#will go well yes. CONSERVATIVE censorship is bad but mine is different and only the stuff *i* don't like

[mirage-coordinator]

post about how censorship is a dangerous thing, and that throwing out “what if a CHILD saw this?” about things you don’t like is parroting conservative rhetoric (because it’s true, some things are going to be uncomfortable, and will make you uncomfortable, but should not be forbidden on the grounds of that discomfort)

it’s some stupid fuckwit covertly arguing that actually, they shouldn’t have to face any criticism for posting their shitty incest fanfic under the guise of a take that any average person would think is perfectly reasonable (they’re idiots who put that shit out in public and are not immune to people pointing out Hey That’s Weird)

[back-and-totheleft]

“Make it for the soldiers”

The three-time Oscar winner is back with a new book—Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game—and turning its pages is like entering a Stone movie. The one-time infantryman had a single condition in granting HUSTLER this Q&A: “Make it for the soldiers. You’ve got to make it interesting to them.” Movie stars are often household names, but Oliver Stone is one of the few screenwriters and directors to have a high public profile. Now he’s released a new book, and it’s a rip-roaring, rollicking read, full of tense drama and trauma. The 342-page memoir focuses on Stone’s life through the age of 40 and sheds light on what forged Hollywood’s movie maverick and makes him tick.

After the Allies liberated Paris, his father—Colonel Louis Stone, who served on General Eisenhower’s staff—met the Parisian Jacqueline Pauline Cezarine Goddet. In December 1945 they married, which Stone wryly writes was “possibly the greatest mistakes of their lives,” and sailed from France to live in New York, where Louis, a Yale graduate, resumed his Wall Street career as a stockbroker. Stone reveals how their divorce affected him and, for the first time ever, describes in detail his combat experiences in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Coming under fire in Indochina’s jungles ignited an intense mistrust of government and hatred of war that actually compelled Stone to become a filmmaker. As the Chasing the Light subtitle indicates, the book zooms in on four movies and provides a behind-the-scenes peek at Stone’s maneuvering through Tinseltown’s machinations. Stone scored his first Hollywood triumphs as the screenwriter of 1978’s Midnight Express, winning an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Like his script for 1983’s Scarface, Midnight Express lampooned the so-called War on Drugs. This set the stage for Stone to tackle President Reagan’s secret war in Central America with 1986’s hard-hitting Salvador, followed later that same year by his grunt’s-eye view on the Vietnam War, the no-holds-barred Platoon. At the 1987 Academy Awards ceremony, Stone was in the rare enviable position of competing against himself in the Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen category for both Salvador and Platoon. Although he won neither, his boyhood idol Elizabeth Taylor did give Stone the Best Director Oscar for Platoon, which also won for Best Picture. The book’s curtain closes as Stone earns his sublime moment in the limelight, emerging as one of the movie industry’s most celebrated writer-directors of all time. His future body of work—1987’s Wall Street, 1991’s The Doors and JFK through 2016’s Snowden—are only mentioned in passing, if at all. An exception is 1989’s Best Picture-nominated Born on the Fourth of July, for which Stone was awarded his second Best Director Oscar, for helming this searing cinematic biopic about maimed Vietnam War vet Ron Kovic, whose relationship with Stone began during the period his memoir covers. HUSTLER interviewed Stone when he returned to Los Angeles in between trips to Europe to promote his book. In this candid conversation Stone opens up about the Vietnam War, drugs, censorship, Edward Snowden, Larry Flynt, Jackie Kennedy, his new Kennedy assassination film and so much more. HUSTLER: How did Chasing the Light come about? Did you write any of it while sheltering in place? OLIVER STONE: No. I was finishing up in that phase. I wrote it over two years. It was final draft, checking things, draft edits, around February, March… I was working on other things, documentaries and so forth. In your memoir you write about your time in Vietnam. Have you recounted those personal experiences extensively before? No. No, I haven’t. In interviews I’ve shared some of it. But no, this is all fresh material. The movies were dramatic presentations. I talk about Born on the Fourth of July and my relationship with Ron Kovic [the paralyzed Vietnam War vet portrayed by Tom Cruise in the 1989 feature]. And a lot about Platoon. Because both were written in 1976 [the year Kovic’s book was published], which falls in the period I’m covering in Chasing the Light, up to 1986. They play a significant