Melissa probably isn't meeting too many transfolk who are okay with JK Rowling *because they're afraid to speak up*. The transgender movement is, IMO, *the* most brutal when it comes to dealing with heretics. I've seen transfolk defend Rowling but daring to challenge your community on the left is dangerous: They will flame you, shame you…
Melissa probably isn't meeting too many transfolk who are okay with JK Rowling *because they're afraid to speak up*. The transgender movement is, IMO, *the* most brutal when it comes to dealing with heretics. I've seen transfolk defend Rowling but daring to challenge your community on the left is dangerous: They will flame you, shame you, flay you and slay you publicly. Racist 'antiracists' and 'feminists' go after their own heretics, but none are as brutal as the trans movement, which is when so-called 'women' start fantasizing about the violent, misogynist ways they'd like to treat natal women who dare to challenge them. (Nothing says, "I'm an angry male chick with a dick" quite like expressing the desire to cut up a woman who has just challenged him. I might be able to dig up this reference but I'm not sure the article is still online.) My operating theory is that transwomen still retain their male brains. Our brains *are* different and they *are* impacted by culture, environment, and family, but boy oh boy, nothing brings out misogyny quite like challenging a trans 'woman' like a natal woman, and you start seeing that old-time traditional, narcissistic, cis-het entitled male misogyny (especially if they've still got The Dangler, as a transwoman I was friendly with before it was cool used to put it back in the '90s).
Melissa doesn't strike me as misogynist, but she's drunk the trans Koolaid. Biology is real, which is all Rowling truly asserts. Just an hour ago while reading Cynical Theories before I got out of bed, it noted how critical theorists are quick to throw women under the bus when it comes to defending human rights abuses. They'll damn any abuse perpetuated by white Western men but turn mum when black and brown women in other countries beg for their help in putting an end to human rights abuses against women and children these so-called 'liberals' would never tolerate in their own countries. Boy oh boy are natal women getting thrown under the bus in the trans movement, and it's amazing how quickly the most feminist-seeming women (think E.B. on Medium, Steve) turn into good, compliant little girls as soon as chicks with dicks tell them how to think. It's no surprise to me that trans'women' (I don't always use the quotes, only when I question their commitment to womanhood) are the loudest voices of all - chicks with male brains who still haven't gotten over the idea that the world no longer revolves around them anymore, with or without The Dangler.
It's not all inherent misogyny - Cynical Theories explains the fundamentals of post-modernist thinking and how it began to change in the '60s (the decade responsible for everything lol) and how critical theory emerged and then turned fundamentalist and dogmatic. There's a strain of toxic anti-intellectual thought that's been there for decades, but the trans movement has really crushed it like OJ crushed Nicole.
So it's sad that Melissa couldn't handle your perfectly valid logical points against her, but I say this very sincerely: At least she didn't act like an entitled dickwad like others would have done.
"Melissa probably isn't meeting too many transfolk who are okay with JK Rowling *because they're afraid to speak up*."
Yeah, "wrong think" definitely definitely isn't tolerated in some trans communities. There's also just the fact of what an echo chamber the trans community is online. Most people think exactly the same thing because they're trapped in the same algorithm as all of their friends who get all of their information from the same few, incredibly biased and unscrupulous sources.
Melissa blocked me after this exchange 😅 But yes, at least she wasn't as nasty as many of the other commenters I've come across on trans issues.
Oh my God! That's awful! It's astonishing how toxic some people in the online trans community are whilst simultaneously claiming that they're the victims.
This is toxic masculinity, plain and simple. This is the violent misogynist language women are quite familiar with: The angry male challenged by a female.
Steve, I don't know if you ever knew of a writer named Jenny Asenscio on Medium, I got friendly with her when I first joined because like me, she had a power feminist attitude and shared my dislike of whiny-ass, chronically victimized Jessica Valenti, arguably Medium's most popular 'feminist' writer, although she was never very prolific, although I encouraged her to write more to counter the perma-victim mentality of so much of Medium's 'feminist' writers. Jenny became Ian last year when she became the highly unusual case of an older person (mid forties) 'coming out' as a man. Yet he still retains his power feminist views and has spoken out (rather like a woman ;) ) decrying transwomen with dicks pressuring lesbians to have sex with them and claiming they're 'transphobic' if they don't - ignoring the fact that lesbians *aren't attracted to penises*. I note that that sounds remarkably like the way women have been traditionally been pressured by men to have sex: "If you don't want to have sex with me you must be a lesbian! Oh you're not? Well *prove it*!"
