![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdLet’s start with the short list of good news: Arkansas’s ban on gender-affirming care has been at least temporarily struck down by a Federal judge. Florida’s similar ban relating to Medicare funding and care has been struck down outright, though I’m sure Florida will appeal. Also – on technical grounds involving standing to sue – the Supreme Court declined an appeal from a Christian school fighting transgender housing nondiscrimination policy. I don’t particularly expect that to hold when – not if – the right brings a challenge without the clear and obvious issues of standing.
Now, back to the usual hell:
Peter Hotez, the vaccine scientist Musk and Joe Rogan attacked on Twitter while promoting anti-vax conspiracy theories, reports being stalked by anti-vaccination activists at his home afterwards. Scientists have already been leaving twitter, but this is accelerating the exodus as they recognise what I’ve been saying for months now: Twitter is a far-right/fascist disinformation and propaganda fountain.
Australia is demanding an explanation from Twitter about its handling of hate speech after complaints against the platform rose to one third of all such complaints, despite having only 4.3% as many users as the other large social networks combined. This indicates hate incidents are almost eight times as likely to occur on Twitter as other social media networks on average.
Talking of Twitter, following Musk’s removal of systematic intentional misgendering and use of anti-LGBT slurs as grounds for suspension or account revocation on Twitter, Musk has now declared the words “cis” and “cisgender” to be slurs which are harassment and grounds for account suspension “at least.”
This whole line of bullshit isn’t just intentionally asymmetrical, though it most certainly is also that. It comes from the fundamentalist Christian assertion that there are no trans people, only “normal” people who are perverts, mentally ill, or under the influence of demons.
Identically, there are no “gay” or “lesbian” people, only “normal” people who are perverts, mentally ill, or, again, literally possessed by demons and/or demonic influence, the last of which has become dominant in the movement.
The words “cis(-gendered)” and “heterosexual,” by providing names for not LGBT, acknowledge the existence of LGBT people as a type of people. And that is unacceptable to them, which acknowledges a reality they have decided to hate, and acknowledging that reality makes it a slur.
Twitter is a hate machine. If you’re still using it, you are supporting the hate machine.
Which is also, predictably, continuing to shaft its employees. Though honestly at this point I don’t care. They should leave too.
More stories from rural red states:
Mass-murder threats against LGBT students at Montana State University are fucking up students’ lives. It’s a little capsule of the state of queer despair, as the legal violence gets worse and worse, and the overwhelming cishet majority mostly either supports it, or looks away.
Not long ago, the countryside – even in Republican-dominated states – used to have moments of acceptance and tranquillity for queers. Even for trans people. It was workable. Thanks to the MAGA/Republican/Fascist hate campaign, that’s over now, which is why we have an internal refugee crisis nobody is willing to acknowledge.
Also if you’re in a red state, assume your medical records are not secure and are not safe; Vanderbilt just handed over all records of trans patients to the state Attorney General’s office. In theory, it’s about billing and focused at Vanderbilt, but I think we all know that’s horseshit.
Another story in medicine: while doctor availability has been a crisis in rural areas for a while – particularly, again, in red states – the new post-Roe abortion bans make it impossible for OBGYNs to get through residency in those states at all. So they won’t, and States With Abortion Bans Are Losing a Generation of Ob-Gyns.
That’s obviously bad for both parents and children, but hey, Republicans hate the young: A new GOP budget scheme would force the next generation to work longer and guarantee them an unlivable planet.
Remember Republican State Rep. Tricia Cotham of North Carolina, the candidate who ran as a Democrat and abortion-rights defender in a safe Democratic district and then changed to Republican once in office in order to get a severe anti-abortion law passed with veto-proof majority? She’s now also trying to rewrite her life history. Whether she was lying then or now doesn’t really matter. The reality is that she was a de facto stealth candidate, and you’re going to see more like her since it worked so well here.
The GOP are moving to restrict abortion access nationally via the 2024 budget, inserting rollbacks to abortion pill into the budget, because of course they are, and if you don’t like it, fuck you, they know better, now shut up missy and get to pumping out your white rapist’s babies.
Republican Fascist DeSantis pledges to send the Justice Department after Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programmes across the country, using the Justice Department against civil rights. His use of line-item vetoes in racially-targeted ways echoes this intent clearly. Meanwhile, Trump plans to use the Justice Department against his enemies more aggressively next time, if elected. They both mean it.
This speaks for itself: Ohio prisons allow Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ but ban books about penal reform.
Conspiracy-theorist anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. also used to spread HIV-AIDS conspiracy theories claiming that HIV didn’t cause AIDS, the “gay lifestyle” did, and claimed that Fauci declaring it an infection disease (the reality) allowed him to “take control” of it as part of a power grab. This is of course decades-old fundamentalist anti-LGBT bullshit, and he’s being propped up by fash activists with money against Biden in the Democratic primaries.
Sceptical Inquirer has a medium-length read updating the current state of what has been called “Creationism,” “Biblical Science,” “Intelligent Design,” and so on – the grandparent of all the attempts by the right to destroy science and rational thought. While this specific line of undermining has been far lower key as of late than others – see above for vaccine denialism, as one example – it’s been a driving force for decades and has not gone away, so take a moment and get caught up.
Professional misogynist and public propagandist of incel and other virulent hate material Andrew Tate has been formally charged with rape and human trafficking. Some of Elon’s favourite fascist friends on Twitter have been protesting about it, but sucks to be all of them, because this isn’t Twitter.
A follow-up: the school board in Utah that was required by Republican law to take the Bible out of school libraries due to vulgar, violent, etc., content upon parent complaint has put it back into libraries. This was inevitable and they do not care about any hypocrisies.
Finally, I include this today because the right is – as always – lying about it: The US murder rate is down an 12% year-to-date, based on 90 cities that have released data. It would be the fastest decline in recorded history if maintained.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
