Do Not Post Bette Midler Plz

Bette Midler has long been associated with gay culture, being a purveyor of showtunes and bland liberalism.  In the runup to the fascist takeover of the USA, she wrote a very TERFy op ed in some newspaper or another (this is not factually accurate, see correction in comments).  As transphobia was one of the levers the nazis used to gain power, she directly contributed to that.

And yet a month or so after the old Woody Guthrie song “You Fascists Bound to Lose” started trending on yewchoob, to what should my wondering eyes appear?  Bette Midler doing a cover of that song!  Look gays, she hates fascists almost as much as she hates transgender people!

I hope no other bloggers or commenters on FtB will post anything about her anywhere.  Trans Day of Visibility.  Make that shit go unseen.  I only mention its existence the way you say Dracula! before you raise the crucifix.

–

Jenny McCarthy sang Trans Rights?

I had a dream a young lady in a black wig came into my place of work.  This was Jenny McCarthy, younger than she would be in real life, fallen on hard times that she will never experience in real life.  She was reporting income from a singing gig at a strip club, because she was receiving a need-based social benefit with eligibility tightly linked to those numbers.

As I was trying to get access to her benefit record for the purpose of placing this work report, her social security number was showing on two lines, where one had to zigzag between them to get the sequence, and each zero was replaced with an ascii character of a double zero.  Do those even exist?  She was sitting right next to me and I had to dissuade her from looking at the screen while I sorted this out.  I told her that normally she’d be on the other side of the counter, please don’t read this stuff.

Somehow that changed in the course of the conversation to where I was willing to let her sign into gmail on my computer, to download her pay stub.  It was a pdf full of hyperlinked images, looking like a porn site.  I was trying to understand which number represented her gross income and accidentally touched one of those links, forcing me to close my browser immediately before the malware could load.  Then I had to get back in and start over from scratch.

In waking life, I’m under pressure at work to not use the hold button.  I just try to do my inputs quietly while people yak at me.  She said she wanted to regale me with an original song about trans rights, and launched into it.  I had to ask her to be quiet twice, while nearby coworkers were on phone calls.

She started playing with one of those coworker’s hair, like a stripper might do to somebody during a lap dance.  Then Patrick Stewart came, in character as her strip club manager, in a black toupee of his own, tousling her wig hair.  I got that he was playing a character even tho I didn’t feel the same about her, and wondered why he was still doing shitty parts when he could have retired long ago.

I finished my work, she was gone, and I wanted to tell a coworker about it, enough that I violated a privacy policy to do so.  Then I noticed Jim Carrey sitting on floor, leaning against a pillar, and thought, shit, ex-boyfriends are a category of people we particularly do not want to disclose information to.  I hoped he hadn’t heard me.  Ho-hum, I woke up.

–

Catgirl Zoo

Had a dream, felt like the raw setup and environment were recurring, but the feeling of remembering can be fake, like in déjà vu.  I was at a zoo adjacent to a small amusement park, trying to climb into an off-limits area with a better view of the reptiles.  The zookeepers caught me but I kept getting away on some woowoowoowoo nyuk nyuk nyuk shit like a cartoon character.

This time, outside the zoo, I was trying to explain why I do it, that I’m not animal thief, and while they didn’t believe me, they weren’t going to arrest me either.  I went to get a milkshake at a fast food restaurant, ran into more hijinks I don’t remember, then back, but this time…

I met a small group of zookeeperesque people who were trying to be very supportive of and help me in gender transition.  However, all their methods were geared toward me transitioning not to a woman, but to an anime cat girl.  They were trying to get me to eat cat food.

Even tho in real life I’m not pursuing medical transition (aside from an idle ambition to get facial hair removal if I ever get more money) or even more full time social transition (might if my life circumstances were much different), I was very accepting of the situation.

I didn’t like the cat food, but I was just like, This is my life now…

–

a couple of weeks after this, i was awakened from deep sludgy sleep by a little gastroesophageal reflux.  my acid is strong enough i can’t ignore it, had to get up to treat my throat in some way.  i had been in a dream of details worth remembering, and i tried to, but only one odd bit survived my subsequent trip to nod and back.

i had to catch a violent cat, so i was trying to wrap her in t-shirt bondage.  she still managed to bite me a few times.  what was her crime?  murder.  apparently she had murdered somebody.

the dream was also guilelessly convinced that she was psychotic (how would you know this of a cat?) and that she was transgender.  the psychotic transgender murdercats must pay for their (imagined) crimes…

–

Are You the Baddies?

Lil’ question for the scientists and science communicators and defenders of liberty who thought woke moral scolds were impinging so badly on their freedom to be assholes.  Who is censoring the hell out science right now?  Whose side is doing that?  I know, bring up the way your fave race “scientists” could only sometimes get published in mainstream sources, cool cool.  But on this scale?  How about the way they’re gutting universities?  Destroying the Department of Education?  Libraries?  This sound like the work of people who care about academia, enlightenment, the advancement of the human species?  Sophisticated discourse, holding up the hem of your toga as you walk through the agora?  Is this how you saw yourselves?

