#deplatforming of sex

[djuvlipen]

controversial radblr opinion: the left isn't just as bad as the right and leftist men aren't just as bad as right-wing men. It is absolutely true that there is a liberal left and an antifeminist left that wants to decriminalise prostitution, that embraces porn, that deplatforms and boycotts women and lesbians for defending sex-based rights, that supports abusers and tolerates sexual violence, but there is also a left that wants to abolish porn and prostitution and supports women's rights (and yes, there are men advocating for this. I am not pulling a 'not all men', just stating the fact that there are leftist men who oppose TRA politics and the sex industry). Right-wing parties have absolutely never offered women that kind of support. Pretending that left doesn't exist anymore is plain wrong and frankly disrespectful to leftist activists who advocate daily for the abolition of prostitution and for holding abusers accountable (I am in such a party).

Claiming the left is just as bad as the right when it comes to women's rights is so disingenuous and irresponsible given the current political climate in Europe, where fascist parties have been steadily growing and becoming the #1 political force on the continent. It's not leftists who want to deprive women of their reproductive rights, who want to establish religious authoritarian regimes, arrest prostituted women. It's the right.

Feminism is a left-wing political movement and overemphasizing the differences between the feminist movement and leftist politics is irresponsible. Claiming you are 'politically homeless' is irresponsible and a pretty privileged thing to call yourself when poor women, disabled women, woc and lesbians don't have the luxury of not voting for the left. Divesting from left-wing parties because you disagree on their support of transactivism is irresponsible.

Politics won't wait for you, we shouldn't leave the entire leftist political platform to men and TRAs. Feminists have to invest leftist parties (and be active in those parties) if we want to have a political platform.

Feminism has its roots in Marxist thought. Read de Beauvoir, MacKinnon, Firestone, Federici - they all extensively rely on Marxist theory to analyse men/women power relationships. You can't be a serious feminist if you refuse to engage with Marx's work because he was a man. You can't be a serious feminist if you don't know some basic Marxist concepts (dialectical materialism is the one that comes to my mind) and if you disregard absolutely everything Marx ever did or said and even reject the label 'marxist'. Anti-leftist sentiment is very prevalent on here, and I absolutely get where it's coming from, but it's a misrepresentation of reality to say all of the left is just as misogynistic as the right. And I'm so sick of hearing they are one and the same when my country's far-right party (who opposes gay marriage, wants to restrict abortion access, and such) has been winning all our recent elections

[ukrfeminism]

A professor of criminology, who was compared with “a racist uncle at the Christmas table” because of her gender critical beliefs, has won an unfair dismissal claim against the Open University.

Prof Jo Phoenix, a lesbian who set up the Gender Critical Research Network (GCRN) at the OU, was also found to have suffered victimisation and harassment, as well as direct discrimination.

She becomes the latest in a series of gender critical feminists, who believe sex is biological, immutable and should be prioritised over gender identity, to win employment tribunals.

In a judgment published on Monday, the tribunal found that Prof Louise Westmarland, head of discipline in social policy and criminology at the OU, made the “racist uncle” comment, which amounted to harassment, because she was unhappy about Phoenix signing a letter in the Sunday Times registering disquiet over a perceived inappropriately close relationship between the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall and UK universities, and about her expressing her gender critical beliefs at a Women’s Place UK talk.

The tribunal panel, led by Judge Jennifer Young, found that Westmarland “was effectively telling the claimant off for having expressed gender critical beliefs”.

“Prof Westmarland knew that likening the claimant to a racist was upsetting for the claimant. We conclude that its purpose was to violate the claimant’s dignity because inherent in the comment is an insult of being put in the same category as racists”.

The panel found instances of direct discrimination including the prohibition of Phoenix from speaking at departmental meetings about her experiences of being treated in detrimental ways because of her gender critical beliefs or talking about her gender critical research. Additionally there was “silence and lack of praise” motivated by her gender critical beliefs when she obtained a C$1m grant while another colleague was praised just for making a grant application, according to the tribunal.

After Phoenix set up the GCRN, 368 of her colleagues signed an open letter calling for the disaffiliation of the group, which it labelled transphobic, from the OU because of the beliefs of its members. OU did not take action to ask those behind the letter, published in a Google Doc, to take it down and the tribunal said this was harassment, having “a chilling effect on the claimant expressing her gender critical beliefs and carrying out gender critical research”. A statement about the GCRN in a similar vein to the open letter was published on the university’s website by the wellbeing, education and language studies faculty/reproduction, sexualities and sexual health research group. There were also tweets and retweets from colleagues about the GCRN.

Phoenix resigned from the OU in December 2021. The tribunal found that she was constructively unfairly dismissed because the university breached the implied terms of trust and confidence in her employment contract and the duty to provide her with a suitable working environment. Remedies will be determined at a later date.

The judgment said: “We find that the claimant was not provided with effective protection from the effects of the launch of the GCRN. We find that the respondent did not provide the claimant protection particularly in the form of asking staff and students not to launch campaigns to deplatform the GCRN, or make calls to remove support for the claimant’s gender critical research, or use social media to label the claimant transphobic or TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). The respondent failed to protect the claimant because they did not want to be seen to give any kind of support to academics with gender critical beliefs, including the claimant.”

Prof Tim Blackman, vice-chancellor of the OU, said the university was disappointed by the judgment and would consider whether to appeal. He said: “We acknowledge that we can learn from this judgment and are considering the findings very carefully.

“We are deeply concerned about the wellbeing of everyone involved in the case and acknowledge the significant impact it has had on Prof Phoenix, the witnesses and many other colleagues. Our priority has been to protect freedom of speech while respecting legal rights and protections.”

[ralluincy]

This is going to be my first ever real post on any social media and most likely my last, a streamer who I’ve watched for years now has almost been entirely deplatformed everywhere.

Their name is taigaxholic on twitch, which is their last platform, but they’ve deleted every vod they had.

For a few years now they have been constantly harassed by stalkers for pretty much no reason beside denying having sex with them.

