We Hunted The Mammoth
When the Federalist teased its essay “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives” on Twitter on Thursday, some people, including myself, joked that the new word they were looking for was probably “fascists.” This turns out to be not much of a joke, as the essay, by Federalist senior editor John Daniel Davidson, preaches a revanchist authoritarianism that in many ways resembles classical fascism.
The “moral panic” over drag shows seems to have reached a disturbing inflection point. 33 GOP House members have just introduced a federal “Don’t Say Gay, Don’t Say Trans” bill that could ban institutions getting federal funding from hosting drag shows or making books featuring gay people available to children.
So Graham Norton’s Twitter account has disappeared. Norton, the popular UK talk show host was last seen offering some seemingly uncontroversial opinions on trans issues that somehow did not meet the approval of Harry Potter mega-author and trans antagonist J.K. Rowling.
Does J.K. Rowling believe that trans people — or at least trans women — don’t deserve the presumption of innocence? That seems to be the clear implication of an op-ed she wrote for the Times (UK) today. But she is cagey enough in her wording that she can and probably will figure out a way to say, my goodness, I wasn’t saying anything of the kind.
So over on Ovarit — the Redditesque hangout for TERFs — the regulars in the so-called “Gender Critical” forum were discussing the fact that trans women are still required to register for the draft in the US, as if they were men. Naturally, the “Gender Criticals” found this hilarious.
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Madonna’s “I’m gay” Tik-Tok video has confused a lot of people on the internet, myself included. In the video, Madonna taps into a TikTok meme in which people announce “if I miss this, I’m gay,” before throwing something at or perhaps into a wastebasket. Or maybe a basketball hoop. I don’t know, I don’t generally watch TikTok if I can help it.
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Sometimes it’s useful to remind ourselves just how batshit Breitbart is. Take yesterday’s column by John Nolte, which argues that the “Democrats are embracing permanent child mutilation and morbid obesity” as a way “[t]o replace working-class, black, and Hispanic voters” they’ve been losing in recent elections.
So British anti-trans attention seeker (and friend of Joanne) Maya Forstater has been engaged in a very strange Twitter meltdown over a cartoon alien for the past four days. And when I say “weird” I mean really, really, really weird. So I’ve taken the liberty of assembling all of Forstater’s best tweets — by which I mean worst tweets — in one place. With commentary.
The trans panic has reached an alarming stage: transphobes, most notably Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, have escalated their rhetoric and become more obvious about their stochastic terrorism, with Tucker Carlson broadcasting the names and faces of board members of Vanderbilt Hospital, which offers gender affirming care to children. Bill O’Reilly gave the same sort of “publicity” to a prominent abortion doctor years ago; the doctor was murdered by an anti-abortion fanatic.
Tucker Carlson is doing that not-so-delicate dance again, inciting violence against his ideological foes without literally telling his listeners to beat anyone up in those exact words.
