Links - 8th September 2023 (2 - Masculinity)

The Gathering Resistance to the Stigmatisation of Masculinity - "clashes between parents and the educational establishment are no longer relegated to the fringe. When parents discover, for instance, that a school is making their sons face their female peers and apologise on behalf of their sex for crimes of which they are personally innocent, they are understandably angry and are finding ways to express their anger in various online and media fora. In this way, awareness of the systematic stigmatization of masculinity is growing...   Over the past few decades, the teaching profession has become increasingly gender-imbalanced—75.8 percent of teachers in the UK and 75 percent of teachers in the US are female. This in itself is not an issue—these positive traits, the problem is the imbalance between these and the traditionally male ones. The issue arises when normal male traits are disparaged. In schools, rough-and-tumble is discouraged in favour of nurturing and compassion—there is little room for the kind of boyish exploration and adventure celebrated in Ken Jolivet’s Brilliant Bob books. In today’s schools, wrote David French in the National Review, “we love the Earth, we don’t conquer it.” This general sentiment is shared by Christina Hoff Sommers, who argued in a short video for Prager University, that “being a normal boy is a serious liability in today’s classroom.” Little patience exists for the kind of male disorganisation and restlessness that just two decades ago would have been understood as a normal part of growing up. Quoting psychologist Michael Thompson, Sommers concludes, “girl behaviour is the gold standard in schools, boys are treated like defective girls.”"

Ariarne Titmus Olympic coach celebration: American fans accuse Dean Boxall of 'toxic masculinity'
Only women are allowed to celebrate victory

Changing masculinities in East Asian pop culture - "Pan-East Asian soft masculinity has its roots in the Confucian tradition of scholar masculinity shared by many East Asian cultures, such as the wen (literary attainment) masculinity in China or seonbi (scholar-officials) masculinity in Korean history. The talented scholar is physically weak, delicate and handsome, with androgynous beauty. He is desirable to women by dint of his knowledge and literary gifts.  At the same time, the current popularity of these images of masculine beauty also reflects the influence of the metrosexual trend from the West. This indicates that masculinity has become increasingly pluralistic and hybridised in a rapidly globalising East Asia.  One conspicuous example of the transnational flow of male images in East Asia is the spread of otaku culture... The ‘softness’ of Pan-East Asian soft masculinity also lies in its more sensitive and caring attitude toward women. The ‘Herbivore Man’ (sōshoku danshi) in Japan and South Korea, and ‘Warm Man’ (nuan nan) in China are all in line with this type of sensitive new guy.  The term Herbivore Man and its counterpart, ‘Carnivorous Woman,’ were first coined by the Japanese author Maki Fukasawa and became known through Megumi Ushikubo’s popular book The Herbivorous Ladylike Men: A Change in Japan. This new type of man is arguably a rebellion against the ideal salaryman masculinity of postwar Japan. They are less ambitious and are ‘harmless’ for women because they always display an understanding of women and their feelings."

Barack Obama Calls Out Rappers For Their Toxic Masculinity: 'You Seem Stressed'
Racist!

Becoming a Man - "There are commonalities of human behavior that extend beyond any geographic or cultural boundary. Every known society has a sexual division of labor – many facets of which are ubiquitous the world over. Some activities are universally considered to be primarily, or exclusively, the responsibility of men, such as hunting large mammals, metalworking, and warfare. Other activities, such as caregiving, cooking, and preparing vegetable foods, are nearly always considered primarily the responsibility of women...   The recognition that hunting is a predominately male behavior is widespread across cultures. In fact, this association is not unique to humans. In the volume Chimpanzees and Human Evolution (2017), anthropologists Brian Wood and Ian Gilby write that, “Among all primates that regularly hunt vertebrates, including chimpanzees, baboons, and capuchins, males hunt more frequently than females.” Yet hunting among human populations is not solely an extension of a biological inclination found predominately among males; it is a behavior that is often deeply infused with social meaning...   The world over, there is a sense that manhood is precarious; that it is something that must be earned over time, yet can quickly be taken away... A great warrior, a great man, is discerning – not needlessly hostile nor chronically deferential, he instead recognizes the responsibilities of both defending, and caring for, his friends and family...   Terrence Real and bell hooks, like many other feminist writers, are very critical of phrases such as “be a man” or “man up,” arguing that these sort of statements impose rigid gender norms and unreasonable standards on young boys. I’d like to propose an explanation for why these kinds of comments exist in the first place.  As anthropologist David G. Gilmore notes in Manhood in the Making, exhortations such as “be a man” are common across societies throughout the world. Such remarks represent the recognition that being a man came with a set of duties and responsibilities. If men failed to stay cool under pressure in the midst of hunting or warfare, and thus failed to provide for, or protect, their families and allies, this would have been devastating to their societies.  Throughout our evolutionary history, the cultures that had a sexual division of labor, and socialized males to help provide for and protect the group, would have had a better chance at survival, and would have outcompeted those societies that failed to instill such values... some common components of the traditional, idealized masculine identity I describe here may continue to be useful in the modern era, such as providing essential resources for the next generation of children, solving social conflicts, cultivating useful, practical skills, and obtaining socially valuable knowledge. Obviously, these traits are not, and need not be, restricted to men. But when it comes to teaching the next generation of young males what socially responsible masculinity looks like, it might be worth keeping these historical contributions in mind. Not as a standard that one should necessarily feel unduly pressured by, but as a set of productive goals and aspirations that can aid in personal development and social enrichment."

Meryl Streep on Big Little Lies: 'Toxic masculinity? Women can be pretty toxic too' - "Streep also makes the point that the series even has a post-MeToo message. We should not only focus on toxic masculinity, she warned, “because women can be pretty f------ toxic. It’s toxic people”."

It’s masculinity to the rescue - "When a knife-wielding killer went on a bloody rampage through the streets of Sydney, Australia, this week, he was stopped in his tracks by a group of courageous men using just a milk crate and a chair... We always are quick to point to the dark side of masculinity when violence is committed, but too often we overlook the feats of bravery by men who combat it... in the new era of “toxic masculinity,” young men are taught to ignore their heroic instincts and learn to be weak. They are instructed always to be on guard against the monster within.Shaving-products company Gillette’s “toxic masculinity” campaign is a case in point. Whereas the razor maker used to celebrate the bond between fathers and sons, its new woke advertising is all about showcasing bad male behavior — such travesties as men standing behind BBQs or little boys roughhousing. This demonization of intrinsic maleness is part of a feminist movement to rewrite human history as the tale of tyrannical patriarchy. It quickly mutated out of the #MeToo campaign, which began as a reasonable get-square with powerful men who preyed on women but since has taken on a frighteningly punitive air.Now masculinity itself is the enemy and must be crushed from its earliest manifestations.Boys and young men are bombarded with messages pathologizing their DNA. If they look at a woman, they’re accused of leering. If they open a door for a woman, they’re sexist. Even the way they sit on the subway has been criminalized as “manspreading.”The American Psychological Association formalized the new pathology earlier this year by declaring “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful.” The male attributes it fingered as most worrisome were: stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, aggression, anti-femininity, achievement, “eschewal of the appearance of weakness,” adventure, risk and violence.Gimme a break! Without any of that, all you’re left with is a soy boy with whom no self-respecting woman would want to mate.This is the paradox of human attraction. Evolutionary psychologists have found that women instinctively desire a mate who can protect her and their offspring"

WhatATwist on Twitter: "Man expresses loneliness = incel
Man expresses enthusiasm = creep
Man expesses anger = toxic
Man expresses sadness = weak
Man shares any feelings that isn't happiness = emotional load
Man shares no feelings = emotional drain
Your messages are a traffic light dysfunctioning"

Men Don’t Need Tampons. They Need Fathers - "The idea that anything can be rewritten — whether the past or present — demonstrates that the secular world has no stability. What sanctity do our values hold when they seem to change every five years? In just the last decade, we’ve gone from “girl boss” to gender-exclusionary phrases like “the future is female” to “boys can be girls.”... A sound father figure isn’t something I thought about my son lacking until he expressed a biological need to be around other men around the age of 7. I notice the same patterns in the sons of friends who are also divorced. While each child is unique, each child did suffer in some way from not having a man around.  It’s no secret that many boys today aren’t getting enough time around men. Instead they have celebrity substitutes like Jordan B. Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and BAP. Although their messages have drawn an audience of young men, it’s no substitute for their real fathers. Around this time, I also took my experience in Islamist extremism into extremism across other ideologies. There is one common denominator between young men who joined an extremist ideology: there was a conflict in the home centered on the absence of a strong, grounded male presence. Typically, either the father contributed to an environment of trauma or the father was missing, which is its own trauma... We just passed International Men’s Day on November 19, which would have been a wonderful opportunity to discuss manhood. Instead the ACLU celebrated International Men’s Day with a campaign on how “men who get their periods are men.” Newsweek ran an article about International Men’s Day on mental health, but completely ignored the opportunity to a have a real conversation. Instead they curated conversations about discrimination related to race and sexual identity, self-care, depression, and how it’s socially acceptable to wear pink. That was it.It’s got to be hard being a man today. Your entire identity is systematically being scrubbed from existence. You’re repeatedly told you’re not good enough, punished for not conforming, and gaslighted into believing you are a distortion of your true nature"

Meme - "The Stop Assuming Gender Crowd Loves to See Little Boys Get Their Nails Painted or Dressed Like Girls. When's the Last Time You Saw Them Demand Little Girls Go Outside to Cut Grass? Or Go to the Barber Shop for a Haircut? You Haven't. & You Won't. Because It's Not About Gender Neutrality It's About Dismantling Manhood"

Unofficial Artist formally known as Diversity and Comics Yaboiposting - Posts - "The newest photos from The Boys Can Be Princesses Too Project are here!"
"I’ve noticed a trend that the only time young boys get positive reinforcement from society is when they do girly things. The feminist’s “you had your chance” mantra, it’s meant to hurt rich adult men, but it’s usually the youngest and forgotten most hurt by it. If you’re inundated with a media that’s constantly saying how terrible men are and great girls are, and the only time women don’t look down at you is when you’re wearing a dress, you can’t be too surprised boys are embracing this trash"
So much for toxic masculinity not meaning masculinity is toxic

Judith on Twitter - "Feminism doesn't care about toxic femininity, nor does it care to talk about positive masculinity because its goal isn't fairness, it's to paint men and masculinity as social issues that only feminism can correct. Like good conmen, they invented an issue to sell you the solution."