role—the failures of those two films to get made haunted me. You were wounded twice in Vietnam—where you served with distinction as an infantryman, winning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. So what do you think about President Trump allegedly calling dead soldiers “losers” and “suckers” and stating that military parades should exclude wounded vets? It’s a strange statement. I don’t know if he made it, but it sounds very bizarre. Obviously, I don’t agree with it. On the other hand, I don’t believe we should be over-glorifying our veterans either, because that leads to other sets of problems, which we’ve seen in the spate of recent wars. To prepare for this interview, I watched Scarface again. In your book you mention that you were probably conceived in Europe, your mom was an immigrant from France, and it struck me that Scarface is very much an immigrant’s saga. How do you view the Trump/Stephen Miller immigration and refugee policies? I abhor them. I do believe in immigration—it’s what the American way is about. This country has been built on immigration. Even in this lifetime of mine we’ve had such a new spate of immigration from different countries, Third World, Asia. It’s remarkable. In Scarface we talk about Latin Americans who are coming into Miami, some good, some bad. It’s a rich mix, and that’s what had given America its experimental nature. There’s no fixed America in my mind. It’s 250 years—it’s a constantly changing soup. Scarface, like Midnight Express, is drug-themed. Your memoir is quite candid about your own use of substances. What do you think of the War on Drugs? Who won? [Laughs.] It’s a ludicrous objective. It should not be called a “war.” Listen, I partook of drugs. I’ve been very honest about it. It started for me in Vietnam. I smoked it in the base camps, in the rear, when we came back. I smoked it to relax. I go into the reasons for it. It helped me get through that war as a human being. Very important to me. I respect it. I also talk about drug use later on in my life, like cocaine—which I don’t think worked for me at all, and I said why. So I’m on both sides of it. But I do think it’s an individual issue, of individual responsibility and education. The treatment for it is not punishment but hospitalization or medical help or psychiatric help. The War on Drugs is a waste of money, and again, it’s political. I saw that in Scarface, the birth of the Drug Enforcement [Administration]—very political, huge budgets; it’s growing every year. The Reagan war and all that—they call it a war. Everything in America is a war. But we don’t win any one of them. Have you encountered political censorship in Hollywood for your movies’ dissident politics over the years? You posit that Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig being on MGM’s board may have affected an early effort to make Platoon. Yes. It’s been a long haul. And I emphasize the word may, because you never know when they turn it down. They never tell you, “It’s because of political reasons that we don’t want to make your film.” They never say that. They couch it in economic terms or, “This is too depressing.” “It’s blah-blah A, B or C.” You never know. In this case, it was a very easy deal for them to make. Dino De Laurentiis was behind it—as my producer he was financing the film. MGM had a distribution deal with Mr. De Laurentiis, and they didn’t live up to it. He was making very risky movies at that time, like Blue Velvet. MGM had to make a minimal investment in distribution costs, and they did not do it. Why? Well, I would assume that the president of MGM at the time, Frank Yablans, said that he had gone to the board and they had turned [Platoon] down, but I’m not sure he’s telling the truth. Because they sometimes don’t even bother to go to the board because they don’t want to take any heat. On the board, of course, were two very conservative men on Vietnam who I’d classify as war hawks. So, I mean, it became a political issue. I do believe that; I have no proof. Also, the Pentagon passed on the film, calling it completely unrealistic. This is an important issue because the movie is realistic. I was there, and I saw it on the ground. I was in four different platoons, in four different units, in three combat platoons. I served in the south and in the north and saw quite a bit of action. And I’m telling you, three things I wrote in the book, about the three lies in Vietnam, I believe apply even today to all fought wars. One is friendly fire. American soldiers get killed by their own side, by small arms fire, artillery and bombs. It’s not precision bombing. About 20 percent of the casualties, wounded and dead, comes from friendly fire. This is a very important point, because it is buried over and over again by the Pentagon in their after-action reports. Recently, the Arizona Cardinals’ Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan, and there was a whole mess in trying to get to the reasons for his death. Of course, that