And because of that they have been harassed multiple times and have had fake allegations thrown at them, mass reports, death threats, bad faith videos and etc, going their way for years.

Taiga has lost just about everything to these creeps and has had multiple breakdowns and depressive bouts because of such, and now not only has both of their YouTube channels been taken down, their Twitter and TikTok have been taken down also.

Not only have all their ways of revenue have been taken away, but also ways of spreading this information leaving them nothing.

Not only that but every time they try to make a new social media (twitter, instagram, Bluesky, TikTok, etc) taiga’s stalkers mass report it taking it down almost instantly.

I’m making this post because 1. I’m worried about taiga’s mental health and 2. I want to raise awareness of this situation, and gather support for them in any shape or form, whether it’s donations or just general support.

I can only hope that anyone can see this and help Taiga out.

(Sorry if this sounds scattered brained, I wanted to make this quickly.)

[dreamonminecraft]

Like. Is it kinda shitty? A breaking of bro code, perhaps? Yeah, I guess. Some of it depends on how accurate you think punz is being about the situation at this moment in time but...

Dream being messy with sex and egirls isn't new, it especially wasn't new early in his career, and it's by no means a reason to deplatform him. All it did was made punz look like a coward

Like yeah if everything Punz says is 100% true, sure. Cheating in any capacity is shitty. Dream's been cheated on several times and I find it hard to believe he'd not only allow that to happen but actively dangle that in someone's face. However the only information Punz admits to actually having is that they dm'd BEFORE THEY STARTED DATING. I literally do not know what his point is, but I think he's an insecure two-faced bitch who's using a lot of the same language we've seen victims use a lot the last few weeks to try and make it seem like Dream did something wrong when nobody needed to know literally any of this shit.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/20/2024

i don't usually use these writeups as a memory aid, but this week it's good bc most of last week was a blur of applying to jobs and playing breath of the wild

listening

i have several playlists that are several hours long with a couple different flavors of the really specific kind of instrumental music i need to do mass quantities of data entry. these are now all poisoned by horrible memories of my last two jobs so i'm slowly building new ones. a great candidate is OASIS, off the REDLINE soundtrack. REDLINE (2009, dir. Koike) is an extremely horny anime movie about driving really fast, being true to yourself in spite of corporate overlords, sports betting, and fucking.

i think this was a scene with background club or cafe music? electronica instrumental with a little bit of a groove and a very particular mid-aughts sound. you know when powder coating is extremely matte but also extremely sparkly? spotify.

-

reading

Samantha Cole (previously Vice, co-founder of 404 Media) has a beat that's focused on sex tech, sex work, deplatforming of sex work, and kink community beefs that manages to be both detached and very, very kind. i trust her to write about any kink community in a respectful and fair way, and even when she visibly doesn't understand the appeal of a kink she writes about them in a respectful and fair way. a great example of this is the furry adult baby diaper community being deplatformed by patreon.

but her most recent investigation, "can this shitty vibrator actually give you malware?" is fascinating. any job that can legitimately claim vibrators as a buisness expense and perform a teardown is fascinating to me.

what a tremendous and endlessly fascinating world we live in.

-

watching

there are many movies on tubi that i have like. name recognition of but have never actually seen, so i'm starting to work my way through things that aren't noir or obscure westerns. like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, dir. Lee).

the practial effects in this movie are insane. the wirework is insane. wirework insane. this is the dreamiest and most beautiful chase/fight scene i've ever seen and they're zipping around a bamboo forest.

we're going to have to live with this imperfect screenshot ok this laptop is Extremely old. the interior sets often look like theater sets (complimentary). just a stunningly beautiful movie with the sickest action scenes you’ve ever seen. plot a little choppy but forgivable imo. i know this is regarded as one of the finest movies of all time, not just one of the finest martial arts movies of all times, so saying anything feels a little like giving it a dollar store plastic trophy. i liked it and i had fun. watching a critically acclaimed non-american good movie is good for the brain steeped in lackluster american westerns, i think.

-

playing

much like in real life, in breath of the wild i am refusing to do much towards the main quest and am mostly puttering around looking for shit to upgrade my outfits.

unlocked rudania, did not go inside.

what's with this little. sword graveyard??? on the northeastern edge of the caldera??? the only thing on that island is an octorok?? did it kill like eight guys???

finished richard scarey's tarreytown :) including that horrible rich guy who wanted me to kill some guardians for ??? reasons. i am pretty confident about killing hinox (is the plural of hinox, hinox?), wizzrobes, and most lizalfos if i can get the drop on em but i am Not confident about killing actively moving guardians without guardian arrows, which is an expensive way of doing business. due to reliably one-shotting the wizzrobes with revali's bow, i am running into the interesting problem of always having a glut of magical weapons. which leads me to go fuck around the extreme hot and cold areas those magic weapons are good for. and less fucking around the normie areas i actually want to fuck around.

got the good sword at thirteen hearts, i stopped short at twelve hearts gone and the deku tree called me a pussy. i unfontunately did not screenshot that. hey did you know there's a korok on the deku tree's head whose life's purpose seems to be riddles?

:(

and now for quite a lot of horse talk.

dodged like four lynels taking Ganon's horse up the northern edge of the map to get a pic of the leviathan.

caught the white horse, we are such pretty pretty princesses together. i think it's very funny that the gerudo fanciest weapons and hylian royal regalia look so similar. purple and gold eternal.

did you know if you feed your horse an endura carrot you get extra spurs???

i was looking for a 5 star speed horse but after catching and releasing four different solid black horses this is the best one (4 str, 4 speed, 5 stamina) i found. maybe I’ll shoot for a bright chestnut with lots of chrome for my speedy horse, the equine equivalent of a red convertible.

very funky conincidence on the grasslands behind the lord of the mountain's spring. not identical, bc the lead horse doesn't have facial markings, but what are the odds of that huh. i wish grays in this game didn't look so chalky and washed out, i love a gray horse in real life.

i think it's some bullshit that you have to fight your way into this spring, get told "go get a dragon scale", deal with all that, fight your way BACK into the spring, and then be presented with a Major Test of Strength shrine. c'mon just give it to me!!!

