A few days ago, I learned a new term: sealioning: Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity. That’s right, evidence, civility and sincerity are now a form of trolling. In my article, What Happens If Trans Women Aren’t Women?, I asked what is so terrible about admitting that trans women are, in fact, trans women. I asked why
I have been simply astonished at the extent to which lies coming from the "trans" cult are accepted by people who should know better. Several times I have heard from incredulous people that reassignment surgery has never been performed on anyone under 18, and it is universally accepted that puberty blockers never do lasting harm
We are witnessing a phenomenon of incredulity on the level of Trump's Big Lie.
With very few exceptions the "trans" activists maintain a state of maximal outrage and are as quick to attack allies as enemies. Reading from afar it is plain to me that they are not considerate of women or even other "trans" people, only in swelling their numbers by any means necessary.
The fact that "trans" is, unlike being gay, a phase that many go through and emerge from, but many emerge after having their bodies mutilated or their pubescent development badly affectefd.
You held your side up well, but I got so sick of G's responses that I had to stop reading halfway through. The rape and death threats are only going one direction - from trans activists to women. I don't see trans people as "under widespread threat." I see the overprivileging of trans at the expense of all other groups on the left as finally being dialed back a bit.
But tragically, that's where they come from and remain. We must own our nutjobs just as we demand conservatives, the Religious Right and Muslims own theirs.
Well, they don't, why should we? I would dispute that they are ours to rein in but it would just end up in hair-splitting that I haven't the patience for.
I will say though that their breed of inflexibility and rigidity has nothing in common with our pluralism; I see the "trans" activists as MAGAts in a mirror.
They're our embarrassing cousins. They're correctly associated with the left and assuming you categorize yourself that way (I characterize myself that way) I say they're ours and yes, SOMEONE has to challenge them, and the right has to see that not all of us approve of them either. It will alert the conservatives who aren't completely crazy (like liberals who aren't part of the Loony Left) who their compatriots and allies are.
Extremism is extremism, and every side has a few of them. I am about to start insisting the trans movement own up to their sexual predators (the way I've been hammering the Catholic Church for decades) as I DO think we share responsibility for those who are associated with us - whether their MAGA hats are red or that gawdawful colour combo on the trans flag.
The trouble is, just as the political right points at the radical left and says, "look at those leftists with their [some names here], so too does the political left point at the radical right and say, "at those crazy conservatives with their [some names here].
Those names don't apply to all since the radicals don't define the tribes as if they are a monolith.
I don't believe those numbers based upon the ones I know. But my circle is too small to be a statistic. I don't want to engage in a left right political argument.
Since you asked, I will say that the majority of the left wants to destroy the republic by getting rid of the only remaining thing that prevents the tyranny of national "democracy" by eliminating the electoral college. Then they can vindictively impose their will upon everyone leaving nowhere to run within the US.
The majority of voters are idiots choosing the lesser of two evils provided by those in power. If a choice between Trump and Biden was the best that we can do what is the virtue of voting? We might have been better served by a random warlord.
It's not hyperbole when I opine that democracy is idiotic when you live in an Idiocracy.
The Electoral College is a leftover from the era of slavery and right now it lets Senators representing under 30% of the population control the national agenda. Twice this century the EC has delivered us awesomely inadequate Republican presidents who had lost the popular vote.
I have absolutely no reservations about southern conservatives being "oppressed" by not getting things their way because southern conservatives are for the most part utterly horrible people. Yes, yes, I know, there are no "good and bad" people, only "our and their" people. Well, not in this case.
Minority rule has done America no good, and just look where it's brought us. A high school dropout in the House, a Libertarian in the Senate, a madwoman on the Supreme Court. I say end the EC and if the conservatives are so unhappy they can secede, operate under conservative economics, and starve to death.
Woah! It has a name. This appears to be a sizable enough tribe within the tribe to cause people to think they are representative. A buzz kill for many conservatives who are not of that tribe, and as big a potential fracture as the woke extremists.
We don't have to agree on everything since neither of us have the power to change the world. Lest you forget, I tilt left or right on individual issues rather than in conformance with a political tribe.
It is common for people to say the party (tribe) moved away from their values like Jim Webb & Tulsi Gabbard did when the tribe doesn't align with their values. I hear people talking about RINOs or extreme left or right when it's just a matter of the population of the tribes not being a monolith. I reject all tribal labels since none of them define me.
Unfortunately what I think conservatives in a theoretical "Jesusstan" would do is arm up and invade what's left of the United States. After all, they don't want their own country, they want to overthrow the one we've got. I was horrified the other day to see somewhere - forget whether it was social media or a website or a news story - in which they claimed Democrats 'want to kill us all.'