New Hollywood Reporter Cover Celebrates “Triumph of the Beta Male” - "from the #MeToo movement, to commercials, to culture in general, young men appear to be being indoctrinated with the idea that being weak and effeminate will help them get ahead in life and relationships.Combined with constant lecturing that they need to keep their “toxic masculinity” in check, this has led to a dramatic loss of confidence amongst young men and the rise of sub-cultures where some are giving up on women entirely.A recent survey found that almost 25% of US millennial men think that merely asking a woman to go for a drink is a form of sexual harassment.However, whenever women are asked if they prefer stereotypically “beta men” or alpha men, they almost always choose alpha men. Women are also more likely to be attracted to masculine men during the fertile part of their ovulation cycle."

For-show female empowerment & gender fluidity are simply the latest instruments of corporate capitalism (By Slavoj Zizek) - "Let’s face it: sexuality as such involves a certain degree of self-objectification. For example, when I engaged in sexual activity, when I embrace a naked person that I love, I abstract (and that is the imminent logic of sexuality) from all the nasty things that are part of the human body – bad odors, remains of dirt etc. I minimally idealize, in a way, the other’s body. Without this, we approach de-sexualization.In spite of all the talk about free sexuality liberated from binary heterosexual restraints, what we are basically dealing with here is an attack on sexuality as such... [to] claim that sexual difference is just one among the oppressive constructs of those in power and that we should playfully engage in multiple sexual identities, that it is just a game, and that everything is open and that if we just get rid of the binary heterosexual oppression we will enjoy full free sexuality, is a great mistake. It obliterates the basic lesson of Freudian psychoanalysis, which is that sexuality in itself is something pretty dark... What many people do not accept is that the problem is not objectification as such – it is not the whole game of sexual seduction, flirting of men and women - it’s that, in some sense, you precisely objectify yourself as you want to present yourself as seductive. The problem is not that there should be no objectification – the problem is that each sexual agent should have the right to control his/her/their objectification... I often detect in these transgender new identities something that I do not like. It is that as once heterosexual standards were imposed oppressing other identities, now, if you read all these texts, in some of them you find the idea that if you are still within the traditional heterosexual sexuality you are somehow retarded. To be truly free, you have to play with your identity and blur all the lines.I do not agree with this. This idea of freely rearranging, changing your body and playing with identities is something that perfectly fits today’s consumerist capitalism with its infinite dynamics. There is a chance that big companies are already playing these games. Probably some of our readers remember a Gillette ad from about a half a year ago, where a father helps his ex-daughter, who is now a boy, to shave herself for the first time with Gillette. There is absolutely nothing subversive in this ‘play with different identities, experiment with yourself’ attitude. It is simply a perfect form of sexuality for the late consumerist capitalism... this type of struggle for free sexual identities is something that can easily be used as a part of capitalist machinery to oppress more dangerous popular demands, even and especially the authentic feminist protests... As it is always the case, the establishment tries to redirect this awakening in such a direction that it will not really change power relations. We will get a quota for women, women will be presented in the media more respectfully. But the same power relations will persist in our society. That is what all these fighters against patriarchy do not often get.In the developed West, the ruling ideology is no longer a patriarchy. It is a kind of false openness which also functions as a way to avoid radical mobilization and radical solutions. When we are focused on whether a woman can wear a beard or a man can put on lipstick, no one wants to talk about the continuing terrifying oppression of women, of the exploding rape culture in  Mexico and South Africa. Let’s focus on the struggles in which the real freedom of people will be decided."

Occupy Democrats Logic - Posts - "Men who don't wear jackets in cold weather do so with the express intent of intimidating women and to make women feel like lesser beings. If you see a man who is not wearing a jacket when you're cold, then call out his toxic masculinity. #ToxicMasculinity"

Professional Privilege Checkers Inc. - Posts - "What are some social norms related to masculinity that are total nonsense?"
"That women get a say on what it means to be masculine."

Exposing Feminism 2.0 - Posts - "Men's suicide rates are far higher than that of women in almost every country. #WhyMenNeedABreak"
"This is the suicide gender paradox. Women often have more suicidal thoughts than men, but men commit suicide more frequently. Moreover, mental illnesses like depression and anxiety are more common in women than in men. Why do men die more then? Because of toxic masculinity."
"If the genders were swapped, she'd probably say that women die more because of the oppressive patriarchy.
When men have issues, it's their own fault.
When women have issues, it's society's fault."
The amazing motivated reasoning of feminism
Amazing. Twitter decided her tweet violated their rules

Lisa Britton on Twitter - "We’re telling girls they are perfect just the way they are, that they can do anything and the future is female! Meanwhile... We’re teaching boys they are inherently bad, they should be ashamed of their masculinity and the future is female! Don’t you see something wrong here?"

Firms urged to crack down on office football chat - "Chat about football or cricket in the workplace should be curtailed, a management body has warned.Chartered Management Institute head Ann Francke said sports banter can exclude women and lead to laddish behaviour such as chat about sexual conquests... Ms Francke is concerned that discussing football and, for example, the merits of video assistant refereeing (VAR) can disproportionately exclude women and divide offices... "It would be so, so negative to tell people not to talk about sport because girls don't like it or women don't like it, that's far more divisive."She said the secret was to discuss sport in an inclusive way and to notice if people were blankly "staring into space" during the conversation. A majority of people responding to a LinkedIn post from the BBC and on Twitter appear to agree with Ms Oatley.Former sports, gambling, charities and loneliness minister Tracey Crouch called the Chartered Management Institute's advice "a load of nonsense"... Office manager Debra Smyth worries that other topics such as Love Island, EastEnders and Game of Thrones could also be censored if sport chatter is banned. "I personally think companies should not dictate what people talk about, as not talking about it will alienate those with similar interests," she said."Where would it end? Banning people with children talking about them so as not to alienate people without children. Certainly not!""
Of course, cracking down on celebrity gossip, shopping or makeup chat would be misognistic and a war on women
Naturally, we are still told there is no war on masculinity
I thought "stereotypes" were bad?

Martin Firrell | socialart.work - "When men hold power they abuse it"
"All men are dangerous"
Of course, I doubt the police will open a hate crime investigation despite their rules

My boyfriend’s wedding dress unveiled my own shortcomings over masculinity - "I found myself unexpectedly uneasy with his new fondness for feminine frocks – a reaction that challenged the progressive ideals I’d prided myself on for decades. I’d long thought I was contributing to a progressive shift in how we define masculinity, finally allowing men to be emotional and vulnerable, or to ask for help, or to hug their male friends … or to wear dresses."
This suggests that feminism can be seen as a shit test

Millennial men need to man up - "Modern feminism spends a lot of time attacking toxic masculinity. And this attack, which often turns into an attack on traditional gender roles, is having serious consequences. It is leading to the churning out of insecure, non-competitive men, who can’t seem to manage basic life skills. It also means that trying to find an interesting person to connect with, let alone a life partner, is becoming more and more of a challenge with Generation Woke.Accusing someone of toxic masculinity has become a way to denigrate any man who doesn’t comply with the modern demands of feminism. It’s a term that can be used almost indiscriminately... What’s odd about the obsession with toxic masculinity is that very few men today actually showcase any of its characteristics. As Forbes reported in 2017, millennial men are redefining masculinity, with fewer than a third of 18- to 29-year-old men claiming to feel ‘completely masculine’. The alpha male is a rarely spotted animal in 2019.But whether millennial men feel at ease with their masculinity is less important than whether we are accelerating into a society which demonises the very characteristics we are born with. Western culture has shifted from welcoming home brave 20-year-old men who have risked their lives in war to celebrating guys who have decided to wear pink hats on a Women’s March. The cultural attack on masculinity is widespread, too, having made its way into education, the workplace and even romantic relationships. Trying to date in a culture that denigrates so many traditional masculine acts, from holding a door open for a woman to paying on the first date, is becoming increasingly challenging. It’s even creating an environment where men are reluctant to talk about things for fear of being accused of mansplaining. Instead, men increasingly seem to be happy riding in the backseat. I, along with many of my female peers, have had my fair share of first/last dates where guys seem to be content with still having their parents pay their bills well into their 20s. Many can’t seem to manage basic tasks of ‘adulting’, like cooking a simple meal or doing their own laundry. I can’t speak for all women, but I would think most are hoping to be someone’s partner, not his mother. I want someone to challenge my ideas and thoughts, not constantly agree with them out of fear of offending me. I want a man to be able to support my career as I could his, while also playing an equal part in our home life. If I fail at something, I want someone to be honest about my shortcomings instead of preaching about the systemic barriers I may face as a woman, just to show how woke he is... If we keep this up, we’ll be cultivating a generation of painfully insecure men who revel in their incompetence. For the sake of the future, I’m urging millennial men to ignore the false messages, grow up and man up."