game continues to be very bad at spitting out riders next to horses or donkeys EXCEPT!!! for this doctor. i didn't know hyrule had traveling doctors! i quite honestly didn't think they had the techonology, given that the state of medicine in hyrule is very mortar and pestle based!

the game gave me a tooltip like "make friends with dogs! they'll lead you to treasure!" and i was like What but it does actually work, you just have to target them in the camera first and then feed them several hunks of meat. bonkers game. how many other goddamn mechanics are there that i've missed???

next steps: shrine hunting. i have like 50 out of 120 which is wild to me. i played this game two years ago, got to about a hundred shrines, and managed to forget where they all fucking are. yes my shrine sensor is always on. there's probably at least twenty in central hyrule, which is not a place i touched much on my list playthrough, also the last two memories i need are in there. i have filled out a good chunk of the compendium (completely filled the materials pages) but idk if i will be a completionist about it. there are so so so so so many weapons variants. i am cheating a bit and looking up the animals i missed (mostly a lot of bugs and fish) but one of the entries is for patricia, the royal sand seal. i would not have ever thought to take a picture of the named sand seal, i'm sorry game but that's a bit obtuse.

-

making

not much progress on the cross stitch or job fronts, but since i finally have a balcony, i planted peas and beans from @shiny-good-rock and basil from @morrak than have been languishing in a box for several years, the basil had an okay germination rate so my fingers are crossed re: peas and beans.

i am a bit annoyed about marigolds. maybe it's a bit too early for them here, or maybe they're not as popular as they were in the northeast? i tried like five different big box stores and indie nurseries, only one indie nursery had any and they were very pest-ridden. i would like marigolds, as friends for my tomatoes.

it is currently 11:40 PM CST as i type this so tomorrow i'll add something with a garden layout and what varieties i planted.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Dennis Kavanagh

Published: Jun 6, 2024

This year’s Pride Month has rarely seemed so pointless. After all, only the truly shameless in the LGBT activist set could feel any pride in 2024 – a year in which the rainbow-flag fliers’ betrayal of gay youngsters in the name of gender ideology was laid bare.

The publication of the Cass Review in April exposed the scandal of the NHS’s treatment of ‘gender confused’ kids. It showed how the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS) subjected troubled, often gay youngsters to life-altering hormones, drugs and treatments. Yet when these same-sex-attracted young people needed a gay movement, it failed them. Stonewall, its principal representative, actively cheered on those encouraging gay youngsters to believe they were born in the wrong body. Former Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt even warned parents that half their gender-distressed children would commit suicide without puberty blockers. At the same time, leading sections of the gay movement turned on anyone questioning the trans agenda.

You won’t see any reflection on this betrayal of gays and lesbians during Pride Month. There will be no recognition that by embracing gender ideology, the gay-rights movement of today has undermined the gay rights of tomorrow. Instead, an unholy alliance of corporates, trade unions and parading gendercrats will spend weeks celebrating their supposed virtue, while remaining oblivious to the absurdity and growing unpopularity of the movement they represent.

Don’t let the ubiquitous Pride flag fool you over the coming weeks into thinking this is a successful movement. How strong can a ‘gay rights’ movement be if it has allowed its next generation to be chemically castrated? How strong can a movement be that has allowed lesbians like Kathleen Stock or Julie Bindel to be deplatformed, harassed and sacked for standing up to gender ideology?

The new ‘Progress Pride’ flag tells the story of the movement’s corruption. A new trans chevron makes an ugly incursion from the left, with an ‘intersex-inclusive’ purple circle placed on top of it (despite some intersex activists asking not to be included). This is more of a logo now and less of a flag. It symbolises the hostile takeover of the gay-rights movement by gender-identity ideology.

Pride was once our answer to shame. The riposte to being kicked out of your home for coming out. The retort to everyday incidents of homophobia, which are now thankfully a thing of the past in the UK and the West.

Today’s Pride is different. It is not a response to a sense of shame. It is a false pride born of shamelessness. A pride fuelled by the self-righteous embrace of the cause of trans rights. Think of Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley calling lesbians ‘sexual racists’ in 2021 for not wanting to have sex with biological males. Think of those happily suppressing moderate gay voices for warning that ‘conversion-therapy bans’ simply criminalise ordinary therapy for gender-confused youth. Or how Stonewall did everything in its power to hound gender-critical barrister Allison Bailey out of a job.

If one must take pride in anything during Pride Month, I prefer to find it in the spirited and steadfast work of women and gay people in the UK who, against all the odds, have taken on gender ideology and its champions within the gay movement. Organisations like LGB Alliance and the Gay Men’s Network, which I direct, have done sterling work in defending gay rights from the predations of gender ideology. It has been tough. We have had to battle against an elite consensus. It wasn’t that long ago that both Theresa May and, later, Sir Keir Starmer were promising Pink News that gender self-identification would become law. Now, in part thanks to the efforts of gay-rights activists and gender-critical feminists, the sitting and shadow secretaries of state for health and social care are committed to implementing the findings of the Cass Review.

Pride, the holy month of the rainbow, is now a thoroughly rudderless affair. Its foolish embrace of the specious cause of trans rights has cost it dear. This increasingly silly party now takes place against the backdrop of a generation-defining medical scandal that Pride and its backers endorsed. Even Stonewall seems cowed. It certainly seems less keen to pronounce that transing a two-year-old is a good idea than it was just a few years ago.

Pride should parade its way into irrelevance. The gay-rights activism of the future will need to look very different.

Dennis Kavanagh is a director of Gay Men’s Network.

[gothhabiba]

why do you unequivocally support people with harmful kinks? meaning ageplay, white ppl with raceplay kinks, cnc, etc. i’ve seen seen you make many critical posts on bdsm, so i don’t really understand you boiling this down to just not being in favour of cancel culture/call-out posts.