Sounds very seriously like projection to me. This is what Trump did, tell us what he was thinking himself by saying his enemies wanted to do this or that. I think these people seriously are going to start 'coming after the libs' soon like they just did for Nancy Pelosi.
I'm going to stand up for the Democrats a bit here. I know they're their own mess; they don't have all the answers; and they're part of the problem. But why is Biden considered not much better than Trump? Why was Obama similarly maligned? Let's remember the Republicans make it a point to a) Never do anything to help the American people unless they're rich enough to be their base and b) Never let the Democrats do anything good for the American people just because.
However, I do agree with your contention that the majority of voters are idiots who vote for their own obstacles to the changes they say they want to see.
So they may turn Congress back to the Republicans because they don't like the economy? Oy.
Only hatred of Trump would allow people to ignore Biden's mental state. Its not worthy of argument. If you don't see it you just don't want to see it.
As for the economy, hell yes it matters. The people the Democrats claim to represent suffer the worst. I walk past people living in the park because they can't afford a basic low end middle class. What matters more than, a roof over your head, a job, not having to choose between food and child care. People with children liked working from home when school was out so they could eat. Stores are shuttered all over the place. Put out of business by the panic that cured the flue.
Obama, I didn't mention Obama. His presidency was an order of magnitude better.
I have posted many times that the statistics for "trans" claims exceed medical criteria a thousandfold. I wish someone responsible (e.g. not Marjorie Taylor Greene) would get this out and start pushback. Most fads have to do with ephemeral styles of hair and clothing, not permanent surgical alteration. This could be done without attacking others by pointing out that genuinely dysphoric people are being left out in the cold by the scant resources for their support being drained by people who just want attention.
Of course I doubt even Steve could write this on Medium. It take only a single report of "transphobia" to get banned from there by Roger (he/him).
I am being interviewed for a technical writing job and were I ordered to use "they" as the "nonbinary" want I would have a really big issue.
I find G’s certainty astonishing. It really highlights what happens (or doesn’t) inside the bubble of curated thought around most of us. Two examples:
A lovely and deeply liberal friend of mine had no idea Clarence Thomas was initially not included in the new Smithsonian museum of African-American history because he is a conservative.
An articulate and fascinating new friend born in Egypt and active in child psychology, father in the UN and speaking five languages had never heard of the Abraham Accords. Yes, a woman from the Middle East and deeply proud of her heritage didn’t know about one of the singular achievements towards Middle East peace in 70 years - because Trump.
...but that bubble, it’s so comforting...
So G is certain all thoughtful discussion about protecting female spaces is based on trans hatred. And puberty blockers are reversible. And no surgeries are done under 18. What in the world passes for research, informed opinion, and engaged knowledge anymore?
I appreciated your patience in response Steve - highlighting how you have to repeatedly and often gently pop that pretty bubble to let the sunshine in.
It's frightening to me how easily gaslit so many female and allegedly feminist 'allies' are. It's breathtaking how ignorant this woman is, how she only gets her information from those who blindly accept trans-activist propaganda. I'm not familiar with those Medium writers - I may have avoided them if I recognized them as loony lefties - but there were plenty who were uncritical of the trans movement, who naively accept that everyone's there because they're GD rather than some other highly suspicious reasons, like for sexual fetishism reasons and/or to harass and intimidate women with their genitals. Thanks for those articles, BTW, they'll come in handy with some 'trans-ally' anonymous coward on Twitter I've been challenging this past week (you know, the kind of with a grey head, no profile information, and a following of 11).
This is the problem with the left - it favours tolerance, but it's become *too* tolerant, and too easily swayed by misogyny in the trans movement. These guys are clever - they figured out how to get women to stop hammering them about their male privilege and accept them as alleged victims.
Let's remember that when it comes to genuine victimhood in the trans community, their biggest threat is, like it is to us natal women, male aggression. We're not the ones killing and assaulting transpeople; that is and remains a guy thing, just as harassment in toilets, spas, and violence shelters is a guy thing (funny how they always seem to have penises. Where are the trans-harassers with vaginas? Are there any? Who knows?)
Also the Nazi genocide comparisons are wearing very, very thin. There was an actual genocidal effort to eradicate the world, or at least Europe, of Jews in the last century. I've never heard anyone advocate killing or eliminating all the transpeople. If there are such voices, they're probably on the far right, but I suspect that particular trope is mostly between their ears.
