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I’m trying to work through some thoughts that have been coming up around the outright insane laws being proposed and passed regarding transgender people in the US. This isn’t new, but what is new is how aggressive and coordinated the attack is. Over 100 bills have been proposed around the US attacking trans folk in the start of 2022 alone, let alone the hundreds from 2021 and the hundreds more regarding lgbtq+ folks more broadly.

It’s obvious that this attack on trans people is being seen now as a more palatable way to attack people viewed as outsiders, since going after gay people more generally is no longer in vogue. Heck, some people have already moved on from trans attacks directly to going after furries in a move that is not at all novel, yet comes off as extra shockingly ridiculous when parroted by lawmakers.

As a closeted gay teen fluffy animal in the early 2000’s, to an out, expansively queer fluffy dog in 2022, there are a lot of things that I wish were different about my maturation specifically, and the state of the world for those coming of age now. I have a lot of hope because they are able to be more out and proud with much more support than I had back then. But I’m also worried about the larger target coming from mainstream acceptance.

I think that the people behind most anti-trans legislation are a vocal minority. Though there is a strong split along partisan lines, a growing majority of Americans outwardly support trans people, at least in the abstract.

What we need now are more than just allies. We need accomplices that will explicitly call out these prejudiced attacks on our communities, and work to change structures so that bigoted bills like the hundreds being considered across the country this year never even make it to chamber floors.

It has become our job to defend ourselves, but we need your support as well. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

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📚

Babes in TERFland: Part 5 – Catherine Bouris

Pair this newsletter series with the Inside a Cult series, as both cover a lot of detail about the mindset of Gender Critical groups and how they lure in new members.

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FAKE FRIENDS EPISODE TWO: parasocial hell

A few year old but new to me. We know that some people form unhealthy, one-sided relationships with offline and online personalities. But hearing firsthand accounts from both the celebrities and their fans is still shocking at times.

I Went Clubbing in Virtual Reality: Raves of the Metaverse

The only pushback that I want to do here is that this isn’t really community owned. This is a corporation benefiting from user generated content, it’s just not as big as Facebook and doesn’t have the same controversies (yet).

Inside a Cult – Gender Critical (Part Three – Mask Off)

At this point in the series (make a depressing day of it and watch all three!), Caelan reveals themselves and works through the fallout of that, as well as what these groups really mean when the coded language falls away.

The Man Who Broke The Internet By Deleting 11 Lines of Code

Another video that I’m grumpy-sharing. The narrator points out that open source creators can share things for free, yet treats him like a villain for deciding to remove his software from one platform. Also, it’s the rare site that actually broke for end users. Build systems (like npm itself) kind of ensured that unless someone was being forceful in pushing their code to production, the break happened on the dev computers, not on the sites that we would have seen.

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Meet the woman who went undercover to infiltrate white supremacists (Live from Union Stage!) – There Are No Girls on the Internet

A good example of an accomplice, using her privilege and ability to move unnoticed to collect data on hate groups and help supply evidence against them.

The Long, Slow Death of the Internet with Cory Doctorow – Factually! with Adam Conover

I think that we have reason to be hopeful about the future of the Internet, but pragmatically we should be working to ensure that the hope is not misplaced.

How .GIFs Became the Lingua Franca of the Internet – 2 Girls 1 Podcast

It’s a hard G. That’s all I’m gonna say.

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