#user: erininthemorn

[heyitsthexone]

Some bad news afoot. The creator of the 2007 adaptation of flatland, Ladd Ehlinger (Often known as FilmLadd on twitter and Tumblr), is a transphobe and has made several adverts for conservative campaigns, one of which compared the shared access to healthcare to slavery.

[ID: A screenshot of a tweet by Erin Reed / Erininthemorn that reads, "A new bill in Missouri would put teachers on the sex offense registry if they 'contribute to social transition' of a trans youth. Including pronouns, haircuts, information, and more. It would make a teacher 'contributing to social transition' a class E felony." FilmLadd replies on March 2nd, "Sounds like a great idea". End ID.]

Another user made a post that goes into more detail about the sorts of ads he's made, as well as his behaviour. I'm not the best person when it comes to explaining things so please to read it's post and share it around.

Best course of action? Inform others, Block FilmLadd and downvote the original youtube upload. Besides, i've heard that the books tackles a lot of societal issues that were completely forgotten about in the film; classism, sexism and ablesism, etc. The film is fun, but perhaps we could make out own spin on it (unique character designs and all) It is public domain after all.

[mariacallous]

On Monday, X filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for America (MMFA), a nonprofit, alleging that a recent report showing big name advertisers appearing next to antisemitic content on X was an attempt to “destroy” the company by encouraging advertisers to pull their money.

Shortly after, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office announced that it would be investigating MMFA for “potential fraudulent activity.”

Neither X nor the Attorney General’s office responded to questions about whether these moves were coordinated.

“This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X’s critics into silence,” says MMFA president Angelo Carusone. “Media Matters stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court.”

But it is likely not just this report from MMFA that has stopped advertisers from spending on X. Last week, Musk appeared to endorse the antisemitic “great replacement” theory in a post, leading many advertisers, including IBM and Disney, to pause or pull ads from the platform entirely. It was the latest blow to X’s shrinking ad revenues.

Early Saturday, Musk posted on X that he would file a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters, along with a screenshot of a document in which X alleges that MMFA “misrepresented the real user experience” on the platform.

“These lawsuits quite clearly are triggered not by an offense, but by Musk losing advertisers. And it’s quite clear they’re leaving because of what he said,” claims Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit watchdog group that is also being sued by X for their research. In the suit, filed in August, X alleges that CCDH had cost the company “at least tens of millions” of dollars in advertising revenue and other costs. CCDH’s reports showed how disinformation and hateful content was allegedly able to remain and circulate on X. The suit alleges that CCDH accessed the data to show this by using another nonprofit’s Brandwatch account.

“To be a victim in that lawsuit is incredibly expensive. It’s incredibly time-consuming,” says Ahmed, who estimates that CCDH has had to spend more than $250,000 in legal fees to defend itself. Ahmed worries that these types of lawsuits could have a “chilling effect” on other organizations monitoring X.

In the suit against MMFA, X claims that “99% of X’s measured ad placement has appeared adjacent to content scoring above the Global Alliance for Responsible Media’s brand safety floor”—an advertising industry standard to prevent monetization around harmful content—and that MMFA had “manipulated” the platform’s algorithm to return results that, the suit claims, are otherwise rare.

In response, X CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that “not a single authentic user on X saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to the content in Media Matters’ article.” Yaccarino added that “only 2 users saw Apple’s ad next to the content, at least one of which was Media Matters.”

But users on X have been running their own experiments, sharing screenshots of ads running next to content returned when users searched terms like “heilhitler” and “1488,” a hate symbol.

“Holy shit. If you search HeilHitler, you get a ton of ads. I literally just got the German Government's ‘come live in Germany’ ad on the search,” user @ErinInTheMorn posted. “Media Matters was not lying.” WIRED was not able to replicate these results, and it appears as though ads are no longer running against this and similar terms.

Taking aim at nonprofits, Ahmed says, might backfire on Musk. “I think it's really important that people understand that this is a man that you're doing business with, and that if you advertise on that platform, you're essentially endorsing the behavior.”

Since Musk took the helm at X, the company has seen a steep decline in advertising revenue, which comprised about 90 percent of its revenue at the time of purchase.

One of Musk’s first moves as owner was to lay off nearly everyone at the company working on trust and safety—the roles that ensure that hate speech, disinformation, nudity, violence, and other inappropriate content are kept off the platform. And as many experts feared, hate speech did increase after Musk took over. In response, some advertisers have pulled their spend on X amid fears the platform is high-risk.

In an attempt to right the ship, X brought on now-CEO Linda Yaccarino, an experienced advertising executive from NBCUniversal. But Musk has remained the focal point of X, and though the company said in October that it was seeing some of its marquee advertisers return, a different study from MMFA found that these advertisers were spending 90 percent less than they had before Musk took over the company.

Shannon Jankowski, interim director for US free expression at the nonprofit PEN America, claims that X’s choice to file its suit in Texas is “arbitrarily choosing a venue that’s known to be conservative, that’s likely to favor Elon Musk and X.” Texas also doesn’t have any laws on the books that prevent “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPP lawsuits, she adds, meaning that it will be more difficult for MMFA to get the case dismissed or recover any legal fees from X.

“It can bankrupt those organizations to try to get rid of these lawsuits,” Jankowski says.

