Dame's weird political sideblog.
They/them/theirs and it/its
if you don't know me.
Quick stances: anti-radfem (anti-swerf and anti-twerf), anti-truscum, pro-aro/ace inclusion, anti-pedophile, anti-fascist, pro-choice, feminist. Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Splatter. DNI If you contradict any of this.
The Red Cross which seems to have a donation page for most provinces. Both the Canadian and Alberta government will match each dollar of your donation.
Unite for Change not directly donating to the fires but is working to make changes at a provincial and federal level to help fix the climate crisis which is directly making the fires worse.
Please tell me if you know of any other places taking donations to help either put out the fires or help the people affected. If any of these donation links are also donating to discriminatory policies or such like anti-trans legislation’s please inform me so I can remove the link!
Quebec and Ontario links are especially wanted as I couldn’t find anything for there and neither could my friend.
Here’s some more organizations I’ve seen mentioned, by and for the indigenous communities that are being impacted:
Dave Brandt was so much more than a meme. He partnered with universities to experiment with and expand soil conservation and cover crop techniques, worked to educate other farmers through worldwide conventions and direct mentorship, founded the Soil Health Academy, and was called the “Obi-Wan Kenobi of soil health” by the chief of the USDA’s conservation department.
There is no healthy planet without healthy ag practices, and this guy was a legend.
URGENT: Congress about to pass a mass censorship and surveillance bill under the guise of “protecting children”
May 13 2023
The Senate has been in a “do something!” mode regarding children’s online safety. They’re using this as an excuse to push for widespread internet censorship and surveillance. I already spoke about the EARN IT Act, which has a slimmer chance of passing with widespread opposition and a few senators saying they won’t vote for it. The real threat is actually KOSA (s.1409), the Kid’s Online Safety Act. It does two primary things:
First, KOSA pressures platforms to install filters that would wipe the net of anything deemed “inappropriate” for minors. This means instructing platforms to censor. We saw how these filters impacted websites firsthand with tumblr in 2018, with not only blocking all adult content but also sfw queer content such as suicide hotlines, art archives, wiping out entire blogs because they had queer fandom related posts, etc. Places that already use content filters have restricted important information about suicide prevention and LGBTQ+ support groups. KOSA would spread this kind of censorship to every corner of the internet. And who gets to decide what is and isn’t harmful for minors? Oh don’t worry, just every single state attorney general and the FTC, which is appointed by the president. You know, the same attorney generals that just banned gender-affirming healthcare under the guise that it “ruins mental health” of minors. This is why the Heritage Foundation was one of the first to sponsor the bill because they can use it to censor trans content, and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is it’s co-author.
Second, KOSA would ramp up the online surveillance of all internet users by forcing websites to use age verification and parental monitoring tools. Yup, that’s right. Now every single person who wants to access the internet has to upload their govt ID online to third party apps that get hacked all the time. You queer in a red state? You undocumented? You an activist? Have fun getting all your online activity and metadata attached to your govt ID.
Over 90+ human and LGBT rights groups agree that KOSA is dangerous and updates to the 2023 version won’t and can’t address the big problems with the bill. This bill has MASSIVE bipartisan support, and the authors Blumenthal and Blackburn (yes, that Blumenthal that’s pushing the EARN IT Act, and who also sponsored the RESTRICT Act and SOPA/PIPA if you remember) are using the tragedy of mothers who lost their kids to online harassment and young adults who’ve been traumatized online to lobby for it, and got Dove the company to use a bunch of influencers to push for this under the guise it prevents eating disorders…I wish I was lying. There are already 30 co-sponsors.
HOW TO FIGHT KOSA
CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES & THE COMMERCE COMMITTEE
Opposition is getting drowned, and these upcoming weeks will be heavy for lobbying and they’re using young people to do it. We NEED to show these senators that young people are actually opposed to this and don’t want it.
The opposition is getting absolutely drowned online. Dove has nearly 100k signatures to push for KOSA. Influencers on tiktok are pushing for this without ever having read the bill. Fucking Lizzo is sponsoring it. If you have twitter, reddit, tiktok, are in any community, SPREAD THE WORD, PLEASE.
Here is a linktree with all the above petitions for easy shargin: Link to linktree
I initially thought this could be a positive thing without seeing the stipulations attached…yikes. Protecting minors shouldn’t involve surveillance of literally everyone.
Okay, so one of the reasons you can’t seperate TERF ideology from ableism is because one of the basis’ of their ideology is that bodily autonomy should be restricted from people based on their mental status.