was a celebrity-type killing, but this goes on all the time in every war. In Vietnam, in the jungle, you can imagine the asymmetric aspect of it. When fire happens, you don’t even know where the fire is coming from. People are firing—you don’t know if it’s coming in or out. And various things like that are happening all the time. I believe my first wound came about through friendly fire. The second lie I talked about was killing civilians, trashing villages. Racism was really a huge factor in that. We treated the civilians mostly as enemies, as people who were supporting the enemy. [Secretary of Defense] Robert McNamara estimated three to four million Vietnamese killed. The third lie, the biggest one of all: “We’re winning the war.” We heard that lie again and again and again. It was fed to the American people. Even from the beginning, we never had a chance. In Neil Sheehan’s book A Bright Shining Lie, [Lieutenant Colonel] John Paul Vann made it really clear, in 1962 this was a hopeless situation, a hopeless war, because true patriotism was to fight for your country. This was a war, as he said, of independence that was fought against us as colonizers in the wake of the French. Inflating body counts, lying about enemy movements, CIA involvement in the war, no question about it. Misguiding the war. Often bad information, among other things, about the My Lai massacre in March 1968, when 500-plus villagers were killed in cold blood by [U.S.] units who were told that the enemy would be in the village. Not a single enemy bullet was fired in that whole day. And this was investigated by the Army itself, by an honest [lieutenant] general named [William Ray] Peers. He didn’t believe it at first. He thought it was bullshit, that the Seymour Hersh revelations were bullshit. He went in there and investigated thoroughly and came up with the conclusion. That’s what my movie I wanted to make on the My Lai massacre is about. He indicted 20-plus officers all the way up to the top of that division. He indicted the general of that division for his negligence. It’s a disgusting story. But it happens all the time in war and is covered up. Covered up for the dignity of the family, for the dignity of the death and so forth and so on. “How can you criticize the military?” You know, that horrible kind of righteousness, which prevents us from seeing what war is. Although you’re a decorated Vietnam veteran, the Pentagon denied you any support for Platoon—and, I assume, for your other Vietnam War-related movies. Yes, that’s correct. But other directors such as, say, Michael Bay, who never served in the military but who make pro-war, pro-military films, are given permission to shoot at U.S. bases, use of armed services personnel, access to high-tech equipment, etc. What do you make of this double standard? Does it violate the First Amendment? I don’t know about that, but it’s certainly a violation of morality. It’s much bigger than Michael Bay—there’s a book that came out in 2017, National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood by Matthew Alford and Tom Secker. James DiEugenio, who works with me, has covered this issue separately in another book, Reclaiming Parkland. These two books cover the involvement of the Pentagon in Hollywood. Alford and his coauthor talk about 800-plus films that were made with Pentagon cooperation. You’d be stunned at some of the films made. Among case studies are Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down—which is basically a whitewashing of the affair in Somalia—Charlie Wilson’s War, Hotel Rwanda, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Rules of Engagement, The Terminator, 13 Days, United 93, Wag the Dog. Talks about people like Tom Clancy, of course a big military supporter, and the CIA too. TV series such as Alias, Homeland and 24—which had a tremendous effect on the American public in glorifying the CIA, making it seem like it was a backstop for our security, which is a lie too. It undermined our security. All this is much bigger than Michael Bay. In Chasing the Light you mention “surveillance” a number of times, and of course you made 2016’s Snowden. On September 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance—which Edward Snowden exposed—was illegal and possibly unconstitutional. What do you think of that, and what should happen to Snowden now? [Laughs.] It’s obviously correct. Snowden should be brought back to the country. I don’t know if he should be pardoned for his wrongs—because he never did anything wrong. He should be pardoned immediately, as should [WikiLeaks’] Julian Assange. The fact is, the NSA has been breaking the law for so many years. We owe it to George Bush and that administration. That was reported on as early as around 2004, but buried by The New York Times until after the election. The Pentagon Papers was released by The Times because they hated Nixon, but I guess with Bush, they gave him a pass. Terrible. It [NSA’s bulk surveillance] has resulted in this sense of unease—you’re always monitored, we have to check our behavior, we’re under control. This is a disaster for the world. Also, other countries have responded accordingly. The World Wide Web is very dangerous. It goes back to the worst days of J. Edgar Hoover. Free speech is a recurring theme in a number of your films. How were you involved in the making of 1996’s The People vs. Larry Flynt? I was a producer. It was written by Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander. It was their script. Milos Forman developed it with them. I did feel that Larry Flynt had a case—he won the case [against Reverend Jerry Falwell Sr.]