Stop Lying About Our Sons - "I never thought we would reach a point where it was commonplace to hear social commentators, journalists and presidential candidates awfulize boys and men — our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons — simply because they are male. There were always those fringe women’s studies professors and radical feminists who made their living by hating on men but I couldn’t have imagined that such ugliness would infect the public discourse and be lauded as brave, let alone enlightened."

Dear Men Who Write Articles About How Women Should Behave — Please, Stop
SPOING! It's only okay for women to tell men how to behave

Thread by @TellYourSonThis - "The reason men are so obsessed with achievement is because nobody gives a fuck about men
Including the majority of men
The closest thing you can get as a man to being cared about, is being cared about because you're useful
Implicit to the role of provider is not being loved for who you are, but what you can do.
True love is very rare.
Most people are just using each other out of practicality.
Many people don't even believe in true love.
Some dudes who follow me would give me flak for saying true love.
"No such thing" "soulmate myth" "Disney bullshit"
But I don't care.
I do believe people can like one another deeply for impractical reasons. It's just improbable.
Men have no inherent value.
Women and children are valued simply for existing
This is why boyhood to manhood is an especially rough transition for males.
Because they're no longer loved simply for existing.
Their worthiness must be proved, or they're nothing. And no one cares
If you want to bitch about being a sex object
Try being a success object
At least people actually give a fuck about your existence
You are not defined by what you can do, but by who you are as a person
You are infinitely more humanised
You dont know what it is to be nothing.
Women preserve their value, men create it.
This is why the average woman is more valuable than the average man.
Especially in a society which favours women over men.
And this is why the feminist arguments that focus on inequality are trash.
They only focus on the winners.
Women, in their infinite desire to upgrade, are blind to the men beneath them, and obsessed with the men above them.
This translates politically as demanding special privileges for women in general, because a minority of men dominate the majority of positions of power.
Idiotic.
And those men sure as shit earned their position, because like I said before, nobody gives a fuck about men.
And so when even the remotest inkling of compassion is linked to one's competence, you will literally breathe to succeed, obsessing over achievement.
Men need love too.
Success isn't a lifestyle choice for men
It's a matter of life and death
It's a lifestyle choice for women
A woman who fails in academia or business can just give up and become a mother
She will still be wanted for who she is
Who is interested in a loser man?
Fucking nobody
So of course men will always outdo women at the high end of society
BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO
But the flipside to that is men who don't make it aren't even assigned a base level of compassion or human decency
They are an invisible underclass
And you fucks smugly mock them
I had more shit to say but I can't be fucked to make the thread longer, and I'm sure I've already triggered enough people into calling me a bitter incel now, so I'll leave it there for now hahaha."

Why Secret Invasion SUCKS - A Scene Comparison

"The MCU is in a state of emergency, desperately clinging to life after the embarrassment of Phase Four and quickly becoming a caricature of its former self.

The franchise's main appeal was once the continuity of a Cinematic Universe, has now been stretched and spread so thin that the world we knew is no longer recognizable.

The story has become a convoluted mess, expecting the audience to watch the TV shows to understand the films and the characters that paved the way have all been scattered to the wind. Not a single one of them was given the chance to reach their full potential.

So by the time Secret Invasion came out I didn't think there was much left for them to ruin. Nick Fury's mystique had already been stolen by a cat. What more could they do to him?...

So Nick Fury the master spy and the founder of the Avengers is now just another disgraced old man who abandoned his friend and wants to die. Too old to make a difference, out of his league. Who does that remind you of? *Old Luke Skywalker*...

Instead of just using their incredible abilities to blend in or moving to any of the established locations, the Skrulls decide that the only reasonable solution is to take over the planet.

Nobody knows where Captain Marvel is and nobody cares even though it was her promise as well.

This entire show exists solely to shit on Fury, making sure that we all know that he's worthless... if that wasn't enough they invent a secret wife just to say that he abandoned her too to add salt on the wounds.

The types of character assassination I've been forced to endure over the years have prepared me for this moment and I'm not remotely surprised that they've ruined another.

But nothing could have prepared me for what I witnessed in the last episode, proving once and for all that Marvel has lost its way and I want to break down and explain why this may very well be the worst finale in the history of the MCU, versus the best finale in the MCU: Bucky, Cap and Iron Man's showdown in Civil War...

Civil War is a movie that achieves many things, but one of the biggest accomplishments is re-establishing the continuity and making our heroes accountable for their actions for the very first time.

The focus on real world politics not only helps believability but also gives a true look into the perspectives of each character and manages to make their positions match their history, from Rhodey's respect for the law to Falcon's rebellious nature to Natasha being conflicted watching her family be torn apart. But what makes Tony and Cap's drama so fascinating is how much it highlights their personal journeys, as the positions that they hold now would more than likely be reversed if this was them from the first phase...

So Fury is back after years in space and they go out of their way to make sure that the first thing that we notice is that he's old as shit and has a bad knee...

We get the privilege of watching one of the most consistent and long-standing characters go out like a complete fool... you have her die in the most insulting way imaginable. Maria knows that they're hunting Skrulls, yet nobody in this stupid show ever checks to see if the person that they're talking to is a Skrull. The moment that she got shot, Maria would know that she messed up. But you give her this stupid line instead to confirm that she's retarded...

Then he gets draped up and tossed in a van. No combat skills, no special weapons and tactics, nothing. They want to make sure it's perfectly clear that he's crap... [he] is pretty much useless all season crying on a bench or yapping about cornbread, so thankfully they introduce a new character, Sonja Fallsworth to pick up the slack...

Any chance of him being an interesting villain is snapped away as they reveal that he's just an unhinged asshole...

[G'iah] also has a change of heart after seeing a father be nice to his son on a screen and realizes that humans have feelings too. Even though she's been on this planet for 30 fucking years and should know better. Why is everyone in this show so stupid?...

Talos's killed trying to defend him. The only character in this show that makes any sense, the only character that I give a fuck about and instead of giving him some kind of payoff, he dies for absolutely nothing. Doesn't even get the credit of being a martyr or the respect for his people that he fought for for 30 years. Fuck this show...

Disney has no idea how to make a sympathetic villain... but we're forced to watch them bitch and moan anyway. So Gravik throws another tantrum and then hops into his machine to become a Super Skrull but for some reason he decides to let Fury join him...

I watch in horror as G'iah sprouts Mantis antennas and puts him to sleep. A fight that was already impossible to take seriously just managed to embarrass itself even further. Falling through the air, upside down, getting choked, yet G'iah somehow manages to master Mantis and Captain Marvel's Powers at the same time. No need for training or struggle, this is the new phase of the MCU where powers are just handed to you or manifested out of fucking nowhere.

G'iah completely dominates Gravik even though they should be equal in strength. This makes no sense but being competitive against a woman is against the rules at Disney so instead he just forgets how to fight and dies...

The president declares war, Talos died for nothing, Maria is in a box and Rhodey is fucking ruined. Fury messed up everything and goes back to space... a pointless, nonsensical embarrassment of a finale...

What amazes me about Secret Invasion is just how much of the premise is wasted...

The ability to shapeshift is an incredible tool for a writer that we've seen used in so many ways and so many different stories but this show's lack of interest in this concept is just insane. Not just the fact that almost nobody, including the Skrulls, will ever test the person that they're speaking to to confirm that it's really them, but they never even bother to explain why they couldn't use this ability to blend in, instead of depending on the promise of one human to find them a home.

They turned an entire alien species into helpless morons, just to highlight Fury's broken promise. Instead of expanding on the arcs of older characters they would rather have them be worthless, ruined or die for nothing. And instead of introducing new characters in a logical way like Civil War did, we are forced to watch characters that had massive potential be immediately damaged by jamming them into this horrible plot - once again for the sake of replacement...

An entire season of Gravik whining about Fury's promise and we never even get to see them speak. I don't even understand why this was so personal to him or what he expected this one man to do for a million Skrulls. And I have no idea why he blames Fury and not Carol when she's the one with the actual power to help...

G'iah found out that her mom was killed by Gravik because she was too stupid to connect the dots on her own or speak to her father, and even after being told the truth she still let thousands of people die and took almost an entire season to retaliate, compared to Tony's immediate reaction.

