of my favorite Phil songs:

There But For Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs

Death of a Rebel: A Biography of Phil Ochs

That Man in the Gold Lame Suit: Phil Ochs’s Search For Self

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Dave Whammond

* * * *

Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. Double Standard.

July 8, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

JUL 08, 2024

The mainstream media continues its whisper campaign against President Biden, as they report that anonymous “senior leaders” talk “in private” about approaching Joe Biden to urge him to drop out. At least Adam Schiff had the guts to express his qualms in public respectfully, even though I strongly disagree with his views (on this subject).

One evolving narrative among the press is that the Biden administration “concealed” the truth of Biden’s cognitive state—which supposedly justifies their righteous anger. Bull****. This is another example of a double standard applied by a media that is intent on driving Joe Biden out of the race—damn the facts!

Joe Biden has been transparent with the American people about his health—which cannot be said about Trump.

Remember Trump's unexplained visit to Walter Reed for a treatment that remains secret to this day? Or showing up to a debate in 2020 knowing he had tested positive for Covid but concealed that fact from Joe Biden, the debate moderators, and the American public?

Or having a doctor release a statement about Trump's health that was dictated by Trump? Or when the White House physician provided false information about Trump's vital statistics—like his weight—and said that Trump might be the first president to live to be 200?

Amid all the calls for “cognitive tests” for Biden—but not Trump—journalists are committing malpractice by failing to note that President Biden released a detailed summary of his annual physical in February of this year.

The full report is here: Health-Summary-2.28.pdf (whitehouse.gov). The examination included consultations with neurological experts at Walter Reed hospital. I urge you to read the entire report and consider how you would measure up to such a battery of tests!

[...]

So, Biden did have a “detailed neurological exam” four-and-half months ago. The widespread media demands that Biden “take a neurological exam” should be directed to Trump instead.

Predictably, this “proof” won’t be enough for the media. Just as the media refused to accept a certified copy of President Obama’s birth certificate, the goalposts will keep shifting.

The issue is not Joe Biden. It is Donald Trump—and the media’s arrogant refusal to apply the same scrutiny to Trump that it is applying to Biden. If they did, they would be demanding neurological exams of Trump and his withdrawal from the race. So far as we have been informed by Trump, his cognitive test consisted of recalling five objects: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” Can you say, “double standard”?

Why isn’t the media making demands that Trump submit to “extremely detailed neurologic testing” by experts from a nationally recognized hospital?

The answer is simple. Trump has quashed dissent within his party. Anyone who dares raise a voice in dissent is the immediate recipient of anonymous death threats and public ridicule on Trump's vanity media platform. And Trump's para-military press surrogates leap into action, declaring that the dissidents are dead to MAGA.

So, the press's application of the same standards to Trump has no upside because it won’t incite the mass panic among Republicans that Democrats are willing to supply by the bucketful.

I accept at face value the good faith of readers who say they have lost confidence in Biden because of the debate or any other reason. That is a personal judgment only you can make. But I again remind everyone that “Biden should withdraw” is not a plan. If you believe a different path to victory is appropriate, then you must devote yourself to that path with all the vigor and financial resources you can muster.

[...]

Timothy Snyder (author of On Tyranny and Substack blog Thinking About), addressed the role that the press has been playing in whipping up “fascist froth” that helps Trump. See Timothy Snyder, Fascism and Fear (substack.com)

There are three tests of good faith for those who are proposing that President Biden step down. The first is recognition that Biden’s first term has been one of extraordinary achievement. The second is a plan for what the Democrats would do, should Biden withdraw, to select a nominee and win the election. The third is recognition that the threat of regime change is what might justify changing the nominee.

If I am right that much of the energy behind the Biden pile-on is displaced fear of a regime change, much of the media will continue to generate fascist froth for Trump, whether or not Biden is the Democratic nominee — unless, of course, journalists confront their fears, and keep the issue of regime change inside the story, and provide a constructive alternative alongside personal criticism.

[I inverted the order of Snyder’s two paragraphs above so they made more sense in a short quotation.]

