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being-kindrad · 20 days

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Interest in a dedicated feminist online forum community?

What are women's thoughts here on an online feminist community, a forum (like phpBB for example), for discussions? Would enough women would be interested in this? Forum software has decreased in popularity, but is still used for niche subjects/communities. (Some real life examples: https://www.reef2reef.com/ and https://www.gardenstew.com/) I'm mildly interested in trying to set up forum software as a technical learning experience, but only if there would actually be interest in using it (because it would cost me money to buy a domain name and web hosting).

It seems like there are so little dedicated spaces for feminist women on the internet. Most feminist communities seem to be libfem, and/or plainly taken over by men (if they purport TWAW, then they definitely are taken over by men). Tumblr has a radfem community, but it's still part of a larger social media system which involves many TRAs (some of which harass radfems), and men, porn bots, etc. Ovarit is useful for consciousness raising, but it seems to me like the Overton window has been shifting towards more conservative takes than feminist ones, especially in how there appears to be more anti-trans takes on there than actual gender critical feminist ones, which kind of makes me bored of it. And so again, radfems are then stuck in a larger community, this one of conservative/non-feminist women, who are there because they dislike trans people and appear to have found a space where they can safely make fun of them and not actually to discuss gender critical content (the recent realization that I even need to be defending common feminist stances like women's right to abortion on Ovarit has been demoralizing). I basically want to make a place where feminist women can just take a break and not have to constantly be building up from ground zero, defending against TRA insults, arguing against conservative/right-wing rhetoric, and instead maybe discussing feminist topics or just chilling in some hobby forum sections or something, idk.

I was initially going to call it a "radfem community" but I see no reason for the community to not include women who identify more with other branches of feminism like gender critical feminism, black feminism, lesbian feminism, eco feminism, socialist feminism, intersectional feminism (I mean the original definition of intersectional, not "tumblrized intersectionality"), etc.

I think there would need to be some "gatekeeping" involved so that it doesn't end up filling up with neoliberal feminists ["choice feminism"] or "prolife feminists" [an oxymoron], so that would need to be figured out. This community would not be meant to be a place for feminists to have to hand-hold people and slowly explain over and over how gender is sexist, or how porn is misogyny, or how abortion is a part of women's healthcare and bodily autonomy. This place would be meant to be a solace from that. Imagine trying to participate in a Calculus class where people who haven't even taken algebra are constantly joining the class and asking "why the fuck are there letters with numbers in math now?!" The class would barely, if at all, progress. Likewise, this community would be for feminist women to have an agreed upon basis for basic feminist stances, and move forward with deeper analysis. There are plenty of other online communities for women who are new to (non-lib)feminism to learn about how "but I like wearing makeup, it's art" isn't a feminist stance. We don't need to keep spending finite energy hashing this out, we need to be able to move forward.

My basic thoughts so far:

It would be women-only. (But there would be no vetting that would involve requiring to share personal information, it would just be an honor system.)

I think there must be some basic feminist stances that members need to agree on, otherwise the community might as well just be a part of any mainstream social media platform. I would assume a decent starting point would be: gender critical, pro-choice, anti-prostitution, anti-pornography, anti-surrogacy, anti-beauty culture?

Some category ideas I have so far: feminism (with maybe different sections for the branches of feminism, and sections for discussing feminist books/websites/documentaries); politics (with sections for discussing or sharing news about feminist political topics like reproductive rights [for abortion, birth control, bodily autonomy], gender critical, surrogacy, prostitution, etc.; spirituality (for those who are into Wicca, or other spiritual beliefs); casual (for general chat, hobbies, music, arts, etc.)

So yeah, what are women's thoughts on here about this?

Would this type of community interest you?

What would you want to see in it?

What would you not want to see in it?

Has this been done before and I am just oblivious? (I tried searching for "feminist forum," but nothing relevant seem to come up.)

Am I naive and this is not going to work?

Please let me know! I welcome any opinions. Thank you. 💜

#radblr #radical feminists please touch #radical feminists do touch #radical feminist community #radical feminist safe #radical feminists do interact #terfblr #terfsafe

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swp2023 · 20 days

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SWP Account

TW: transphobia, transmisogyny, SA, gaslighting/manipulation, general trotskyist bullshit

I first joined the SWP as a minor during the Honor Oak demos. When I attended one of the protests for the first time in May 2023, I knew fairly little about the British left and its intricacies. I joined at a time when I was incredibly vulnerable - I was an isolated trans teenager with a poor home and school life and few friends. I initially joined SUTR but was soon syphoned into the SWP and became a formal member around 1.5 months in. After four months I was lucky enough to meet people outside of the party, find my own systems of support, and start drifting away from them. At the beginning of October I formally left the party and rescinded my membership. I essentially speedran the process. I know that I am not the first to come forward about their experiences in the SWP, and that my account won’t be as horrific or traumatic as others’. But the more I sit with the memories of spending time in the SWP, the more frustrated and angry I become with how poorly I was treated, especially as a trans teenager. A while ago, I compiled a list of everything I could recall about being in the party and its impact on me, and I’m hoping sharing it will draw more awareness to the extent that the Socialist Workers Party hasn’t changed and actively poses a threat to young activists.

Structural/Functional Problems

Most people are aware of the SWP’s overt focus on recruitment, but within the party it’s even worse than it looks from the outside. Recruitment processes target those new to activism, especially young women and queer people. On multiple occasions, SWP leaflets were purposefully plastered outside my secondary school and other schools in the area. Once you’re involved with the party in any capacity, there’s a lot of pressure to ensure you formally join - if you’re not a member, within a month you’ll have membership papers being shoved in your face constantly. The worst instance of this was when I attended Marxism over the summer while I was in quite a bad place. I ended up having a breakdown in a corner of SOAS, and someone walked up to me when I was visibly upset and somehow tried to use it as a recruitment opportunity. Although far from the worst of their faults, the recruitment means the party is incredibly stagnant and frankly, boring. The same meetings repeat over and over, the same discussions are held, conferences are repetitive and demos are attended only for the purposes of recruiting or selling papers.

The general attitude towards other, non-SWP activists is extremely condescending and patronising, especially in both formal and informal discussions of anarchism and grassroots organising. I consistently heard anarchists being reduced to a violent, ineffective group of rag tag young un’s who don’t know what they’re doing. I think it must have been in their handbook to describe anarchism as “grabbing 15 of your mates and beating up fascists”, because I heard that exact phrasing used at least twice. The belief that the SWP’s unwritten values and structures are the only correct ones runs deeply, and since I was a teenager my age was often used to dismiss my actions as immature or naive. I was told I was being pretentious for wearing a mask at demos - I’d been doxxed before and was looking out for my safety but apparently this made me appear “hostile and unwelcoming”.

I can’t emphasise enough how much everyone in the SWP is treated as disposable unless you work for them. They don’t care about arrestee support, accountability, or building safe environments. I was a trans teenager so I looked good for their party, but ultimately they couldn’t care less what I had to say and I was often shut down or told my ideas weren’t appropriate. The SWP consistently seizes the politics of individuals’ marginalised identities to create a more appealing facade, while also discarding the same individuals as soon as they are no longer politically convenient.