There's no meaningful payoff here. It's bullshit. Nick Fury is barely a part of the finale of his own show. The man literally says that he hasn't brought in any of the Avengers for help because this is personal. And then he proceeds to let G'iah fight his battle for him. It's pathetic

Captain Marvel already broke the scale yet they somehow managed to create an even more ridiculously overpowered creature.

All I asked for in a story is consistency throughout the plot and the characters, so I can look back and understand just how the fuck we got here...

Anyone who watched Iron Man 1 would fully understand why that cave would change Tony forever. But what would make a man as diligent and loyal as Nick Fury abandon the Skrulls and break his promise?

Well the answer is simple. He was sad you see from the Snap, and he wanted to die and give up fighting. This entire story is built on a lie. I can't even call this a retcon. It's just a straight up lie as anyone who watched Infinity War knows that he went out doing everything that he could. This was not a moment of sadness

But these spineless treacherous hacks changed the scene just to try to make it fit their story.

And that is the death of a Cinematic Universe. When you can no longer trust your own memory of a scene, because these writers don't give a shit and will manipulate you, retcon and lie. Anything they need to do to tell their story. Having no respect for the work that paved the way for them...

The curse on Emilia Clarke's career continues, as she has now been a part of the worst season of Game of Thrones, the first Terminator movie to flop, the first Star Wars movie to flop and the worst rated episode in the history of the MCU...

And as for Samuel Jackson's Nick Fury, desecrated in every way imaginable. From his legacy to his self-respect. And I never want to see his ass again. If half the effort that went into ruining this character actually went into the script, we might have gotten a decent show. But instead we have another Disney disaster. A triumph of character assassination and shitty writing"

Links - 8th September 2023 (1 - Migrants)

Emmanuel Macron blames video games for teenagers rioting - "After chairing a crisis security meeting, the French president claimed they were copying violence from games that had “intoxicated” them.  He called on parents to keep troublemakers off the streets before blaming social media for the tumult and unrest since Nahel M, 17, was killed by police in Nanterre... Mr Macron told social media firms to remove content related to the rioting, which has seen a bank ransacked, barricades erected and cars set alight. Tens of thousands of police have been deployed across France... Police unions have highlighted how many of those arrested are aged just 14 or 15.  “I don’t have much hope that they are going to prison,” the head of the Alliance police union, Rudy Manna, told Europe 1 radio on Friday."
When you want to pretend the problem is not as bad as it is

Meme - Destiny Is Destiny: "A Reminder: Nazi propaganda from 1932 predicted that the French people would be replaced by Africans within 100 years.
Caption: "The last non-colorful French people - the main attraction of the Paris Zoo"
Die Vernegerung Frankreichs in 100 Jahren"

Renson Seow - "Rolling eyes at the cultural enrichment now happening in France, suppressed by nearly all left wing media outlets. There's literally African rioters toting and firing automatic weapons on their streets, but nope, silence from legacy media because of the skin colour. Twitter is literally the only source of actual true news right now."
France Riots: Crazy Visuals Emerge On Social Media As France Riots Seem Like War-Zone - "Malls and showrooms have been looted. There has been vandalism and arson on the streets and rioters have reportedly looted armories and video footage of armed rioters have surfaced all over social media. NDTV cannot verify the authenticity of these videos, but most have been shared by verified social media handles... The Paris region's bus and tram lines remained "severely disrupted" on Friday, the RATP transport operator said, after a dozen vehicles were torched overnight in a depot and some routes were blocked or damaged.  There was daylight looting Friday in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where rioters targeted an Apple Store and other shops."

Yasmine Mohammed 🦋 ياسمين محمد on Twitter - "Yelling Allahu Akbar as they commit violence during Eid. So peaceful. #FranceRiots"
Related: I ran into one idiot who claimed that most rioters "Were born in the Middle East and Africa, then immigrated there as "refugees"", and proceeded to cite 5 articles which didn't support his claim at all

The Roots of France’s Riots - "I spoke to dozens of young men to make sense of the past 10 days. They will be referred to only by their first names, as revealing their full identities could lead to their losing their jobs or being subjected to harassment. They come from the outskirts of Paris, the much-discussed banlieues, and the notorious northern neighborhoods of Marseille, as well as from smaller towns like Mulhouse, a former industrial powerhouse that has attracted immigrants of all backgrounds. They were all born in France and are French citizens, but express a sense of alienation"

Paris riots: Suburban mayor's wife hurt as rioters attack their home - "Attackers in France tried to set fire to the home of a suburban Paris mayor's home overnight and fired rockets at the official's fleeing wife and children.  The incident has caused widespread shock and is being treated as attempted murder. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne described it as intolerable.  Mayor Vincent Jeanbrun was not at home, but his wife suffered a broken leg and a child was also hurt... The attackers used a car to ram through the gates of their home before setting the vehicle on fire so that the blaze would spread to the house"

The French Riots and the Broader European Underclass - WSJ - "A deep-rooted dynamic of disorder has set France’s police against teenagers and young men from immigrant backgrounds. The law-abiding majority now faces the consequences of the state’s long failure to enforce the law... Merzouk had no criminal convictions, but not for lack of effort. His judicial file, which happened to reach France’s Europe 1 channel, is said to contain 15 items, including driving with false license plates, driving without insurance, drug dealing and possession, “rebellion against police officers,” and several charges in juvenile courts for resisting arrest. He didn’t deserve to die. The law-abiding, hard-working majority in the outlying housing projects known as banlieues don’t deserve to live amid endemic crime and violence.  Though France’s historical circumstances are unique, there is nothing uniquely French about the country’s present discontent. Western European societies were historically cohesive and “high-trust” societies. High immigration rates and a systemic failure to integrate the children of immigrants have in recent decades balkanized them into low-trust, high-crime societies, especially in the cities. An underclass culture of dependency and macho criminality contributes to high crime rates and increasingly violent interactions between youth and police. Bad blood from France’s colonial era may divide whites from the brown-skinned children and grandchildren of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. But that doesn’t explain everything. Germany never had an empire in North Africa or the Middle East, yet it too struggles to assimilate the children of immigrants. Meantime, Britain’s population of immigrant descent also largely comes from ex-British colonies, yet it population isn’t at odds with the British state. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Indian-descended parents emigrated from East Africa in the 1960s... The last major outbreak of rioting in France was in 2005 and was largely confined to the banlieues. This time, however, rioters looted French city centers, attacking police with shotguns, Molotov cocktails and fireworks. The unions representing more than half of France’s police officers said this week that they are fighting “savage hordes” and “vermin.” This is the language of civil war.  If the police are losing a struggle for control of the streets, there will be electoral consequences across Western Europe. Nationalist French politicians Marine Le Pen or her niece Marion Maréchal will continue to narrow the gap with the centrist parties as the country approaches its 2027 presidential elections. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is now polling at 20%, ahead of the Social Democrats. The structural consequences will be felt in Brussels, where the European Parliament is already a repository for nationalist protest votes. An insurrection can be crushed. Democratic government can rule only by assent."

France teen's family tell BBC police use of lethal force must change - "A relative of the French teenager shot by police has told the BBC the family did not want his death to spark riots, but insisted the law around lethal force at traffic stops must change... France's penal code was changed in 2017 to allow for a broader use of firearms after police said they were facing increased levels of violence... Nahel's grandmother also called for an end to the violence and accused rioters of using Nahel's death as an excuse.  "Don't destroy the schools, don't destroy the buses. It is other mothers who take these buses," Nadia, Nahel's grandmother, told BFMTV."

