e_urq

e_urq, 11 months ago to random

This one's been a bit under the radar, but the US Conference of Catholic Bishops are moving ahead with plans to force Catholic hospitals to refuse any sort of gender affirming care, which would include maintenance doses of hormone therapy for emergency patients such as stroke victims who were unlucky enough to be brought to a Catholic hospital.

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/qgqzzx44bmfatwh70u4n5b4rfs7bar

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

The depressing thing about 2024 is that in the absolute best case scenario we'll have 4 more years of Joe Biden.

There's so much that urgently needs to be moved on, from global threats like climate change and the destabilizing effects of wealth concentration, to smaller scale stuff (which I include my LGBTQ+ community's concerns in). Government has an inescapable role in all of it, and the very best we can hope for is not a radical shift to finally address all this, but just more Biden.

e_urq, 10 months ago to random

I find myself wanting to contextualize the impact of gender-affirming care bans in a thread. I'm not writing a proper post on a Friday afternoon, Bluesky has reached a crisis point over moderation, Twitter feels death-throes-y to me, so I'm just going to post it here.

For reference, a judge in Kentucky just reluctantly reversed himself, allowing Kentucky's ban on gender affirming care to go into effect after the 6th circuit recently allowed a Tennessee law to.

https://substack.com/@chrisgeidner/note/c-19713769

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

Having now been subjected to two (2) lectures on AI in my entrepreneurial journalism class, I am concerned about two (2) things.

First, that AI is being sold to budding entrepreneurs (who are relatively poor and not in power) as necessary to embrace if you want to succeed.

Second, that AI doesn't represent a threat to writers in the sense it's being sold (being able to do their job faster and for less money) but in the sense that capitalists have decided to use it to drive more layoffs.

e_urq, 6 months ago to random

Someone on another site mentioned that it's been a year since the LLM "AI" hype started, and it hasn't transformed anything.

This is coming just after Sports Illustrated was caught using (likely) AI-generated content with fake AI-generated headshots to pass it off as the product of real people.

I think that's interesting to think about where AI has been used, where it hasn't, and maybe why that is.

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

I don't know how or if I can report this, which means I don't know if I'll write about it "officially" but it's truly unsettling to me how little national orgs, particularly HRC but others as well, are doing in response to the slow motion roll back of all our rights and progress.

They should be making so much noise they're unavoidable. Constant op-eds placed, constant interviews, their websites re-tooled to highlight the current fights and their place in it.

e_urq, 11 months ago to random

I'll be taking the week of July 4th off from publishing Assigned Media because I'm so patriotic*

*9 members of my family will all be in a house that sleeps 8 and I'm getting to sleep on the couch bc I'm the only unmarried non-child.

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

Last boost...

I'm not someone who has studied this deeply, but I think the treatment of queer and trans people in Nazi Germany are very relevant, and very similar to what we're seeing now.

Trans people are not "a people" in the eyes of the right, we're evidence of the degeneracy of their enemies.

for reference: https://indieweb.social/@emilygorcenski/110388342108847775

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

On another site, one that can remain nameless, I'm having a discussion with other trans people I very much respect about the "born this way" argument, and whether it does more harm than good.

I've long been of the opinion that it is a demeaning and undignified argument to say you wish you'd been cisgender but just can't help being a lowly trans person... and also that as things stand I'm not going to hold myself above doing that sort of begging for my life.

e_urq, 9 months ago to trans

Parents of trans youth spent hours pouring their hearts out to an NYT reporter. They thought she empathized with them, and trusted her with their stories. But as publication approached, one mom began to grow suspicious of the reporter's closeness to the very anti-trans activist she'd proven to Ghoraysh had lied in a sworn affidavit.

The story of an aggressive NYT reporter who played hardball with a vulnerable family, and won. #trans #news #journalism #transgender

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/you-betrayed-us-azeen-parents-of-trans-youth-reeling-after-speaking-to-the-nyt

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

I never thought I'd call a high school valedictorian metal but that was before this kid called for school board members to resign over their participation in racist and queerphobic oppression targeting students during his valedicory address.

The kids are out there putting it all on the line, fighting not to be dragged into a theocratic future. Adults could learn a thing or two.

Calling for the school board to resign at graduation. Fuck yeah he did.

https://dailyprogress.com/community/orangenews/orange-county-valedictorian-calls-on-school-board-members-to-resign-at-graduation/article_a1cbcf70-f9af-11ed-9eff-ff57adb96e35.html

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

I think many see comparisons of this moment for trans Americans to genocide as a hyperbolic attempt to reach ppl emotionally, and what I want to describe in this thread is that yes, we're trying you reach you emotionally, but it's also as clear a description as we can give.

In TX, authorities are going after trans children's medical records. Based on that, families are trying to decide whether they should flee because they're worried the state might put them in jail.

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

This is where we are: Families of trans youth are fleeing political persecution in the US with no sign that anything will stop the GOP's reign of terror.