Lack of Accountability

From the beginning, it was clear that there were zero helpful routes for complaints or conflict resolution. I asked multiple times at meetings what their explicit process was for dealing with internal issues, and at best I got an off-hand mention to the central committee. Mostly I was shut down right away and told it wasn’t the right time to ask - a better time never became apparent. There is zero transparency and it didn’t take me too long to realise that I had no faith in anyone in the party to protect me or listen to me if something went south. You’ll hear them talk about their “disputes committee”, which was established as a response to the Comrade Delta coverup, but despite all the time I spent in the party I still have no idea who’s in this committee, how to access it, or whether it’s ever successfully resolved a dispute.

No one talks about the coverup. This isn’t too surprising but every time I tried to ask about it, I was met with the same awkward dismissal. It’s creepy how everyone who’s been in the party for a while feeds you the same “that was a long time ago and we’ve changed and learned from it” schtick. Even a month in the party would be enough to show you that this isn’t true. The process of covering up the reputational damage from Comrade Delta is very much still active and the more time you spend around them, the more subtly intrinsic it becomes to everything you do. I was walking with a paid member of the SWP and watched him slap an SWP “trans rights now” sticker over one that read “the SWP protects rapists in their party”. No organisation that’s suitably addressed its failures should feel so threatened by the reminder of them.

More widely, there are never any internal criticisms of the party. When I was in, I was in deep. I went to their weekly meetings, their organising meetings, their conferences - I went to fucking marxism. Not once did I hear a natural critique arise, there’s a complete lack of self awareness. It isn’t an environment where you’d feel comfortable expressing criticisms, and this has led to an echo chamber of sorts in which many members are incapable of conceiving themselves or the party as imperfect. It’s a dangerous amount of self-assuredness and this attitude allows for a culture of racism and bigotry to underlie the party’s supposedly anti-racist fronts - microaggressions don’t get called out, racism gets excused especially in the predominantly white spaces. There aren’t any attempts to actually foster anti-racist mindsets or incorporate it into how they organise, it’s largely just for external presentation and again, recruitment.

Any issues that do get brought up are met with absurd amounts of gaslighting and guilt tripping. The party runs on guilt and censorship. If you ask too many questions people start acting cold or frame your comment as needlessly confrontational. Even now, I still struggle to process a lot of what happened because I was constantly told it was normal, that I was overreacting, that because I was relatively new to activism I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Transphobia and Transmisogyny

As I’ve mentioned, my main involvement in the party was based around my identity as a trans youth, but there was very little regard for my safety as it pertained to this. For instance, without any warning a parcel was sent to my house with my chosen name on it. This put me in a bad situation because my parents hated the thought of me going by another name, I had to lie and endure my home life temporarily getting much worse. When I brought it up with someone I trusted in the SWP, it was dismissed without so much as an apology for putting me in a dangerous situation. I spoke to another trans ex-member about this and they told me about going through the exact same thing a few years back - the SWP doesn’t learn or change.

There is consistent, blatant transphobia in the party. There were too many occurrences to list out here, but it’s so profoundly endemic to the party that I spent a considerable amount of time feeling uncomfortable and objectified. I had someone tell me they wouldn’t use they/them pronouns because “it’s too hard”. I was constantly misgendered, and although it was sometimes a careless mistake it was often very clearly intentionally weaponised. Almost every time it happened there was someone in the room who knew me well enough to know what my pronouns were and correct the mistake, but that never happened. No one stood up for me.

There’s explicit transmisogyny. In addition to being generally misgendered and sexualised, trans women are often referred to with they/them pronouns and as a “person”. There was a trans woman quite deeply involved with the party who I spoke with a few times, she often got dismissed when she contributed at conferences and one time, a cis dude fully stood up and started talking over her while the chair of the meeting allowed it to happen.

Contrary to what the SWP would have you believe, there just aren’t many trans people in the party. Certainly not a proportionate amount when compared to the wider left, which isn’t surprising once you’ve experienced being trans in there - there aren’t any attempts to make you feel any less isolated, ostracised, or used. There are, however, plenty of cis people who think that just because they’ve attended a trans demo or two they know more about the experiences of trans people than we do.

I want to note that all the transphobia I experienced and witnessed took place while London branches of the SWP were spending their time at HO trans rights demos, handing out their placards, using it for recruitment, and taking credit for the work that was mainly being done by grassroots activists. Transphobia is just one example of how hollow their ideals are.

Non-Existent Consent Culture

When I was sitting in a conference at SOAS, a man I didn’t know sat next to me and ran his hand down my back while we were talking, and then repeatedly tried to scoot closer to me when I moved away.

A different time, someone tried to get me to sit close enough to them so that our legs were touching.

Both of these incidents were extremely creepy and uncomfortable, and just to be clear: I was visibly/openly a minor during both.

In general, physical contact is heavily normalised and sort of expected. There was always an expectation that you’d hug people, that you were okay with being patted on the back or having an arm around your shoulders or whatever. I always felt uncomfortable with this and although some people were fine with it and people’s intentions weren’t always harmful, there’s just generally zero consent culture and most times I wouldn’t have felt comfortable saying no.

When I was in a transition phase of technically still being in the SWP but trying to spend as little time around them as possible, one of them came up to me at a demo (where, for the record, I’d just been through quite a traumatic incident - not that it should have to matter) and tried to pull me in for a hug without asking. When I flinched away without saying anything other than “hi”, she later commented to a comrade that I was being rude. The persistent entitlement to my body and my consent was disgusting.

Exit Process

When I started spending less time with the SWP and more time with anarchists and antifascists, they were semi-aware of it so I got lots of calls and messages purporting to be “checking in”, but the undertone was very much “why aren’t you standing with us at demos anymore”. No one ever checked in on me when I was properly in the party. One of the calls was particularly lengthy and pretty much summed up to “we feel like you’re drifting away, we really miss you and you’re our comrade” - more guilt tripping. The feeling that I was trapped because I was constantly being contacted and approached at demos was bad enough to make me actively suicidal.

The final breaking point for me was a conversation that happened in the South London SWP group chat that had reached an intolerable level of censorship. Someone, very politely, complained about how the branch had made a commitment to doing hybrid meetings but consistently struggled to actually have working tech/mics/etc. They also suggested a possible solution. They got shut down with a curt “our main focus has to be in the room rather than on our phones”, a comment that rightfully got called out as being explicitly ableist, especially since the following messages implied that attending online was insufficient or lazy. This conversation was concerning enough, but the original person then got told they “sounded harsh” (they didn’t - I’ve seen more lively conversations in my extended family’s whatsapp group), and was explicitly told to delete their message. I finally had a good answer to what happens when you criticise anything the SWP does, and this was a fairly mild criticism too.

Then, a comrade I know very gently expressed their support for the original person - literally just said that they agreed with them and didn’t think they were being harsh. This comrade (also a teen) got two separate DMs telling them that they “misunderstood” what was happening and to delete their message as well. The hierarchies and power structures within the SWP are so obviously corrupt, and this whole incident just made that much more clear to me.