1. I wrote those posts years ago

2. There is an enormous, critical difference between “nothing, including sex, exists completely outside of and uninformed by politics” and “individual people whose sex lives whatever group of people deems distasteful should be shunned, harassed, have people who interact with them harassed to further said shunning, &c.” which obviously leads to some extremely ugly places

3. And if you do decide that someone having sex with other consenting adults in ways you don’t like is enough to make them a persona non grata—these things shade into each other so minutely imo that there is absolutely no sensible place to draw that line.

4. And when certain already socially vulnerable people (in this case—trans women) are the ones to be harassed and ‘deplatformed’ or w/e in this way time and time again, it’s worth asking, huh, are my principles being used to do heinous things? Does this indicate to me that I should rethink some things? lmao

[whitehotharlots]

If you believe in nothing, you will achieve nothing

Andrea Long Chu has a problem. She and her acolytes presently enjoy dictatorial control over every discourse that falls to the left of Fox News. They have convinced the world that speech is inherently violent and therefore a dedication to free speech is a precondition of fascism, if not outright genocide. Every decent person must agree with every thing they say, no matter how deranged or implausible. And so if a random person, for example, says that sexual dimorphism exists or that maybe cosmetic hysterectomies shouldn't be the first response to teenage mental health issues, that person has committed a severe act of violence and must be silenced.

But, oh no, it turns out that Chu and her cohort have found themselves outgunned on the topic of Israel-Palestine. The same left that has gleefully silenced all improper discussions of culture war issues for the last decade is now seeing their exact same tactics being used to silence any criticism of Israel's ongoing genocide. You can't even do something as anodyne as expressing support for a ceasefire without making a Jewish Yale student feel unsafe, and since speech is violence and feeling unsafe is even more of a genocide than an actual genocide I'm sorry, you were bad and unvalid and you must silenced. Them's the rules.

Chu attempts to reconcile these two, very sad realities in a recent piece for New York Magazine titled "The Free Speech Debate is a Trap." The essay is staggeringly moronic, even by Chu's august standards. I had to read it twice just to make sure I wasn't understanding it unfairly.

My readers seem like decent people. I find no joy in subjecting them to crap like this. But a deep dive into Chu's essay is necessary because it confirms the value of free speech on two fronts: 1) it shows why nothing short of a doctrinaire support of the first amendment can allow for the dissemination of opinions that dissent against the consensus of the permanent war state, and, 2) it demonstrates how an opposition to free speech leads to the proliferation of braindead analysis among supposed leftists.

Let us begin:

As is her wont, Chu writes in an obfuscatory style. She belabors simple points to weaken the reader's attention, so that when she sneaks in observations that are insane or otherwise very stupid we're less likely to notice.

She starts with a description of herself, another writer, and the whole staff of a poetry center being deplatformed for expressing their support of the Palestinian cause. This is, obviously, an injustice. But rather than taking the fascist's way out and deciding that maybe this free speech thing is actually worth pursuing, Chu explains that the incident actually strengthened her resolve against the free and protected exchange of ideas. Because, naturally, anything else would render her a hypocrite, and then she wouldn't be able to silence people for dissenting against gender bullshit:

Now it’s true: A left that supports the deplatforming of transphobes but opposes the deplatforming of anti-Zionists cannot justify itself by appealing to free speech — nor should it. For the liberal, freedom of speech is a deliberately empty principle. It allows a liberal institution to mediate peacefully between differing political views without any (apparent) reference to the content of those views — all while quietly promoting its own views under the banner of neutrality. The left can do better. 

Now, here it's very important to note the degree to which the concept of transphobia has been expanded in recent years, thanks in no small part to the work of Chu and her allies in media and academe. The concept once meant something like "a hatred of trans and/or gender non-conforming people," which is bad. But now it's expanded to include things like recognizing that males and females have different athletic abilities, expressing concern with the thought of male sex offenders being housed in women's prisons, the refusal of female service workers to perform intimate procedures on natal males, or even simply using words like "male" and "female." This type of extreme narrative control simply could not persist in a discourse that wasn't very broken, or among people who did not regard the aggressive policing of speech as a paramount ideal. Like the rest of the identitarians who now control what passes for the American Left, Chu is very unabashedly pro-censorship.

Strip down the blandishments and you'll find her point is simple: free speech is bad, because it allows people to say things that may discredit her. Only instead of admitting to being discredited, she shall claim that speech itself in an act of violence, because after all if she's discredited that means violence has been inflicted upon her. Herself and other people who believe everything she believes should be anointed the gatekeepers of what does or does not constitute acceptable speech. Those who break from their dictates must be shunted from the public sphere and suffer professional consequences.

The type of nihilism endorsed by Chu is only advantageous to those whose beliefs benefit the empowered. And, at the end of the day, the people who run most every left-liberal institution (including the Democratic party) are resolutely in favor of Israel's genocide. Some of them take genuine pleasure in watching Palestinians die; others were taped fucking children on a sex island and cannot upset their blackmailers; and the bulk of them are mortified by the prospect of being labeled some kind of -ist or -phobe, as they know full well--thanks, again, to the efforts of Chu and her cohort--that they would not be able to proffer any defense against such accusations, regardless of how stupid they may be.

There is no way to reconcile this situation within the boundaries set by left identitiarisn. None. You can either support free speech as an abstract principle and allow unpopular and inconvenient speech to proliferate without punishment, or you can endorse a society where the acceptability of speech is determined by the desires of the warmongering sociopaths who run the world. It's one or the other. There are no other options.

I don't think anything I've written so far is especially complicated, or even controversial. These are the sort of observations I would have easily grasped in middle school. But, oh, here's where the obfuscation sets in, where Chu demonstrates her Pulitzer Prize-winning skill of making reactionary bullshit sound left-ish.

She starts with the well-worn trope of arguing that today's speech debates aren't really about free speech because the first amendment only applies to, like, the government:

It is worth remembering the vast majority of what we call free-speech issues have little basis in the First Amendment, which only forbids the abridgment of speech by the government, not private organizations like magazines, cultural centers, or Hollywood production companies. In most states, for instance, it is perfectly legal for employers to fire workers for speech, as a Westchester synagogue did last year after a teacher wrote an anti-Zionist blog post. So when advocates talk of freedom of speech, they are usually referring neither to the Constitution nor to statutory law but to a set of civil norms imagined to promote the health of the republic but which cannot be directly enforced by the government. 