. I’m glad. I’m proud of the movie. After Platoon was released, you quote Jacqueline Kennedy, who wrote you and said, “Your film has changed the direction of a country’s thinking.” Your movies presented a counter-narrative to the Reagan regime’s reactionary agenda. Modesty aside, do you think that Salvador, Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July may have helped stop Reagan and Bush from turning their Contra Wars in Central America into full-fledged Vietnam-like invasions? I don’t believe that they did. What happened was the fortuitous fuckup by the CIA when Eugene Hasenfus was captured after his plane was shot down. He was a contractor—he was in Nicaragua supplying [weapons to the U.S.-backed anti-Sandinista Contras]. It leads to the larger story of Oliver North, Reagan, George Herbert [Walker] Bush and the Iran-Contra affair. That’s what stalled them. Not that it was revealed in its entirety—that’s another story, of course, that’s been buried by The Washington Post’s Katharine Graham, who has been lionized in another kind of movie. But basically that scandal at least was enough to stop the momentum of an invasion, and Reagan did not have the power, the ability, the credibility anymore after October ’86. Which of course helped Platoon too, because it came out right in that juncture, and that revived Salvador, which was rereleased. Both films had an impact, but whether that would have changed the course of Reagan without the accident with the CIA—I don’t think so. Tell us about your new film, JFK: Destiny Betrayed. It’s a four-hour documentary, and it has the facts. More facts than ever. We deal with everything that happened after—in terms of documentation—since [JFK] came out in 1991. Very interesting. Because the assassination records review board, which was created from the JFK film with the JFK [Records] Act—although it was stymied by many restrictions, it did manage to release a fair amount of documents. Not all. And in those documents there’s quite a bit of information, including, of course, Operation Northwoods, that the Pentagon was operating to undercut Cuba. What are some of the highlights you learned since 1991 about the liquidation of President Kennedy? Well, I think you have to wait for the movie. [Laughs.] But certainly the ties of [Lee Harvey] Oswald to the CIA. That’s more explicit. Certainly, the evidence. We revisit the original evidence presented by Mark Lane but with new witnesses; new characters have come forward. Many people [didn’t] talk, but they start talking after the movie in the 1990s…People talk. All these informational signals come from all directions. You explain that your book title, Chasing the Light, refers to a moviemaking term. But does it also allude to your personal quest for enlightenment? And if so, have you attained it yet? Well, I’m much older [now] than when the book ends. But certainly that is an important moment, in 1986. After wanting to achieve a dream of writing and directing since I was 22 and being rejected and defeated many times, having some success along the way, and after having almost given up at 30—finally, at the age of 40, I really had a breakthrough of major proportions, with two solid movies back to back that really convinced the world, as well as myself, that I was a writer-director. It was a core victory for me and an important fact. That sets the tone for the foundation of my character. There’s going to be changes, more detours, pushes and turns in the story, but certainly, it’s established in 1986. So your memoir ends in 1987. That means a lot of your other classics are yet to come. So, in that grand Hollywood tradition, will there be a sequel to Chasing the Light? Well, I hope so. I do hope so. I hope the book does well enough to justify it. What’s next for you? I have two documentaries. One is the JFK documentary, four hours long, that won’t be out for a year. Another one is unedited, about the future, the need for clean energy, which includes nuclear energy. It’s based on a book I bought called A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow, by Joshua Goldstein and a Swedish scientist, Staffan A. Qvist. I understand you’re traveling these days. I’m about to promote the book in Paris. I just came back from Italy, France and Germany… It was big in Italy—they loved me. [Laughs.] Much better than in the United States.