Yes the most infinitesimal deviation from the most insignificant point of their ideology leads to your being called not just "transphobic" but "incredibly transphobic" and probably seeing a red box next time you log on.
Hasn't happened yet, and with a new narcissistic nutbar who suffers from delusions of adequacy taking over Twitter I anticipate that will happen even less now. Perhaps it's time to respond humourously/ironically with their own verbiage. "I find you comment incredibly hysterical that you can see *any*, let alone 'an incredible amount' of transphobia in my comment. Have you ever looked up the word phobic?"
i'm going to come up with an Inigo Montoya (overused, for sure) meme: "Transphobic. You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
I don’t think a lot of people are gnawing their nails in fear that a man in a dress and heels with some major identity disorder is going to mug them in an alley.
It annoys me no end that “phobia” is used for “hatred.” That suffix is "-misia.”
Kat Rosenfield recently had a great piece on tribalism and how certain positions are simply unspeakable...until they aren't. That's probably the worst part of the tribal discourse today ... "Oh, you have this particular discrete thought? Then you are evil and are hereby branded as an outright heretic and are forever banned from this tribe."
I had a stark instance of it on here in the original Rittenhouse post. I mentioned that there had been a video of Rittenhouse talking about how he wanted to go shoot protesters, taken on a friend's cell phone and that the judge refused to let it be played in court.
I was challenged to produce the video despite its unavailability; it had been mentioned in court but was no on YouTube or anywhere else. First time I wanted a block button on here.
TY, Steve. When You're right, You're right. For what good it does "G." I quote:
"Everyone, without exception, is entitled to their beliefs, but and its a huge but, they are not entitled to force their beliefs on to others, under any circumstances, even parents."
Gimme a break. Exactly who is it that's *forcing* their ideas on *women* and *parents*? It's another "rule for thee, but not for me" deal. And that's just plain despicable, IMO.
I have been simply astonished at the extent to which lies coming from the "trans" cult are accepted by people who should know better. Several times I have heard from incredulous people that reassignment surgery has never been performed on anyone under 18, and it is universally accepted that puberty blockers never do lasting harm
We are witnessing a phenomenon of incredulity on the level of Trump's Big Lie.
With very few exceptions the "trans" activists maintain a state of maximal outrage and are as quick to attack allies as enemies. Reading from afar it is plain to me that they are not considerate of women or even other "trans" people, only in swelling their numbers by any means necessary.
The fact that "trans" is, unlike being gay, a phase that many go through and emerge from, but many emerge after having their bodies mutilated or their pubescent development badly affectefd.
You held your side up well, but I got so sick of G's responses that I had to stop reading halfway through. The rape and death threats are only going one direction - from trans activists to women. I don't see trans people as "under widespread threat." I see the overprivileging of trans at the expense of all other groups on the left as finally being dialed back a bit.
Please don't confuse the "woke" with the "left."
As a bonafide leftist who wore armbands in 1970 and a gay man who has known real transsexuals, I formally disown those fools.
But tragically, that's where they come from and remain. We must own our nutjobs just as we demand conservatives, the Religious Right and Muslims own theirs.
Well, they don't, why should we? I would dispute that they are ours to rein in but it would just end up in hair-splitting that I haven't the patience for.
I will say though that their breed of inflexibility and rigidity has nothing in common with our pluralism; I see the "trans" activists as MAGAts in a mirror.
They're our embarrassing cousins. They're correctly associated with the left and assuming you categorize yourself that way (I characterize myself that way) I say they're ours and yes, SOMEONE has to challenge them, and the right has to see that not all of us approve of them either. It will alert the conservatives who aren't completely crazy (like liberals who aren't part of the Loony Left) who their compatriots and allies are.
Extremism is extremism, and every side has a few of them. I am about to start insisting the trans movement own up to their sexual predators (the way I've been hammering the Catholic Church for decades) as I DO think we share responsibility for those who are associated with us - whether their MAGA hats are red or that gawdawful colour combo on the trans flag.
The trouble is, just as the political right points at the radical left and says, "look at those leftists with their [some names here], so too does the political left point at the radical right and say, "at those crazy conservatives with their [some names here].
Those names don't apply to all since the radicals don't define the tribes as if they are a monolith.
Thirty percent of the right wants fascism. Seventy percent believes Trump won.
What is comparable on our side?
I don't believe those numbers based upon the ones I know. But my circle is too small to be a statistic. I don't want to engage in a left right political argument.