As a matter of simple fact, this is wrong. At least 32 of our 50 states require potential government employees to sign some sort of loyalty oath to Israel before they are allowed to receive state jobs. Compelled speech in support of zionist genocide--or, at least, the promise to never criticize said genocide--is enforced by the government. This is very literally a first amendment issue.

But, I will concede, the support of free speech largely redounds to a set of civil norms--the same as how we don't go around slashing other people's tires or puking in our neighbor's mailboxes not strictly because it's illegal to do so, but out of a sense of shared civic duty. Even if we can't articulate exactly why, we just sense that it would be bad to abandon our principles to a degree where we did or tolerated that sort of stuff.

These unspoken compacts are essential for the existence of any human society. And probably any animal society. And, shit, this probably applies to plants and bacteria, too. But the persistence of these compacts pisses off people like Chu because such compacts can, at times, present a threat to their capacity as the sovereign overseers of what is or is not acceptable. If judgments were deferred to science or empiricism or any other existing form of adjudicating correctness and decency, all of a sudden Chu wouldn't be a very smart intellectual, and we cannot have that.

Chu's... her... discussion of this? I hate to call it a "response," because an actual response would require some degree of honesty. But, uhh, the way she addresses this is to point out that free speech is actually, like, just a fiction, mannnnn...

While it is true that left-wing ideas have flourished in the humanities and, to a lesser extent, the social sciences — the result of the retreat of post-1968 social movements into the academy — the big private universities remain in the business of business, their endowments tied up in fossil fuels, big tech, and the prison-industrial complex and their purses fattened by wealthy donors who expect influence in return. After a letter was released at Harvard that blamed “all unfolding violence” on the Israeli government, the billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, apparently speaking for his fellow CEOs, demanded that the school publish the rosters of the student groups who had signed the letter “so as to insure [sic] that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members.” The implicit understanding here was that elite private universities funnel their graduates into the nation’s highest positions of power and influence — including Congress itself — and that this pipeline must not be polluted by ideas that its previous beneficiaries find morally despicable or politically disadvantageous. The House hearing itself came chillingly close to a direct attempt by the federal government to materially intervene in the composition of the incipient professional class through, as more than one Republican suggested, the expulsion of student protesters.

Yes, indeed, speech has always been limited by the sovereign. Go back and read Locke and Bacon, see how much they hem and haw about their love of the Queen. Point to any of the hundreds or thousands of socialists who found themselves jailed in these United States for criticizing our involvement in the first World War. That's all true. But none of these facts negate the value and utility of free speech as an ideal.

If you have no principles, if your only goal is a naked quest for power, you will eventually encounter someone more empowered whose desires run counter to your own. Then you will fail, as you will have no recourse to do anything but fail. Without ideals, there is no path forward. Without decency, there is no hope. If the battle over the continuation of a genocide redounds to nothing less vulgar than two sides claiming righteousness by din of their own existence, the side that owns all the guns and media organizations is going to win.

But there's no room for such realizations within today's left, of whom Chu is a very sad but fitting embodiment. She is immensely successful not because of talent or intelligence or decency but because she manifests the perfect set of identity markers. If she were not physically hideous and/or a manipulative sociopath, she'd be a nobody. She thrives within our broken discourse only because her enablers fear her, and that fear is born of nothing more than pity. She cannot afford the existence of principles, as that would threaten her exalted status. And she is demanding that all the rest of us abandon every last sliver of hope to make sure she and friends remain in charge.

[peoplegettingreallymadatfurries]

Queer eroticism and closeness is one of the things that has always drawn me and pushed me away as a person. I hate putting down qualifications when making big statements but if you sanitize all of your work with love to hide away sexuality, then you have an aesthetic. Nothing wrong with loving the way you love, especially if you're ace and don't vibe with it. But the way we've moved our discourse to be less about existing and being sexy creatures and more toward being presentable for all palettes hides the true blissful nature of queer sexuality. While we hide away aspects of sex for the sake of advertisers, straight allyship, and other normative societal expectations, they just expect less and less of our eroticism while they can have their sex since it's safe for them to do so. You are free to live your life as you can.

Then again I'm just a gay furry who happens to be distant from their gender. When something is explicit, I put that on a blog with 1 follower who found it, but suggestive stuff gets put here without tags not because it's horny, but because it's liberating. We are allowed be free in bodies that we can't inhabit via art and that's wonderful. You're free to unfollow when you see a nude body that remains untagged, but that's your choice and I uphold mine. On a site where tagging things as suggestive can destroy a creator, it's an act of resistance to post it without tagging it. Art is to be shared. Somebody drew and created that art and posted it knowing the risk that it could be deplatformed.

I think a lot of you would not survive the queer art history of the 80s and 90s if you continue to shy away from sexual aspects of queer sexuality

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Hi so when are you going to report all the people you accuse of being pedophiles and zoophiles to the cops? When are you going to rescue the animals and children in their lives from these supposed dangerous predators? Or are you just a fucking pussy who doesn't really believe the bullshit you spout?

This is such a funny and misguided critique of me because I have in fact reported people for drawings of children in sexual situations and a few have gotten arrested and the rest have at least been deplatformed. I don’t make it my life’s mission to seek out pedophiles and lock them up because I don’t really want to look at their gross content at all and this isn’t really my job.

Bestiality is also not illegal federally, it’s considered a state issue in the US. There are states that consider sex with a dog or horse or any animal that can do such with a human without getting physically harmed completely legal as long as it’s not done publicly. There are videos of people having sex with dogs and horses that are openly posted online and I can’t report them because it’s not illegal where they are.

To that end, most examples of real footage of bestiality is not illegal meaning of course that drawings of it aren’t either. So in short it isn’t really something I could act on outside of calling their place of work or any college they go to. I could do that to Agro but doxxing is in most cases illegal and would fall under harassment and cyberstalking, which if I’m being honest is probably the reason you want me to lol.

