This documentary makes an excellent case. The telescope was named by a breach of their established protocol, and, while it’s true James Webb did good things for NASA, his role in the Cold War and the Lavender Scare makes it an uncomfortable name for LGBQT+ scientists now.
I am constantly surprised by all the companies that want to pay me money to advertise on my YouTube channel. It’s a tiny channel, infrequently updated, so they must be desperate if they’re reaching out to me. This latest offer, though…guess what I think of it?
Avalanche Software, Inc.
Centrum Sumavska, Sumavska 416/15, 602 00
Brno, Czech Republic
Esteemed Prospective Partner:
Our company has found your YouTube channel interesting as a subject to promote our game “Hogwarts Legacy”.
We have been exploring your channel for some time and we enjoy your creativity so we are sure that we can be useful to each other!
If you are interested in our offer, please reply to this email and we will send you a media kit which includes a promotional video and the terms of the advertising contract!
Kind regards,
John Bahringer
First, I am put off by dishonesty. No, you didn’t find my channel interesting, and you probably never even looked at the content. You’ve got a ranked list by order of the number of subscribers, and you’ve been working through it and found me down near the bottom. That’s it.
But secondly, and more importantly — advertise Hogwarts Legacy? HELL NO. You want me to contribute to the coffers of wicked transphobe and bad writer JK Rowling? Not gonna happen. Never in my lifetime. I’ll go the other way and suggest that everyone should boycott Hogwarts Legacy. I’m going to side with Jessie Gender on that.
In addition to being an obnoxious writer of tedious potboilers, that thread also shows that JK Rowling can’t read.
There’s something suspicious about making lists, especially when the list-maker clearly has nefarious intent.
Today it has been reported that Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas attempted to get a record of all transgender people who have legally changed their gender on their drivers license in the state. Although the initial request only asked for the monthly numbers of those who changed gender markers, the request did state that they may need drivers licenses and ID numbers later – some of which were eventually delivered. This comes months after Paxton sent a letter to Governor Greg Abbott that stated the parents of transgender children in Texas should be investigated for child abuse. This policy has been nearly universally decried and led to harsh investigations and suicide attempts among trans youth in Texas. Fears of registries continue to grow in the transgender community as Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and other states all consider policies that would create lists of trans people in the state. These lists can ultimately be used for nefarious means, especially if you believe that states will continue to target transgender people with laws designed to further restrict and criminalize their lives.
I wonder why he wants a list of all the trans folk in Texas? Do you think it’s so they can deliver appropriate health care more efficiently?
The Senate passed the “Respect for Marriage” Act, which would be a federal law protecting the right of gay marriage and interracial marriage. It’s amazing to me that this could be an issue anymore, but all the Democrats voted for it, and they persuaded 12 whole Republicans to join them. Twelve is looking at the glass as a quarter full, I guess; we could also note that 36 Republicans voted against it. We really have to get rid of those ugly antiques.
Now do the same thing and pass a federal law protecting abortion rights, OK?
The man running for the office of dumbest politician in America has put out another ad, this time slamming trans athletes…right after the Club Q shooting. It’s not just the bad timing, but also that he has teamed up with Riley Gaines, the indignant transphobe, which opens the door to sick burns.
Barely a day after a deadly LGBTQ bar shooting killed two transgender people and three other patrons, Georgia senatorial candidate Herschel Walker (R) released a campaign ad slamming trans athletes. Democrats are pointing to Republican anti-LGBTQ campaigns like Walker’s as the type of rhetoric that led to the murder of five people at Colorado Springs bar Club Q on Saturday night.
The video featured Riley Gaines, a self-described 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer. In March, Gaines tied for fifth place with trans swimmer Lia Thomas. Gaines has been complaining about it ever since.
Fifth place. She’s complaining about having to share a teeny-tiny footnote in a record book with a trans woman. That’s a photo of two cranky losers up there.
It was an epic battle in Club Q: one hateful gunman inflamed with the rhetoric of conservative pundits versus a room full of unarmed dancers and partiers, and one guy who took action, Richard Fierro.
As he looked up from the floor, Fierro spotted the shooter’s body armor and instead of running from the attacker, moved toward him, grasped the body armor, then stripped suspected gunman Anderson Aldrich of his rifle and beat him bloody with it.
“I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” Fierro told the Times, describing a scuffle in which he found himself atop the 300-something pound gunman, who had momentarily lost his grip on his rifle. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.”
He said he enlisted the help of another patron, Thomas James, to secure the rifle so it was out of reach of their attacker.
