zx3 @zx3@driveinsaturday.org

Hey, kids,

(kids in this case being literally anyone younger than I am, but especially anyone in that weird gap between 18 and ~25 where most world governments will acknowledge your personhood but your brain still hasn't reached its final form)

The world is shit right now. You know it, I know it, anyone really paying attention knows it. This can make *everything* just feel so much worse, from getting caught in traffic to stubbing your toe on furniture to new realizations about the lengths shitheads will go to hurt people.

Please try not to automatically assume that things will never get better, or that something someone said that hurt you was said with genuine malice.

With the latter? People make mistakes, and tone doesn't come across as intended sometimes - particularly if it was over text. Take context into account.

As for the former? Things can get better, they have historically gotten better, and I believe that they *will* get better so long as we're still screaming about how awful things are.

That said, I also believe that things *can't* get better if we just give up. Why? That's simple. Giving up is what the fascists and abusers of the world *want us to do,* because if we give up? They suddenly get everything they wanted without having to fight nearly as hard for it.

You wanna know what I want out of this world? There's a movie quote for that.

"I want more life, fucker!" - Roy Batty, Blade Runner (1982)

I am begging more people to understand that legal bans on drag are just an easier way to pass laws make being trans/GNC* in public illegal.

The claim that these laws are meant to "ban drag to protect children" is intended to hide the fact that they actually make "cross dressing" in public (aka "anywhere people under 18 could be") illegal.

That means if your ID says M and you are in a dress doing your grocery shopping you can be arrested. If your ID says F and you are wearing men's pants and a button down at your doctor's office you can be arrested.

This is not careless wording, it is a very pointed and purposeful way to get these laws passed before most people understanding their true intent and how they will be used.

They know people are less likely to oppose or work to stop a law that is "banning drag to protect children" from passing than a law "banning trans people from existing anywhere in public". They know that LGBTQIA+ people and our allies will not give as much time/energy to fighting what they think is a "ban on drag" than a "ban on trans people" because the level of importance and impact will seem lower.

They also want to stop drag and will use it to limit drag performances too, but the main targets/intent once these laws are passed is to use it against trans/GNC people so we literally cannot legally exist in any public space.

Their goal is to terrorize trans people out of existence, push us back into (or keep us from coming out of) the closet, and throw any of us who try to continue to exist in jail. Tennessee is now the first to pass one of these laws, but MANY states in the US have laws already being advanced that move them towards this goal.

It. Is. Not. About. Drag.

*GNC people like cis butches are also not the main target of these laws but will most likely be impacted more than drag performances will

#Transphobia #TransRights #Queerphobia

in a moment of lovely synchronicity i rediscovered this David Byrne quote today.

"It can often seem that those in power don’t want us to enjoy making things for ourselves—they’d prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation."

if you ever feel like doing some antifascist praxis, log on to ebay, do a search for "nsbm" and report some listings, because that stuff is supposed to be against terms of service, yet it's all over the site.

once you know some of the nsbm band names you can search for those as well.
you can at least be an inconvenience, and that's the point, making life less easy for nazis is antifascist activism.

LIES weren’t borne with Trump’s 2016 campaign, but LIES were his hallmark then, throughout his administration, the pandemic & insurrection, & since. LIES have permeated GOP politics until red truth has utterly vanished.

Lying wasn’t invented in online chat rooms, but their anonymity provides a warm, moist place for its incubation, for catfishing, fraud & other crimes on social media.