And, finally, Rebecca Solnit wrote what I wish I had written. See her essay in The Guardian: Why is the pundit class so desperate to push Biden out of the race?

Solnit begins:

I am not usually one to offer diagnoses of people I’ve never met, but it does seem like the pundit class of the American media is suffering from severe memory loss. Because they’re doing exactly what they did in the 2016 presidential race – providing wildly asymmetrical and inflammatory coverage of the one candidate running against Donald J Trump. They have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Biden is unfit, will lose and should go away, at a point in the campaign in which replacing him would likely be somewhere between extremely difficult and utterly catastrophic. They do this while ignoring something every scholar and critic of journalism knows well and every journalist should. As Nikole Hannah-Jones put it: “As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.” They are not reporting that he is a loser; they are making him one. And so it goes with what appears to be a journalistic competition to outdo each other in the aggressiveness of the attacks and the unreality of the proposals. It’s a dogpile and a panic, and there is no one more unable to understand their own emotional life, biases and motives than people who are utterly convinced of their own ironclad rationality and objectivity, [also known as] pundits.

Here's my advice to everyone—regardless of what side of the issue you take regarding Joe Biden’s continued candidacy. The issue is Trump, not Biden. Whether Biden drops out is not something you or I have control over. (Readers frequently write to me and say, “Please tell Joe Biden . . . .” The only thing Joe Biden knows about me is my credit card number.)

Joe Biden has control over his choices; his close advisors and family have influence; some senior leaders in the Democratic Party have some influence. They are talking amongst themselves. Let them have a rational, private conversation not played out on the front pages of the NYTimes and WaPo minutes after the latest exchange of views.

However, the one institution that has demonstrated it cannot be trusted to deal with this question is the media. They have a perverse financial incentive: Chaos = profit. They are agents of chaos at this moment in pursuit of the mighty dollar.

I believe that Joe Biden is the best candidate to defeat Trump, that replacing him at this point poses unacknowledged and unknowable risks, and that those who advocate a different path have the burden of identifying and funding an alternative candidate.

Our task has not changed. It is our moral and patriotic duty to alert all Americans about the threat posed by Trump and his fascist plan to undermine democracy. We have plenty of work and precious little time left to accomplish our task.

Let us channel all our energy away from debating Joe Biden’s age and health into defeating Trump. In that task, we must speak with one voice.

[MORE]

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[consanguinitatum]

Hiya!

I've been keeping up to date with your substack for a while (I absolutely love seeing your posts!) and I know you do lots of research on David Tennant's early career in Scotland, so I think you're the best person to help a problem I'm having. But this is a bit of a story, so bear with me. After seeing Takin' Over the Asylum, I've become obsessed with Donna Franceschild's writing and I've been wanting to see more of her work (I've been somewhat successful). It just so happens that at the same time I have an acting exam coming up and I have to find material to perform. I then find out about Donna Franceschild's play "And The Cow Jumped Over The Moon". It's a play about about the experiences of a women's ward in a Glaswegian hospital (basically TOTA but more feminist!) and also found out it had a TV adaptation! (which would be helpful for me, since it would give more material to base my acting on, and therefore I would find my exam easier.) I'd completely love to see that play and be able to perform it! But here's where we get to my dilemma. I have not been able to find this play anywhere. I have scoured the internet and have only found references saying that it exists - not any archive of the script or videos of the play itself. The TV adaptation was done for The Play On One - which I know you resurfaced one of the episodes for - so that's one of the reasons why I'm asking you if you have any clue what has happened to this play. I know it's somewhat out of your area of expertise since this doesn't involve David Tennant, but I do know that you've already done a lot of research on Donna Franceschild, Scottish theatre in the 80s/90s, and The Play On One! This is a bit of a reach asking you, but if you do know anything about this play, I'd love to hear about it! :D

First off, thank you for following my posts about David's early career on A Tennantcy To Act, and I'm really glad you find them worthwhile. I also appreciate it that you think I'm knowledgeable enough to help you out. I hope you don't mind that I put your question and my reply to this out in public, because I thought you might not be the only one interested in Donna Franceschild's And The Cow Jumped Over The Moon. When I spoke to David Blair, the director of Takin' Over The Asylum, he mentioned the play as a vital element in ToTA's eventual development. He said:

The BBC – not myself – then commissioned Donna to adapt a stage play she’d written called “And The Cow Jumped Over The Moon” to fit a play strand we were doing at the time.

