Further to The Blurting, a footnote of sorts:

“My Fox News dad makes everything political” https://t.co/JxaZvPwrSg

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) August 15, 2024

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Update, via the comments:

The above, it seems to me, is not so much a declaration of values as a psychological profile.

As Rafi says in reply,

Not having to deal with such people does have a cash value. If in order to use a communal laser cutter, you first have to “strive to uphold” the notion that sex differences are unrelated to biology, that “meritocracy is a joke,” and that, despite all available evidence, “nonbinary people” somehow aren’t aggravating poseurs… Then, well, buying your own laser cutter seems a much better option.

After all, this life is finite and best not wasted on proximity to wankers.

Oh, and some of that super important intersectionality.

From transgender Reddit, a new niche woe. Specifically,

And more specifically,

We’re all learning things today.

Again, learning things.

Ooh. So close.

In subsequent replies, the similarly traumatising terms gock and bussy are also pondered, along with girldick and female penis. And yes, these will be on Friday’s test.

Other commenters suggest a policy of coyness on the subject:

The terrible wrongness of terminological appropriation crops up, as do thoughts as to which terms are most affirming of a gentleman’s state of ladylikeness. Another contributor, a “genderfluid he/she/they,” insists that, as one would obviously defer to a person’s pronouns, one should likewise defer to that person’s preferred terms for their genitals. Because discussing the other person’s genitals is a thing that happens, apparently.

Those unschooled in the world of transgender penis discourse will find much to chew on.

Via Eliza Mondegreen.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

In somewhat-surreal-modernity news:

Sensitive readers may wish to look away now:

Traumatic scenes of the desecration taking place can be found below:

A group of five to six kids just starting doing donuts and creating skid marks on the Pride Mural. Right in front of me as we’re reporting on three people getting arrested for doing the same thing last night.@KHQLocalNews pic.twitter.com/FMXGAg77fx

— Adam Schwager (@schwagerTV) June 6, 2024

The situation is of course terribly fraught and further complications have been uncovered by our tireless media professionals:

After allegedly causing “widespread damage” – again, see photo, above – three suspects have been arrested and charged with first-degree malicious mischief, a class-B felony:

Clearly, feelings run high.

Though it occurs to me that the pretentious weeping currently underway could have been avoided by not painting one’s weird religious symbols on the chuffing road at a busy intersection. As if that were a perfectly normal thing to do, and in no way a potential irritant or an invitation to mischief.

And then, inevitably, the sly conflation:

At which point, readers may wonder whether the children’s scootering, and the wider disaffection for the increasingly cluttered and kaleidoscopic Pride flag, may have less to do with “homophobia,” as claimed, and rather more to do with a symbol that is now associated with creepy, compelled unrealism, fantasy pronouns, and the steering of children towards experimental drugging and surgical mutilation. The kinds of things that many people, including many gay people, might find a little contentious, or alienating, or morally repugnant.

That the repeatedly ‘enhanced’ Pride flag now represents a range of things to which a great many people, including gay people, might conceivably take exception – or find obnoxious, indeed degenerate – is apparently unthinkable. Or at least unsayable. And so, with the deploying of the word “homophobia,” gay people are being used as a rhetorical shield against objections to, for instance, pornography in schools, the ideological grooming and sexualisation of children, and cross-dressing men in women’s intimate spaces.

Among other things.

However, pretentious howling is very much in fashion, and so,

I’m guessing the wear and tear caused by normal foot traffic will be monitored closely. Dog walkers will doubtless be urged to avoid the sacred space at all costs, lest the unthinkable occur.

And is therefore much more special than you:

That’s it, I’m joining Westboro pic.twitter.com/3CFGnrKDyJ

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) June 5, 2024

In this hour-long podcast, Hannah McElhinney, above, and her equally self-preoccupied associate Rudy Jean Rigg – “teacher and creative” – can be heard blathering at length – and sometimes seemingly at random – about “queer temporality” and “how LGBTQ+ people experience time differently to straight and/or cisgender people.”

Though conscience compels me to warn you, it’s an hour you won’t get back. Indeed, the sheer arse-chafing tedium of it is difficult to put into words.

Among the deep wisdom on offer, this:

This is the rhetorical pattern for much of what follows. There’s no shortage of self-reference, and paying attention to one’s queerness, and much airing of niche woes – the endless agonies of being a “creator,” a “creative,” and an “influencer.” And of course the terrible burden of being so much more complicated and interesting than all those other people. The ones who experience time in a humdrum, heteronormative way.

The whole thing – which I endured, heroically – calls to mind some kind of therapy session for the terminally tedious and inadequate.