WTF will artificial intelligence do to us in this culture of unreality?
Without TRUTH we lose everything!

more people need to realize the following:

fascism needs crisis.

fascism needs crisis because almost every fascist movement utilizes politics of fear and moral panic as means of gaining support.

hitler used the crisis of germany's defeat and economic collapse as a fertile ground for his politics of hatred. republicans use anti-trans bathroom/"groomer" panic to gain support and sway people to their side.

the reason it works so well is because fascism targets people's fear of uncertainty and trauma from crisis, while appealing to the sense of exceptionalism or superiority.

this is where is the whole "make america great again", "we need a strong leader", "purity of the nation" and other shit comes from.

and today we are on the brink of economic and ecological crisis. covid-19 and rapidly changing climate is about to fuck us up completely. people are afraid.

don't let the alt-right and fascists take advantage of them this time. not here, not now, not again. protest, rally, talk to your friends or people, sign petitions, go on strikes and refuse to work, take action, but for the love of god, don't stop resisting. we can't let this happen.

When i was young i thought Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock had to be the same person. I found this today...

"America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."
~Hunter Stockton Thompson, who died this day in 2005.

#rip #hst #missyou #doc

texas' senate just introduced a bill which would allow any medical provider providing gender affirming care to anyone to be sued for malpractice. i saw this coming. you probably did too. they said they would do it, and here we are. i guess we got what we deserved for being from a red state.

but i'm from dallas. i've never lived anywhere else but texas. it's a part of who i am that i'm from here. now that part of me is being torn out of my chest and smashed to bits in front of me by an apartheid government of rich white bastards who maintain their hold on power with dirty tricks and police violence. i am being told, more or less explicitly, that i am not wanted in the only home i've ever had because i made the stupid decision to hold myself out to the world as transgender. they'll cut off our healthcare, then they'll cut off our heads when they decide we're not "going away" fast enough.

they hate us. i hate myself, too, for what it's worth. i hate myself because i feel like i'm a coward for not standing up and fighting at every opportunity. yes, i've been to protests and made my voice heard. i even thought about voting for all the good it will do. but i can't just go fistfight dan patrick until he decides trans people are okay actually. i'm going to run away like i always have before, and i'm going to think of all the people i'm leaving behind when i do just to twist the knife a little bit. i feel like there's an octopus trapped in my chest trying to worm its way out through my throat and scream "STAND AND FIGHT YOU COWARD!"

but that's how i feel. none of the so-called "cis allies" who i've been navigating recently are going to put their lives on the line just to help trans people. they get to read about our impending genocide in the morning paper and go "oh that's so sad. if only there were something i could do." and then PUT US OUT OF THEIR MINDS BECAUSE WE'RE TOO PONDEROUS. that guilt tearing me up because i won't fight pales in comparison to the feeling that we've been betrayed somehow, because they won't fight. we're dealing with our own battles, and there are too few of us trans people spread too thin for the onslaught of ghoulish right-wing political violence that we now face practically everywhere south of the Mason-Dixon.

AND WE DON'T GET TO TURN THE TV OFF AND HAVE IT STOP HAPPENING.

i got called "brave" for going to a family event as myself yesterday, but. i can't be anyone else. and i am so tired of being brave. i want to be safe. i want to be among kin. i want to rest. i want a place where i can be myself without having to stare down a Roganesque escaped gorilla with a .45 screaming "PEDOPHILE MARXIST GROOMER" in my face every so often. i want a place where i don't have to be "brave" to go to the damn grocery store.

i wish it could have been my home.

if you can, please donate to my liberapay and help me and two other trans women get the hell out of here. www.liberapay.com/thufie/donate

Behold "Glaze", a software tool that subtly alters the pixels in a piece of art online 🎨 ...

... in a way that isn't detectable by the human eye 👀 ...

... but renders the image useless for training a visual AI. The AI can't detect the artists' style, and thus can't mimic it and copy it. 🤖 ✖️

It's item #1 in my weekly "Linkfest" newsletter here 📫 : https://buttondown.email/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-6-gps-on-the-moon-8-bit-jane-austen-and/

(Subscribe here! https://buttondown.email/clivethompson)

Eventually, though, the fascists will have worked their way through everyone between you and them and then maybe the threat will be apparent?

You'll have a lot less allies by then, though, because the fascists will have killed and imprisoned the rest of us.

So, you know, by all means, take your sweet fucking time figuring it out.