Its so frustrating that it seems to both add ammo to the conspiricist thinking of "you can't trust main stream media" while at the same time allowing batshit conservative agendas with the sort of dross they are hoping to spread. It's exhausting keeping up and almost impossible to argue for sanity or common sense anymore!
Aug 26, 2022·edited Aug 26, 2022Liked by David Farrier
from a trans perspective... seeing this kind of inflammatory news make headlines over & over again inspires the most overwhelming hopeless sense of despair, it's hard to even describe. i have to just sit there and watch it happen, knowing none of it is true, watching people i love start to embrace it, knowing i can do nothing to stop it. the truth is nobody (especially not conservatives) wants to listen to trans people on trans issues.
a while back in australia, newscorp ran a story about trans people demanding we stop using 'mum' and 'dad' in schools and abolish all gendered terms. i found out about the story from a facebook feed of a gay friend of mine. he had always been a nice person and i politely commented to let him know the story was false and warn him about falling for clickbait - especially as a gay man spreading misinfo about his trans siblings! next thing i know, he's accusing me of calling him a transphobe and directing his facebook friends to dogpile on me in comments. he was in my DMs saying terrible vicious things about how i was a Bad Trans accusing gay people of transphobia for no reason. i told him i hadnt thought he was a transphobe then but i certainly did now. it reminded me of how people are more afraid of being called a racist than they are of /being/ racist and how outrage over being perceived racist shuts down any sort of conversation you could otherwise have with them. of course, all these feelings and experiences are tenfold for our non-white siblings.
the worst part was that it occurred within weeks of the judge of a prolonged case describing the 'manslaughter' of a trans woman as a crime "on the lower end of serious" and illegally attempting to give the killer a community service order instead of jailtime. (he had killed her during sex and so it was ruled an accident - the court did not take into account the graphic threatening texts he had sent her, her family, & her friends beforehand). the story got almost no coverage at all apart from the ABC. no outpouring of outrage from allies there. there's never any huge noise online about injustice towards trans people from cis allies. it was an event that permanently altered & further radicalised me.
ugh. it's a lot. having to watch it happen over and over again. with outrage over trans women in sports. with outrage over trans people pissing in the bathroom. with outrage about mythical surgeries happening to children (while people stay silent on the actual "sex-correcting" surgeries that happen to intersex children and babies). my heart breaks for younger trans people hearing adults on tv call them "mutilated" - i heard similar things just from my parents growing up and it permanently impacted me. supportive people outside my house were all that got me through. i just hope trans kids in similar households seeing this shit on tv will be ok. people are drinking the transphobia kool-aid all over the world in the past few years and it's hard not to feel empty. as a baby journalist, it's hard knowing any sort of good coverage about trans people i could put into the world will likely be passed over and remain unshared. but, we have to keep making it. it all counts.
and at the same time, i was heartened when the most recent australian elections saw a woman stand up and publicly out herself as a TERF in an attempt to gain the liberal party favour, only to be absolutely smashed in the polls as part of australia's most progressive election result in a long time. TERFism hasn't really caught on here in huge amounts (yet). that keeps me going.
and thank you for writing things like this. the truth is, people on the fence are far more likely to listen to you as a cis man than me. it sucks (no offence <3) but it's what we have to work with.
ok. long time reader first time commenter! sorry for the word vomit, i hope at least some of it makes sense.
Aug 26, 2022·edited Aug 27, 2022Liked by David Farrier
Very interesting timing on your coverage of this issue, as just a couple weeks ago WaPo published this piece about "pink slime journalism," a term that's apparently been around for awhile but was new to me. It's discussed as an American issue only, but it's got a lot in common with this sinister force you're talking about. But it's largely about the death of local news and how it's all just a pile of corporate mush (hence pink slime) which is often used to promote political agendas, as is the case with this cat thing.
