Chester the Cheetah would never!

It’s interesting that you mention LiveJournal, because a lot of early internet feminists were there.

I’ve been wondering if part of the strategy has also been infiltrating feminist communities, and if they would have started learning there.

“Trans exclusionary radical feminists” always existed, but they were very much on the fringe. The only time the “men are invading lesbian spaces!” crowd would speak up was around Michfest (“womyn’s” festival or when Mary Daly (prominent 70’s academic TERF) died.

So it was a pain point that could be targeted. They use essentially the same propaganda now that they do on the right - that trans women are all sexual predators and perverts trying to get access to women. The “feminist” innovation is that they can be somewhat empathetic to “self hating gays” = straight trans women or “poor little girls deceived into mutilating their bodies by the patriarchy” = trans men. But it is supposed to be conversion therapy for us all.

Now, they dominate a lot of feminist discussion spaces. We have self identified “progressive feminists” who spend all day seething at random blogs which keep a Google alert on “transgender + rape.” Same sources that right wing nutjobs share on Facebook.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s also a response to the effectiveness of #metoo. Trolls will pretend to both be trans people and TERFs (to post creepy goony shit or send sexual/death threats). There are bad actors in the conversation, whether they are Russian trolls or American basement dwelling weirdos.

People keep posting that Sartre quote about anti-semites, but that’s the point.

It’s not about the actions, it’s about who is doing them.

Psychology and psychiatry as professions unfortunately include people who believe that any deviation from what they personally consider “normal” is illness. There’s a very strong influence from shitstains like Dr Laura and Dr Phil on practitioners, and there are definitely some who’d like to punish political beliefs they disagree with.

They only read the clobber verses about killing gay men, and the shitty bits of Paul (much of which wasn’t even written by Paul).

You can tell they don’t even read the Sodom and Gomorrah stuff, because they don’t know about Lot’s daughters getting their dad drunk to rape him, which is like immediately after.

Did you determine that they were false or misleading based on Ben Shapiro podcasts? I can point to probably thousands of podcasts that regularly are false or misleading.

There are multiple corporate medias. “Corporate media” is not a single organism. I don’t “trust” them - as I pointed out in my previous comment, I critically evaluate multiple sources. (Back in the day, I had an amazing Google Reader setup, Feedly sucks 😢). I tend to discard most science reporting and read the articles directly though my university’s library. For current events, I usually try to find a local news source.

I’m not sure why the fact that corporate media can be inaccurate means that we should turn to random, much more likely to be talking out their butts, podcasts on the internet. That seems to be a way to get trapped in an echo chamber that confirms your pre existing beliefs.

For the most part yes. Everyone has their biases, which is why I usually check multiple sources. I’m more inclined to trust a source that is run by people who have backgrounds in journalism, who provide their sources. Articles go through professional editors, who can fact check the information. Paid professionals are involved in the process, and stake their reputations on the quality of their reporting. There has certainly been a decline in the quality of mainstream journalism - largely due to mega corps buying up local news - but I will turn to the BBC before I turn to Joe Rogan.

I find that even podcasts I like and consider informative can often have misinformation. Podcasts are often more focused on entertainment and commentary - it is a different set of priorities.

So mainstream news sources aren’t trustworthy, but random podcasts are?

Didn’t Fox literally claim in court that no one would ever take them at face value? (Or was that just Tucker Carlson?) Why would you want to take anything Fox News says seriously?