I’m not falling for it, anon. You’re just looking for a loophole to let Agro sue me because you’re either bitter or hungry for drama but either way I’m not doing it. I’m also not going to just post his address, come on. I only do that to people like Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro.

[opinated-user]

indeed, anon. i'm sure it means a lot for LO that you're willing to lie so blatantly. 1. that user they mentioned? not one of my followers or regular users who interact with my content. if you go to their blog, literally the only one that reblogued from any of us was this post. for the record, it was the post where i posted the screenshot of LO using the r-slur against her critics and Brittany commenting that LO later changed it to "crackhead".

i can't speak for the other blogs though. at least they didn't ring any bells for me. just in case it's needed too: i'm stubbornly clear about how i don't want anyone reading my blog to go interact with LO in any sort of way. the goal here is deplatforming and you can't deplatform someone if you just keep validating their platform with more social interactions. not to mention that anything you say to her is just more for her victim narrative. 2. one reblog post. zero likes. the rest of their interaction are miscelanious posts that have nothing to do with either LO or our blogs. is that what "regularly interact with" means now? but even if they did "regularly" interacted with any of us... again, we're all pretty adamant about not harassing or bothering LO because it'll always be useless. so clearly this person is not listening to us either and went out of their way to go against what we try to do. i'm not happy about this person going off on LO like they did either. 3. let me get this straight. when we say that some anons write the exact same as LO does and we can recognize the tone, or it's just pathetically obvious in some other way, that's us building conspiracy theories because we can't accept that someone might actually like LO. those two things have nothing to do with each other in the first place, LO is capable of using sockpuppet accounts and also there being people who for some reason think they like her, those are not mutually exclusive, but that's what LO has said before. but when this unconfirmed anon that nobody know who they are say that they recognize the writing style of some of the anon messages we get with this other random tumblr user who only wrote something by themselves once, oh, now that's a valid thought process. to clarify, they might be right for all i know. i have no clue. i just know that this user went against LO in the most unnecessary way possible and it did nothing but anyone, so i hope at least it was worth it for them because certainly it wasn't for us. they might have also send us some anons for all i care. i just question the double standard here. when we do it, it's a conspiracy. when other people to it to defend LO, no, that's just being a smart person who just notices this kind of things. 4. "showing people 5+ instances of you being directly contacted by the blog"... what is this even talking about? what other 5+ instances are they refering to? i only just found out about this one user going on their own. this one user i might have seen once in my activity notifications and never again. where are those other blogs who are part of this side of tumblr doing this? 5. "everything going on with Poppy last month has also been very helpful." i'm so glad, anon, that you're able to be so honest and say that you're glad that Poppy violated the consent of a survivor of CSA to the point that she destroyed his trust. i almost respect that. or do you mean the multiple allegations of abuse against her that have nothing to do with us or LO? the ones that LO has majorly ignored? while treating Poppy like a potential victim only after she put the testimony of Courtney behind a paywall? truly, i'm fascinated with how you see a sex pest harming people, using them and discarding them as "helpful" to keep the good reputation of your favorite youtuber. indeed, the sign of a well adjusted and moral person with their priorities in the right places. thank god that all those people were negatively affected by Poppy so it could serve you to keep protecting a proven groomer. i bet all those victims will be delighted to know that their experiences were useful for you. but really, what i can expect from a fan of the woman who has said more victim blaming things that are more aboherrent than that? you two truly deserve each other.

[coochiequeens]

The "2SLGBTQI" cult loves to use any marginalized community to make themselves look inclusive until someone dates to criticize them. Even if that someone is a woman and survived addiction

By Shay Woulahan November 25, 2023

A museum in London, Ontario, has removed a female powerlifter from an exhibit on resilience in apparent retaliation for her vocal opposition to males participating in women’s sports. April Hutchinson said the move quickly followed her suspension from the Canadian Powerlifting Union.

Launched in October at the Museum London, the exhibition, titled “Resilient London: Meet Your Neighbours,” was intended to be an inspiration for the community and featured a diverse panel of locals alongside obstacles they had overcome. Hutchinson was featured not just as a local athlete, but also as a survivor of addiction.

But on November 10, Hutchinson received a letter from the Executive Director of the museum saying they were removing her feature from the exhibit. They stated their reasons were due to Hutchinson’s media appearances where she commented on male athletes competing in female sports. The letter accused Hutchinson of being at odds with the values of the museum, and claimed she was “denying” the existence of “transgender women.”

Signed by the museum’s executives, the letter continued by implying her public comments went against the Ontario Human Rights code, stating: “Misgendering someone intentionally is a form of discrimination.” The letter ended by saying they had made the decision to remove her from the exhibition because her comments were harmful to the “2SLGBTQI community.”

Speaking to Reduxx about her removal from the exhibit, Hutchinson expressed anger and sadness over the decision, which she says was a sudden, decisive move. Hutchinson says museum administrators were already aware of her views prior to her inclusion in the exhibit, and had still sought her out and worked with her on developing her contribution. At the time, the board director reportedly told Hutchinson that they would not police her online activity.

“I was devastated when they told me this information. I’m still so hurt. My friends and family and tons of people came out to support me. I’m still very angry and disgusted,” Hutchinson told Reduxx.

Hutchinson notes that it was only after she was suspended from the Canadian Powerlifting Union for her outspoken stance on women’s single-sex sports that the museum decided to take the opportunity to remove her display.

“The museum is basically telling women they don’t care about us. Our safety or our sports. It’s absolutely wrong. I am standing for truth and saying the things that 99% of society thinks. I will not lie to myself. I will not play charades and I will not give in to delusional thinking.”

After the Museum London removed Hutchinson, another member of the community who was featured in the exhibit celebrated the decision on social media.

Stevie Bees, a trans-identified female, took to Facebook to praise the museum for removing Hutchinson’s contribution.

“I am EXTREMELY proud to be on that wall and I also want everyone to know that Trans Women ARE Women! April Hutchinson SHOULD be deplatformed for spouting garbage like this,” Bees said, providing screenshots showing Hutchinson discussing her suspension from powerlifting for her stance on fairness in women’s sports.