When a 'woman' uses a penis or a penile symbol to threaten natal women, it's a giant red flag that they're a 'woman' in name only.
"Steve, I don't know if you ever knew of a writer named Jenny Asenscio"
Yep, Jenny is fantastic. So feisty! And I love how I can absolutely depend on him to call out trans activists who use intersex people as a talking point to support nonsensical claims. I see him in my comments fairly frequently when I write about trans issues.
I am, in general, very skeptical of many versions of the Privilege Narrative. Not denying that anything exists, but I question the utility and applicability of the exaggerated narratives built on that foundation. We can nuance that more some other time.
I just have to say that the behavior of some MtF trans rights activists is among the strongest examples which cause me to give some more credit to the "male privilege" perspective. It seems more nakedly portrayed than usual. Asserting that one has a woman's brain and soul, while treating biological women and their concerns with so much disrespect - ouch!
And this does not characterize all trans people by any means; only some trans rights activists. I have known trans women who were very respectful of women's rights, and I hope they don't get caught in a backlash to the more extreme activists. I do not consider all trans people to having the same viewpoint! (Nor any other identity group).
I'm with you on that one. Privilege exists, but we pay oversized attention to some and not so much to others like wealth privilege, or 'green' as Steve called it awhile back. Not to mention when it's combined with celebrity privilege, which is how OJ Simpson got away with murdering his wife, Kobe Bryant got away with raping a woman, and I strongly suspect how Bill Cosby got away with raping white women as far back in the day when a lynching wouldn't have been entirely out of the question had he been accused (it's interesting how many white women with a LOT more power over black men back then never told.) Cosby's career would have been over and he never would have been able to venture south of the Mason-Dixon).
“...critical theorists are quick to throw women under the bus when it comes to defending human rights abuses.” Yes, just ask Scott Smith's daughter. I can't believe what the system did to this man and his family all in the name of protecting trans rights. I deeply believe that trans persons deserve all the civil and humans rights protections afforded anyone else in our society. But this is beyond the pale...
Actually, that story ended a bit differently than the way it initially played out. As it turned out, the boy was wearing a skirt but wasn't 'trans', and he came to the bathroom the girl chose expecting sex because he had consensual sex twice with this girl. She said she had only wanted to talk, this guy expected sex and he forced her. But, they weren't gender-neutral bathrooms, the incident happened *before* the school's bathrooms changed the policy.
So, the girl got raped by the guy, but it wasn't the trans horror the right wing made it out to be.
Can't say it hasn't happened elsewhere, and it's sure as hell going on in prisons where 'trans' women with dicks and a long list of sex offenses are allowed into women's prisons, but that's a rant for another day.
I see. I hadn't caught this. It was presumed, at the beginning at least, that (s)he was trans. Even the recent article I read on WaPo regarding the conviction used the pronoun she/her to describe the gender fluid boy. So I misunderstood and stand corrected. Sounds like he is/was a very confused human being regardless and the sex does appear to have been coerced.
The mother of the "young man"?, "young person"? said he had been experimenting with different styles of clothing: “He was trying to find himself and that involved all kinds of styles. I believe he was doing it because it gave him attention he desperately needed and sought.” Which brings up another concern of mine. How many of these youth asserting that they are gender fluid or trans are just seeking attention due to poor parenting? And what are their false assertions doing to the poor kids who actually are trans? What a mess...
This one was a slippery one. I only know about it because I got into a debate about it with someone elsewhere and I wondered, "Did this really happen?" and when I started looking at news sources I found it, not surprisingly, in the right wing media, particularly questionable sources like the Daily Caller and the UK's Daily Mail, both notoriously right-biased and footloose with the facts. I don't care as much about bias if the essential facts are correct but neither of these can ever pass muster in Media Bias Fact Check. So, just make a mental note: Right now there's not a lot of evidence for sexual assaults in bathrooms, so allegations may well come from the right wing media. OTOH, the left wing media is NOT reporting prison rapes so I can't say they're not happening, and it's not terribly radical to say don't believe everything the media says. I'm not anti-MSM, but I've watched journalistic standards slip over the decades.