I sent a final message on this chat, calling out the patterns of behaviour I’d noticed and advising people to do what I had - take a step back and look at who actually gets listened to in the party, at the corruption that’s so deeply rooted in it. Then I left that chat. The next day I was removed from every SWP-related chat I was in - fine by me, I was done. I did get sent one DM telling me that I had misread the situation, was overreacting, etc. It was incredibly infantilizing and blamed the fact that I’d been associating with other people as the reason I’d formed these opinions - clearly the SWP was reliant on my isolation.

I was out of the chats but I did get the aforementioned comrade to update me on the aftermath, which was mostly damage control. The upcoming conference got plugged, people talked shit about me for being immature and overreacting. I’ve got screenshots of this incident in particular but I honestly don’t think they’re too worth sharing. I firmly believe that painting the bigger picture of the party and how and why it operates like this is much more important.

I’d say I made it very clear that I wanted nothing more to do with the SWP and its members, but to this day I still have issues with them at demos. I’ve had people come up to me and try to touch me in various ways - hugs, back pats, etc - that I’ve expressed I’m uncomfortable with. There’s someone who winks at me. The general attitude towards me seems to be either glaring me down when I walk by (I don’t mind this honestly), or being overly nice as if I hadn’t been groomed into their cult (this is considerably worse).

I think this summarises it pretty well. It’s not everything - some stuff is hard to talk about, some would involve revealing info about me that I need to be private, and honestly my brain has defensively blocked out a lot of the time I spent around the SWP, so I’m still remembering stuff out of the blue. But please listen to me, listen to everyone else who’s been through their pipeline and made it out the other end. They aren’t just an annoyance with boring placards, they hurt people. They prey on young queers and women and don’t actually give a shit about anyone. Kick them out of your demos, kick them out of your circles, and also - try to get people out! I owe my life to the anarchists who were like “hey, we see you’re in there and you probably don’t want to be - you can hang out with us”. Most of the people the SWP recruits are sucked in before they have a chance to form other networks, and it’s hard as fuck to leave a party when all your activism takes place within it and you’ve got nowhere else to go. The Socialist Workers Party is broken beyond repair and needs to be dissolved, and I would encourage its current membership to resign. Thanks for reading.

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trickricksblog08 · 8 months

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WEF says it's time to legalize sex and marriage with animals to promote inclusiveness.

Now globalists are calling for people to have the right to marry animals.

Spain is the first country to pass new legislation that is taking big steps toward this initiative. This is not surprising given that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is an avowed socialist and a participant in the agenda of the World Economic Forum. In the socialist government of Sánchez, the law on bestiality was promoted by WEF member Ion Belarra Urteaga, Minister of Social Rights and Agenda 2030.

If that's not alarming enough, the WEF has ordered the mainstream media to start promoting the narrative in other countries.

"According to them, bestiality is just another spectrum of trans pride. It's no longer a slippery slope. We're in a free fall off a cliff. The world elite is determined to destroy our civilization and everything we have built as a society."

#fucking satanist #enough is fucking enough #when you know you know #nothing can stop what is coming

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morwynlefay · 23 days

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trans day of visibility 31/03/2024, Medborgarplatsen Stockholm. a lot happened, let me explain

several weeks ago i sent in a request for a permit for a TDoV demonstration on the 31st of march on behalf of trans hälsoplattformen , initially at Mynttorget but due to construction on site it had to be changed and so i chose Medborgarplatsen. weeks go by and it’s exactly one week left until the protest and i learn that a big football match is taking place right before the protest and that a lot of fans plan on being there afterwards. i try to get the times changed but my request is denied and we did not have the time to request a fully new permit and we reassured that there will be security on sight that is aware of our presence so we let it.

the day of the protest rolls around and i get there and start setting up our stuff, but there is no security in sight…

after being interviewed by the socialist paper Offensiv i notice a man aggressively talking at one of our volunteers so i walk over to check on the situation and so does my father snd mother. the man who was drunk gets increasingly more aggressive and so i ask him to leave at which he decides to get up and stand a cm away from my face asking if i want to fight, i push him away and he launches his hand hard towards my throat

fully intent on grabbing onto me, he is then pushed away by my father and he kicks our table and speaker into our volunteer that i mentioned before, he continues fighting my father until eventually he is thrown on the ground at which point his friends arrive and start pulling him away, he then throws his food at us before getting fully dragged away. no security in sight…

my mother then sees a police car on the street and walks over and tells them to come over to us. here it is revealed that they had no idea that there was even going to be a protest there.

at this point two christian fundamentalist 14 year olds come over and start arguing with us about brainwashing and sin and all kinds of stuff for one snd a half hours!

some men walk by and take some pictures and call us faggots, and as they approach us the police who are here at this point comes and leads them away.

eventually the cops drove away and we hold some little speeches and we continued cautiously, dancing to the music.

some drunk people walked by and through our trans flag at which they yell at us to get our “faggot flag” away from them and then they spit towards us.

my mom walks back to the cops and tells them to fucking come back, which they do.

it is now the dnd of the protest and we pack up to the sound of Solidarity forever and we go home

the pride flag i was carrying throughout was one that was burned last year by people who entered our yard while we where out of the country, tore it down, ripped it and then burned it.

whenever you think this type of stuff doesn’t happen in sweden, remember this story. the public was violently transphobic towards us and the police fully neglected us.

#transgender #trans #transfem #transmasc #trans pride #transgender day of visibility #trans day of visibility #tdov #tdov 2024 #transphobes #tw assault #ACAB #all cops are bastards #queer #protest #activist #stockholm #sweden

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 months

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By: Bernard Lane

By: Mar 5, 2024

The gist

The puberty blocker-driven “Dutch protocol” of medicalised gender change—administered to ever more teenagers around the world—appears more likely to come under serious scrutiny in its home country.

The parliament of the Netherlands has now passed two motions this year calling for a closer look.

On February 27, with a majority of 101 out of 150 votes, the parliament approved a motion asking the government to commission research.

This would compare the outcomes of the Dutch protocol with the results of new, more cautious treatment policies in other European countries, such as Sweden, where non-invasive psychosocial techniques are now favoured as first-line responses to gender distress.

On January 25, the parliament approved a motion—proposed by Diederik van Dijk of the conservative Calvinist Reformed Political Party (SGP)—that the government seek advice from the independent Health Council on the medico-legal implications of medicalised gender change for minors.

Both motions were opposed by the temporary Health Minister of the Dutch administration in caretaker mode, but cabinet negotiations are under way and expected to produce a new, more responsive government reflecting the success of centre-right and populist-right parties in last November’s elections.

“I think this [second motion] will exert extra pressure on the new minister of health to initiate a review of the puberty blockers in one way or another, be it the Health Council or another institution,” said media sociologist Dr Peter Vasterman, who has been calling for independent evaluation of gender medicine in the Netherlands before any expansion of capacity.

“We don’t have a new government yet, but it will probably be a right-wing variant. So, there is a good chance that this topic will finally be put on the agenda and a review will be conducted of current trans care.”

