Apparently the CIA does movie reviews as part of its internal newsletter, and that those reviews are hilariously salty when dealing with movies that have negative portrayals of the CIA. Which is to say: basically every movie featuring the CIA.
In any case, in today’s usage, the term [transgender] is only properly used as an adjective, e.g., “transgender (or trans) girl”, “transgender man”, “transgender youth”, etc. Transmuting the word into a noun (“transgenderism”) or a verb (“transgendered”) has important implications.
First, and perhaps most importantly, changing the word transgender into something else labels the very people we are talking about with a word they did not choose and specifically object to. This is insulting and entirely unnecessary.
Second, by making being transgender just another “ism” we are encouraged to dismiss it like any other political, social or religious belief: liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, Catholicism. In this formulation, transgender becomes a description not of who a person is but what they believe. It’s like telling someone from Japan that they are not actually Japanese (adjective) but their ethnicity is only a belief that they are Japanese, perhaps a mistaken belief. Might we call this “Japanese-ism?”
Curt Buckley on language.
The whole article is about debunking and illustrating the dangers of “trans skeptics”, i.e. the sort of people who like to front up asking “polite” and “reasonable” questions about “transgenderism” and won’t someone just think of the children. So, like, obvious content warning in the article for transphobic attitudes and languages, presented for the purpose of criticism. Buckley’s point is that not only are “trans skeptics” wrong objectively (i.e. their science is bad), but that because they’re good at seeming “reasonable” to cis people, they’re arguably more dangerous than the out-and-out frothing bigots. It behooves cis people, then, to be vigilant not just for the arguments the “skeptics” make, but to also be aware of the facts that counter them.
Kinder unwrapping and “wrong head” videos are weird but, ultimately, probably harmless. If you want to be worried about what YouTube is doing, worry about what it’s doing to you.
It’s one of the things that people who aren’t well-read in dystopian fiction may not realize about dystopias: they don’t necessarily just happen because there’s a zombie virus outbreak or a meteor that wipes out half of humanity, and they don’t happen because an evil dictator suddenly seizes power one day against the will of the people and everyone just goes along with it. They happen because people want them to happen. They happen because many people want to give up a little liberty to get a little safety. They want a president who seems like he’d be fun to have a beer with, or a guy who “tells it like it is.” And they want people to be nice. They want cars to use their turn signals and stop for pedestrians. They want people to take care of their aging parents and to do heroic acts. And if a government policy is making those things happen, they’re less likely to complain about the nasty side effects, like a journalist being inconvenienced. Or, say, journalists being even less likely to say anything critical of the government, or for all people to stop doing any actions the government considers distasteful, like being openly homosexual, or advocating for women’s equality. And slowly but surely, we ease into that dystopia.
Rebecca Watson on the journey.
Current and former executives from companies including Microsoft, Uber, Facebook, Reddit, Something Awful, and YouTube (among others) talk about what went wrong with the internet. Fascinating and essential reading.
I don’t want to see stories of the future in which humans are treated as slaves, in which millions are murdered to disguise the kidnap of a plot token, in which torture is treated seriously as an intelligence-gathering technique, in which violence against women is used as “character development”, in which the othering of non-white people is considered “world-building”…
I want a socially responsible science fiction, that is self-aware, that knows it is a powerful tool for affecting public opinion – and not just at the behest of corporate paymasters. I want a science fiction that scorns shit right-wing concepts like evo psych and alpha males and eugenics. I want a science fiction that tells good stories and does so responsibly. I want a science fiction that doesn’t abandon its ethics or its artistic integrity in pursuit of the bottom-line. And I want a science fiction readership that accepts partial responsibility for the shit content that is produced, that demands more [responsible] content and rewards it by consuming it in sufficient numbers to make it profitable.
Ian Sales on better futures.
Amen.
What happens when education is no longer a route to social mobility? And what happens when that situation was intentionally engineered…
The Internet Archive has a library of old Apple II software, all available to use in-browser. I used it to play Oregon Trail, and, well…
New additions to Mt. TBR:
You know, I believe that. I believe that the human race belongs in space. It might be silly, it might be naïve, but I know people who believe all sorts of ridiculous things that do a lot more damage. I don’t acknowledge any vengeful God the Father. I don’t believe in a great Rapture to come. I do believe that if we are spared, if we spare one another, we will make it to the stars.
Not you and me personally, of course. By the time the species sorts its shit out enough to think about sending starships full of adventurers to distant planets, we’ll be too old to get on them, but I’ve met some kids recently who might not be.
Laurie Penny on being lost on space.