On the day of the studio, the Producer overseeing the project was taken ill and they asked me to fill in for her ‘in the gallery’. (This was an old TV play where you worked in a rehearsal room for, say, three weeks then shot the whole thing – multi-camera – in a matter of days). Of course as a result, I became familiar with the material and was indeed taken by this minor character – Eddie – who was a hospital radio DJ.  After that, I asked Donna if she felt there might be mileage in creating a serial based around this character.

So for anyone who digs Takin' Over The Asylum, watching this play should be a must-do - since without it, we almost certainly wouldn't have had our Campbell, Eddie, Francine, and Fergus!

And The Cow Jumped Over The Moon was originally completed in 1989 and became a play which premiered at the Traverse Theatre in 1990. Donna wrote a playscript from it for the BBC which was broadcast on BBC One on 15 Aug 1991 as part of the last series of its 'The Play On One' series. The TV broadcast is archived at the British Film Institute on VHS, and here's a small article I've located about the plot and cast of the TV version:

I didn't find much mention of the character of Eddie in the TV version of the play, but I did find this about him from the stage play - and he doesn't seem like a pleasant fellow. Perhaps Franceschild created a different version of him for the short film, enough that Blair thought him worthy of his own drama?

I don't know.

But I soon will! Because as I come to the point of your post...which is do I know where to find And The Cow Jumped Over The Moon...the answer is a resounding yes! Because I haven't seen this, either (and I haven't looked for it for about a year, when I did all the research on it that I posted above.)

But I went looking again after I got your ask, and it turns out someone's done us a serious solid and has uploaded it to the Internet Archive!

So there you have it.

I know what I'm watching tonight - and @lemonycheesecakes, a huge thanks for asking!

PS: I just tried to access the video file on the Internet Archive and it says "This video file cannot be played". I'm seeing if I can download it, and hopefully I'll know soon. I'll update as soon as I know for sure!

PSS: I downloaded it via the "Torrent" link under the Download Options (I think you could also do the H264 IA download, too) and it worked - I can see it. So if you plan to access the file, that's the way to go! PPS: I think I might use this as a basis for my next post at A Tennantcy To Act...you made me wonder how many others don't know about how And The Cow Jumped Over The Moon inspired the creation of Takin' Over The Asylum. So I owe you even more thanks!

[darkmaga-returns]

As readers of this Substack know, the CIA was created by fusing top NAZI SS officers from Operation Paperclip with the Office of Strategic Services to create an unconstitutional monstrous spy agency that has been fomenting both global and domestic chaos since its inception.

Various coups d'état in 1953 in Iran and 2014 in Ukraine were all executed by the CIA. From illegal Ukrainian biolabs to Ralph Baric’s criminal gain of function research at Chapel Hill University of North Carolina (and many other assets across most American universities) to Anthony Fauci himself to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to Event 201 to the PSYOP-19 scamdemic itself and the associated slow kill bioweapon “vaccines,” to Operation Mockingbird and Hollywood movies to socially engineering vast swaths of populations both at home and abroad, the CIA has had its hand in all of these shadowy proceedings.

Not only must the CIA be splintered into a thousand pieces and scattered to the winds, but so too should the FBI, IRS, FDA, CDC, NIH, ATF, and many other of the wholly unconstitutional Federal government agencies that have been responsible for subverting We The People’s freedoms for far too long.