Here is a gifted (no paywall) link to the article:
All of this is also reminiscent of local TV news in the US. I don't know to what extent other countries have regional affiliate TV news, but I imagine it's nothing like it is in the US simply due to the sheer size of this country. Local TV news just disgusts me. Sometimes my mother will watch the evening news broadcasts on multiple stations in the same night. If I'm within earshot, there is a 100 percent chance that they will say something that will make me start yelling. As in out loud, like normal people do during sportsballs. Now I try to preemptively leave the room.
Local TV news is just the deepest, thickest muck at the bottom of the pond (well, before all the ponds recently dried up, anyway). They did the sensationalistic, fear-mongering clickbait coverage before you could actually click something.
Silly example, but I just happened to think of it the other day: When I was in high school, a big teen trend was to wear and trade these crappy little rubbery bracelets with your friends. The more you had going up your wrist, the cooler you were. Also, they were extremely cheap and broke all the time (this is relevant). Well somewhere this rumor started that the bracelets were a secret sex code among teens. Different colors referred to different sex acts. (Yes, they literally just co-opted the hanky code to make this shit up) And then if you had committed said sex act, you broke the bracelet, I believe was the theory. None of this was true. They were friendship bracelets and an indicator of coolness level. But local TV news gobbled this up and caused hysteria among stupid parents across the country. Schools banned the bracelets. Teens were like, "ok boomer" except 20 years before we started saying that. Found this article about it from 2019...only skimmed it and it's wrong about a lot of stuff, but then that's the point I'm making, so:
This cycle just repeats with any sensational bullshit they can find. So it's clickbait except for ratings.
TL;DR: I fucking abhor local TV news.
(ETA, 8h later: Uh, I just remembered where you used to work, David. Ha. Fuck me. I was speaking to American news, I've only ever seen some of your interviews! Eating meatloaf with Meatloaf was quality content! Please don't ban me!)
Obviously I go super nuts about bad journalism, especially when it's got particularly broad reach. We need to do better.
Hi David, I was just reading this - https://newrepublic.com/article/167499/new-apostolic-reformation-mastriano-christian - and thought there were some interesting parallels across a number of the threads you pull in your work. Obviously in NZ there's (currently) a less dominant "Christian" [sic] political scene than in the US, but we still some very influential players once you consider the combined size of congregations across Destiny, Arise, City Impact etc.
The gist of the article is the (somewhat conspiratorial) idea that there's a religious group pulling strings across an increasing number of social and political institutions, in a bid to rule the world (of course!)... What piqued my attention was the '7M' stuff and the appeal to inject themselves into community spheres of influence; and, importantly, the way that broadens their appeal in demographics where belief in nonsense like Noah's Ark and talking snakes might not otherwise fly (eg. yoga teachers, doomsday preppers, and working parents)... If you can promise an (all-)powerful backing for even batshit ideas, and also don't care too much if your influencers sleep-in on Sunday, you can 'employ' a bunch of useful idiots to slowly reshape society via school boards, sports clubs and small business... You simply plant some broad ideas and opportunity and then encourage organic growth - so it still looks like perfect liberalism. Especially if you're happy to hit speed bumps (like Jan 6th!) along the way, because you're building influencer quantity and distribution over time, and care less about quality.
We tend to laugh off the apparently disparate and contradictory ideas that appear in these FreeDumb protests, media and channels. We also tend to believe lunatics find each other via the lubrication of modern social media, rather than questioning if they are drawn together because, as distant as their approaches may have strayed from the source, they were started down their paths using a common framework.
If we step back and look at both the net disruption and division, and the continuous attention and discussion that spills out of these corrupt churches, conspiracists and conservative groups, we know they are affecting us. And, if we start to think about it as a longer, wider game being played, rather than a series of unconnected brain-farts, it's hard not to be worried it is working. The regular re-emergence of these 'variations-on-a-theme' news stories then start to look less like drool from a broken individual, and more like a gradual ratchetting gear, designed to wind society into a more debilitated and feeble state.