The detail

Parties supporting the February 27 motion included the centre-right New Social Contract (NSC) party of Peter Omtzigt, the right-wing populist Party For Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders and the populist-right Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) of Caroline van der Plas. The motion was spon.sored by NSC member Dr Rosanne Hertzberger.

Among those opposed to the motion were GreenLeft-Labor (GL-PvdA), the social-liberal party D66, the Socialist Party (SP) and the Christian Democratic Appeal party (CDA).

The objections raised by Health Minister Pia Dijkstra, of the D66 party, included privacy risk, the difficulty of the research proposed, the redundant nature of the research proposed, and the ethics of using randomised clinical trials (something not proposed by anyone).

Dr Hanneke Kouwenberg, a Dutch radiologist and nuclear physician who has followed the gender clinic debate, said she was angry at the denial and hypocrisy of parties seeking to block the motion.

“As often happens, opponents of a more fundamental scientific approach in this debate do not substantiate their position with arguments, but rather with emotional blackmail,” she told GCN.

“It is deeply disturbing that research aiming to examine whether Dutch gender care has better outcomes than other countries, which indeed might substantiate the claim of successful selection of treatment candidates, is being vilified by parties perceived as ‘progressive’ and ‘left wing,’ whilst the minister goes so far as to call such research ‘unethical’—which is especially bizarre since no intervention is needed in the proposed research.

“It once again shows how much the parties resisting [inquiries] do not have the interests of minors, nor quality of care, in mind, but consciously and repeatedly close their eyes to a practice whose benefits have never been substantiated but whose drawbacks are increasingly coming to light.”

“More and more teenage girls are choosing to change their gender around the world. In Quebec, the health system responds very quickly to their requests for medical transition by prescribing blockers, testosterone and mastectomies. These young girls often present with several mental health problems and many wonder if we give ourselves the time to evaluate everything that is going on in their heads. Is it normal for a 14-year-old girl to get a testosterone prescription within minutes? And what happens when they change their minds?”—Documentary, the French-language arm of Canada’s CBC public broadcaster, 29 February 2024

Watch the ethics

A spokeswoman for the group Genderpunt, which advocates for more open debate about gender medicalisation, said the Dr Hertzberger’s February motion with its focus on comparative outcomes might seem more palatable to government, although she suggested that if the job were given to Dutch gender researchers it might be undermined by “gender-affirming” groupthink.

She said it was possible that the ethical and medico-legal analysis called for by Mr van Dijk’s January motion would prove “far more interesting.”

“Is it ethically justified to take the risk that a minor will, in the long-term, regret gender-affirming care and have to deal with the consequences for the rest of his life? How is this child protected by national and international law (like the Convention on the Rights of the Child).”

Science: egalitarian or authoritarian?

Before her recent election to parliament Dr Hertzberger was a microbiologist studying the little understood bacterial makeup of the human vagina, a field with implications for the reproductive and sexual health of women.

“For instance, it is unclear why humans are the only apes with this high acidity and dominance of Lactobacillus whereas these characteristics are absent in other primates. Why is the human vagina such a good host for these specific bacteria?” she says on her website.

She carried out her research thanks to the hospitality of a lab at the VU University Amsterdam, which is also home to the gender centre whose Dutch protocol for “juvenile transsexuals” culminates for males in castration and the surgical creation of a pseudo vagina.

Dr Hertzberger has practised “citizen science” with the rationale of engaging ordinary women in research to develop a probiotic to modify the vaginal microbiome. She is also an advocate for “open science” whereby all findings, even negative results, are made public.

“The general aim is to increase scientific efficiency by sharing as much information as possible with other scientists and the general public,” she says.

She has also reflected on the role of science in society, publishing an essay with the title The great nothing: Why we have too much faith in science. Her thesis is that science is muscling into the moral vacuum left by organised religion.

“I see a new generation of Western secular policymakers, politicians, administrators, thinkers, writers, entrepreneurs and leaders who no longer see science as a tool for generating knowledge, but as a new infallible authority; an all-knowing judge who decides what is good and what is evil,” she writes.

Video: Dutch MPs debate gender clinics

youtube

Vision necessary

Dr Hertzberger’s motion was put in the context of the international scientific debate over youth gender dysphoria and reports to the Dutch parliament acknowledging missing data and a “lack of visibility” into local gender patients.

A familiar narrative in the Netherlands has been that the pioneering Dutch protocol was a source of pride and that any concerns arose from its less careful application in other countries. However, the rigour and ethics of the key Dutch studies establishing the protocol have recently come under much sharper scrutiny both in the Netherlands and internationally.

During the February 15 debate of motions proposed by her and other MPs, Dr Hertzberger said: “The decision to treat these children with puberty inhibitors is taken at an early age, 14 to 15 years on average, during a period of major hormonal, physical and mental changes, based on symptoms that are not objectively quantifiable.”

“We have seen in recent years how other European countries have become more reluctant to treat minors according to the so-called ‘Dutch protocol’. More importantly, the reports before us today show a lack of visibility [into Dutch gender patients].

“We see in Sweden, for example, that they have temporarily really stopped puberty inhibitors altogether and only allowed them in experimental settings. We are very curious to see what happens to that cohort of patients in the end and how their wellbeing goes.

“This [shift to more cautious treatment] comes not only from politics and not only from society, but also from healthcare itself and from science.”

“The Endocrine Society (ES) is updating its clinical practice guidelines on ‘gender-affirming care.’ ES, however, appears to be putting its thumb on the scale in favor of medical interventions by appointing experts with serious conflicts of interest to its guideline-development group, ignoring its own standards for how to write trustworthy medical recommendations, and trying to keep the process hidden from the public.”—Leor Sapir, news article, City Journal, 27 February 2024

“It’s noteworthy that most of the authors of ES’s 2017 clinical practice guidelines were also big names at WPATH [the World Professional Association for Transgender Health]. Two—Peggy Cohen-Kettenis and Louis Gooren—were Dutch pioneers of pediatric gender medicine. Despite the perception that ES and WPATH are separate entities, and that recommendations on behalf of ‘gender-affirming care’ are not just made by trans advocacy groups but also by run-of-the-mill U.S. medical groups, the truth is that WPATH members used ES as a guise for embedding hormonal interventions as an accepted standard of care in the United States.”

Why the data drama?

Aside from her successful motion, Dr Hertzberger put up another which did not go forward. This sought data to compare people diagnosed and treated in Dutch gender clinics with those on waiting lists.

She noted that the patient group seen today—dominated by teenage females—was different from the past group of mostly males with gender distress stretching back to early childhood.

“I am really puzzled by this [resistance of some MPs to requests for more data], because there is a report [to parliament] that says there is too little visibility into this group [of patients] and the medicalisation of this growing group of children and adults,” she said.

“We are particularly interested in the children. We see major changes in recent years in European countries that have changed their standard of care [Finland was first in 2020, followed by Sweden in 2022 and England issued a new, cautious draft treatment policy in 2023—GCN.]

“Surely that is a goldmine of data which, by the way, we can easily collect in anonymised and aggregated form, as we so often do.

“I really want to ask [Health Minister Dijkstra] why she does not want more data on this important development [in gender dysphoria], which also has medical-ethical consequences,” Dr Hertzberger said.