Another ruinous agency in the Department of Education is about to be permanently shut down imminently, which is vital because this agency was directly handled by the CIA since it went online in 1980, and has been responsible for indoctrinating generations of American children into compliant slaves that paid their taxes and believed the official narratives to today believing in climate change and fluidity of infinite genders en route to “gender-affirming” bodily and mental mutilation:

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

I Found 10 Vital Mistakes After Reviewing 500+ Substack Accounts

Inspiration and Education for Freelance Writers on Substack Why are they problems, and how can we corect them? Over the last 12 months, I have had the privilege of reviewing and completing health checks for over 500 Substack profiles or publications created by my proteges and collaborators as a giveback activity or as a low-cost service of my Substack Mastery Boost Pilot. My findings helped…

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2024 #43

hello hello it has been a bit of a weird week of ups and downs. really excellent movie times with friends, good food, and halloween crossdressing, but also a long approaching break up finally got made official today. my reading has not slowed down in the slightest though so let's talk about it!

Finished:

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallet, narrated by Thomas Judd I think this book is really one that should best be enjoyed in audiobook format. Like yeah okay there's some reasons you'd want the text version if you're a person who likes to try to solve the mysteries in mystery novels and want to highlight or take note of certain parts, but the conceit is that these are transcripts of audio messages left by a severely dyslexic man who uses them for notetaking/journaling while trying to uncover a mystery. as I said last week I got really attached to our main character Steve

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 5 written by Kaneshiro Yamada, art by Tsukasa Abe, translated by Misa 'Japanese Ammo' I am not particularly interested in this first-class mage exam arc that Frieren and co have been on for this volume. Idk i just find it much less charming than the sort of adventure of the week style that had been the previous pacing. I'll take a break reading this for a bit and see if it has its charm for me again after a little away. The anime is definitely on my to-watch list now

"Male Sexual Victimization: Examining Men's Experiences of Rape and Sexual Assault" by Karen G. Weiss glad i read this for myself after seeing it cited in another work

click by hornyonside (birdlord5000) on ao3 tender sky/fourteen fifteen smut that's a good time

Whitewater Foxholes by Aterikakaal (Biorenewologist) on ao3 Phyrgian has a disappointing hookup with Corrasion bc they are home sick for other branched :,(

to remake ourselves by evilmageclub on ao3 read for shapeshifting samsam smut

when the moon has gone to bed by blacksatinpointeshoes on ao3 if you would like to cry over a Fero/Samol modern au, might i recommend this fic? go forth and witness Fero as just some guy you meet in Boston

"The Third Sex" by Talia Bhatt on substack

"Degendering and Regendering" by Talia Bhatt on substack read some of Talia Bhatt's transfeminist essays this week. highly HIGHLY recommend reading "The Third Sex" if you have ever heard of hijra being described as "India's religiously venerated third gender" because Bhatt does some vital recontextualization with that

Longbourn by Jo Baker, narrated by Emma Fielding A great supplementary read to Pride and Prejudice, spinning up a dramatic story for the servants of Longbourn that only mildly intersects with the trials and tribulations of the Bennets. Since it was written in 2013 is reckons a little bit more with racial and class politics for regency England in a way that Austen's work did not explicitly. not perfectly but in a way that made me sit up in my seat reading it. the romances in this makes my heart ache like crazy

blind item by blacksatinpointeshoes on ao3 tabloid fic of clementine kesh's school years

Magic's Promise by Mercedes Lackey, narrated by Gregory St. John I need to incorporate the ways this book handles sexual coercion and violence towards minors as well as incest into my thesis somewhere, at the very least to point at it as a thing the fantasy genre deals with. it is fascinatingly frank

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallet, read by Annie Aldington, Nneka Okoye, Gareth Armstrong, Sid Sagar, and Kristin Atherton I guess having key characters make up fake people that seem as real as the rest in the epistolary format is Hallet's signature

Started/Ongoing:

John Dies at the End by David Wong (Jason Pargin's psuedonym) reading for SFF book club. I am finding it incredibly abrasive tonally....

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall oh poor Stephen.... so my copy is like subtitled as a classic work of lesbian literature, but to be clear, it is also very easy to interpret it through a transgender lens

[protoslacker]

Others strive to shed labels altogether. Many politicians, for somewhat obvious reasons, embrace them when they’re convenient—rounding up votes in primaries, appealing to activists, and raising cash—and abandoning them once they become a burden. The burden, or perceived burden, arrives when a politician has to campaign in a competitive general election. John Fetterman, the famous senator from Pennsylvania, is deep into his rebrand, and seemingly considering how to position himself when he faces voters again in 2028.