Thank you for including my post in the comments section from your previous article, David. As this falsehood originally came from family members, I took it on face value as truth. Knowing what I know now, it’s frightening to me just how far this lie has circulated the (literal) globe. Treating all people with kindness and respect should be the rule, not the exception.
I thought this myth had died in the US months ago! Last fall, I discussed this with my two teenage god-daughters. Apparently, there were students in their middle school who were "furries," wearing cat/dog/fox ear headbands, meowing and hissing at each other, etc. The oldest repeated a myth about a school in Michigan having to put a "litter box" in the restroom for kids who identified as furries. We had a deep discussion about how to verify truth/fiction on the internet and how there was alot of gossip/rumor around trends. We talked about how everyone wants to be noticed and at their age trying on different personalities, but mostly how I remembered at my age, we were just trying to annoy the teachers and parents. The furries trend faded as fast as the next one started.
We need to teach our kids about decerning the truth in the news and internet....actually, lets start with school officials and parents!
Aug 26, 2022·edited Aug 26, 2022Liked by David Farrier
On principle I stopped reading or clicking on anything from the Herald a long time ago. It had started reminding me of the 1990s womans weekly. Start with a picture or a non verified comment and let your imagination run wild. Obviously a lot of this content is not local but it still irked me so much that bullshit was being passed as real and news. The fact its actually even more insidious than that and these articles are intentionally perpetuating prejudice and fear against minority groups is disgusting. We just have to do better. We know what ignoring it looks like. We have real life examples all around us. Thanks for escalating and maybe if more of us do write in and challenge this stuff there will be a rethink.
Ever grateful for how you share and open my eyes to ploys like this! I’d seen that article somewhere and just thought “good on them” (in a positive/supportive way, not the 80s sarcastic shitty way). I had no idea it was fake, or that it had a hidden agenda! It was a great reminder to question everything, but also saddens me about who or what you can trust 😕
The thing that really gets me is that even if there were kids somewhere out there that suddenly decided to identify as cats ... that wouldn’t hurt anyone. That wouldn’t cause any kind of damage to anyone else’s life. In fact, I have a friend who sews costumes for furries, and she makes an INCREDIBLE living from that, and the community has been nothing but endlessly kind to her.
What does hurt though, are the inherently transphobic conversations these articles inspire. Every eye roll, every scoff, all the outrage, and the huffing and puffing makes it that much harder for people to feel comfortable being open about who they are. There’s a reason I’ll never come out to my parents as bi, or non-binary. My parents are wonderful people, who’ve never done anything but endlessly support me, but all the tiny, judgmental conversations have piled up, and up, and up, and now they’re a mountain. I’m fine. I’ll always be fine. But there are many, many people out there with much harder lives, in much harder situations, who won’t be. And that’s the tragedy of it.
Unfortunately this kind of thing happens all the time. I can't remember the exact details, but last year, a nz reporter/journo made some comment about what was essentially unsubstantiated gossip. It was political & probably something like 'crisis in the Labour Party'. This opinion was reported somewhere else, then regurgitated, used as a reference, and then two weeks later used as proof that "there must be something in it" because it had been reported everywhere. FFS. It makes me so fucking mad. Good journalism can be spotted a mile away. There is only a handful of bylines I trust, the rest is like witnessing high school bitchiness.
NZ Herald is a tory newspaper - full of BS opinion pieces from has been politicians & the like - one of the only worthwhile writers is Simon Wilson - & the cartoons are good - thank god there are better alternatives to NZ Herald such as Newsroom.co & The Spinoff
Thanks again David for bringing this harmful mass-hysteria-producing fake news into the limelight to be tested and ultimately exposed. Just like Arise the media “make a watery apology” and don’t intend to change anything to prevent it happening again. And just like Arise, Hillsing, Destiny Church and City Impact, making money and being the “greatest “ is their underlying goal. And yes the horse has bolted, the public still think Obama wasn’t American by birth, hydroxychloroquin cures and prevents Covid 19, the Pfizer vaccine contains a DNA changing metal chip, (the mark of the beast!) Jacinda’s husband was caught for trafficking drugs and wears an ankle bracelet, and gay people and the NZ education ministry have an agenda to make our children question their identity, turn everyone gay and destroy families. Thanks David once again for bringing us back to reality and non dualistic thinking. God could be a woman and she could be black!