-Ed Rampell, Hustler, Jan 16 2021

[ex-terfs]

I’m curious about how you were introduced to trans exclusionary ideology, and when you realized how toxic it truly is. I’m genuinely curious.

Hello! Sorry for the hiatus.So this is my story & long rant post.I've been among TERFs/Radfems (AKA the Conservative side of "feminism") since 2015. In mid-2016 — with the dangers of having Trump as President — I started getting critical of everything going on in the community, deleted older posts, & stopped reblogging "trans-critical" stuff. In 2017 — after seeing TERFs celebrating that the 'Everyday Feminism' site was facing a financial crisis & after paying more attention at what our "enemies" were trying to say — I unfollowed all the bullies, & eventually started to despise seeing "trans-critical" stuff. Their hatred towards the "big scary Libfems" is what made me rethink my priorities.

Many parts of their ideology had peculiarly attracted my attention back in 2015. As a GNC person who celebrates gender nonconformity, their gender abolition theories seemed very interesting (& I later found out how bigoted they are towards GNC men & GNC people with different identities/pronouns). When I was a sex-repulsed person, their porn-critical & sex-negative theories also seemed very interesting to me (I later found out how bigoted they are towards sex-repulsed people — upholding heteronormativity & saying things like "Haha, nobody loves you", "If you're a man/bisexual/lesbian, you must perform oral sex on your gf"; but still, I'm NO longer in the sex-negative/SWERF community). People sending them death threats was also one of the reasons why I had joined their movement.

It always begins like this. Step 1: you begin exploring anti-kink/anti-porn stuff; Step 2: you begin exploring anti-"MOGAI" stuff; Final step: you turn into a transphobe. That's how I got into this mess.

Second-wave theories originally had a critical focus on the social construction of gender & sexuality, monogamy, submission/masochism, natalism, the family structure, the fear of nonconformity, emotional/economic dependency, religion, & violence.As a feminist, yeah, I still agree with most of these analyses. I love reading academic books. But there was something different about terf/radfem tumblr. & this is all I've noticed over the years.

TERFs treat their word like holy truth.

TERFs use Right-wing "sources" to back up their transphobic & sex-negative arguments (& often associate themselves with conservative groups).

TERFs claim that all men are "biologically/physically the same".

TERFs contradict themselves all the time: claim that sex-repulsed AroAces are "usual straights", mock people who just want to remain single, & at the same time still say that if you don't want to have sex with men, then "you're a lesbian"; they say that people don't owe you sex, & at the same time say it's "not okay" for men to sexually reject a woman for "bad reasons".

TERFs claim that lesbians who are anti-TERF or who don't believe in the "born-this-way" theory are "fake lesbians".

TERFs are against the idea of removing your secondary sexual characteristics; & if an AMAB person doesn't like their "secondary sexual characteristics", then they must be a "delusional fetishist" (srsly I identify as a woman, but I still wish I could remove my uterus & have a breast reduction surgery; & it's not for sexist reasons! Shocking, I know!).