Ross Barkan at Beaver County Blue, originally published at Barkan's Substack Political Currents, John Fetterman Exits the Progressive Coalition.

“I’m not a progressive. I’m just a regular Democrat.” Fetterman is in the first year of a six-year term. He has time to repair relations with progressives or sever ties altogether. At this point, the latter is rapidly happening anyway.

____

I voted for John Fetterman and thought he was progressive when I did. I try to keep up with the news, but I know I miss a lot. And it's really hard to understand "media bubbles. I'm not sure what bubble I'm in, but I know what counts as news for me isn't what counts for news for lots of others.

Fetterman isn't on the ballot in November. But his "rebrand" points to politics. I oppose the Republican Party embrace of Fascism more urgently than I oppose the policies of moderates, of which there are many positions and policies I do oppose. Voting is vitally important. But there is more to politics than voting.

The venerable magazine The Progressive founded by Republican senator Robert La Follette has a good short description of "progressive":

Championing grassroots progressive politics, civil liberties, human rights, economic justice, a healthy environment, and a reinvigorated democracy.

I suppose Senator Fetterman is against all of that, along with lots of folks who'll vote for Democratic candidates. it's good politics to support and favor progressive politics among regular Democrats even while voting for regular Democrats like Biden. Oh politics!

[exeggcute]

"random substack account" isn't usually my go-to source of information but this was a good read and seems like it has the sources to back itself up. highlights:

Conversations of this kind are not unusual for any important interest group, but they reveal the degree to which, in the tech-oriented hasbara world, the lines between government, the private sector, and the nonprofit world are blurry at best. And the tactics that these wealthy individuals, advocates, and groups use — hounding Israel critics on social media; firing pro-Palestine employees and canceling speaking engagements; smearing Palestinian journalists; and attempting to ship military-grade equipment to the IDF — are often heavy-handed and controversial. [...] Israeli officials have invested heavily in shaping the narrative about its war on social media, viewing online discourse as a vital area for maintaining public support. Last month, a spokeswoman for the IDF and the Israel office director of Bessemer Venture Partners, the venture capital firm where [former Oracle CFO] Jeff Epstein is an operating partner, jointly led a Zoom workshop for “high-tech leaders” on tactics for scoring “victories” in the public discourse on Twitter/X. J-Ventures has also raised funds for automated technology to mass report tweets and for facial recognition technology for the IDF to identify hostages. Meanwhile, other Israeli officials have led similar webinar sessions on strategy to shape coverage in campus newspapers and major media outlets. [...] "You guys are our frontline soldiers,” said Tamar Schwarzbard, head of Digital Diplomacy at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, on an October Zoom call posted online by Hasbara Fellowships, a nonprofit group that works closely with the Israeli government to train pro-Israel activists in the U.S. and Canada. She noted that the government needed help reframing the Gaza war and the public messaging over the conflict with Hamas.

[grandhotelabyss]

Any thoughts on the Lauren Oyler controversy?