We also learn,

So. Much to chew on.

Or choke on, should you happen to be a physicist.

When not experiencing time differently – and showering the credulous with tales to “validate” and “inspire” – Ms McElhinney and her fellow Bringers Of Arcane Knowledge feel a need to,

So, clearly, the rumblings on offer are entirely free of conformity or modish pretension of any kind.

Via Katie Herzog.

The subject of pretentious timekeeping has cropped up here before.

From the recent batch of Ephemera – Chloe makes these videos because he wants you to relax:

“Chloe”, a man who identifies as transgender, makes ASMR videos dressing up in women’s and girls’ clothing. One depicts a violent abduction and torture fantasy.
Some videos are aimed at children.
Chloe is allowed to use facilities for women and girls. pic.twitter.com/DmoNeSWOLk

— Genevieve Gluck (@WomenReadWomen) May 23, 2024

The above features highlights from a video titled Psycho Girlfriend Kidnaps You.

You are feeling relaxed, aren’t you?

Perhaps you’d prefer some roleplay about a bra-fitting appointment.

Hey, I’m just giving you options.

Oh, and our whispering wonder’s Instagram account is a heady mix of seductive pouting, décolletage, and filters working overtime. He also wants us to know that women have no reason to be wary of gentle lady-beings such as himself.

It’s possible he’s not being entirely honest.

For the adventurous, an OnlyFans option is also available.

Via Genevieve Gluck.

I expect to be busy for a couple of days, so consider this an open thread.

Quoted below, extracts from a conversation that in many circles would result in much hissing and flailing of limbs, but which, it seems to me, very much ought to be had:

From the following video, in which Andrew Gold talks with the formidable Mia Hughes, author of The WPATH Files, about pseudoscience, malpractice, and experiments on children.

It’s a forty-five-minute watch, but there’s plenty to chew on. Much that could be quoted. I should point out that the later sections of the interview, which explore surgical affirmations, or as one surgeon puts it, “creating body types that do not exist in nature,” does get a little vivid, and indeed surreal.

Further to this, touched on in the comments,

Here’s Helen Joyce on transgender overreach, exploited politeness, and belated pushback:

Full interview below:

An earlier, longer interview with Ms Joyce has been mentioned previously and can be found here.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Time for a spot of downtrodden-minority news:

The Vancouver Police Department, quoted above, are referring, rather coyly, to this chap here:

Happily, passers-by assisted the alarmed mother, and Mr Beekmeyer, who was shirtless at the time, was overpowered and arrested shortly afterwards, before being charged with assault. Unlike the police and several news outlets, including the Vancouver Sun and the CBC, witnesses to the crime were quite comfortable using the words he and man when referring to Mr Beekmeyer.

Apparently, it’s the kind of euphoria that results in one attacking random women and their four-month-old babies. Until a crowd of passers-by pin one to the ground.

If the above isn’t sufficiently Silence of the Lambs, there is more.

He’s going to his happy place. Where the good vibes are:

So nothing of concern there.

Readers with an interest in self-expression and interior décor will find much to ponder in the video below:

🚨A man in Vancouver, Canada, was charged yesterday after assaulting a mother while she was breastfeeding her baby.

Nathaniel “Millie” Beekmeyer, 26, identifies as transgender and made videos about taking estrogen so he could masturbate to himself. pic.twitter.com/W03mw5gpN8

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) May 11, 2024

When not sharing his thoughts on how “super cute” he is, and therefore how sexually aroused he is, Mr Beekmeyer declares himself a saviour who will “fix the world.” Specifically, by transforming men into women. However – and this is perhaps something of a catch – “all women have to be destroyed.”

Mr Beekmeyer adds, “I’m a beautiful person.”

For reference purposes.

Still, at least the public were spared getting what might laughingly be referred to as the wrong idea, thanks to the police and media misleading said public about the identity of a dangerously deranged criminal.

Though it occurs to me that, for the passers-by who intervened and overpowered Mr Beekmeyer, it must have been quite strange to see subsequent reports in which this shirtless man was referred to by the police and the media as a woman. As if their own, first-hand perceptions, from mere inches away, were somehow wildly and implausibly inaccurate.

And as noted by Genevieve Gluck, author of the piece quoted above,

But hey. This is where we are now. Feel the progress.

Update, via the comments:

As noted previously, you have to wonder whether the absurdity above will continue indefinitely, a sort of routine surrealism, or whether it will it just peter out, like any fad, and then be remembered with some embarrassment. As if it were on a par with wearing flares.