Hutchinson has been outspoken in her defense of women’s sports, both in interviews and on social media. She appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored in August of this year where she argued that males should not be allowed to compete against females in powerlifting due to their inherent biological advantages.

Hutchinson has also spoken about how she approached Canada’s powerlifting governing body, the Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU), about the issue of males participating in female competitions.

During an event hosted by Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) in June of this year, Hutchinson said the CPU told her the issue wasn’t a concern because there weren’t many trans-identified males competing in female divisions.

Earlier this month, Hutchinson was suspended from competing and is now potentially facing a two-year ban from the Canadian Powerlifting Union for airing her grievances with biological males competing in women’s sports.

The suspension and potential ban follows Hutchinson voicing concerns about Anne Andres, a trans-identified male powerlifter who had bragged about beating women and labeled female competitors “weak.” Anne Andres recently set the all-time record at the Canadian Powerlifting Union’s 2023 Western Canadian Championship after scoring over 200kg more powerlifting points than the top-performing female in the same class.

Despite her removal from the exhibit and suspension from powerlifting, Hutchinson says she’s received an outpouring of support, including from other female athletes like Martina Navratilova. She also explained that her activism is motivated by a desire to ensure safety and equal opportunities for women in sports.

“Women need and deserve their own sports. The female category has always been protected,” she says.

“My platform is about fairness and women’s sports. It has nothing to do with hate or [being] anti-trans. The museum is basically sending the message that trans rights are more important than women’s rights … but women are fighting back and we will send a stronger message: Bodies play sports not identities.”

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Hi BBP, thank you for your level-headed take on the hate. That said, could you help a bit more on how to dealing with the overwhelming hate? My timeline was fairly clean, but I was on reddit where there was a very one-sided vitriol towards Jimin and about his singing. So I tried to report on different platforms and my exposure to these vile accusations and sexually charged hate speech made me really sad. Idk how you've been able to report and deplatform some of the most awful bunch in the past. How do you not get emotionally drained? I feel so indignant for Jimin and I can't help but feeling hurt, which I know is not a good approach. I wanted to enjoy this comeback wholeheartedly, but I now feel a heavy weight in my heart. I also know that Jimin is a perfectionist and very hard on himself, I hope that he isn't beating himself up too much. He is a phenomenal artist, and I hope the recency bias doesn't get to him too much. If this is what (probably nowhere near the magnitude given the severity and size of army fandom at the time) army+bts went through in 2016-2018, then I can't commend the perseverance and strength of them enough. It's really incredible, and makes me feel better and want to do better. It's equal sign & letter time, I guess. Regardless, your advice would be much appreciated.

*

Ask 2: Lool Jimin is an embarrassment >..< Armys act high and mighty pretending you don't see that sorry excuse for an idol getting dragged all over Twitter lmfao lmfao >..< I wonder what you're going to say now BPP how will you spin it >..< Or are you going to defend his encore bleating?? Jimboy is my bias in BTS >..< you know why BPP? Bcos he can't lie Your boys tried pretending they're singers oh they tried hardddd but Jimin didn't get the memo!! I thought it will be Namjoon to fuck up first in solos given how sex obsessed he is but he pulled through lucky you BPP. Not lucky j-hope flopped >..< but Armys pretended he didn't. Jimin is where all the pretense dies. In solo era your dozens can't hide BPP and no amount of mass buying will change it. Thanks to Jimin the whole world knows BTS is a fraud >..< One day the whole tower of cards will come falling down. Your sick cult fandom will be exposed and your emperor will have no clothes. You know it no wonder you're miserable harassing bloggers here. Do you think people don't notice? How you steal from people here? Your favs are just like you.

Stop harassing bloggers here. You're not satisfied to run them off the app? Go back to the gutter you crawled out of and take your disgusting privileged dozens with you. Nobody will notice and there will be peace.

*

Ask 3: Ngl Bpp, but the success Face is getting in countries like Japan and UK really surprises me. I mean I was expecting him to do numbers but I didn’t expect it to do this well? Specially after all the stuff that’s been happening left and right. I know he’s Jimin and the maknaes in general are expected to do really well because they’re super popular and have tons of solos on top of that too but still. I’m not knocking on Face at all because it’s definitely my top 2 debuts but I guess you’re right that Jimin did unleash something that he hides away deliberately…

I’m expecting even more for Jungkook too especially if he goes more poppy. For Tae I think it will do just as well as Jimins, less maybe if he goes the jazzy, slow type that he’s done but I think he’ll do better in Korea if that’s the case. I’m really curious what those two are planning because they’ve been working on their solos for years now and have scrapped a ton of songs already. I wonder if they’ll flip the expectations too like Jimin did.

***

Hi Anon(s),

Anon in ask 1, the second ask in this post is here for your benefit. Normally when I get asks like that, I delete them. I don't get the really creepy ones anymore because escalating the issue to Tumblr each time got the creepy users permanently banned from the platform. The asks I end up keeping now are the ones that occasionally make me chuckle, like Ask 2. I just thought (and still think) it was so odd but quaint to say "Jimboy". Lol. As though Jimin's name is Jimmy... and like it's 2023, who actually says "Jimboy"? Also, "the emperor will have no clothes"?? I know what that means but it was so random I actually laughed reading it. It's also the most recent hate ask so I didn't have to scroll that far to get it lol.

What did you feel reading that ask? Annoyance? Anger? Confusion? Amusement? Bewilderment? Hate? Now, has anything changed in the last few minutes, in the real world, since the time you read that opinion and now? Actually, who even is this person saying it? They can't be anybody worth listening to if what they're saying isn't based in fact to begin with, can they? Until now I've never actually sat down to think this out, but that's basically the chain of questions that shoots down my mind in a split second when I see things like Ask 2. In fact my only takeaway from that ask is it's a shame its author is a bit insane, because I actually like their sense of humor. I mean, "Jimboy"? Really?