TERFs claim that men can't be raped/abused by women (not all TERFs believe this, but I still see them quietly following the ones who do).

TERFs have definitely never read a book with a different perspective/purpose, yet they will act like total experts on any subject (TERFs act like they're experts on Postmodernism & Queer Theory, but they have no idea what these theories are actually about. These theories are both very complex & don't have only one definition! Shocking, I know!).

TERFs will assume you're a trans woman if you don't disclose you're actually AFAB (& they could still have doubts).

TERFs are very manipulative & use brainwashing tactics. If you're AFAB & anti-TERF, they will say it's because of your "internalized misogyny" & will try to guilt-trip you. Because how dare someone has a different opinion! If you're AFAB & proudly calls yourself 'genderfluid' or 'non-binary', TERFs will get offended.

TERFs claim that asexuality only exists "because of the prevalence of porn" (Aces & sex-repulsed people would still be here even if porn didn't exist! Shocking, I know!).

TERFs claim that men who call themselves 'feminist' are "all predators".

TERFs would rather include transphobic men in their spaces than "those evil libfems" (those women are enemies).

TERFs claim that radical feminism is the "only true feminism", & that all second-wave feminists were "radfems".

TERFs claim that GNC men are "fetishizing" femininity (but according to TERF logic, masculine men are not fetishizing masculinity).

TERFs are extremely bigoted towards sex workers, polyamorous people, people who don't want commitment, people who are sexually experimenting or who are promiscuous (which is also one of the reasons why I left the sex-negative community; their views on sex/lust/love are similar to the Christian conservative perspective).

I can definitely assure you I still very well remember most of their URLs & blog content. There are many TERFs who hide behind aesthetic blogs, & use subtle TERF language & comforting rhetoric — which you might not even notice if you don't know much about their specific type of language & tactics (e.g. complaining about the "neoliberal postmodern identities" & about people "erasing females"). This type of TERF also may follow a bunch of (trans-inclusive) anti-'MOGAI' & anti-kink blogs. If you're trans-inclusive & TERFs follow you, it's likely because your blog content doesn't make them uncomfortable.

Their blatant transphobia is absurd & paranoiac, & they don't hide it. Anyone who disagrees with them gets called a "handmaiden", "lesbophobe", "male", "genderist", "liberal", "libfem", "special snowflake" (I no longer consider myself a radical leftist, but I don't consider myself a centrist either). TERFs call trans women as a group "fetishists", "delusional", "mentally ill", "sociopaths", "narcissists", "pedophiles", "necrophiles", "incels", "genderfucks" + slurs like "tr*nny", "troon", "tr0n", "transes". They say that the trans movement is "coercing children to transition" & "forcing lesbians to have sex with penis". It's pure fear-mongering. Their views on trans men are also contradictory — there are times they claim that trans men are "straight girls who are trans just bc they read fanfiction & watch gay porn", & there are times they claim that trans men are "brainwashed butch lesbians" (Pick a side!).

I live in a very religious Latin American country. The majority of the population here is not educated on gender/sexuality issues. I got the chance of educating myself better only after I've learned English. And then some terfs had the gall to say "academic fields such as Gender & LGBT Studies & philosophy are oppressive & pretentious". In a country like mine with a dark history of military dictatorships, censorship & anti-intellectualism, being leftist means protecting the social sciences in education & freedom of the press.

So yes, I left the terf community bc unlike them, I think for myself & I hate bullying (i was in fact heavily bullied for years in school, & only bullying victims know how it truly feels like). My terf blog is now inactive; I had 1000+ followers. I'm a very quiet person irl & online; I was never vocal about my real opinions bc I don't like getting into heated discussions & I didn't want to be featured on that gross radfem-gossip blog.I was very transphobic back then. & now it's quite possible terfs will say to me "You were never one of us". I followed & liked their blogs, just like they followed mine. I was loyal & obedient. Now not anymore.