When did the left become pro-riot? - "France is in flames. With over two thousand arrests, more than four thousand vehicles set ablaze, hundreds of buildings ransacked and the attempted murder of a suburban mayor, the past six days of riots have been some of the most violent and destructive in decades. They have already exceeded the damage caused by the three weeks of intense rioting in Paris in 2005. The burning and looting continued throughout last night, although on a much smaller scale, with 150 arrests compared with over 700 on Saturday night... there have been some on the left who have sought to justify or excuse the destruction, to treat it as a legitimate response to police racism or deprivation – just as some American leftists responded to the BLM riots. Most notably, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing firebrand and leader of France Insoumise, hit out at the ‘guard dogs… calling for calm’. ‘We are calling for justice’, he insisted...  Talking heads have described the rioters as a ‘self-organised, politically conscious social movement’, fighting against a ‘social system… maintained by racism’. The international media, including the BBC, have continually referred to those burning cars, looting shops and attacking public transport as ‘protesters’, as if these riots were marches that got out of hand.  To talk of this unrest as a protest is completely inappropriate – it speaks to how clueless and detached much of the left has become. Revolution and social change are not on the lips of these rioters. The tragic killing of Nahel, in the words of his own grandmother, has become an ‘excuse’. His family are utterly dismayed at what is being done in his name... Apologists claim that the rioters are consciously attacking ‘economic targets’, emblems of the capitalist order, as they ransack everything from Nike stores to Lidl supermarkets. In truth, they are mainly setting fire to their own communities. While there have been clashes with police on Paris’s famous Champs-Élysées, the vast majority of the trouble has been concentrated in some of France’s poorest neighbourhoods. Rioters themselves have admitted to having no political aims. ‘I made a huge mistake… I was caught up in the euphoria’, one typical rioter told a judge last week. Besides, the average age of those arrested is just 17 years old, some have been as young as 13. It is absurd to call this a conscious, radical campaign. All this talk of ‘rioting for justice’ recalls those other large-scale riots in 2005. That unrest was initially sparked when two teenagers were electrocuted to death as they tried to hide from the police in an electrical substation. Three weeks of rioting followed and three civilians were killed in the chaos. ‘Like today, [the rioters of 2005] were not advancing any political project’, says philosopher Pascal Bruckner. While naive observers saw a ‘proletarian revolution’, one rioter memorably said his demand was for ‘money and girls’.  In 2005, there was a palpable rejection of French institutions and the authority of the state. But this was a rejection characterised by nihilism, destruction, thrill-seeking and violence – not some revolutionary opposition to the status quo. The tendency to make excuses for this behaviour, or to project a political script on to it, Bruckner argues, has since gained legitimacy on the French left – thanks to the now common accusation that everything about France, from its policing to its school system to its economic model, is ‘systemically racist’.    People are fond of (mis)quoting Martin Luther King, saying that ‘riots are the language of the unheard’ (MLK never actually endorsed or called for rioting). But this mantra makes little sense in the context of the past week. For one thing, mainstream politicians, from President Emmanuel Macron downwards, condemned the ‘inexplicable’ and ‘unforgivable’ killing of Nahel almost as soon as the video footage emerged. The policeman who shot him is facing charges of ‘voluntary homicide’... these riots are doing nothing for those in the banlieues. They are only adding to the difficulties experienced by those who live there. While an attack on a town hall might be dressed up as a protest against the state, vandals have also firebombed local libraries, health centres and supermarkets. Rioters are attacking the infrastructure and services that their own communities rely on. It is the poor, particularly those from migrant backgrounds, who will suffer most from these outbursts of violence. To suggest that these rioters in some way represent the five million residents of the banlieues is beyond insulting. The vast majority are as horrified by the carnage as anyone else.  It’s strange that this even needs to be said but there is nothing progressive about mindless violence and criminality. Still, this isn’t the first time that sections of the left have confused riots for a revolution. We saw this during the London riots in 2010, when youths burning down their own high streets was dubbed an ‘insurrection’ against Tory austerity. We saw this with the BLM riots in the US, too, where a mix of low-life criminals and Antifa lunatics torching and looting minority-owned businesses was presented as a ‘fiery but peaceful protest’ against police brutality. In truth, they were the most costly and destructive riots in American history.   Only those utterly disconnected from the lives of ordinary people could see such violence as in any way positive, let alone as the authentic voice of the downtrodden. There’s something both shameful and pathetic about these armchair radicals getting a vicarious thrill out of all the looting and burning, all from the safety of their own plush neighbourhoods. The grim rise of riot apologism speaks to the yawning distance that now exists between the left and the people it pretends to speak for."

Meme - Harry Bergeron: "There's a weird generational inversion where Boomers are like naive children with magical beliefs and their descendants shield most of the real world from them because they aren't capable of handling it. We actually interact with reality every day as the "children" play pretend"
Jack Poso @ @JackPosobiec: "An older French woman is pleading with police to not arrest the rioters bc it would be racist I have never seen anything like this"

Amy Mek on Twitter - "Islamic Rioters are Hunting Police in France; They Issued a Death Threat in a Startling New Video: 'Allahu Akbar - We Are Muslims, We Have The Right to Kill You.....It’s over for all of you, cops' The Muslims used Quranic principles as incitement to murder. This is what an actual insurrection looks like!   I can not post the video on Twitter; a French journalist was already forced to delete it. France is going to extreme lengths to obfuscate the true gravity of these riots and the menacing threats from Islamic migrants.   Tens of thousands of brave officers are putting their lives on the line to protect the people of France. However, instead of providing unwavering support, the government is aiding in censoring the very real threats they face.   The question remains: why would they choose to obscure the dangers that law enforcement officers and citizens confront daily?  Watch the video here that has been translated into English:"
The translation is accurate

The riots in France have become antisemitic - opinion - The Jerusalem Post - "If riots involve the deliberate defacement of a Holocaust memorial, and if said defacement takes the form of threatening Jews with a new Holocaust, as has happened in the Paris suburb of Nanterre last Thursday, where the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation was defaced with the slogan “On va faire une shoah“ (We are going to make a Shoah), it’s hard to see how one could argue that those riots – whatever the original cause of their ignition was – should not described as antisemitic.  So what happens if you search Google News for the term “antisemitic riots”, even several days after the fact? You will find several articles about the incident in Nanterre – all of which have one thing in common. From Israeli newspapers like this publication or the Times of Israel, to The Jewish Chronicle in the UK or the Algemeiner in the US, all the results are from Jewish outlets. Only on subsequent pages do results from ABC News or USA Today pop up as well – but those aren’t related to the recent events in France at all, but months-old articles about people involved in the January 6 riots in Washington DC. Even if you let go of that particular phrase and simply search for news about the Nanterre memorial, only one non-Jewish outlet (i24News) pops up in addition.  If you rely on newspapers like the New York Times or the Guardian, or the websites of CNN or the BBC for the entirety of your information about the riots in France – even if you combine all four aforementioned sources to make sure you get a comprehensive picture – you will be completely oblivious about the incident, and anyone mentioning antisemitic riots will sound like a paranoiac to you. IT SEEMS that the defacement of a Holocaust memorial with threats of a new Holocaust counts as a niche news item, its newsworthiness restricted to those who are directly affected by it through their Jewishness; not political news, but “Jewish interest” news. In a media landscape in which an awkward encounter at a dog park can generate headlines about racism for days, this is at the very least surprising.  Of course, riots are almost by definition chaotic, decentralized affairs, which can make it tricky to define any single incident as representative of the whole. But it’s hard to imagine that, for example, riots by Trump supporters or anti-vax protesters, in the course of which a Holocaust memorial was vandalized and a new Holocaust was threatened, would not be described as antisemitic by most major media outlets. And even if we abandon the notion of assigning it a defining role in the riots, and only look at it as an isolated incident, the silence surrounding it is still striking, and suggests a desire to avoid “tainting” the riots with it, in order to preserve a certain narrative.  If the explanation for this curious state of affairs is not an ideological one, with all the tacit endorsement of (some kinds of) antisemitism and willful abdication of journalistic duties that entails, one would certainly like to know what it is instead."
So much for the conspiracy that Jews are coordinating everything to benefit themselves

Meme - Martyr Made @martyrmade: "With few exceptions, European colonialism raised the colonized to never-before-known levels of civilization and material standard of living. And with few exceptions, they've proven unable to maintain those things when the Europeans left, despite oceans of financial and material aid from their former colonizers. Guys like this know it better than anyone, and his sense of inferiority fires a raging hatred that Western generosity only makes worse."
Manolo De Los Santos @manolo_realengo: "No amount of fire by young protesters in France can equal the over four centuries of violence, death & destruction by France in the Third World. France would have to burn for years without end to account for it's crimes from Haiti, to Algeria & Vietnam!"

In France, Nihilistic Protest Is Becoming the Norm - The Atlantic - "In recent years, mass protest in France has trended toward ever greater violent disarray. President Emmanuel Macron’s government was effectively derailed by the “yellow vest” movement, and the ancillary unrest that it began lasted from 2018 to 2020, until the coronavirus pandemic effectively changed the subject. Earlier this year, the country was crippled by strikes and sometimes violent—and, yes, fiery—protests in response to Macron’s deeply unpopular pension reforms delaying retirement by two years. For the better part of the 21st century, the country has suffered from an ambient rage that remains partially inexplicable and knows no racial boundary. As the philosopher Pascal Bruckner told me when I called him, the sad truth is that “every type of protest now degenerates into a riot.”  At the same time, rioters seem to be getting younger and appear more willing to cross previously unthinkable lines. In L’Haÿ-les-Roses, a suburban town south of Paris, several days ago, unidentified assailants smashed a car into the home of the mayor, Vincent Jeanbrun, and lit the automobile on fire in an attempt to destroy his house. Jeanbrun’s wife and children were asleep. Two of his family members sustained injuries trying to escape. Even as people in France have grown numb to excess, we sense that few limits remain. Jeanbrun correctly observed that this was an assassination attempt and that “democracy itself is under attack.” In all, 99 town halls and 250 police stations or gendarmeries have been stormed; about 3,400 people—on average, just 17 years old—have been arrested; more than 700 police officers have been injured; 5,000 vehicles have been burned; and 1,000 buildings have been damaged or looted.  Yet these incredible numbers still don’t convey the intensity of the destruction or the sheer nihilism that has seized and shocked a country that is quite familiar with protests and rioting. This time, according to Le Monde, just “five nights and as many days of violence have exceeded the severity of the riots in the fall of 2005, which lasted three weeks” and have remained a kind of national high-water mark of violent insurrection.  “One does not unleash violence with impunity,” Bruckner recently warned. “It is a fire that spreads with astonishing mimicry. The more we tolerate it, the more it becomes the only language of conflict.” The uprising has a purely memetic aspect—one evident in the Anglophone media’s haste to dub the current unrest “France’s George Floyd moment,” and in some French activists’ adoption of the American framework of structural racism to explain and at times even justify wanton violence and devastation. In his first remarks on the recent riots, Macron controversially observed the power of social media at play. “We’ve seen violent gatherings organized on several [social-media platforms]—but also a kind of mimicry of violence,” he said, according to Politico, adding that such networked contagion distances young people from reality. What no one can dispute is that this uprising is not reducible to a single killing. “The spirit of rebellion can only exist in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities,” Camus wrote in The Rebel. “The problem of rebellion, therefore, has no meaning except within our own Western society.” Almost nowhere in the West is the equality among citizens articulated more forthrightly or consistently than in France; the United States may be the only exception. This might explain why even though France’s social safety net is far more generous than in Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other wealthy, diversifying European nations, malaise and overt fury—the indiscriminate violence that is always ready to erupt even as society becomes measurably less discriminatory—remain far more persistent here. Nor can the gap between beautiful philosophical promises and the granular disappointments of empirical reality be discounted entirely in any consideration of the spate of homegrown terrorism that marred the mid-2010s, when more citizens of France than any other Western nation went off to fight for the Islamic State, and the group’s sympathizers carried out a series of horrific massacres within France itself."
Clearly the solution is even more welfare