Remember the Matthew Sheperd case, the alleged anti-gay 'hate crime'? (The kid beaten up and tied to a fence in a field and left to die in Wyoming). Next up on my reading list is The Book of Matt, making, from what I've read from reliable reviews, a very good case for how it was actually a drug deal gone bad, that it had nothing to do with his homosexuality, and how the media turned it into a 'hate crime'.
Then there was Tawana Brawley, who I call the Crystal Smollett of hate crimes. Jussie Smollett lied about a racist attack, Crystal Jackson lied about a rape (the Duke University lacrosse team case). Tawana Brawley lied about *both*, but boy oh boy did the media go to town on how it was a racist case without delving too deeply into some disturbing details questioning her story, and then it all came out - the bitch lied!!! One of her accused even successfully sued her for defamation (although I don't know that the bitch ever paid up).
Yes, I ran across the real story of Mathew Shepard more recently and was very disappointed, because I had believed the mainstream report that it was flagrant homophobia for a long time. When you read the details, not it was not. (One of the killers was one of his lovers, even; homosexuality was not an issue in his circle or his death, drugs and drug money was).
I've since come across more info on the George Zimmerman / Treyvon Martin case, and we were sold a buil of goods there too. The media failed to note that Zimmerman was a Hispanic Democrat who voted for Obama, was mentoring two Black kids, and had gone to bat for a Black person killed by an officer's son. Not to mention that all of the forensic evidence and the eye witness accounts are consistent with Zimmerman's story - that he was attacked by Martin, who was on top of him beating him and slamming his head into the pavement, so Zimmerman remembered that he had a gun and shot Martin from below. What we heard was grossly distorted to fit an agenda.
Then I read through the Justice Department's report on the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson - they were really out to go after the officer, but the evidence was quite strong that Michael Brown was charging the officer and the officer was shooting in self defense; the Obama administration reluctantly had to clear him. All the stuff about "hands up, don't shoot" was a false invention.
I've looked into several other such things, and there is a dismaying amount of misrepresentation to "Reinforce the (Oppression) Narrative".
Of course there ARE real cases of abuse, but we cannot trust the media to be accurate in telling us which is which. At this point, I have zero automatic trust in the stories from any side, in any American media; everything must be checked before belief. It's not all false, but enough of it is false or misleading that I've lost any automatic trust in any source. Alas, at this point I think the situation has deteriorated beyond just a slip in journalistic standards, but form your own opinion as you continue to learn more about how deep the rot goes.
Obviously, I'm including Fox News and conservative media in my skepticism, as I always have - what's more recent is that my distrust now incudes most liberal or "mainstream" news as well.
I have not yet read "Hate Crime Hoaxes" by Wilfred Reilly but I gather it records a number of other cases.
If you have doubts about the Michael Brown case, check the DOJ final report. There is another book about the Treyvon Martin case.
Thanks for the heads up about these! I didn't know a lot of these details, although I do remember public discussion about Zimmerman's Hispanic origins and whether that constituted 'white' or not (because, it's a slightly less horrible tragedy if he's a browner shade of pale?). I know he was Democrat, can't remember if I ever knew he voted for Obama. I didn't know about the other stuff, but I can be accused of not following it all that closely.
I aspired to journalism when I was in college (forty years ago) and we learned how to always strive for objectivity and keep our own personal opinions. Most importantly, we learned not to publish *anything* unless we got confirmation or evidence from *three* reliable sources. I thought about that rather a lot when the media's standards really started slipping in the '90s and stuff about Clinton was being alleged just on say-so. Was he really smuggled out of the White House under blankets by the Secret Service for assignations with other women (pre-Monica playing his harmonica)? The media reported this even though no evidence of it or reliable eyewitnesses could verify it. People are wise not to trust the mainstream media anymore, and not getting to the bottom of what *really* happened to anyone which might not suit the prevailing narrative (Trayvon Martin was a thug, Bill Clinton was a slut - well, he *was*, but the blanket story is bullshit) has a lot to do with it. Along with overall shoddy reporting and no effort to keep personal opinion out of it.
Thanks for the mention on the book. Going to put it on my Amazon wish list now, which is where I keep my 2-read list.
Yes, I was aware of the Matthew Sheperd case and the others. And, yes, media standards are slipping. I am far more cynical than you about MSM and avoid them like the plague. I abhor people who misuse their authority. NOT cool. A lie is a lie. The ends do NOT justify the means and real people are getting hurt with their propaganda campaign.