One of the reasons literature seems so moribund in this country is that it's entirely ceased to be fun. One of the things that made it fun in the old days was critical bloodsport. All the better if it could be backed up by genuine erudition, as in the cases of both Ann Manov and Becca Rothfeld, and the ability to wield this as a stiletto, as in Manov's case especially. (The stiletto can be slipped both ways, however, and already on X they're hoisting Manov on her own petard—mea culpa: a mixed metaphor!—for the undergradish allusion to Montaigne and the etymology of "essay." All's fair!) Naomi Kanakia has suggested that this is only Oyler's comeuppance for her own hatchet-jobs, but I doubt it's that exactly. The subtext, rather, as Manov's review hints, is that we perhaps tolerated too much sloppy thinking and writing in the attempt to back out of "wokeness." As long as someone wasn't saying such bizarre not-even-wrong 2012-era Tumblrana like "colonialism invented the gender binary" or "the police are slave patrols," the types of statements treated as holy writ by the literati in the preponderant atmosphere of DNC-NBC-CIA psyops of the Trump era, we were prepared to greet them as the second coming of Spinoza. Now that cooler heads seem finally to be prevailing (mea culpa: a cliché!), the actual substance of writers' thought can come under closer scrutiny again. But back to my first point: literature used to be fun because of the combat! You looked forward to going to Barnes and Noble and getting the latest New Republic or Harper's to see who James Wood or Christopher Hitchens or James Woolcott or Dale Peck or whomever would be eviscerating next! It wasn't destructive; it was discourse. (And there's no such thing as bad publicity.)[*] No one's ever been more wrong about anything than Wood was about Underworld, but still, what a magnificently withering essay. I enjoyed taking my own turn with it when I wrote about the novel. It's an honor for author to be taken up with such malign intelligence. I meant what I said on Substack: I imagine my bad reviews, too, and I appreciate them when they're intelligent. What panting nonsense Manov would think Major Arcana is; she'd be wrong there, but she'd write it up with such witty lucidity, and everyone involved would have a good time. Back to James Wood! Back, even, to Gore Vidal!—and to the vitality of gore, of goring everyone's sacred oxen.

_______________________________

[*] The early blog era retained this sensibility and Substack has lately resurrected it, as for instance in Sam Kriss's recent confrontation with Curtis Yarvin, not that these were book reviews.

[natureintheory]

An art director is a translator.

And the best translations are not always literal.

What info does everyone need to do their best work, efficiently?

Example: communicating feedback. If your client or team member is a writer who writes 5 paragraphs filled to the brim with everything they want to say... Can that be translated into 5 bullet points, so the artist can quickly understand what to do? Of course you can send those paragraphs also; details can also help or inspire new thoughts.

But what's vital is what's actionable.

Another: if either side has negative feedback, e.g. "that looks cheesy", etc. — that's... likely not something to communicate directly. First of all because it's demoralizing; you don't want to kick someone in the shins when they're trying to do good work for you. Second, because it lacks information. "Bad" is subjective. Projects should be goal-oriented: is it doing the job it should? If not, are there design principles we can employ to better meet the stated goals?

There are countless situations where this is applicable, from negotiating terms and rates, to delivering work —

"What do they need to know? What helps?"

—

Trying something. I was going to start a Patreon (or Substack) with dozens of posts like this, but in all the mess of the last couple of years — real world and art worlds — I didn't get around to it.

Is there anything you'd like to know about art direction, or what it's like as an artist/designer on the receiving end?

[acanvasofabillionsuns]

[ID: The link goes to a Substack article discussing Trump's attempts to shut down USAID, purge government workers that disagree with him, and Elon's attempts to access the National Treasury. In particular, it goes over who is doing what to combat these things, and talks about who has the power to do what.

The images are screenshots from the article.

The most common question I saw across social media and in the comments was understandable: Is somebody doing something about this? The short and important answer is yes. And we need to understand a few things to help bring things into focus. First, the timing of all of this was intentional. It all went down on a Friday night, when there would be less ability among affected employees to communicate and resist; decreased national press attention; and closed congressional offices, courthouses and law offices. They wanted us to panic for several days and make us feel like we were rudderless and without clear options.

So it will help us and our cause to stop rolling our eyes when, say, a politician writes a stern letter to a Trump official demanding that the administration cease its illegal activity. That is actually what our senators and representatives are supposed to do. That is how they set the record and inform the press and through them the larger public. As discussed above, politicians don’t bring lawsuits. They usually don’t lead street protests. And the more experienced among them don’t waste political capital on performative stunts that don’t actually fix anything.

That said, those letters and statements, which help establish the public record, are a vital resource. They are cited in lawsuits, often as evidence that the administration was on notice of its illegal actions. They point investigative journalists toward more reporting. And they are an important expenditure of political capital, signaling the priorities of our representatives.

The second and third images are of adjacent paragraphs. End ID]

What it says on the tin, plus some simple explanations of who has the power to do what.