And obviously, we know enough about transness to state it isn’t a mental disorder but I need more people to realize that even if it was a mental disorder, that wouldn’t be a reason to deny trans people community, dignity or resources that have been proven repeatedly and decisively to improve their quality of life.
Transphobia and ableism, especially when we’re talking about TERF ideology, are so closely bound together you can’t fully separate the two. You want to counter transphobia, you’re going to have to deal with ableism as well and far too many of you are shying away, either because you simply don’t know how to fight ableism or because ableism isn’t actually an issue you care about. Either way, you lose.
TERFs don’t care about our mental health and never have but we have to fight the ableism in their attacks as well, not just because it’s one of the roots of their ideology but also because ableism is running rampant and needs to be addressed as well. Even ignoring the heavy overlaps between the trans community and disabled community, they’re our comrades and we have to stick up for each other.
So either stop dodging the issue and speak the hell up or boost the people who are.
and that’s not even getting into the amount of terfs who proudly say the r slur -
Yup. I’ve had TERFs call me that slur, along with one that didn’t but justified another one “snapping at” me bc they found me annoying. So apparently calling me that slur is fine.
There’s also a reason some of these anti-trans bills that have been happening in the US are putting heavy emphasis on autistic people.
If you are a TERF, you are by default ableist. And yes that still applies if you yourself are disabled, internalised ableism is a thing 🤷🏻
The fact that anti-abortion laws and anti-transgender laws are both being implemented en masse, at the *same* time, by the *same* people (who, it hardly needs to be remarked, are overwhelmingly neither women nor transgender) should be enough to convince any reasonable person that the narrative of conflict between and women’s and transgender is, first and foremost, a divide-and-conquer strategy by the far right.
Your survival is our survival. Our survival is your survival. Anyone who says different is a fed.
I think there’s quite a big difference between a woman getting an abortion and a teenage girl being sterilised and having a double mastectomy.
Women’s rights and trans issues are not comparable and are often in opposition.
Fuck off, Collaborator.
It’s interesting that there are people that understand that the right lies constantly about abortion but think they tell the truth about trans people.
Also, hey, let’s walk with this totally bad faith argument for a second. What IS different about a teen girl choosing to get an abortion, and a teen girl choosing to get a tubal ligation and a mastectomy? Are you saying that teenage girls who know that they will never want children should be forced to preserve their fertility anyway? Are you saying that teenage girls with severe back pain or the BRCA gene need to preserve their feminine breasts and be aesthetically pleasing to others, even at the expense of their own health? I mean, they’re just too young to be making medical decisions which might make them less fertile or sexual desirable, right? What if they regret it???
And hey, you know, the same worry that teen girls might regret these things is true for adult women, too. Maybe we should make them wait until they’re married, in case their future husband disapproves. Maybe we should make them wait until they’ve had kids - what if she regrets it and wants children? what if she regrets it and wants to breast feed? what if her stupid little woman brain hasn’t thought this through and correctly pinned her entire self-worth and value as a person on her ability to act as a sex object and baby incubator? what then???
Trans men aren’t women, and infantilizing them as poor helpless girls is obviously transphobic. But in addition to that, even if we were to buy into the central transphobic premise here, the conclusions would still be sexist as hell. Let’s say that there are no trans men. Let’s pretend for the sake of argument that trans men simply don’t exist. Infantilizing teen girls out of being able to make their own medical decisions isn’t feminist either.
If you’re categorically against teen girls being able to choose to get a tubal ligation and a mastectomy, I have an awful lot of trouble believing that you’re actually pro-choice. Pro-choice doesn’t mean “women should have bodily autonomy just as long as they do the things I want”. Pro-choice means pro-fucking-choice. You can’t sing female empowerment and bodily autonomy out of one side of your mouth, while sticking your tongue out to lick the boot of the patriarchy on the other.
Oops it turns out Disney’s lawsuit against the Florida governor is based on a constitutional clause which says that states can’t pass laws to interfere with private contracts. Historically this is something courts have used to strike down basic labour protections like minimum wages. So if the Supreme Court decides to give Disney a win here by saying “um actually any contact betwen private individuals is completely fine and beyond any kind of state regulation” (which would be wildly broad but also that’s how this Supreme Court sometimes behaves) then stay tuned for a lot of terrible lawsuits eroding a lot of basic protections for workers and renters and anyone else who’s signed a contract with a vastly more powerful entity.
[[sadly puts away my “let them fight” jpeg and pulls out my “no matter who wins, we lose” jpeg]]