Melissa probably isn't meeting too many transfolk who are okay with JK Rowling *because they're afraid to speak up*. The transgender movement is, IMO, *the* most brutal when it comes to dealing with heretics. I've seen transfolk defend Rowling but daring to challenge your community on the left is dangerous: They will flame you, shame you, flay you and slay you publicly. Racist 'antiracists' and 'feminists' go after their own heretics, but none are as brutal as the trans movement, which is when so-called 'women' start fantasizing about the violent, misogynist ways they'd like to treat natal women who dare to challenge them. (Nothing says, "I'm an angry male chick with a dick" quite like expressing the desire to cut up a woman who has just challenged him. I might be able to dig up this reference but I'm not sure the article is still online.) My operating theory is that transwomen still retain their male brains. Our brains *are* different and they *are* impacted by culture, environment, and family, but boy oh boy, nothing brings out misogyny quite like challenging a trans 'woman' like a natal woman, and you start seeing that old-time traditional, narcissistic, cis-het entitled male misogyny (especially if they've still got The Dangler, as a transwoman I was friendly with before it was cool used to put it back in the '90s).
Melissa doesn't strike me as misogynist, but she's drunk the trans Koolaid. Biology is real, which is all Rowling truly asserts. Just an hour ago while reading Cynical Theories before I got out of bed, it noted how critical theorists are quick to throw women under the bus when it comes to defending human rights abuses. They'll damn any abuse perpetuated by white Western men but turn mum when black and brown women in other countries beg for their help in putting an end to human rights abuses against women and children these so-called 'liberals' would never tolerate in their own countries. Boy oh boy are natal women getting thrown under the bus in the trans movement, and it's amazing how quickly the most feminist-seeming women (think E.B. on Medium, Steve) turn into good, compliant little girls as soon as chicks with dicks tell them how to think. It's no surprise to me that trans'women' (I don't always use the quotes, only when I question their commitment to womanhood) are the loudest voices of all - chicks with male brains who still haven't gotten over the idea that the world no longer revolves around them anymore, with or without The Dangler.
It's not all inherent misogyny - Cynical Theories explains the fundamentals of post-modernist thinking and how it began to change in the '60s (the decade responsible for everything lol) and how critical theory emerged and then turned fundamentalist and dogmatic. There's a strain of toxic anti-intellectual thought that's been there for decades, but the trans movement has really crushed it like OJ crushed Nicole.
So it's sad that Melissa couldn't handle your perfectly valid logical points against her, but I say this very sincerely: At least she didn't act like an entitled dickwad like others would have done.
"Melissa probably isn't meeting too many transfolk who are okay with JK Rowling *because they're afraid to speak up*."
Yeah, "wrong think" definitely definitely isn't tolerated in some trans communities. There's also just the fact of what an echo chamber the trans community is online. Most people think exactly the same thing because they're trapped in the same algorithm as all of their friends who get all of their information from the same few, incredibly biased and unscrupulous sources.
Melissa blocked me after this exchange 😅 But yes, at least she wasn't as nasty as many of the other commenters I've come across on trans issues.
It's because you're transphobic, you TERF :)
Right?! Send me to the gulag immediately for wanting to have an honest conversation.
I had a trans woman say they wanted to rape me with a chainsaw. This is pretty common language if they perceive you as not 100% supportive of them.
Oh my God! That's awful! It's astonishing how toxic some people in the online trans community are whilst simultaneously claiming that they're the victims.
This is toxic masculinity, plain and simple. This is the violent misogynist language women are quite familiar with: The angry male challenged by a female.
Steve, I don't know if you ever knew of a writer named Jenny Asenscio on Medium, I got friendly with her when I first joined because like me, she had a power feminist attitude and shared my dislike of whiny-ass, chronically victimized Jessica Valenti, arguably Medium's most popular 'feminist' writer, although she was never very prolific, although I encouraged her to write more to counter the perma-victim mentality of so much of Medium's 'feminist' writers. Jenny became Ian last year when she became the highly unusual case of an older person (mid forties) 'coming out' as a man. Yet he still retains his power feminist views and has spoken out (rather like a woman ;) ) decrying transwomen with dicks pressuring lesbians to have sex with them and claiming they're 'transphobic' if they don't - ignoring the fact that lesbians *aren't attracted to penises*. I note that that sounds remarkably like the way women have been traditionally been pressured by men to have sex: "If you don't want to have sex with me you must be a lesbian! Oh you're not? Well *prove it*!"