Dr Vasterman told GCN that it was quite reasonable to request current data on patient registrations, diagnoses and treatment at Dutch gender clinics.

“It is unacceptable that no new data has been provided for years now, which makes it very difficult to evaluate current trends, such as the shift in sex ratio [of patients] and the rise of non-binary identity among young girls.

“These developments have huge impact on the needs for trans care but without data it is difficult to develop new a policy.”

“Despite claims that blocking puberty gives time for decision-making, no one can answer the obvious: How is it possible for a child to discover ‘This isn’t as bad as I feared,’ when they are blocked from experiencing it? Fears are resolved by confronting them, not avoiding them.”—Sexual behaviour scientist Dr James M Cantor, tweet, 3 March 2024

Not our problem

Dr Kouwenberg said that “Dutch politics has long acted as if there were no problem with the Dutch protocol,” despite last October’s breakthrough Zembla documentary on the flawed design of key studies, critiques in international journals and the shift to caution of progressive European countries.

“And if there were a problem, it was invariably stated that the problems abroad were due to a poor selection of candidates for puberty blockers, that in the Netherlands, work was being done very carefully, and only children who were actually ‘trans’ [those whose gender dysphoria would not desist with the passage of time] would be treated with puberty blockers. The concerns of critics were always dismissed as moral panic and fear-mongering,” Dr Kouwenberg told GCN.

“It comes as no surprise that there is actually no test, let alone a validated one, to distinguish desisters from persisters prospectively, and Dutch medicine does not possess crystal balls to predict the future. Nevertheless, the gender clinic in Amsterdam [which developed the Dutch protocol] and the politics associated with it have long been able to stave off further investigation with statements like these.”

“With this motion [by Dr Hertzberger], it seems that finally an end has come to a long period of denial of the altered reality at the gender clinics and of the criticism of the approach for gender dysphoric youth.”

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pebblysand · 2 months

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on violent threats

context: see @photomatt 's page

i have said this before but i will say it again: there is a small but very vocal crowd of people on the left who are currently choosing violent methods of protest, including sending online death threats to people they believe to be harmful to an identity/fight they themselves support. this is particularly the case (because i think it's important to state it clearly) with trans rights activism. and, i think it's important to talk about it.

now, as a disclaimer, i support trans rights. because i have more than two brain cells. trans women are women and trans men are men. this isn't the issue. as another disclaimer, it is evident that violent threats are illegal in many jurisdictions, and that many online platforms choose to moderate hate speech to the best of their ability. this is also not the issue. what i'm writing about below is what is morally and ethically justified, rather than legal or illegal. i'm also not writing about online content moderation because while i'd have loads to say about this, it is beyond the scope of this post.

now, as you can probably see from his page, the CEO of tumblr is in the middle of a shit storm for suspending the account of a trans woman who, amongst other things, made public statements falling under tumblr's content moderation policies, namely saying she hoped he'd die in a car crash. i think we can all agree that this isn't nice. on a personal level, having been on the receiving end of similar death threats/posts last may (not that tumblr did anything about it), i know first-hand how damaging those can be for the person on the receiving end. it makes you paranoid. it is scary and hurtful. i also know that simply by posting this post, i am further potentially exposing myself to a resurgence of these. but i also think the below needs to be said and the following question deserves to be answered:

is it right for trans activists to be sending online death threats to people they perceive as being transphobes right now?

i think there is a tendency, for people on the left who consider themselves 'educated' and 'not crazy' to dismiss this extremist fringe. we want to believe we are 'better than this' and that even if violence and threats of violence is a method routinely used by the right, we shouldn't ever lower ourselves to their level. we believe that violence is never right, and we see it as something that will ultimately hurt the causes that we support. i've already talked about this in another post but back in the middle of my own shit storm, i was very hesitant to even say where all the hate i was receiving was coming from. i responded to some of the anons, but initially deleted all the ones i got which were explicitly referencing trans rights. i kept thinking that if i said anything, it would inevitably hurt the cause and reflect badly on all of those who fight for trans rights and acceptance online. because i think we all know that the left is held to a much higher standard than the right in terms of 'distancing' itself from the violence of its most extreme members. and that one anon can be enough to discredit the whole cause in the eyes of some people.

having however reflected on that, i think it's important to acknowledge that, despite what a lot of people on the left seem to think, this use of violence by the most extreme fringes of the left is actually not new. violence and violent threats aren't and have never been the monopoly of the right. historically, many social fights and injustices have been fought and won in blood by forces considered 'left' wing. i have also written about this. at the time, these forces were more focused on things like racial justice, territorial independence, and economic (socialist and communist) struggles, but they have existed, dating as far back as the french revolution. there is a very legitimate argument to be made that historically, violence is necessary to obtain social progress. this debate actually isn't as easy as simply saying: 'violence is never okay.'

the problem with anonymous online death threats, though, is that they aren't designed to fight for a cause, they are designed to scare the victim and obtain revenge. in war, there is a very real difference between dropping a bomb on a site filled with military supplies and killing ten soldiers as a collateral, and dropping a bomb on a family home and making the same number of victims. one is advancing your position in a conflict, the other scares a population into compliance.

with online death threats, it's all very similar. looking at the case at hand, which is trans activism, i don't believe that a single trans activist sending death threats to someone like JKR believes they will change her mind. what they want is to make her feel the way they feel, as trans people who are currently being threatened by transphobes. it is an understandable urge, a human urge, but it is the definition of wanting revenge and to incite fear.

additionally, with online death threats, there is the added factor that the victim of that fear, the person on the receiving end of the threat, is encouraged not to ever respond and/or talk/do anything about it. allegedly, because responding to the anon or retweeting the threat or interacting with it in any way only gives the threat more of an audience and 'attention.' secondly, if the person receiving the threat is famous/rich, because there is a power imbalance in terms of social media clout between the sender of the threat and the receiver. the typical example of this is, again, trans activists sending hate to JKR, her retweeting it, then transphobes going in to harass these accounts as a consequence. i've seen a lot of people argue that celebrities shouldn't be allowed to reblog tweet these threats because they are being unfair to the senders.

aside from the fact that arguing the latter point is absolutely INSANE and that if you're out there playing keyword warrior sending death threats to people you don't know you should be ready to face the consequences of your actions, this culture of secrecy only isolates victims of online hate more. when i ended up on the receiving end of death threats from trans activists myself and i responded to these threats, i received a lot of messages from my friends and followers expressing support. that made me feel less lonely. had i just deleted these from my inbox, i'd have been the only on seeing these, and thus not only scared but also lonely. this is why i am so opposed to this culture of secrecy.

but coming back to the original question, i believe that the problem with violent techniques we're seeing at the moment isn't that they're violent, it is the reason why violence is being invoked. when violence is only aimed at inciting fear and obtaining revenge, historically, there is evidence to the fact that that kind of violence does not work. this method has been trialled and tested by every authoritative government ever, and every single one has eventually failed. you always reach a point where fear isn't enough to prevent a rebellion. and the left loves this idea when it comes to uprisings and revolutions, but it forgets it as soon as it is trying to push for progress. because let me tell you: if you think you can scare transphobes into compliance, you are mistaken. just like they are mistaken when they think they can scare you into compliance.