He also enlisted the help of a drag performer from the club, asking them to kick the gunman. The performer, he said, “stuffed a high-heeled shoe in the attacker’s face.”
That was so satisfying to read. That’s what we all need to do, fight back against the gutless cowards.
An important part of the heroism, though, is that Richard Fierro was at that club with his family because he loves the lgbtq community, wants to support their businesses, and enjoyed their company. He’s on the side of light.
His wife also made a statement.
With an incredibly heavy and broken heart we lost Raymond, who had been a part of our lives since our daughter was in high school. Raymond was Kassy’s boyfriend. We are going to miss him and his bright smile so much. We are going through a lot of emotions as a family and as a brewery. The loss of lives and the injured are in our hearts. We are devastated and torn. We love our #lgbtq community and stand with them. This cowardly and despicable act of hate has no room in our lives or business.
I’m proud that this family is on our side. Also disgusted at the Tucker Carlsons and Chaya Raichiks and all the Christian evangelicals who have been encouraging the hate for so long
Every day, they seem to add a new criterion for being a True Woman™. Here’s one that surprised even me.
They’re not going to stop until they’ve defined every woman out of existence.
It’s to a site called “Bounding Into Comics”, which I’ve never read before, and it’s to an article titled “New Star Trek Comic Disgusts Readers With A Vulcan Lecturing The Crew On Gender Pronouns”. I’m not linking to it, if you really must see it I’ve given enough information to find it, but really, it’s not worth the effort. Here’s the “lecture” from the comic.
It’s not much. I could see how a literal-minded Vulcan might think calling a ship a “she” is illogical (it is!) and would favor a gender-neutral pronoun, but it’s one sentence. It’s inoffensive, as is the naive Andoran saying “ships are girls”…that’s just silly. Yet here the author of the article is claiming, without evidence, that it disgusts
Star Trek fans.
I was never that big a fan of Star Trek. I definitely enjoyed it and begged my parents to let me stay up late to watch it, but that was because it was one of the few SF shows on television. I’ve watched the movies for the nostalgia, not because I’m a dedicated fan, and while I can understand all the people who are really into it, I’m not one of them.
But here’s the thing: even as someone on the outer fringes of fandom, I know that the majority of hardcore fans of the franchise would not be disgusted at all with that little exchange. They’d approve of it. The author of the article (oh, it’s Jon Del Arroz — I know of him, he’s an asshole) might be disgusted by it, but he’s a weirdo who doesn’t speak for comic readers. He just gets increasingly strident about it.
The Star Trek franchise has become one of the most mocked properties on the internet in recent years, mired with controversies because of the identity politics constantly pushed by the show, books, and comics.
In a recent IDW comic, the writers perpetuated the franchise’s woke content by lecturing its readers on gender identity by using Vulcan characters as a vehicle to gaslight readers who aren’t obsessing over pronouns.
Again, that’s what the majority of the fans of the show want. I’ve attended Star Trek panels at large SF conventions, and every time the audience is a swarm of the most “woke”, liberal fans you might imagine. Where does this delusion that Star Trek fans are repelled by tolerance and gender fluidity come from? As evidence, he presents accounts of other incidents:
The decline of Star Trek’s popularity among fans began with Star Trek: Discovery, which first flaunted racial divisions and an explicit on-screen homosexual relationship before pushing even further to the bottom of the identity politics barrel when they introduced a Trill character who, despite obviously being a woman, lectured her crewmates and audience on how she wanted to be called “they/them.”
In novels, Star Trek author behavior turned off several fans to their TNG-era continuation series, with long-time Trek writer David Mack canceling his guest of honor appearance at MidSouthCon. He did so to taunt the state of Tennessee, which had a law that prevented employers from coercing their employees into taking the COVID-19 vaccine. Mack wrongfully stated that his action was “because Tennessee state law makes proof-of-vax requirements illegal.” The law did not impact the convention, which could have required proof of vaccination to attend, but they chose not to.
Oh no! They had homosexuals on the show, a character who was played by a woman who said she was gender neutral, and a novelist canceled a visit to a state over their bad policies on COVID. Therefore, “several fans” were turned off. That’s it.
Mysterious reader who sent me the link, I don’t know what you were trying to do. Were you trying to demonstrate that my views on sex and gender, which are pretty close to that of the Vulcan in the comic book, are “disgusting” to the anti-“woke” hordes who used to be fans of Star Trek? Or were you just bringing on incredibly stupid article to my attention so I could laugh at it? It would help if you’d send me the link with a sentence or phrase to tell me what you thought of it.