I wasn't going to comment but I think this is relevant... Not so long ago I used to work with someone who now works in production at NZME, and she used to spout the most hateful homophobic and transphobic BS all the time. She was a young and very privileged millenial with a family connection to the CEO, and thought of nobody but herself. I was probably the only openly queer person in the office at the time too, which made things a bit difficult.
I just think it's very interesting that NZME, a company claiming to be a Rainbow Tick certified workplace, are willing to hire very openly hateful people into roles that directly contribute to the media they produce. That doesn't sound at all like a place that queer people can feel safe at, so I wonder how they wrangled that Rainbow Tick.
Well done yet again, David. I get so angry about what is being said and done by anti-trans people. The transphobic right wingers will do anything to portray transgender people as crazy plus to get support to pass every kind of anti-trans legislation possible. Their lies and stupidity disgust me. All further enabled by journalists who don't do the basics of checking sources and actual facts. They are using furries, therians, otherkin, and kids just mucking around as reasons to be ant-trans. Back when I was at school in the 1970s you would have been beaten up for being trans and expelled for school uniform violations. But at least we didn't have anti-trans groups and politicians banning us from toilets, sports, etc., tagging and burning down our community buildings and trying to erase our very existence. Trump in particular passed numerous anti-trans laws and had it in for transgender people (oddly, he didn't seem to hate gay people). All people who believe we are all equal and must be treated fairly should help fight the lies and hatred directed at transgender people.
Its so frustrating that it seems to both add ammo to the conspiricist thinking of "you can't trust main stream media" while at the same time allowing batshit conservative agendas with the sort of dross they are hoping to spread. It's exhausting keeping up and almost impossible to argue for sanity or common sense anymore!
from a trans perspective... seeing this kind of inflammatory news make headlines over & over again inspires the most overwhelming hopeless sense of despair, it's hard to even describe. i have to just sit there and watch it happen, knowing none of it is true, watching people i love start to embrace it, knowing i can do nothing to stop it. the truth is nobody (especially not conservatives) wants to listen to trans people on trans issues.
a while back in australia, newscorp ran a story about trans people demanding we stop using 'mum' and 'dad' in schools and abolish all gendered terms. i found out about the story from a facebook feed of a gay friend of mine. he had always been a nice person and i politely commented to let him know the story was false and warn him about falling for clickbait - especially as a gay man spreading misinfo about his trans siblings! next thing i know, he's accusing me of calling him a transphobe and directing his facebook friends to dogpile on me in comments. he was in my DMs saying terrible vicious things about how i was a Bad Trans accusing gay people of transphobia for no reason. i told him i hadnt thought he was a transphobe then but i certainly did now. it reminded me of how people are more afraid of being called a racist than they are of /being/ racist and how outrage over being perceived racist shuts down any sort of conversation you could otherwise have with them. of course, all these feelings and experiences are tenfold for our non-white siblings.
the worst part was that it occurred within weeks of the judge of a prolonged case describing the 'manslaughter' of a trans woman as a crime "on the lower end of serious" and illegally attempting to give the killer a community service order instead of jailtime. (he had killed her during sex and so it was ruled an accident - the court did not take into account the graphic threatening texts he had sent her, her family, & her friends beforehand). the story got almost no coverage at all apart from the ABC. no outpouring of outrage from allies there. there's never any huge noise online about injustice towards trans people from cis allies. it was an event that permanently altered & further radicalised me.