Since you asked, I will say that the majority of the left wants to destroy the republic by getting rid of the only remaining thing that prevents the tyranny of national "democracy" by eliminating the electoral college. Then they can vindictively impose their will upon everyone leaving nowhere to run within the US.
The majority of voters are idiots choosing the lesser of two evils provided by those in power. If a choice between Trump and Biden was the best that we can do what is the virtue of voting? We might have been better served by a random warlord.
It's not hyperbole when I opine that democracy is idiotic when you live in an Idiocracy.
You and I are often in agreement. Not this time.
The Electoral College is a leftover from the era of slavery and right now it lets Senators representing under 30% of the population control the national agenda. Twice this century the EC has delivered us awesomely inadequate Republican presidents who had lost the popular vote.
I have absolutely no reservations about southern conservatives being "oppressed" by not getting things their way because southern conservatives are for the most part utterly horrible people. Yes, yes, I know, there are no "good and bad" people, only "our and their" people. Well, not in this case.
Minority rule has done America no good, and just look where it's brought us. A high school dropout in the House, a Libertarian in the Senate, a madwoman on the Supreme Court. I say end the EC and if the conservatives are so unhappy they can secede, operate under conservative economics, and starve to death.
Woah! It has a name. This appears to be a sizable enough tribe within the tribe to cause people to think they are representative. A buzz kill for many conservatives who are not of that tribe, and as big a potential fracture as the woke extremists.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/11/white-christian-nationalists-on-us-midterm-election-mission/
We don't have to agree on everything since neither of us have the power to change the world. Lest you forget, I tilt left or right on individual issues rather than in conformance with a political tribe.
It is common for people to say the party (tribe) moved away from their values like Jim Webb & Tulsi Gabbard did when the tribe doesn't align with their values. I hear people talking about RINOs or extreme left or right when it's just a matter of the population of the tribes not being a monolith. I reject all tribal labels since none of them define me.
Unfortunately what I think conservatives in a theoretical "Jesusstan" would do is arm up and invade what's left of the United States. After all, they don't want their own country, they want to overthrow the one we've got. I was horrified the other day to see somewhere - forget whether it was social media or a website or a news story - in which they claimed Democrats 'want to kill us all.'
Sounds very seriously like projection to me. This is what Trump did, tell us what he was thinking himself by saying his enemies wanted to do this or that. I think these people seriously are going to start 'coming after the libs' soon like they just did for Nancy Pelosi.
I'm going to stand up for the Democrats a bit here. I know they're their own mess; they don't have all the answers; and they're part of the problem. But why is Biden considered not much better than Trump? Why was Obama similarly maligned? Let's remember the Republicans make it a point to a) Never do anything to help the American people unless they're rich enough to be their base and b) Never let the Democrats do anything good for the American people just because.
However, I do agree with your contention that the majority of voters are idiots who vote for their own obstacles to the changes they say they want to see.
So they may turn Congress back to the Republicans because they don't like the economy? Oy.
Only hatred of Trump would allow people to ignore Biden's mental state. Its not worthy of argument. If you don't see it you just don't want to see it.
As for the economy, hell yes it matters. The people the Democrats claim to represent suffer the worst. I walk past people living in the park because they can't afford a basic low end middle class. What matters more than, a roof over your head, a job, not having to choose between food and child care. People with children liked working from home when school was out so they could eat. Stores are shuttered all over the place. Put out of business by the panic that cured the flue.
Obama, I didn't mention Obama. His presidency was an order of magnitude better.
None of that is a defense of Republicans.
Oh I absolutely know the difference!
I have posted many times that the statistics for "trans" claims exceed medical criteria a thousandfold. I wish someone responsible (e.g. not Marjorie Taylor Greene) would get this out and start pushback. Most fads have to do with ephemeral styles of hair and clothing, not permanent surgical alteration. This could be done without attacking others by pointing out that genuinely dysphoric people are being left out in the cold by the scant resources for their support being drained by people who just want attention.
Of course I doubt even Steve could write this on Medium. It take only a single report of "transphobia" to get banned from there by Roger (he/him).
I am being interviewed for a technical writing job and were I ordered to use "they" as the "nonbinary" want I would have a really big issue.
I find G’s certainty astonishing. It really highlights what happens (or doesn’t) inside the bubble of curated thought around most of us. Two examples:
A lovely and deeply liberal friend of mine had no idea Clarence Thomas was initially not included in the new Smithsonian museum of African-American history because he is a conservative.
An articulate and fascinating new friend born in Egypt and active in child psychology, father in the UN and speaking five languages had never heard of the Abraham Accords. Yes, a woman from the Middle East and deeply proud of her heritage didn’t know about one of the singular achievements towards Middle East peace in 70 years - because Trump.