Are you starting to understand what censorship actually is?  Are you starting to understand how misogyny, transphobia, and racism will always lead into fascism?  How there’s no good and actually cool version of any of those things?  Growing a tiny spark of self-awareness yet?  The clock is ticking.  You’re running out of time to breathe the air of freedom you’ve so stridently clamored for.  Anything you might think say or do that isn’t in support of the party line, better get your freak on while you still can.

Remember those guys painted out of Stalin’s photograph when they became not stalinist enough?  By supporting this situation, you’ve put yourself in a more dangerous position than most.  Does this feel like freedom to you?  Does this look like what you imagined it would, throwing off the shackles of woke?

I’m thinking of Jerry Coyne and Ophelia Benson here.  I’m not gonna host an answer by one of those humanoid tools of fascism, but I wonder vaguely what that would look like.  I wonder if OB feels like this is the dawning of a new feminist paradise, feels completely blameless in the use of transphobia as a wedge issue to establish Gilead.  I wonder if JC feels good about the state of science now, feels completely justified in working to achieve that egregious new normal.

I don’t wonder enough to read their sniveling bootlicking shit, but maybe one of you could summarize it for me in the comments, heh.

–

Primary they Asses

My union talked me into writing to my representatives thru a web form, and the responses have trickled in.  Clearly just had a machine or intern look at the subject matter vaguely and send robo-reply.  On the web form all three required an honorific but the senatorial old ladies only had mr. and mrs.,  while the congressdude had other options.

For the senators I chose mrs. but also used masc legal name.  First senator with a robo reply “corrected” it to mister.  Kinda like, fuck all y’all.

I’ve said before I’m ok with dems taking some bad deals when they’re in the weak position, negotiating however they can to reduce the damage of nazi policies, but if they act at all like they consider a demographic an acceptable loss, or worse, show enthusiasm for nazi ideas like fuckface newsom, we must brutally primary their asses back to whoville.

And if the dem establishment rams a shit candidate through?  I think they’re a few decades overdue for a riot at their convention.

–

What it Sounds Like when TDoVs Cry

I do find the most worrisome thing about trans rights and the struggle against fascism broadly at the moment is corporate ameriKKKa’s embrace of the very bad november as a meaningful barometer of public opinion – that fascism is more profitable than progress.  I’m gonna try not to think of that too much.  I’ve got dreams to dream.  But for now, let’s say I can understand trans people wanting to inviso all the way out.

When the very bad inauguration happened (2025 version), I immediately began wearing a pink bandana and makeup and pearls at work, to show my less visible trans coworkers that they are not alone.  I don’t usually bother to shave, so this is a pretty queer-ass look.  I’m more self-conscious in recorded form, so not posting selfies of that right now.  But just tellin’ the tale:  I’ve been trans day of visibilitying since Jan 20th 2025 every day that I’m seen by coworkers.

Except that one day I forgot my eye makeup.  Wotta disaster!

Wait, no, fuckit.  Here’s my work look.

visible’d!  why yes i am craggy like the surface of the moon, and not interested in starting to wear foundation at the moment.

–

Red State Leftists Please Start Voting

You heard about all the businesses capitulating to the fresh fashy vibes of the new ameriKKKa?  Tossing diversity initiatives, LGBTetc protections?  Amazon doing this is particularly shit because like many tech companies, they have a disproportionate number of trans women in computer programming.  You’d think that would count for something, but here we fucken are.

Red state leftists don’t want to vote because it feels hopeless, but here’s the thing.  If all of you got up and voted at the next opportunity and lost, it would send a message to the world, loud and clear.  The kind of message electoral politics can ignore, yes, but not the kind of message that corporate america can afford to ignore.  If the nazis win the next one by electoral margins but lose by 80% of the popular vote?  That is a show of force for human rights, for humane policies, for progress.  Corporations will realize that catering to the nazis is not the wisdom, and at least one source of human misery will become substantially less miserable.

That’s where the real power is at the moment.  Corporations.  They have all these fiefdoms carved out in the legalized monopoly game, so boycotts can only do so much.  But demographic information that their advertisers can use, that is something they’ll pay attention to.

Give it a whirl, please?  And who knows?  Maybe there’s still a sliver of a hope in hell that democracy can move this needle slightly away from endless calamity, right?  Throw me a fuckin’ bone here.  Do it on a lark.  Do it on a dare.  Do it high on bin laden weed with a six-pack of beer.  Just do it.

–

Fat Middle-Aged Genderqueer ASMR Unbagging Reaction: Trader Joe’s Crispy Dried Watermelon Chips

Need one o’ them there meridian responses?  Like unboxing and reaction videos?  Product reviews?  You like slow paced grainy video where the loudest sounds are packages rustling and fans whirring?  If ya want my body and ya think I’m sexy, come on baby let me know.  Sorry for rod stewarting at you there.  Point.

I referred to an inanimate object as crazy, in violation of my ableism policy, but I don’t know how to bleep it.  Enjoy this little walk on the wild side.  And go to sleep!

–