When a 'woman' uses a penis or a penile symbol to threaten natal women, it's a giant red flag that they're a 'woman' in name only.
"Steve, I don't know if you ever knew of a writer named Jenny Asenscio"
Yep, Jenny is fantastic. So feisty! And I love how I can absolutely depend on him to call out trans activists who use intersex people as a talking point to support nonsensical claims. I see him in my comments fairly frequently when I write about trans issues.
I am, in general, very skeptical of many versions of the Privilege Narrative. Not denying that anything exists, but I question the utility and applicability of the exaggerated narratives built on that foundation. We can nuance that more some other time.
I just have to say that the behavior of some MtF trans rights activists is among the strongest examples which cause me to give some more credit to the "male privilege" perspective. It seems more nakedly portrayed than usual. Asserting that one has a woman's brain and soul, while treating biological women and their concerns with so much disrespect - ouch!
And this does not characterize all trans people by any means; only some trans rights activists. I have known trans women who were very respectful of women's rights, and I hope they don't get caught in a backlash to the more extreme activists. I do not consider all trans people to having the same viewpoint! (Nor any other identity group).
I'm with you on that one. Privilege exists, but we pay oversized attention to some and not so much to others like wealth privilege, or 'green' as Steve called it awhile back. Not to mention when it's combined with celebrity privilege, which is how OJ Simpson got away with murdering his wife, Kobe Bryant got away with raping a woman, and I strongly suspect how Bill Cosby got away with raping white women as far back in the day when a lynching wouldn't have been entirely out of the question had he been accused (it's interesting how many white women with a LOT more power over black men back then never told.) Cosby's career would have been over and he never would have been able to venture south of the Mason-Dixon).
It's the Golden Rule...The one with the gold....
“...critical theorists are quick to throw women under the bus when it comes to defending human rights abuses.” Yes, just ask Scott Smith's daughter. I can't believe what the system did to this man and his family all in the name of protecting trans rights. I deeply believe that trans persons deserve all the civil and humans rights protections afforded anyone else in our society. But this is beyond the pale...
Actually, that story ended a bit differently than the way it initially played out. As it turned out, the boy was wearing a skirt but wasn't 'trans', and he came to the bathroom the girl chose expecting sex because he had consensual sex twice with this girl. She said she had only wanted to talk, this guy expected sex and he forced her. But, they weren't gender-neutral bathrooms, the incident happened *before* the school's bathrooms changed the policy.
So, the girl got raped by the guy, but it wasn't the trans horror the right wing made it out to be.
Can't say it hasn't happened elsewhere, and it's sure as hell going on in prisons where 'trans' women with dicks and a long list of sex offenses are allowed into women's prisons, but that's a rant for another day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/opinion/loudoun-county-trans.html
I see. I hadn't caught this. It was presumed, at the beginning at least, that (s)he was trans. Even the recent article I read on WaPo regarding the conviction used the pronoun she/her to describe the gender fluid boy. So I misunderstood and stand corrected. Sounds like he is/was a very confused human being regardless and the sex does appear to have been coerced.
The mother of the "young man"?, "young person"? said he had been experimenting with different styles of clothing: “He was trying to find himself and that involved all kinds of styles. I believe he was doing it because it gave him attention he desperately needed and sought.” Which brings up another concern of mine. How many of these youth asserting that they are gender fluid or trans are just seeking attention due to poor parenting? And what are their false assertions doing to the poor kids who actually are trans? What a mess...
This one was a slippery one. I only know about it because I got into a debate about it with someone elsewhere and I wondered, "Did this really happen?" and when I started looking at news sources I found it, not surprisingly, in the right wing media, particularly questionable sources like the Daily Caller and the UK's Daily Mail, both notoriously right-biased and footloose with the facts. I don't care as much about bias if the essential facts are correct but neither of these can ever pass muster in Media Bias Fact Check. So, just make a mental note: Right now there's not a lot of evidence for sexual assaults in bathrooms, so allegations may well come from the right wing media. OTOH, the left wing media is NOT reporting prison rapes so I can't say they're not happening, and it's not terribly radical to say don't believe everything the media says. I'm not anti-MSM, but I've watched journalistic standards slip over the decades.