because the issue is that fear does not breed social progress, it breeds hatred. and, as someone who actually still follows JKR on socials, i have seen this first-hand. the level of hatred she exhibits now towards trans people is on a completely different level, compared to the one expressed in the original essay in 2020. and this is because a) she in turn now feels the very human urge to get revenge and hurt those who hurt her but also b) being on the receiving end of such violence can actually give you the illusion that you are in the right. that you are the one being silenced and oppressed. it is undeniable that she has radicalised herself in her positions in the past four years, and i would argue that is in direct correlation to the amount of hate she has received.

and, putting the JKR issue to the side for a minute, it is also important to note that objectively speaking, these people sending death threats and pretending to be trans activists are fucking stupid. there, i've said it. because, even if you do want to scare people, even if you do believe in inciting fear, what the fuck are you doing sending death threats to Matt Mullenweg?! he's a tech CEO! have you seen the people who work in tech?? i'd say half his employees are LGBTQIA+. of course, he's not transphobic. just like i obviously am not. what are you doing sending death threats to ME for?! i'm a millennial idiot writing a semi-popular harry potter fanfiction on the internet - is this really who you're fighting this big social justice fight against? the level of cowardice disguised as courage is staggering. the merits of sending death threats to JKR are somewhat arguable given her level of power and funding and the fact that she is openly transphobic, but some of the targets these people pick make me think that they do not have two brain cells.

so, to answer the main question: is it right for trans activists to be sending online death threats to people they perceive as being transphobes right now? it's obviously not, but not because violence is wrong, but because this particular type of violence is stupid. and i think these people know this. because i think they're not really trans activists. they're people who are actively trying to sabotage the trans cause. they are people who don't see violence as a means to an end but as a thrill in itself. they aren't the climate activists who break into nuclear power plants to show their vulnerabilities and neutralise a couple of police officers to do it. they are the people who stay at the back of demonstrations with the intent of breaking everything, not to make a point but just for the hell of it. and there is also a very real possibility that these people are actually transphobes trying to make real trans activists look insane.

and this is what matters in all of this.

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warsofasoiaf · 2 years

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”The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact happened because Stalin was forced to by the allies. They rebuked any attempts at an alliance with the soviets. Stalin simply made the pact because he needed time to prepare for the german invasion!”. This view is often parroted by socialists and their ilk. Is this accurate?

As a point of order, I must note that this line is also fiercely promoted by Putin's Russia along with other Soviet Union myths regarding the Second World War, so this is a multi-partisan historical lie. Anyway, this is false for a number of reasons.

First, and simplest, Stalin wasn't forced to do anything. He could have prepared, raised defensive readiness, and manned the Stalin Line. He could have moved troops from the south. He could have cancelled his proposed invasion of Finland to focus on a defensive posture. He elected to carry out the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the Secret Pact shows that it was far from a defensive move meant to preserve the Soviet Union, but a means by which to expand it.

Second, Stalin himself explicitly did not see the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as a means to buy time. Stalin had hoped that Nazi Germany would wage war on the French and British over Poland and explicitly weaken them. Two weeks after the signing of the Pact, Stalin remarked: "A war is on between two groups of capitalist countries. We see nothing wrong in their having a good hard fight and weakening each other.” Stalin had hoped with Nazi Germany focused on a war against Western Europe and Poland, that he would have a free hand to handle his own planned war with Finland. This double dealing was incredibly common regarding foreign policy in the interwar years. Stalin facilitated German rearmament in the hopes that he would wage war against the Anglo-French alliance, and France and England ignored much about German rearmament out of the hope that Hitler's fervent anti-communism would lead him into a war with the Soviet Union that would break both powers. Stalin continually purchased war goods and shipped raw materials to Germany, and allows the Trans-Siberian Railway to ship Japanese goods to Germany; which to me sounds far more like helping to support Germany's war against France and Britain and hoping to profit in the meantime than a means to buy time.

Third, while the Soviet Union did offer an alliance, it was an ultimatum - an alliance or nothing. Per the Canadian Journal of History: "Initially, the British Cabinet resisted this proposal, as the negotiations would likely entail considerable delay; ministers preferred instead a quick declaration of Soviet support to deter possible German aggression in the short term. When it became apparent that the Soviet position meant an alliance or nothing, the Cabinet overwhelmingly opted to pursue an alliance. Despite British determination to reach an agreement, the negotiations proved futile. Soviet demands to provide guarantees to Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, and Rumania against indirect German aggression prompted fears that the Soviets sought the right to interfere in the internal affairs of their neighbours." So far from "rebuking any attempt at an alliance," the negotiations simply failed. The Soviet Union pressed high demands, ones that were undoubtedly unpopular at home due to the domestic peace and pacifism movements (while we criticize the Munich Agreement, it's worth noting at the time that it was immensely popular in Britain and France). Only after the annexation of the rest of Czechoslovakia and establishment of the puppet states of Moravia and Bohemia did Britain begin rearming. British legislators believed that the Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Treaty led directly to German rearmament, so they likely saw an alliance as a direct war against Nazi Germany, which they didn't want and felt they were unprepared for.

Fourth, Stalin didn't prepare for a German invasion. Stalin was hilariously unprepared for Operation Barbarossa despite frequent warnings from both his own intelligence and that of Great Britain and the United States. Taking eastern Poland meant abandoning the Stalin Line, but Stalin was unhurried in the construction of the new Molotov Line and abandoned any notion of defense-in-depth, meaning much of the fortifications between Leningrad and Berlin were either not built, in disrepair, or abandoned. Stalin began to repair the damage to the Red Army not due to the time bought by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but the disastrous performance of the Red Army during the Winter War.

This thesis is largely bunk, meant to prop up the also-false tribal interpretation of the interwar years that communism was uniquely and consistently anti-fascist, but that's a story for another time.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#history #soviet union #joseph stalin #molotov-ribbentrop pact

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philosophicalconservatism · 2 years

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Response To Post On Feminism And Gender Ideology.

Original Post

lThe Lady General

respectfully, have you guys ever engaged with trans people OR feminists or do you get all your infos from i don't know. being stubbornly opposed to kindness, empathy or even basic politeness

Philosophicalconservatism.com

Have you seen any footage of the angry, violent Left-wing mobs that assemble on college campuses across the country whenever Conservative speakers attempt to "engage with trans people or feminists?" Surely this is not the kindness, empathy and politeness of which you speak? Conservative students on college campuses do not conduct themselves in this way when Left-wing figures come to speak. They don't even do so on campuses on which they are the majority. One of the most far Right colleges in this country has invited some of the most far Left figures in the country to speak without incident (including socialists Bernie Sanders and Cornel West).

Conservatives are entirely willing to engage, it is the far Left that seeks to shut down all significant dissent; rendering discussion and debate impossible. Anyone who disagrees with the official orthodoxy is deemed unworthy of engagement (including other Left wingers who step out of line and dispute that orthodoxy in some particular area). In fact your own response to me is an excellent example of this unwillingness to engage. Rather than engage with my initial question, which was a very logical one, you question my kindness and empathy. This is a way of shutting down conversation. The focus becomes the supposedly sinister intentions and attitudes of the other party instead of the validity of his arguments.