...but that bubble, it’s so comforting...
So G is certain all thoughtful discussion about protecting female spaces is based on trans hatred. And puberty blockers are reversible. And no surgeries are done under 18. What in the world passes for research, informed opinion, and engaged knowledge anymore?
I appreciated your patience in response Steve - highlighting how you have to repeatedly and often gently pop that pretty bubble to let the sunshine in.
It's frightening to me how easily gaslit so many female and allegedly feminist 'allies' are. It's breathtaking how ignorant this woman is, how she only gets her information from those who blindly accept trans-activist propaganda. I'm not familiar with those Medium writers - I may have avoided them if I recognized them as loony lefties - but there were plenty who were uncritical of the trans movement, who naively accept that everyone's there because they're GD rather than some other highly suspicious reasons, like for sexual fetishism reasons and/or to harass and intimidate women with their genitals. Thanks for those articles, BTW, they'll come in handy with some 'trans-ally' anonymous coward on Twitter I've been challenging this past week (you know, the kind of with a grey head, no profile information, and a following of 11).
This is the problem with the left - it favours tolerance, but it's become *too* tolerant, and too easily swayed by misogyny in the trans movement. These guys are clever - they figured out how to get women to stop hammering them about their male privilege and accept them as alleged victims.
Let's remember that when it comes to genuine victimhood in the trans community, their biggest threat is, like it is to us natal women, male aggression. We're not the ones killing and assaulting transpeople; that is and remains a guy thing, just as harassment in toilets, spas, and violence shelters is a guy thing (funny how they always seem to have penises. Where are the trans-harassers with vaginas? Are there any? Who knows?)
Also the Nazi genocide comparisons are wearing very, very thin. There was an actual genocidal effort to eradicate the world, or at least Europe, of Jews in the last century. I've never heard anyone advocate killing or eliminating all the transpeople. If there are such voices, they're probably on the far right, but I suspect that particular trope is mostly between their ears.
Yes the most infinitesimal deviation from the most insignificant point of their ideology leads to your being called not just "transphobic" but "incredibly transphobic" and probably seeing a red box next time you log on.
Hasn't happened yet, and with a new narcissistic nutbar who suffers from delusions of adequacy taking over Twitter I anticipate that will happen even less now. Perhaps it's time to respond humourously/ironically with their own verbiage. "I find you comment incredibly hysterical that you can see *any*, let alone 'an incredible amount' of transphobia in my comment. Have you ever looked up the word phobic?"
i'm going to come up with an Inigo Montoya (overused, for sure) meme: "Transphobic. You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
I don’t think a lot of people are gnawing their nails in fear that a man in a dress and heels with some major identity disorder is going to mug them in an alley.
It annoys me no end that “phobia” is used for “hatred.” That suffix is "-misia.”
Kat Rosenfield recently had a great piece on tribalism and how certain positions are simply unspeakable...until they aren't. That's probably the worst part of the tribal discourse today ... "Oh, you have this particular discrete thought? Then you are evil and are hereby branded as an outright heretic and are forever banned from this tribe."
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/11/07/why-i-keep-getting-mistaken-for-a-conservative/
Those are my sentiments entirely. I always enjoyed Kat when I was on Medium.
Sea-lioning
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bx4X9zCCAAEf0sH?format=png&name=small
I had a stark instance of it on here in the original Rittenhouse post. I mentioned that there had been a video of Rittenhouse talking about how he wanted to go shoot protesters, taken on a friend's cell phone and that the judge refused to let it be played in court.
I was challenged to produce the video despite its unavailability; it had been mentioned in court but was no on YouTube or anywhere else. First time I wanted a block button on here.
Without the "Sea-lioning" it seems to have become a thing and argument. https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1587899647414063105?s=20&t=OMebTbg6FBVTdWP7P7ojBg
TY, Steve. When You're right, You're right. For what good it does "G." I quote:
"Everyone, without exception, is entitled to their beliefs, but and its a huge but, they are not entitled to force their beliefs on to others, under any circumstances, even parents."
Gimme a break. Exactly who is it that's *forcing* their ideas on *women* and *parents*? It's another "rule for thee, but not for me" deal. And that's just plain despicable, IMO.
“Women should not have to set themselves on fire to keep trans people warm.”
Absolutely beautiful and so spot on.
True, which is what makes them no better than the extreme right which is attempting exactly the same.
I don't want *either* or these nutjob teams in charge.