And if it does become unfashionable, I wonder how the players below will feel:

I wonder how those journalists, lawyers, and court officials will retrospectively process their very public participation in our current, ongoing clown show. In which, as above, the child molester is flattered and indulged, his pretence affirmed, while his victims are repeatedly insulted. Will they still like to think of themselves as beings of high probity?

And in other this-never-happens news:

He just wants to molest little girls, you see, while pretending to be a woman.

Mr Katie Cruz, quoted above, is, he says, a role model for “trans kids,” and has been “working behind the scenes” to “reduce stigma.” That would be the stigma of being bent on child molestation – specifically, molesting girls between the ages of 9 and 13. Just so we’re clear.

It’s a “trans age” thing, apparently. Which seems to mean that our grown man, a man who pretends to be a woman, also likes to imagine himself as a teenager, aged between “13 and 17ish.” So there’s nothing to worry about, you “far-right” bigots. It’s all totally legit and above-board.

Mr Cruz, also known as Cali Miller, goes on to denounce the “harmful rhetoric comparing the LGBTQ community to paedophiles” – and he does this while using the fig leaf of “queer” activism to advance his own predatory, paedophilic ambitions, and the predatory ambitions of others like him. Which, if not exactly coherent, is certainly bold.

“While I’m empathetic toward children and want the best for them,” says Mr Cruz, “I also hold the view that no one should tell others what they can and can’t do with their own bodies.” Or, it seems, the bodies of others. Say, sweet little Sally two doors down.

And so, those of you not yet fully enthused by the prospect of Mr Cruz’s liberation and empowerment will have to “move toward a more progressive and empathetic worldview.” While Mr Cruz himself, despite his claims of empathy, remains utterly selfish regarding the children whose lives would be monstrously degraded by the imposition of his desires. Given the chance.

And because things aren’t quite twisted enough, the paedophilic groups of which Mr Cruz is a member, and whose goals include “reform” of the sex-offender registry and to “achieve protected class status,” frequently deploy the term “social justice.” And how dare you far-right bigots deny such noble beings their child-molestation rights.

Update, via the comments:

Readers will doubtless have registered just how easily the rhetoric of victimhood and “social justice” is appropriated. A phenomenon we’ve noted here many times. As when we were told, in the pages of the Independent, that when paedophiles claim to remain celibate but still search out employment that puts them in regular and intimate contact with children, their potential prey, this is somehow a “social good” and a basis for congratulation. Because every parent wants their child to have a teacher who harbours fantasies of molesting them.

Regarding Mr Cruz, Nikw211 notes this passage from the original article:

Adding, not unreasonably,

Well, quite. One more time:

That’s the kind of loving and caring that just happens to be abusive and generally traumatising, and which can have serious lifelong consequences for the victim. If another real-world illustration is required, see also this. Though I should point out that it’s not for the faint-hearted.

At which point, I’m going to quote this, on the unconvincing contortions of Dr Ole Martin Moen, and which I recommend reading in full:

Hence the stigma, of course. The stigma that Dr Moen and Mr Cruz find so terribly problematic.

From the Reddit forum r/mypartneristrans, a tale of romantic complication:

The feeling of being, shall we say, misled can do that, I suppose.

Twist incoming.

Oh my, a spotlight shared. Awkward. Or, “Woman who wants to pretend she’s a gay man is thwarted by male partner now wanting to pretend he’s a woman, resulting in something not unlike straightness, albeit with extra steps.”

As I said, complications.

Readers are welcome to speculate as to whose feelings are more, er, valid in the scenario above.

And before you ask, the outlook isn’t great:

Update, via the comments:

Regarding this,

Mags adds,

Indeed. A notable omission. One that results in finger-wagging from fellow forum regulars:

It’s a bold claim. And despite which, the person being scolded, a woman who expects to be taken seriously as a man, can’t bring herself to take seriously as a woman her own male partner. There’s no she or her, just a grudging them. Which does rather cast some doubt on the broader enterprise.

Readers who poke through the subsequent replies will note how almost any kind of questioning – even expressions of surprise and concern from an intimate partner – is promptly dismissed as “hurtful,” “transphobic,” and “pretty shitty,” something to apologise for. As if anything short of immediate and gushing affirmation – pretty much any hesitation at all – were an act of wickedness.

Also, this caught my eye:

Which is something of a drawback, given the odds on that matter.

One of the commenters then replies that “drag queen is a look,” by which they mean valid, a possible aspiration, and that one should “interrogate those feelings” that looking like a drag queen is probably not ideal.

Via Rafi.

In other, happier news, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.