Meme - "France.. "Please don't break my other windows. I need them to pay for your mother's welfare benefits"
"Ne casse pas mes autres vitrines s'il te plaît. J'en ai besoin pour payer le RSA de ta mère"

Meme - "17 is a child, he was a poor kid!"
"Ah yes, when a girl reaches puberty she is a woman ready for marriage yes"

Meme - Shaniqua Posting Delusions @DeIudedShaniqwa: "I love when they admit that the presence of immigrants is a punishment to the host nation"
Khaled Beydoun @KhaledBeydoun: "#NahelM
If France doesn't want "immigrants," it shouldn't have colonized Algeria for 132 years."
Weird how countries that barely or didn't colonise, like Germany and Sweden, have so many immigrants

The real refugee problem? Bigotry - "How, then, could a migration of millions of Muslim men (in the main) from not only the Middle East but sub-Saharan Africa, have any negative effect on Jews? The first aspect is obvious: among those populations there will be many who bring the hatreds and suspicions of Jews that are inculcated in their homelands and faith. In time, this will lead to more attacks like that on the Jewish school in Toulouse (2012), the Jewish Museum in Brussels (2014) or the Jewish food-market in Paris (2015). But here, wider public sympathy will go to the victims of these attacks rather than their perpetrators. Yet another theme has bubbled up which it genuinely shocks me to discover. For many Jewish groups and Jewish leaders have been taking a conspicuous lead in welcoming refugees . Some initiatives – such as that to save Christian children in the Middle East who are being ''cleansed'' from the region – are hugely admirable and widely appreciated. But it is specific and needed. Other initiatives and statements from Jewish leaders and groups appear to be welcoming any and all refugees and equating the plight of 1930s Jews with all 21st-century migrants. This is not just a misreading of history but an incorrect application of history. It also sets up a dangerous linkage between Jews who are already in Europe and an increasingly unpopular, current European migration policy... Soros confirmed that, yes, whereas Orban thought migrants the problem and borders the solution, Soros did indeed think borders the problem and migrants the solution.  In reporting this exchange, the same theme emerged. ''It's all very well for the Jews. They have Israel where only Jews can go and all the time they're destroying our own religious and racial identity in Europe.''  And another theme started to come up which I never thought I'd hear in my lifetime: ''Ah - the rootless, cosmopolitan Jew.'' Searching online I find that this is indeed becoming a theme. A video watched hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube excerpts an interview with a Jewish academic in Sweden who explains that Europe ''has not yet learned how to be multicultural.''  She goes on: ''Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies that they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the centre of that. It's a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode, and Jews will be resented because of our leading role.''... the open-heartedness of so many Jews must also be countered by more vocal and visible even-headedness. In particular, this constitutes a careful warning that it could yet be a problem for European Jews if their leaders and visible figures get ahead of (and are seen to be the progenitors of) a mass movement of peoples that looks likely in the near future to go unimaginably sour, thus bearing out my pessimistic Jewish friend's worst fears."
When you want to incite anti-Semitism, besides importing it
The "leading role" quote is from Barbara Lerner Spectre

Immigration Backlashes Spread Around the World - WSJ - "Record immigration to affluent countries is sparking bigger backlashes across the world, boosting populist parties and putting pressure on governments to tighten policies to stem the migration wave.  Many places, including Canada and parts of Europe and Asia, have been encouraging more migrants to come to help alleviate labor shortages and offset demographic declines.  But the jump in arrivals, along with increases in illegal immigration to the U.S. and Europe, is making more voters uneasy. The influx since the end of the pandemic is altering societies, with many people blaming immigrants for increases in crime and higher housing costs.  The Dutch government collapsed on Friday after parties failed to agree on new measures to restrict immigration that has soared to record levels, triggering new elections in the fall.   Anti-immigrant parties recently took power in Italy and Finland, and have started backing a minority government in Sweden. Austria’s far-right Freedom Party is leading national polls... Polls across affluent countries show a jump in opposition to immigration, including in places that have been most welcoming to newcomers.  Roughly half of Canadians think the government’s new target of about a half-million immigrants a year is too many in a country of 40 million, while three-quarters worry the plan will result in excessive demand for housing and health and social services, according to a poll by Léger, a Montreal-based research company.  In the U.K., which has eased rules to attract more college graduates from abroad to fill skills shortages, nearly half of people think legal migration is too high... In the U.S., where a large percentage of the population has long opposed immigration, attitudes have hardened over the past year: Americans’ satisfaction with the level of immigration into the U.S. declined to 28% in February, the lowest reading in a decade, from 34% a year earlier, according to Gallup polls.  And in France, which has been convulsed by violent protests after police shot and killed a teenager of North African origin, recent polls suggest that French far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who favors tighter rules on immigration, could win the country’s next presidential election... In Europe especially, “you definitely have a strong mismatch between the kind of people our labor markets need and the kind of people actually coming in,” said Roland Freudenstein, Brussels-based vice president of the independent think tank Globsec. Many immigrants to Europe are motivated by generous social-welfare systems in places such as Sweden and Germany, Freudenstein said. That differs from the U.S., where immigrants are more motivated by work, in part because social benefits are less generous... Despite Germany receiving millions of refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine in recent years, businesses there complain that they still need more skilled migrants because refugees are hard to train and integrate. Only around 100,000 of the roughly one million Ukrainians in Germany have a job... U.S. research suggests that an immigration inflow equal to 1% of a city’s population is associated with increases in average rents and housing prices of about 1%. Some 60% of Australians support a cap on migration to reduce housing costs... The backlashes repeat a long cycle in immigration policy, experts say. Businesses constantly lobby for more-liberal immigration laws because that reduces their labor costs and boosts profits. They draw support from pro-business politicians on the right and pro-integration leaders on the left, leading to immigration policies that are more liberal than the average voter wants.  That leads to a populist buildup and outburst, Manning said. Populist politicians subsequently stifle immigration, reducing voters’ anxieties, and the cycle begins again."

Links - 3rd September 2023 (Trans Mania)

Disturbing Video Shows Trans Biological Male With Erection In Women's Restroom - "A trans biological male dressed like a woman was caught on video flaunting an erection in a women’s restroom, prompting horror from women and online viewers. Despite lively chatter indicating a large group of people nearby, the biological male made no attempt to hide their shame from the random women walking by. On the contrary, the disturbing video shows the individual stopping near a sink and pointing their phone toward their genitalia, presumably taking a picture... Though the above video is the most viral case, incidents involving males “showing off” their erections under the guise of being transgender have become increasingly prevalent as trans ideology invades mainstream culture. A similar incident from mid-may saw a sorority “sister,” a male-to-female transgender, allegedly watch women undress and not-so-subtly hide erections."

Meme - "*Mutilation.
*HRT.
*Going to court.
*Plastic surgery
*Fake their voice.
*Needs others to play pretend.
REAL WOMEN: look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power"

Meme - "ACTUAL NAZIS
Sterilized children
Were homophobic
Sadistic doctors experimented on mentally ill patients
Promoted eugenics
Were threatened by free speech
TRANS ACTIVISTS
Sterilize children
Are homophobic
Sadistic doctors experiment on mentally ill patients
Promote eugenics
Are threatened by free speech
TRAs: are we the baddies?"