Here’s a story that had me hopelessly confused: according to this one woman in the UK, she was denied essential surgery because the hospital wanted to pander to the transeses. It sounded unlikely to me, but hey, I don’t trust hospital administrators myself. Here, though, is an article that explains it all, using the woman’s own words.
It turns out she made a whole bunch of unreasonable demands, triggered by seeing someone she thought was a trans woman looking at her. So she insisted that no men be allowed anywhere near her, that she get a private room that allowed no men to enter, and that she would not agree to use pronouns or otherwise engage with such manifestations of gender ideology
. She also accused men in general of having mobile phones that they use to look at sick, perverted pornography. The hospital told her that they could not meet her demands and told her to go elsewhere.
It’s all there at the link, but be warned: the complaining woman is a retired solicitor, and her complaints are lengthy and outrageous.
JK Rowling, transphobic hack, is angry with Graham Norton, amusing talk show host.
Rowling wrote:
Enjoying the recent spate of bearded men stepping confidently onto their soapboxes to define what a woman is and throw their support behind rape and death threats. You may mock, but takes real bravery to come out as an Old Testament prophet.Neither Norton nor Bragg referenced rape or death threats in their statements.
He didn’t even mention Rowling! Here’s the horribly offensive thing that Norton said.
“If people want to shine a light on those issues then talk to trans people. Talk to the parents of trans kids, talk to doctors, talk to scientists. Talk to someone who can illuminate it in some way.”
How awful. Doesn’t he know the proper authorities on trans rights are cranky neo-fascists?
Then he went further.
The phrase “cancel culture” has become a ubiquitous catchall that celebrities may cling to after they make a controversial or offensive statement.
But Graham Norton doesn’t think that’s the correct description for what really happens when fans criticize “canceled” people. The right word, he says, is “accountability.”
Norton, the host of a titular BBC talk show, tackled the thorny topic of “cancel culture” at the Cheltenham Literature Festival this week. Speaking to interviewer Mariella Frostrup, Norton decried the concept of “canceling” anyone who still has a sizable platform from which to speak.
“You read a lot of articles in papers by people complaining about ‘cancel culture,’” he told Frostrup. “You think, in what world are you canceled? I’m reading your name in a newspaper, or you’re doing an interview about how terrible it is to be canceled.”
“I think [‘cancel culture’] is the wrong word,” he continued. “I think the word should be accountability.”
Exactly right.
And now Graham Linehan, Rowling sycophant, oblivious toady, and professional hate-monger, has been sucked into the conflict, the poor man.
Speaking to GB News’s Andrew Doyle at the Battle of Ideas festival in London, Linehan said he was “disappointed” by the comments from Norton. He said: “I find Graham Norton personally such a betrayal, because one of the first things he did was his role on Father Ted, there is no way he cannot know about what’s happened to me.
“For him to say there’s no cancel culture, I don’t know what to say about it, but he’s really disappointed me.”
Linehan also addressed being dropped by Hat Trick Productions from involvement in a musical version of Father Ted because of his views. He said: “The way I look at it is, it’s preemptive cultural vandalism. It’s something that’s been cancelled before it even appeared.
“I don’t really know what to say except they’ve never told me what I’ve done wrong. They’ve never told me what I’ve said that they disagree with.
“When I asked once, someone in the room rolled their eyes, as if it was obvious. Well, actually, it’s not obvious.”
Actually, it is obvious. We could start with your willingness to go on GB News, but also…
He had also been a very active and prolific tweeter on popular micro-blogging website Twitter, and in recent years had focussed on attacking trans people and being a general TERF. He opposed the trans charity Mermaids in a rather transphobic post on Mumsnet (a parenting website known for rabid transphobia), and was called out for this by hbomberguy in the latter’s famous marathon charity livestream to raise money for Mermaids, in which he raised over $340,000.
On June 27 2020, Graham Linehan was permanently banned from Twitter, due to violating several of their hateful conduct policies. On March 9, 2021, he announced that his anti-trans activism had caused “such a strain that my wife and I finally agreed to separate”.
You mean his wife never told him what he’d done wrong? I can believe it.
GL’s Wife: Graham, I’m divorcing you.
GL: What? Why?
GL’s Wife: Because you wallow in self-pity, and you’ve become a hateful twit forever ranting about where people should go to the bathroom…
GL: Someone is using the wrong bathroom? Quick! To the Twitter machine! Sorry, dear, this is important, we’ll talk later.
Shorter explanation: you’re being held accountable for your transphobia, Glinner. Obliviousness is not an excuse, and neither is “cancel culture”.