This is how we got here: A drip, drip, drip of confusing and misleading news stories showed us how little it takes to destabalize the situation for an already vulnerable minority group.

Calling a spade a spade feels like all I can do some days. #transgender #journalism

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/its-happening-here-its-happening-now

e_urq, 11 months ago to random

For #Newstodon Assigned Media was actually much more newsy than shit-talky this week (we do a little bit of both, check out our Friday TWIBS column for the latter).

But, I think I'll highlight some GOOD news, the opinion by a federal district court that an Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for youth violated constitutional rights to equal treatment and due process.

It's not just the decision, though, it's the fact finding that made this so important. Check it out:

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/federal-judge-finds-anti-trans-propaganda-is-bullshit

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

I don't understand the impulse some people are having to use they/them pronouns for a gender nonconforming girl who was forced to sit out her high school graduation after school officials told her she had to remove her pants and just wear underwear under her robe.

She's very masc presenting, but her mom is quoted using she/her. Using they/them imposes something no one has asked for.

e_urq, 1 year ago to random

There are a lot of contenders, but "Why has [conversion therapy] never been tried?" has got to be the single most annoying clueless-cis-person comment for me.

It has been. Over and over. It doesn't work. It makes things worse. How can you not know this???

Freaking morons thinking no one has ever tried therapy to make people not trans.

e_urq, 11 months ago to trans

Hey, Fediverse. It's your intrepid transgender reporter, asking for support again. This community responds to honest talk abt finances, so here's the picture:

I spend 40 hrs weekly on Assigned, covering trans issues and debunking propaganda.

Support has grown steadily since I started! I'm currently making about $800 monthly from memberships.

I have a pt time day job, 30 hrs/wk.

70hr weeks aren't a lot! Become a member to help me quit my side gig. #trans #journalism

https://www.assignedmedia.org/newsletter

e_urq, 2 months ago to trans

New on Assigned, I found out earlier today that Jonathan Haidt, the author of the splashy new pop-psych book about how smartphones are bad for kids, believes and is promoting a fringe theory that kids are becoming #trans due to social media as well.

Haidt told PBS that "clusters of girls" are developing gender dysphoria when they never had it before.

The problem, of course, is that there's no research whatsoever backing that up. #science #news

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/jonathan-haidt-social-contagion-rogd-pbs

e_urq, 8 months ago to random

The entire conversation about Biden feels flummoxing to me because a big part of why I was so downhearted about Biden being the nominee in 2020 was that, obviously, it meant the best case scenario was 8 years of a Joe Biden presidency.

I'm not sure why that wasn't obvious to everyone. A party who went with the "safe" choice of Joe Biden in 2020 was never, ever going to go against the "safe" conventional wisdom that incumbents get a huge boost with the electorate and nominate someone else.

e_urq, 11 months ago to random

Do people actually believe the 70 million Threads users number?

Iisn't this the company known to have lied about video's popularity. casually destroying an entire industry?

e_urq, 9 months ago to random

Did you see this piece in the Guardian? Senior managers at Vice apparently blocked a story about how the Saudi government helps families harass and threaten transgender Saudis living overseas. Vice now gets a lot of Saudi money, and it seems like the editorial independence of their news team was part of the deal.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/aug/15/vice-blocked-news-stories-that-could-offend-saudi-arabia-insiders-say

e_urq, 10 months ago to random

Yesterday, for the Washington Post opinion section, Kathleen Parker sought to normalize the violent hatred that is demanding trans people be hounded out of public life in a column on the Bud Light boycotts.

Don't lose your capacity to be shocked. This hatred does not belong anywhere, but it certainly shouldn't be in the pages of a major mainstream newspaper, even in the opinion section.

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/kathleen-parker-normalizes-extremism-in-the-washington-post

e_urq, 9 months ago to trans

A story out of Gainesville, FL describes a man approaching a woman, then pulling out a gun and shooting her when he realized she was transgender.

Thankfully, the bullet only grazed her so she doesn't seem to have been badly hurt.

However, I found this really fucked up: A local news report described this potential hate crime as "mistaken identity." #trans #journalism #MediaBias

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/gainesville-tv-news-calls-bias-motivated-shooting-mistaken-identity

e_urq, 7 months ago to random

My next newsletter is on the feeling of speechlessness I get when the only words I know to explain trans rights and medical care are constantly misused by opponents.

How do you communicate when the goal of the otherside is to render your words meaningless?

The newsletter is $5/month, and it's the main way I support my work for Assigned. Please help out, it means the world <3!

https://www.assignedmedia.org/newsletter

e_urq, 5 months ago to random

A woman who was once prominent in the detransitioner community now opposes bans on gender-affirming care.

Carey Callahan feels guilty at the role she played in a movement that is hurting both trans people and those who detransition. The Washington Post covered her story today, and I've got some of my own thoughts and analysis.

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/washington-post-carey-callahan