Emmy Awards is being criticized after nominating non-binary Bella Ramsey for Best Actress
Time to abolish sex divisions, so feminists can once again claim it's sexist that men win all the time

Veteran biology professor who has been teaching sex is determined by chromosomes X and Y is fired - "A veteran biology professor in Texas who has been teaching that sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes for over 20 years was allegedly fired after four students walked out of his classroom. Dr. Johnson Varkey has claimed he was let go from his teaching position at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio after he was accused of 'religious preaching'. He was discussing the human reproductive system on November 28, 2022, when four students stormed out of the lecture. Varkey was then accused of 'discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter'... The community college has received complaints from conservative-leaning professors before with political science professor Will Moravits claiming last month that his contract was terminated because of his beliefs due to student complaints. A lawyer representing Moravits said he tried to get them 'to engage all sides of controversial issues, such as police brutality and gender ideology. Many of his engagements with students in class discussions came in direct response to their questions.'"
"Trust the Science"

Meme - Kwite @Kwite: "Are you retarded"
blue @gay_blue_mail: "love you man, please remove that word from your vocabulary
kind weird to speak in support of trans people while also using a slur that applies to a large portion of trans people"

Meme - Dick X @ConsentAccident: "Alfred, I don't know what to make of this body. My scanners show a skeleton that is indisputably male, yet the victim has breasts and appears to be castrated. The face is caked with makeup, so this could be The Joker's work, but this seems sadistic even for him."

Meme - "Believe it or not 2 of these beautiful young women were born male *2 MTFs, 2 beautiful young women*"

Meme - "23andme for trans people?
I convinced my friend to take a 23andme dna test for fun (she was born male, but now identifies as female), and her results came back with a Y-DNA haplogroup and only one X chromosome. This was really problematic for her and made her feel uncomfortable. Does anyone know if 23andme makes any accommodations for trans people? Has anyone here had any experience with it?"

Meme - "Rainbow Pride (v)
Salted caramel and honeycomb parfait, milk ice cream, malt biscuits, magic malt crumb, dipped in 42% milk chocolate."

NY teacher forced 5th grader to go by male pronouns: suit - "Debra Rosenquist — a fifth-grade teacher at Terryville Road Elementary School in Port Jefferson Station — started calling the 9-year-old Leo and using opposite-gender pronouns toward the beginning of the 2021-’22 school year, according to a lawsuit filed in Suffolk County Court by the child’s parents last month. The parents say they were only clued in about what was happening in January 2022, when the school principal called them, telling them their child — referred to in court papers as A.V. — had drawn a picture of a girl, writing, “I wanna kill myself” and “I feel sad like a lot,” the filing claims. The principal also informed the parents that A.V. had even met with the school psychologist, telling the mental health worker that she “was confused about her gender identity,” the court papers say... A.V.’s parents also became concerned when they saw complaints against Rosenquist on Facebook, claiming the teacher had been reported for abuse but that the school district had done nothing about it because she was tenured... During a deeper dig into the social media comments, the parents found that Rosenquist didn’t follow the school curriculum and taught her students about transgender people and told kids to “try being gay” or try going by the opposite gender, the suit claims. The educator even made her own LGBTQ+ book called “I Am Neither” for her 9- and 10-year-old students and assigned a book called “When Aiden Becomes a Brother,” according to the lawsuit. While the parents weren’t concerned by the topic, they were worried that it was being taught at too young an age and were also worried that Rosenquist “had significantly deviated from the district’s curriculum,” the suit claims. One of the parents met with the principal, the superintendent and the assistant superintendent on Feb. 3, 2022, when the administrators “admitted that the issue was ‘not handled properly'” and said they hadn’t known about the off-curriculum materials that Rosenquist had been using, the filing alleges... Some of her classmates even have a text message group where they discussed leaving A.V. out with comments including: “literally tho what is she??? Girl?? Boy???,” the court papers say. The whole ordeal has caused A.V. to suffer “humiliation,” “anxiety,” “emotional pain” and “trauma.” And the family has had to pay for psychological treatment and lawyers fees."
Liberals still pretend grooming doesn't happen, and that no teachers are trying to indoctrinate kids, and that parents are just homophobic/transphobic
Unsurprisingly, it has coloured hair

Meme - "Trans people when you ask them why are they so depressed when celebrities, the media, big companies, the education system, and even the president himself supports them"

Meme - "SONIC SAYS... Nohody is "denying your existence". We just don't like you."

Oregon Rolls the Dice on Transgender Care - WSJ - "I was glad to see the letter signed by 21 clinicians and researchers from nine countries that rejected the Endocrine Society’s claim that “gender-affirming care improves the well-being of transgender and gender-diverse people and reduces the risk of suicide” (July 14). In Oregon, activist groups and Democratic lawmakers used that claim to pass a new state law—signed by Gov. Tina Kotek right around when the letter was published—expanding access to these experimental, risky and sterilizing procedures. The new law requires Oregon taxpayers to foot the bill and federal taxpayers to fund the medical-claims audit process. Oregon doctors also can now treat adolescents 15 years and older without parental permission or even notification. What’s happening in Oregon is a national scandal worthy of further investigation"

When girls won’t be girls - "This house is a sanctuary – from the summer heat, the looks of strangers and, above all, from the past... “Being trans was very special...Before that, I had never felt special, or that my pain mattered.”... Thanks in part to the full-throated support of progressives and trans activists, one approach is gaining ground in America. It contends that children know themselves best: if your three-year-old says he is a girl, do not deny or question her but instead support her. When she is ready to transition, assist her to do so – whether that means buying pink dresses now or approving her use of cross-sex hormones later on. Parents who affirm their kids’ desire to transition have been widely lauded for their courage; doctors who question whether medical intervention is in a child’s best interest have been accused of transphobia. So contentious is this argument that parents I have spoken to fear publicly raising issues that worry them. There is one, in particular, that troubles many: what if my child changes her mind?... children who begin taking blockers early on in puberty, followed immediately by cross-sex hormones, will never produce mature eggs or sperm of their own. “Can a 12-, 13-, 14-year-old imagine how they might feel as a 35-year-old adult, that they have agreed to a treatment that compromises their fertility or is likely to compromise their fertility?”... Max scheduled his mastectomy for July, even though he would still be 17 years old. In Britain, patients are eligible for surgery only if they are aged 18 or over. American guidelines are more flexible. If minors, with the backing of their parents, can find a surgeon who is willing to operate, then they can proceed. Max had no trouble finding one... When Max was 19, just over three years after he came out as transgender, she realised he’d made a mistake... Now 21, Max would be better described as FTMTF, female to male to female. Max is a woman and has been one for two years. Six months after he began successfully passing, he realised, deep down, that he wasn’t sure. “I started being like, oh damn, this is for real.” There were drawbacks to being seen as a man. Women he passed on the street were “scared” of him. He couldn’t talk about his childhood without lying or leaving things out. He found laddish banter distasteful. And the possibility that someone would discover he was transgender haunted him. “People don’t love to find out that you weren’t born a man.”... Dr Thomas Steensma, who belongs to an influential group of Dutch clinicians, says that reliably distinguishing between those who will carry on to be transgender adolescents and those who won’t is impossible – a view supported by the American Psychiatric Association... many who detransition never inform their doctors, Max says, so are not reflected in the statistics... After she stopped taking testosterone, her body began to change again... Her sex drive, which had been “ridiculous”, became “manageable”. She became “more emotional”: “I cried a ton less on testosterone.”... she is also part of a movement encouraging the World Health Organisation to declassify gender dysphoria as a mental illness, in much the same way that homosexuality was removed from the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” in 1973... But removing the mental-health element means it is less likely that people with gender dysphoria will see a therapist before they are treated. In America, a growing number of clinics will prescribe hormones to patients as long as they understand the effects of the treatment – letters from therapists are not needed... There is a growing view that transgender people, not their doctors, should be in charge of their own bodies. Many argue that identity, not health, is the fundamental issue. Though they know there may be deleterious consequences, they want autonomy over their own treatment. In this light, doctors – who are obliged to respect the right of patients to do what they want to their bodies – should acquiesce. But they are also required to do no harm... Max believed that transition was right for her and she wasn’t going to let a therapist tell her otherwise. Now, though, she wonders how anyone, whether adult or child, can “provide meaningful consent to an experience that’s pretty transformational…Kids are particularly susceptible to pursuing things that later in life they might not believe was the best possible thing for them to have been doing. Kids do all kinds of stuff.”"
From 2017
Damn male privilege!
TRAs will claim that Max only detransitioned due to transphobia, using the crappy study that wasn't designed to study detransitioning (the name of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey alone is telling, not to mention that it was an online study and so had even more selection issues)
Given the explosion in trans mania since 2017, the detransitioning statistics now are definitely much higher

Sirens, succubi & sex symbols: a history of female monsters | HistoryExtra - "‘There is also this other sort of horrible kinship with the mermaid for trans women in that mermaids are portrayed as sort of seducing men in for their own nefarious reasons and there's things like the trans panic defense which is the horrible idea that if a man sleeps with someone or even seems to be about to sleep with a woman and it's a trans woman, if he murders her because he finds out she's trans, that’s somehow mitigating rather than horrible and horrific and that that's still used as a defense. And that sort of does tie into this idea of the mermaid. Of the idea that trans women are somehow seducing people and that if you find out someone's trans then it's okay to act in whatever horrific way you want and you can still get away with it... the really horrible kinship there is um between the mermaid and trans women as well’"
Ironically, liberals claim that if you have sex with deception (stealthing) you are being raped because the conditions under which you agreed to have sex are no longer valid. And they certainly support women fighting back against their rapists

Meme - "Genitals don't determine gender.
Then why bother removing them?"