ugh. it's a lot. having to watch it happen over and over again. with outrage over trans women in sports. with outrage over trans people pissing in the bathroom. with outrage about mythical surgeries happening to children (while people stay silent on the actual "sex-correcting" surgeries that happen to intersex children and babies). my heart breaks for younger trans people hearing adults on tv call them "mutilated" - i heard similar things just from my parents growing up and it permanently impacted me. supportive people outside my house were all that got me through. i just hope trans kids in similar households seeing this shit on tv will be ok. people are drinking the transphobia kool-aid all over the world in the past few years and it's hard not to feel empty. as a baby journalist, it's hard knowing any sort of good coverage about trans people i could put into the world will likely be passed over and remain unshared. but, we have to keep making it. it all counts.
and at the same time, i was heartened when the most recent australian elections saw a woman stand up and publicly out herself as a TERF in an attempt to gain the liberal party favour, only to be absolutely smashed in the polls as part of australia's most progressive election result in a long time. TERFism hasn't really caught on here in huge amounts (yet). that keeps me going.
and thank you for writing things like this. the truth is, people on the fence are far more likely to listen to you as a cis man than me. it sucks (no offence <3) but it's what we have to work with.
ok. long time reader first time commenter! sorry for the word vomit, i hope at least some of it makes sense.
I would like to know why the herald 404 picture is Boris Johnson out tagging
Very interesting timing on your coverage of this issue, as just a couple weeks ago WaPo published this piece about "pink slime journalism," a term that's apparently been around for awhile but was new to me. It's discussed as an American issue only, but it's got a lot in common with this sinister force you're talking about. But it's largely about the death of local news and how it's all just a pile of corporate mush (hence pink slime) which is often used to promote political agendas, as is the case with this cat thing.
Here is a gifted (no paywall) link to the article:
https://wapo.st/3CAfRiz
Samantha Bee's show (RIP, thanks Zaslav) did a fantastic report a few years ago on how local newspapers are dying...
https://fb.watch/f8SayPoooN/
All of this is also reminiscent of local TV news in the US. I don't know to what extent other countries have regional affiliate TV news, but I imagine it's nothing like it is in the US simply due to the sheer size of this country. Local TV news just disgusts me. Sometimes my mother will watch the evening news broadcasts on multiple stations in the same night. If I'm within earshot, there is a 100 percent chance that they will say something that will make me start yelling. As in out loud, like normal people do during sportsballs. Now I try to preemptively leave the room.
Local TV news is just the deepest, thickest muck at the bottom of the pond (well, before all the ponds recently dried up, anyway). They did the sensationalistic, fear-mongering clickbait coverage before you could actually click something.
Silly example, but I just happened to think of it the other day: When I was in high school, a big teen trend was to wear and trade these crappy little rubbery bracelets with your friends. The more you had going up your wrist, the cooler you were. Also, they were extremely cheap and broke all the time (this is relevant). Well somewhere this rumor started that the bracelets were a secret sex code among teens. Different colors referred to different sex acts. (Yes, they literally just co-opted the hanky code to make this shit up) And then if you had committed said sex act, you broke the bracelet, I believe was the theory. None of this was true. They were friendship bracelets and an indicator of coolness level. But local TV news gobbled this up and caused hysteria among stupid parents across the country. Schools banned the bracelets. Teens were like, "ok boomer" except 20 years before we started saying that. Found this article about it from 2019...only skimmed it and it's wrong about a lot of stuff, but then that's the point I'm making, so:
https://www.ranker.com/list/the-truth-about-jelly-bracelets/anncasano
This cycle just repeats with any sensational bullshit they can find. So it's clickbait except for ratings.
TL;DR: I fucking abhor local TV news.
(ETA, 8h later: Uh, I just remembered where you used to work, David. Ha. Fuck me. I was speaking to American news, I've only ever seen some of your interviews! Eating meatloaf with Meatloaf was quality content! Please don't ban me!)
Obviously I go super nuts about bad journalism, especially when it's got particularly broad reach. We need to do better.