But whether or not X’s lawsuit is successful, or the Texas Attorney General’s investigation returns anything, Jankowski worries it will hamper future accountability work. “If he can just file a frivolous lawsuit in a conservative venue, and then potentially trigger government-level investigations, it’s just really going to deter organizations from wanting to dive into this work.”

[psiotechniqa]

Study has been debunked - because it specifically went for people who had the full on gender transition surgery. there’s no real way of ever going back after that.

there are studies showing that especially children and teens who express gender dysphoria simply grow out of it

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23702447/

 - 80% detransition rate, but it was all from kids and teens who had only socially transitioned, nothing medical

Mind you, most of them did end up turning out to be gay, bi or lesbian... mind you, that study has also been greatly poopoo’d and slandered by pro-trans nutjobs because it is poison to their narrative. I mean, I’d much rather trust a scientific study than a huffpost article saying its no true, because huffpo is such a beacon of journalistic legitimacy.

Then again, its not exactly easy to find unbiased sources on this - because all the pro-trans activist organizations will of course champion their narrative, which makes googling for information on this really damn difficult

here’s a study from ‘21 showing that the US has a detransition rate among its adult trans folks of around 13%  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8213007/

Hell, the r/detrans subreddit has nearly 50.000 users, and is an endless sea of stories of people who feel shit about what was done to their bodies and minds. If detransitioners are as rare as the bullshit activist propaganda from erininthemorning would have it, then that subreddit would not have numbers like that.

“How dare facts get in the way of my gender activism” - some huffpo writer

The study itself is titled, “Long-Term Regret and Satisfaction With Decision Following Gender-Affirming Mastectomy,” and sought to study the rate of regret and satisfaction after 2 years or more following gender affirming top surgery. The study’s results were stunning - in 139 surgery patients, the median regret score was 0/100 and the median satisfaction score was 5/5 with similar means as well. In other words… regret was virtually nonexistent in the study among post-op transgender people. In fact, the regret was so low that many statistical techniques would not even work due to the uniformity of the numbers: In this cross-sectional survey study of participants who underwent gender-affirming mastectomy 2.0 to 23.6 years ago, respondents had a high level of satisfaction with their decision and low rates of decisional regret. The median Satisfaction With Decision score was 5 on a 5-point scale, and the median decisional regret score was 0 on a 100-point scale. This extremely low level of regret and dissatisfaction and lack of variance in scores impeded the ability to determine meaningful associations among these results, clinical outcomes, and demographic information. The numbers are in line with many other studies on satisfaction among transgender people. Detransition rates, for instance, have been pegged at somewhere between 1-3%, with transgender youth seeing very low detransition rates. Surgery regret is in line with at least 27 other studies that show a pooled regret rate of around 1% - compare this to regret rates from things like knee surgery, which can be as high as 30%. Gender affirming care appears to be extremely well tolerated with very low instances of regret when compared to other medically necessary care.

[...]

The intense conservative backlash, to the point of disputing reputable scientific journals, likely stems from the fact that reduced regret rates weaken a central narrative these figures have championed in legal and legislative spaces. Over the past three years, anti-trans entities have showcased political detransitioners, reminiscent of the ex-gay campaigns from the 1990s and 2000s, to argue that regrets over gender transition and detransition are widespread. Some have even asserted detransition rates of up to 80%, a claim that has been broadly debunked. Yet, research consistently struggles to find substantial evidence supporting this narrative. The rarity of detransition and regret is underscored by Florida's inability to enlist a single resident to bear witness against a lawsuit challenging the state's ban on gender-affirming care.

[tony-the-tigers-juicy-armpit]

I'm having one of those "do people really need tony-the-tigers-juicy-armpit to tell them this?" Moments but honestly like I just want more people to know! (I stole this from a tweet by user ErinInTheMorn)

The Office of Civil Rights will defend Texan parents of trans kids if the state tries to take them away

The Children's Bureau contradicts Texas CPS

HHS Demands HIPAA be followed

[barbosaasouza]

'The Matrix' Is Actually A Trans Allegory According To This Writer (And They Make A Good Point)

With the debut of the trailer for The Matrix Resurrections, twitter user @ErinInTheMorn took to the website to make the case that the franchise is actually an allegory for the trans experience. Detailing key dialogue, characters and personal experience, she makes a pretty good case! 'The Matrix' Is Actually A Trans Allegory According To This Writer (And They Make A Good Point) published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

[corvidiss]

[ID: Tweet from user ErinInTheMorn which reads:

I often get asked by trans people and parents, "Where should I flee? Am I safe?" I have continually updated an anti-trans legislative risk map to answer that question. This latest update accounts for all recent bills. Subscribe to support my work.

Then a map graphic showing the risk factor for trans people in each state in the US. I won't list all the information because they are described and with more detail on the actual website and I would probably get the state names wrong. End ID.]

Note: There is a more up-to-date version of this map (2nd of April 2023) here!

[ID: More up-to-date version of the graphic. It's worse. It's mostly worse y'all. (a couple states have moved from "low risk within 2 years" to "safest states with protections" categories though so that at least is good.) End ID.]

This map is the most up to date version as of 3-4-2023 and takes into account all recent movement on anti-trans legislation