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beguines · 9 months

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There are at least three major symptomatic facts that the ruling ideology silenced during the transition process: firstly, through its socialist industrialisation, social infrastructure, and social ownership, Yugoslav self-management brought major material improvements to the everyday life of the majority of people; secondly, in the name of the nation and its "liberation" from socialism and Yugoslavia, the social wealth and social ownership was at first nationalised and then privatised (a dispossession of the productive means and social infrastructure); and thirdly – and more awkwardly for transitologists – the transition to capitalism and liberal democracy was conducted after democratic elections in which the victorious political parties promoted and led the ethnic wars. The initial quote by Boris Buden lucidly argues that the post-Yugoslavian case demonstrates where the transition process went terribly wrong and turned into a disaster. The apologists attributed the failure of the transition to a variety of causes: from the backward rural environment and the prolonged economic crisis to the lack of democratic culture and remnants of a totalitarian past. Those who spoke of "Yugoslav totalitarianism" actually made it "responsible for repressing ethnic issues". The same people also came up with the conspiracy theory stating that "post-Yugoslav nationalism" was merely a "continuation of Yugoslav socialism by other means, conducted essentially by the same agencies and actors". The process of converting the old communists into new political elites was accompanied by this bizarre confusion as regards the causes and effects, and on a deeper level it functioned as a sort of redemption for the guilt that the transitional elites felt for the wars. In juxtaposition to the apologetic, (self)orientalising, and ethno-methodologist standpoint of transitional ideology, Nikola Dedić articulated the intimate nexus between capitalist transition and nationalism within the post-Yugoslav context:

"Nationalism is not a phenomenon that is separate from the 'logic of transition'. On the contrary, nationalism made room for the establishment of neoliberalism, and genocide is a radical consequence of the privatization that began in the 1990s. Afterwards, with the empowerment of 'democratic' transitional governments and privatization laws (which most of the former Yugoslav states adopted in the late 1990s and early 2000s), genocide was finally legalized. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and nationalism, therefore, served as the basis for the accumulation of surplus value, and paved the way for the integration of the former Yugoslav societies into the system of global capitalism."

Gal Kirn, Partisan Ruptures: Self-Management, Market Reform, and the Spectre of Socialist Yugoslavia, trans. Borut Praper & Gal Kirn

#gal kirn #partisan ruptures #yugoslavia

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fuckyeahmarxismleninism · 5 months

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Today marks 5 years since the first issue of Struggle - La Lucha. Here's what I wrote at the time:

"It's a special day. Today we launch a new publication, Struggle - La Lucha for Socialism, providing a fighting Marxist-Leninist perspective for the workers and oppressed.

"We are dedicated to preserving the legacy of Workers World newspaper and the revolutionary spirit of the founders of Workers World Party, before the leadership of our organization was seized earlier this year by a renegade grouping hostile to those traditions.

"2018 has been a difficult and painful year for many comrades. But it's ending with great hope, as we raise the red flag and carry forward the urgent struggles to unite our class against the deepening attacks of the U.S. imperialist ruling class and the capitalist system.

"We'll have much more to say in the coming weeks and months. For now, check out our beautiful first issue and other articles on the website, like and share our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter."

From here we launched the Socialist Unity Party in 2019. The publication has been consistent, as has the work of our party in the face of numerous obstacles.

In 2023 we successfully carried out our first national initiative, building a coalition and mobilization for the Oct. 7 National March to Protect Trans Youth in Orlando.

Following up on the John Parker's 2022 trip to the front line of the U.S. proxy war in Donbass, which helped to break the grip of pro-Ukraine war propaganda on much of the U.S. left, this year our comrades went to Cairo to support the Global Conscience Convoy for Gaza.

There is much more to come in 2024. Join us.

-- Melinda Butterfield, co-editor

Struggle-la-lucha.org

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bluepecanpie · 10 months

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as a retrospective, occupy wall street was the endpoint of the kind of ‘horizontalist’ politics that was popularized with the anti-globalization movement. the involvement of adbusters in establishing the initial ows is more than enough to show us how direct this influence is. underpinning the anti-globalization movement in the global north was a reliance on the framework consecrated by liberalism, and idealist notions that democracy had been distorted from its optimal function by the presence of trans-national corporations bypassing the power of the state. the idea that in the first instance, the state is an instrument of class power - specifically the power of the bourgeoisie, in the capitalist epoch.

occupy’s failure, is the shared failure of that anti-globalization movement, and in between - that of the arab spring, which had seemingly exhausted imagination for another kind of social modality other than one informed by neoliberalism - islamist or not. even the anti-globalization movement came to fore as a sort of post-cold war rebuke of state socialism and the vanguardist politics used to set it up, only to fumble once confronted with the hard power of the state and especially great power conflicts - in a way that ‘actual existing socialist’ states could not do. the occupy movement also forgoed the kind of deep organising that could actually build class consciousness and galvanise the working class into making demands.

i’m not saying that the occupy movement was bad, or counterproductive: it politicized a generation of people, and broke out of this anhedonic, apathetic morose typical of atomised subjects under neoliberalism. I’m just saying that it was no threat to the ruling class, to any corporations, to anyone wearing the robes of institutional power. pro-ows assessment would rather we think how well ows spread and that was the real victory, like there wasn’t a demand for the neoliberal epoch - whether it was explicity stated or otherwise.

#occupy wall street #ows #occupy movement #anti-globalization movement #adbusters #horizontalism #socialism #anarchism #reformism #arab spring #neoliberalism #class struggle #state socialism #working class #organising #marxism #direct action

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foreverlogical · 1 year

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SALEM, N.H.—Well, that was something.

By the time former President Donald Trump left a high school auditorium Saturday afternoon—his return to the campaign trail after an unusually sleepy start to his 2024 campaign—he had ricocheted off many of his standbys: indulging conspiracy theories, nursing conservatives’ fears about race and gender, and offering an alternative reality to his successor’s record. The hour-long diatribe suggested Joe Biden would have been shrewd to throw his son, Hunter, under the bus, that the Taliban were incapable of fighting at night because they lacked “binoculars,” and that wind turbines routinely knock planes out of the sky. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

It was, in essence, a standard Trump speech, but with a more uneven pacing, and a little weirder and meandering.

For a fragile frontrunner facing criticism for the shaky start to his third bid for the White House, Trump’s initial showing did little to calm the skittishness that the candidate himself acknowledged.

“They said, ‘He’s not campaigning. Maybe he’s lost a step,’” Trump said, mocking his critics. “I am more angry now and I am more committed now than ever.”

Maybe, but words—even hyper-exaggerated and errant ones—aren’t deeds. Trump on Saturday dropped into New Hampshire to speak to the state party’s annual meeting, where he picked up the backing of the party chair who ended his term on Saturday. He then jetted to South Carolina, where he unfurled a pack of high-wattage supporters at the state capitol. As political events go, they were fairly routine and expected steps for presidential hopefuls.