Hi David, I was just reading this - https://newrepublic.com/article/167499/new-apostolic-reformation-mastriano-christian - and thought there were some interesting parallels across a number of the threads you pull in your work. Obviously in NZ there's (currently) a less dominant "Christian" [sic] political scene than in the US, but we still some very influential players once you consider the combined size of congregations across Destiny, Arise, City Impact etc.
The gist of the article is the (somewhat conspiratorial) idea that there's a religious group pulling strings across an increasing number of social and political institutions, in a bid to rule the world (of course!)... What piqued my attention was the '7M' stuff and the appeal to inject themselves into community spheres of influence; and, importantly, the way that broadens their appeal in demographics where belief in nonsense like Noah's Ark and talking snakes might not otherwise fly (eg. yoga teachers, doomsday preppers, and working parents)... If you can promise an (all-)powerful backing for even batshit ideas, and also don't care too much if your influencers sleep-in on Sunday, you can 'employ' a bunch of useful idiots to slowly reshape society via school boards, sports clubs and small business... You simply plant some broad ideas and opportunity and then encourage organic growth - so it still looks like perfect liberalism. Especially if you're happy to hit speed bumps (like Jan 6th!) along the way, because you're building influencer quantity and distribution over time, and care less about quality.
We tend to laugh off the apparently disparate and contradictory ideas that appear in these FreeDumb protests, media and channels. We also tend to believe lunatics find each other via the lubrication of modern social media, rather than questioning if they are drawn together because, as distant as their approaches may have strayed from the source, they were started down their paths using a common framework.
If we step back and look at both the net disruption and division, and the continuous attention and discussion that spills out of these corrupt churches, conspiracists and conservative groups, we know they are affecting us. And, if we start to think about it as a longer, wider game being played, rather than a series of unconnected brain-farts, it's hard not to be worried it is working. The regular re-emergence of these 'variations-on-a-theme' news stories then start to look less like drool from a broken individual, and more like a gradual ratchetting gear, designed to wind society into a more debilitated and feeble state.
(I'm off to make a tin-foil hat now!)
Thank you for including my post in the comments section from your previous article, David. As this falsehood originally came from family members, I took it on face value as truth. Knowing what I know now, it’s frightening to me just how far this lie has circulated the (literal) globe. Treating all people with kindness and respect should be the rule, not the exception.
I thought this myth had died in the US months ago! Last fall, I discussed this with my two teenage god-daughters. Apparently, there were students in their middle school who were "furries," wearing cat/dog/fox ear headbands, meowing and hissing at each other, etc. The oldest repeated a myth about a school in Michigan having to put a "litter box" in the restroom for kids who identified as furries. We had a deep discussion about how to verify truth/fiction on the internet and how there was alot of gossip/rumor around trends. We talked about how everyone wants to be noticed and at their age trying on different personalities, but mostly how I remembered at my age, we were just trying to annoy the teachers and parents. The furries trend faded as fast as the next one started.
We need to teach our kids about decerning the truth in the news and internet....actually, lets start with school officials and parents!
On principle I stopped reading or clicking on anything from the Herald a long time ago. It had started reminding me of the 1990s womans weekly. Start with a picture or a non verified comment and let your imagination run wild. Obviously a lot of this content is not local but it still irked me so much that bullshit was being passed as real and news. The fact its actually even more insidious than that and these articles are intentionally perpetuating prejudice and fear against minority groups is disgusting. We just have to do better. We know what ignoring it looks like. We have real life examples all around us. Thanks for escalating and maybe if more of us do write in and challenge this stuff there will be a rethink.
Ever grateful for how you share and open my eyes to ploys like this! I’d seen that article somewhere and just thought “good on them” (in a positive/supportive way, not the 80s sarcastic shitty way). I had no idea it was fake, or that it had a hidden agenda! It was a great reminder to question everything, but also saddens me about who or what you can trust 😕
The thing that really gets me is that even if there were kids somewhere out there that suddenly decided to identify as cats ... that wouldn’t hurt anyone. That wouldn’t cause any kind of damage to anyone else’s life. In fact, I have a friend who sews costumes for furries, and she makes an INCREDIBLE living from that, and the community has been nothing but endlessly kind to her.