Remember the Matthew Sheperd case, the alleged anti-gay 'hate crime'? (The kid beaten up and tied to a fence in a field and left to die in Wyoming). Next up on my reading list is The Book of Matt, making, from what I've read from reliable reviews, a very good case for how it was actually a drug deal gone bad, that it had nothing to do with his homosexuality, and how the media turned it into a 'hate crime'.
Then there was Tawana Brawley, who I call the Crystal Smollett of hate crimes. Jussie Smollett lied about a racist attack, Crystal Jackson lied about a rape (the Duke University lacrosse team case). Tawana Brawley lied about *both*, but boy oh boy did the media go to town on how it was a racist case without delving too deeply into some disturbing details questioning her story, and then it all came out - the bitch lied!!! One of her accused even successfully sued her for defamation (although I don't know that the bitch ever paid up).
Yes, I ran across the real story of Mathew Shepard more recently and was very disappointed, because I had believed the mainstream report that it was flagrant homophobia for a long time. When you read the details, not it was not. (One of the killers was one of his lovers, even; homosexuality was not an issue in his circle or his death, drugs and drug money was).
I've since come across more info on the George Zimmerman / Treyvon Martin case, and we were sold a buil of goods there too. The media failed to note that Zimmerman was a Hispanic Democrat who voted for Obama, was mentoring two Black kids, and had gone to bat for a Black person killed by an officer's son. Not to mention that all of the forensic evidence and the eye witness accounts are consistent with Zimmerman's story - that he was attacked by Martin, who was on top of him beating him and slamming his head into the pavement, so Zimmerman remembered that he had a gun and shot Martin from below. What we heard was grossly distorted to fit an agenda.
Then I read through the Justice Department's report on the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson - they were really out to go after the officer, but the evidence was quite strong that Michael Brown was charging the officer and the officer was shooting in self defense; the Obama administration reluctantly had to clear him. All the stuff about "hands up, don't shoot" was a false invention.
I've looked into several other such things, and there is a dismaying amount of misrepresentation to "Reinforce the (Oppression) Narrative".
Of course there ARE real cases of abuse, but we cannot trust the media to be accurate in telling us which is which. At this point, I have zero automatic trust in the stories from any side, in any American media; everything must be checked before belief. It's not all false, but enough of it is false or misleading that I've lost any automatic trust in any source. Alas, at this point I think the situation has deteriorated beyond just a slip in journalistic standards, but form your own opinion as you continue to learn more about how deep the rot goes.
Obviously, I'm including Fox News and conservative media in my skepticism, as I always have - what's more recent is that my distrust now incudes most liberal or "mainstream" news as well.
I have not yet read "Hate Crime Hoaxes" by Wilfred Reilly but I gather it records a number of other cases.
If you have doubts about the Michael Brown case, check the DOJ final report. There is another book about the Treyvon Martin case.
Thanks for the heads up about these! I didn't know a lot of these details, although I do remember public discussion about Zimmerman's Hispanic origins and whether that constituted 'white' or not (because, it's a slightly less horrible tragedy if he's a browner shade of pale?). I know he was Democrat, can't remember if I ever knew he voted for Obama. I didn't know about the other stuff, but I can be accused of not following it all that closely.
I aspired to journalism when I was in college (forty years ago) and we learned how to always strive for objectivity and keep our own personal opinions. Most importantly, we learned not to publish *anything* unless we got confirmation or evidence from *three* reliable sources. I thought about that rather a lot when the media's standards really started slipping in the '90s and stuff about Clinton was being alleged just on say-so. Was he really smuggled out of the White House under blankets by the Secret Service for assignations with other women (pre-Monica playing his harmonica)? The media reported this even though no evidence of it or reliable eyewitnesses could verify it. People are wise not to trust the mainstream media anymore, and not getting to the bottom of what *really* happened to anyone which might not suit the prevailing narrative (Trayvon Martin was a thug, Bill Clinton was a slut - well, he *was*, but the blanket story is bullshit) has a lot to do with it. Along with overall shoddy reporting and no effort to keep personal opinion out of it.
Thanks for the mention on the book. Going to put it on my Amazon wish list now, which is where I keep my 2-read list.
Yes, I was aware of the Matthew Sheperd case and the others. And, yes, media standards are slipping. I am far more cynical than you about MSM and avoid them like the plague. I abhor people who misuse their authority. NOT cool. A lie is a lie. The ends do NOT justify the means and real people are getting hurt with their propaganda campaign.