“Together we will complete the unfinished business of making America great again,” Trump said in Columbia, S.C.

Yet Trump isn’t starting as a blank-slate national candidate. The image of Trump is pretty well baked at this point. A meager 5% of Americans said they don’t have an opinion about the only President who was impeached twice and whose actions in the wake of the 2020 election led to a deadly attack on the Capitol, according to the latest CNN poll. Trump may want to campaign as a traditional candidate with the universal support befitting a former President, but that isn’t his core competency, and he seems to lack the requisite skills to keep his ship afloat as some two dozen would-be pirates are on the docks and considering their own next steps.

For potential Trump challengers, Saturday’s showing should not have spooked anyone from the race. Sure, Trump can still butcher political red meat with the best of them; he can slag his foes without a flinch, call the modern Democratic Party a tribe of socialists, Marxists, and communists, and disparage Black Lives Matter demonstrators as criminals. But mentions of Hunter Biden’s errant laptop seemed to land with a thud, and members of the audience seemed to go numb when “Crooked Hillary” Clinton came up in remarks that seemed like a time capsule from six years ago. His boasts about being called “your excellency” now just seem sad.

Trump has a rich reservoir of material to mine, to be sure. If you strip away his crude mannerism and crash rhetoric, his agenda as President actually gave conservatives a whole lot of the wishlist that’s been incomplete since the Reagan era. Trump smartly picked up on the public’s latent—and then not-so-latent—discontent with the border criss, the economic disparities incumbent with globalization, the rampant drug addiction crisis in this country. In turn, he reshaped the modern GOP to fit his needs.

On this new jaunt to New Hampshire, he used a more aggressive pivot to parents’ rights and education—including, unfortunately, a lot of talk about school sports and trans kids—but it was lost amid so much noise.

Ex-Presidents leave office with some truly unique stories, and Trump is no exception. On Saturday, amid a salvage yard of anti-trans exclusionary ideas and the direct election of school principals by anti-woke parents, Trump told the tale of landing in another country and being shocked that Air Force One had to dim its lights and draw the shades for security precautions. He talked about his negotiating sessions with the Taliban and the five telephone operators who stood by to help him place calls. Corporate clients might pay top dollar to hear such anecdotes on the lecture circuit. The members of The Presidents Club command six-figures for an afternoon in a convention center, and Trump’s time in D.C. is certainly ripe for storytime.

Which, if you listen carefully to the activists in the audience at Republican events in recent years—and especially after Jan. 6, 2021—is where many in the party would prefer Trump spend his days. To a tee, they all praise what Trump was able to accomplish but aren’t exactly eager to rush back into the late-night tweets, the performative trolling of anyone not wrapped in a Trump fleece, or the erratic policymaking by hunch. They’re objectively good anecdotes, even if it’s unclear how any of them help convince voters Trump should again be given the nuclear codes.

“I liked President Trump’s policies,” Michael Loftus tells me as we were waiting in the school hallway for Trump to start his speech. “But he’s so divisive,” the 67-year-old retiree from Newport continues. “Going forward, we need someone who is not so controversial.”

That, no matter how much sandpaper Trump brings to his new workshop, will never be the case. Which is why Sen. Lindsey Graham, appearing with Trump in South Carolina, took direct aim at that criticism: “How many times have you heard, ‘We like Trump policies but we want somebody new’? There are no Trump policies without Donald Trump.”

There may be no Republican Party, either.

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coochiequeens · 7 months

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A notorious German pedophile lobby group has endorsed the new gender self-identification law, stating that “trans kids” are “politically important” for advancing pedophile rights." Disgusting but at least finally honest that they don't actually care about the kids outside of how they can serve the interests of adults.

By Anna Slatz. October 7, 2023

A notorious German pedophile lobby group has endorsed the new gender self-identification law, stating that “trans kids” are “politically important” for advancing pedophile rights. Krumme-13, also known as K13, are also directing its members to watch a movie about an 8-year-old boy who is transitioned to live as a “girl.”

On October 4, K13 published an announcement on its website regarding a film that was set to be screened on television. The movie, Simply Nina, was initially released in 2022 and featured the story of a child “rebelling” against their body.

According to the film’s synopsis on the Hamburg Filmfest’s website, the 8-year-old main character, Nina, is “convinced that a mistake was made at birth” and “plucks up her courage and informs her family that she has always felt like a girl and would like to live as one.” Nina is portrayed by male child actor Arian Wegener.

K13 offers praise for the film, which they noted was being screened on television on October 6. They continue that “the issue of transsexual children is currently of great political importance,” and mention the newly-passed draft of Germany’s new gender self-identification bill. The bill is intended to make it significantly easier for people to change their name and sex, something they will be able to do once per year with no medical documentation needed to demonstrate the individual is transitioning.

In their announcement, K13 notes that “minors from the age of 14” will be allowed to change their name and legal sex with the consent of their guardians or, if their parents will not consent, the permission of a family court. But K13 suggests the age proposed for gender self-determination is too high.

“Why is gender identity also politically important for pedophiles/pedosophists?” K13 asks. “Gender and sexual identity does not only begin on the 14th birthday, when the so-called protection age limit ends. Children can and want to experience their childhood sexuality self-determined beforehand.”

The post continues: “Child sexuality as a whole must no longer be a taboo. Because pedosexual relationships are not conceivable without self-determined child sexuality.”

K13 was founded in 1993 in Trier, Germany by Dieter Gieseking, who was briefly imprisoned on possession of child pornography. Gieseking has been a vocal advocate for the legalization of pedophilia, and frames adult-child sexual activity as normal.

In a 2018 interview for the program Veto, Gieseking repeatedly refers to pedophilia as a “romantic relationship,” and insists that children can seduce adults. “On the forums and in my experience there are many times, for example, when a boy of let’s say 12, actually initiates the relationship,” he says.

Gieseking also made several references to the Netherlands, a country known for its prominent pedophile activism and which currently hosts the majority — 66 percent — of all CSAM sites in the European Union. He told the interviewer that Germany should follow the Netherlands’ lead and lower the age of consent to 12 years old.

“That is just the current zeitgeist, in the past studies have shown the many benefits (of sex with children) for children… The problem is that victim protection and child protection organizations have sprung up and influenced mainstream media,” Gieseking added.

As previously reported by Reduxx, Gieseking has filed a total of three petitions with Germany’s parliament calling on members of the Socialist Democrats, Free Democratic Party, and Green Party to agree to an amendment to Germany’s anti-discrimination legislation which would protect pedophilia as a “sexual identity.”

Gieseking frames his campaigning as an effort to defend “children’s rights” and to protect “sexual minorities” from discrimination. The two most recent petitions submitted to the government were lodged on February 14, 2021.

On July 2, members of K13 congregated at the Cologne Pride Parade, colloquially known as Christopher Street Day (CSD), and displayed a flag representing “minor-attracted persons” pride. They also carried signs opposing the “censorship” of the organization Queer.de and advocated for a “diversity of opinions” within the LGBT community.

#Germany #K13 #Simply Nina #Self I'd #Trier #Dieter Gieseking #Another groups of creeps trying to attach itself to the LGB like a parasite

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