What does hurt though, are the inherently transphobic conversations these articles inspire. Every eye roll, every scoff, all the outrage, and the huffing and puffing makes it that much harder for people to feel comfortable being open about who they are. There’s a reason I’ll never come out to my parents as bi, or non-binary. My parents are wonderful people, who’ve never done anything but endlessly support me, but all the tiny, judgmental conversations have piled up, and up, and up, and now they’re a mountain. I’m fine. I’ll always be fine. But there are many, many people out there with much harder lives, in much harder situations, who won’t be. And that’s the tragedy of it.
I love this newsletter and community! Today I learnt that the furries community exists 🤷🏻♀️
Unfortunately this kind of thing happens all the time. I can't remember the exact details, but last year, a nz reporter/journo made some comment about what was essentially unsubstantiated gossip. It was political & probably something like 'crisis in the Labour Party'. This opinion was reported somewhere else, then regurgitated, used as a reference, and then two weeks later used as proof that "there must be something in it" because it had been reported everywhere. FFS. It makes me so fucking mad. Good journalism can be spotted a mile away. There is only a handful of bylines I trust, the rest is like witnessing high school bitchiness.
NZ Herald is a tory newspaper - full of BS opinion pieces from has been politicians & the like - one of the only worthwhile writers is Simon Wilson - & the cartoons are good - thank god there are better alternatives to NZ Herald such as Newsroom.co & The Spinoff
Thanks again David for bringing this harmful mass-hysteria-producing fake news into the limelight to be tested and ultimately exposed. Just like Arise the media “make a watery apology” and don’t intend to change anything to prevent it happening again. And just like Arise, Hillsing, Destiny Church and City Impact, making money and being the “greatest “ is their underlying goal. And yes the horse has bolted, the public still think Obama wasn’t American by birth, hydroxychloroquin cures and prevents Covid 19, the Pfizer vaccine contains a DNA changing metal chip, (the mark of the beast!) Jacinda’s husband was caught for trafficking drugs and wears an ankle bracelet, and gay people and the NZ education ministry have an agenda to make our children question their identity, turn everyone gay and destroy families. Thanks David once again for bringing us back to reality and non dualistic thinking. God could be a woman and she could be black!
I wasn't going to comment but I think this is relevant... Not so long ago I used to work with someone who now works in production at NZME, and she used to spout the most hateful homophobic and transphobic BS all the time. She was a young and very privileged millenial with a family connection to the CEO, and thought of nobody but herself. I was probably the only openly queer person in the office at the time too, which made things a bit difficult.
I just think it's very interesting that NZME, a company claiming to be a Rainbow Tick certified workplace, are willing to hire very openly hateful people into roles that directly contribute to the media they produce. That doesn't sound at all like a place that queer people can feel safe at, so I wonder how they wrangled that Rainbow Tick.
Well done yet again, David. I get so angry about what is being said and done by anti-trans people. The transphobic right wingers will do anything to portray transgender people as crazy plus to get support to pass every kind of anti-trans legislation possible. Their lies and stupidity disgust me. All further enabled by journalists who don't do the basics of checking sources and actual facts. They are using furries, therians, otherkin, and kids just mucking around as reasons to be ant-trans. Back when I was at school in the 1970s you would have been beaten up for being trans and expelled for school uniform violations. But at least we didn't have anti-trans groups and politicians banning us from toilets, sports, etc., tagging and burning down our community buildings and trying to erase our very existence. Trump in particular passed numerous anti-trans laws and had it in for transgender people (oddly, he didn't seem to hate gay people). All people who believe we are all equal and must be treated fairly should help fight the lies and hatred directed at transgender people.