Disparities in Childhood Abuse Between Transgender and Cisgender Adolescents - "Seventy-three percent of TGAs reported psychological abuse, 39% reported physical abuse, and 19% reported sexual abuse. Compared with heterosexual CGAs, TGAs had higher odds of psychological abuse (odds ratio [OR] = 1.84), physical abuse (OR = 1.61), and sexual abuse (OR = 2.04). Within separate subgroup analyses, transgender males and nonbinary adolescents assigned female at birth had higher odds of reporting psychological abuse than CGAs."
This is similar to the results for sexual orientation, and coheres with our knowledge that a lot of FTMs do it because they hate being women due to abuse, bullying etc

Meme - "COLORADO SPRING SHOOTER IDENTIFIED AS NONBINARY
DENVER SHOOTER IDENTIFIED AS TRANS
ABERDEEN SHOOTER IDENTIFIED AS TRANS
NASHVILLE SHOOTER IDENTIFIED AS TRANS"
I still see liberals pretending there're no trans shooters

Meme - "TRANS RIGHTS OR ELSE *guns*"
"Nashville shooter, Audrey Hale."
Hysterical and violent rhetoric has consequences

Meme - ">be cis man
>feeling down
>go to FtM online support group
>post selfies
>"omg you're so handsome!"
>"you look so strong"
>"how did you get so handsome"
>rinse and repeat whenever I'm feeling insecure"

Rebel News on Twitter - "'Trans' rugby player confronted as unhinged teammates scream, police arrive One of the three women injured by Ash Davis last month has said, 'I had never been hit like that before, even at the competitive women’s level. There was so much more brute force. There are women who are bigger than him, but no girl hits like that. This is a strong human.' Meet Ash Davis. Or is it “Ashley” these days? Mr. Davis plays for the Fergus Highlanders WOMEN’s team. He tackles hard. Just ask those three women players who suited up for the Stoney Creek Camels last month who had to be removed from the game thanks to Ash’s debilitating tackles. Ash is clearly a male; in fact, he doesn’t even try to look female. He has an Adam’s apple. Male pattern baldness is setting in. And it’s impossible to ignore those leg muscles. We visited Fergus, Ont. last Saturday to take in a game between the Highlanders and Burlington. We think it is safe to describe Ash’s style as “ambush-predator.” Which is to say, he spends most of his time on the pitch casually strolling around, not that active at all. But what he’s actually doing is waiting for a female player on the other side to take procession of the ball. Then he goes into charging rhino mode. Think of that infamous hit Scott Stevens rendered onto Eric Lindros a few decades ago — that is Ash’s style. Except he’s a male and his victims are female. It is outrageous. It is egregious. And it is clearly unsafe for real women to play against this brute. And it is perhaps the most overlooked, underreported Canadian sports story of 2023. As far as we can see, Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun is the only mainstream media scribe to pen a story on this gender-bending grifter. Indeed, Warmington noted that female players with the Stony Creek team felt as though they were being “hit by a bus on the field. Or a truck.” Stated one injured player: “I had never been hit like that before, even at the competitive women’s level. There was so much more brute force. There are women who are bigger than him, but no girl hits like that. This is a strong human.” Naturally, given our cancel culture environment that is championed by the rainbow mafia, the woman did not want to give her name. Diana Murphy, a friend of some of the players, tweeted: “Three women’s rugby players had to be removed from a game and treated for injuries from hits sustained by a transwoman” and that she feels “Trans have no place in women’s sports.”"

Woman sues hospital for removing her breasts when she was 13 - "A California woman whose breasts were removed when she was 13 years old because she thought she was transgender is now suing the doctors and hospital that oversaw the procedure — claiming they were in it for the money. Kayla Lovdahl, now 18, says she was pushed to “entertain the erroneous belief that she was transgender” at age 11, after being exposed to online influencers... “…they essentially handed Kayla the prescription pad, and allowed her naïve, emotional, childish, rollercoaster of feelings to dictate the so-called ‘treatment’ that she would receive”... By the age of 12 she was on hormone blockers and testosterone without a proper psychological evaluation, Lovdahl claims... ovdahl underwent a single 75-minute transition evaluation, she alleged. ” ‘It is better to have a live son than a dead daughter,’ ” the physicians allegedly told the family. The procedures were “ideological and profit-driven medical abuse,” Lovdahl now maintains... Lovdahl additionally accused the hospital and doctors of not providing her and her parents proper “informed consent,” which would have included in-depth therapy, something she said never happened. The procedures were “an insane form of child abuse,” lawyers for Lovdahl, who also uses the pseudonym Layla Jane, said in a statement."
Clearly gatekeeping is a bad thing
Weird how so many lawsuits exist saying that doctors failed in their duty of care in ushering kids down the transition pipeline when TRAs insist that it is very hard to transition

Trans indigenous Canadian slams doctors for denying her euthanasia request, saying death would be better than her constant pain from a surgically-built vagina - "An indigenous transgender woman has slammed Canada's healthcare system for rejecting her euthanasia request despite the pain she endures from a surgically-built vagina. In social media posts, Lois Cardinal, a self-proclaimed 'sterilized First Nations post-op transsexual' said regret over her medical transition led her to apply for a lethal injection in January... Most recipients suffer pain and discomfort afterward, according to a recent study from the University of Florida. Pain during intercourse and bladder problems are common... Doctors are more interested in finding out what pronouns she uses than easing her pain... In other social media posts, Cardinal slams the transgender ideas that led to her to bottom surgery 14 years ago. In one video, she burns a version of the LGBTQ+ flag. In others, she appears frustrated and even on the verge of tears. 'I do not agree with the current rhetoric of the trans community,' she says. 'A lot of the so-called trans hate is fuelled by the trans community, because we aren't allowed to have honest and tough conversations.' She says 'children and vulnerable' Canadians, especially its native population, are 'falling prey to a trend that is medicalized.'... The country is on track to record some 13,500 state-sanctioned suicides in 2022, a 34 percent rise on the 10,064 in 2021, according to Schadenberg's analysis of official data. Alberta is conservative compared to the rest of Canada, but still saw MAiD numbers jump 41 percent to 836 cases last year."
Gender affirmation surgery is literally life-saving basic healthcare

Toco the human collie steps out for first ever walk in public - "A Japanese native has transformed himself into a canine after forking out more than $14,000 for a custom-made collie costume. The private citizen, who goes only by Toco online, says the unusual garment has helped actualize his dream of “becoming an animal.”... As an introduction to his unusual hobby, Toco answered a series of questions in a video posted last year, admitting he always “had a vague dream of becoming an animal” ever since he was a child. “When I fulfilled that dream, this is how it turned out,” he wrote in the clip, adding that he chose to become a collie due to the negligible size difference between the breed and humans. Zeppet, the company that manufactured Toco’s collie costume, says it took 40 days to create the furry fashion item, which cost a cool $2 million Yen (USD $14,161)... Despite garnering online fame with his puppy pursuit, Toco conceals his unusual proclivities from most of his friends and family. “I rarely tell my friends because I am afraid they will think I am weird,’ he said in a separate interview with the Mirror. “My friends and family seemed very surprised to learn I became an animal.” Meanwhile, the Japanese man said last year that most of his colleagues are also unaware that he dresses as a dog outside of work. “I don’t want my hobbies to be known, especially by the people I work with”"

Teenagers tell Education Secretary they're 'too frightened' to say there are only two sexes - "Teenagers have told the Education Secretary they are “too frightened” to tell their classmates that there are only two sexes.   Two 14-year-old girls have written an open letter to Gillian Keegan, saying they want her to know “what it’s like in a school environment where dissenting voices are stifled” and “extreme ideologies are presented as fact”, ahead of the upcoming publication of transgender guidance in schools. The girls, who said they attended different secondary schools in England and who have published the letter anonymously, said: “There is a growing atmosphere of fear around this topic, and many students, including us, are frightened to speak out openly due to the threat of ostracisation and bullying from students who adopt the authoritarian dogma of gender ideology.” They said they have “both experienced times when biased teachers attempt to implicate gender ideology in innocuous topics, for instance claiming that Zeus, the Greek god, was ‘non-binary’, or that Lady Macbeth was ‘gender-fluid’.”  They added: “There is immense pressure among students our age to conform to the popularly-held views that ‘trans women’ are women, and any opposition to this belief is considered ‘transphobic’ and unacceptable.  “There have been many cases of students being bullied and ostracised for disagreeing with gender ideology, where gender-critical pupils are punished by teachers, excluded by students, and abandoned by friends.  “A lot of us are too afraid to speak out due to fear of the consequences, and this must change so that different opinions are allowed to be heard, even on divisive topics such as this one.”"
Clearly this is not credible since it's anonymous, so we should ignore this. The letter is probably fake anyway

Bringing to the table / Not tempting men / Big Bad Wolf

"When he asks what you bring to the table *breasts*"

"Well-hidden hair so as not to tempt men. *hijabi with big breasts and nipples showing*"

""Forget about finding your Prince Charming. Find the Big Bad Wolf. He can see you better, hear you better and eat you better."