My point in saying this is, your personality will always impact how you approach hate, and this is something I didn't fully appreciate until recently. My personality is such that exposure therapy really does work on me - I've been into this for so long that few things are genuinely surprising (which is one reason I appreciate BTS/HYBE because that SM fiasco? Lol! Was left-field grade A entertainment. 10 years on and they still impact this system like new blood). Anyway, a lot of the talking points and insults get old. Like I know that in 2026 we'll be answering these exact same questions when a new wave of fans join the fandom, because this has happened every 2 - 3 years since 2013. When I first started actively writing on this blog, it was around the time Jimin was in a controversy related to missed insurance payments I think. There was a lot of hate and at first I'd respond to asks by pointing out how this will hardly impact Jimin in the real world, how Jimin hardly comes online anyway, how the people who write things like that are weird and miserable, how they're essentially binary code... I didn't appreciate that some people need more to understand what's happening because the scale and pervasiveness of hate in k-pop, whether in shippers, solos, ARMYs, or k-pop stans, is frankly senseless. So, I'll say a few more things if you don't mind.

Specifically on how to deal will hate towards Jimin or idols you like:

This might be weird to say, but one thing I consider very important is to remember what you are. You're a fan. That's it. Your scope of effective change is mostly beneficial when compounded with other fans' efforts. And even then, Jimin is his own person, a person strong enough to thrive in an environment as caustic as this, surrounded by people he loves and people who love him. So I get it when you say things like, "I feel so indignant for Jimin and I can't help but feeling hurt," but at the same time, it will be easier to detach and gain perspective when you remember what you are in this situation, a fan. And so is that person hating him. It's okay to just step back, log off, and go do something else if you're not in the mood to respond to them clearly, or to just report and block (recommended). Jimin is more than fine. Obviously. He already hears how much of a respected artist he is from his bandmates, their staff, talkshow hosts, interviewers, and designers, and what I suspect he'd like to see more is the response from his fans. So if you like what you're hearing, express that however you like. Just doing that is powerful and amazing. And going by that meme dance (the one JK too did), that Jimin posted on Instagram, maybe Jimin will notice how you express your love for his work. I'm writing all this to show it's not merely cliché to say focus on the music, it really just makes sense.

Anon in ask 3, thanks for providing a good segue into showing one of the best ways to deal with criticism IMO: actually listen to the music and support the artist. You were mad, amused, or both, reading Ask 2 weren't you? It didn't seem rational to you at all, did it? Responding to posts like that Anon's will take time away from you enjoying or assessing what Jimin has released, so it only makes sense to just focus on Jimin and support him harder. That's what ARMYs and his other fans did for him the last two weeks, and that's what they'll do again for Yoongi's D-Day release.

[ Your surprise at Jimin doing so well though lol... Jimin released the album of the year, ended k-pop, and owned every live performance, and you're surprised the fandom rallied for him and the world loved his work? Come now. ]

Speaking of D-Day's release and ARMY support, Taehyung and Jung Kook's debut will be so chaotic for the fandom oh lawd. I almost don't want to be here for it, but I also don't want to miss it because theirs could be the biggest debuts in the group and I honestly like Taekook's music so far. Both Tae and JK have made pop tunes so I assume they'll have a mix of pop, R&B, jazz, and/or hip hop in their albums. Let's pray Jungkook was thoroughly inspired by Jimin in Set Me Free Pt 2 and we get nasty rapper JK in JJK1, or a feature with one. We know Jungkook will be dancing hard in at least one MV too...

Besides that I have no expectations for Tae and JK. They'll both do very well.

*

Anon in ask 1, hate is something you'll only see more of unfortunately the longer you spend time in k-pop circles online, especially if BTS remains at the top of the hierarchy for a lot longer. I think whatever impact that will have on BTS will be insignificant so long as each member keeps making art. I could be wrong but that's also an outcome outside of our control, so why fret about it. Also, I personally enjoy a good debate and don't mind seeing critiques often because sometimes you learn something new, so I'd encourage you to remain in the spaces you're in, but it's also okay to curate your feed or block spaces that are clearly toxic to you. It takes a few tweaks but it's possible to curate a fan space online that's fun and helpful/informative to you as a fan. My $0.02: if that's what you want though, don't open a Tumblr account and turn on the Anon feature. Lol. A lot of people are just weird.

[taehyungfirst]

If Mental sickness is something it's them

https://x.com/BlockForJKV/status/1804209316313874494

I literally have no words. These people are danger to humanity. They not only dragging Tae and shading JK but their stance on their fav is so pathetic. And don't even get me started on jnnie and saying things about her. 🤢

Jikookers are pjms in disguise and only token stan Jk for the sake of the ship because they’re mentally ill sex deprived fetishizers old women who actually don’t like Jk but talk shit about him and his album every chance they get because their real fav is just Jm? Groundbreaking.

Maybe this is the day they actually deplatform those freaks, since they’ve been saying the most disgusting shit ever about Tae since forever.

[eileenleahy]

i deleted the ask cause it bothered me and i didnt wanna see it but recently someone came into my inbox saying i was terfy. why was i acting terfy? for presenting the actual beliefs of terfism. despite explicitly stating my disagreement with them. which is hysterical in itself but i know where that came from. it's partly a misunderstanding of "deplatforming" wherein people act like even talking about a decried ideology is platforming it. which isnt true; in fact you MUST talk about the beliefs you seek to disempower

it's not terf sympathizing to say terf ideology is massively misrepresented. it harms nobody but the people who ostensibly oppose terfs to have a mistaken perception of them, because you HAVE to know what you're opposing to.... well... oppose it. sun tzu the art of war know your enemy etc etc

it is not terf sympathizing to say terfs are gender abolitionists. they are. that is core to radical feminism. you may say "but im a gender abolitionist and hate terfs!!" great. doesn't change anything

it is not terf sympathizing to say that terfs dont believe in any gendered inessential, inherent nature. they dont believe women are inherently feminine and men inherently masculine. you may find terfs who say "males are xyz by nature," but they are not saying that nature is gendered—instead, it's sexed

those are the primary beliefs that differentiate radical feminism from garden variety transphobia. blinding yourself to the ideological bases of what you claim to oppose is a recipe for failure