SocialMedia on Marti Abernathey

Stop Gatekeeping Queerness Like You're Auditioning for the Conservatives You Hate

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:07:11 +0100

A lesbian writer who used to be a mutual of mine on several social media sites back in the 2000s turned up in a Gmail search. (I’m currently going through gigabytes of old emails and mass-deleting in preparation for shutting the account down entirely.) Curious, since I hadn’t heard that name in years, I looked up her socials. What do you know: TERF. “Why I’m Not Going to Pride” posts, complete with mentions of trans people and other queers as the reason why. Shocker.

On that note, I’m tired of people who center themselves as the definition of an identity and then gatekeep everyone else out of it. The last few days, the target has been lesbians. One person claimed that “real” lesbianism means never having been attracted to a person of the opposite sex, ever, and that people in twenty-year WLW relationships aren’t lesbians in that context if they were previously in a heterosexual relationship. What in the unholy gold-star-lesbian hell is this? Gatekeeping identity is ignorant. Y’all sound like the conservatives you marched in Pride to counterprotest.

Maybe it’s because I grew into my queerness around the foundational idea of the trans umbrella that I have a wider picture of what community boundaries — and gatekeeping them — actually entails. Maybe it’s because, even though my gender identity is fairly binary, I live in this body, and that gives me a wider vantage point too. There are times I feel like non-binary-identifying people take up too much space in trans spaces while ignoring their own cis privilege. But I would never say, “You’re not transgender, get out of my community.”

So what in the Milo Yiannopoulos are you doing? Sexual orientation isn’t a binary, and it never has been. I understand wanting to say “it’s not a choice,” but that framing isn’t healthy — it’s a fear- or shame-based response. The science on sexual orientation points to a mix of explanations, some social, some biological. But again, fixating on that origin story isn’t healthy either. What actually makes an orientation or relationship dynamic unhealthy is a lack of consent. Outside of that, all choices are morally equal.

Over time, I’ve realized that my own orientation is basically what people today call gynesexual: attraction to femininity, regardless of the sex of the person expressing it. I’ve genuinely wanted to be attracted to certain masculine men who were attracted to me, but it just wasn’t there. So I get the impulse to say it isn’t “a choice.” But I’m also not saying it’s strictly biological.Femininity itself is a social construct, built on layers of tradition and social expectation.

“Sexual orientation” is a big tent full of nuance, whether you like that or not. My real issue isn’t the nuance — it’s how toxic the gatekeeping becomes. Strip away the rhetoric, and what’s left is: “I’m gay because I was born this way. I can’t help it. There’s something wrong with me. It’s not my fault.“Screw that, all the way down to Shitsville, USA.

One more time, for the people in the back: your sexual orientation isn’t defective or morally bankrupt — unless it denies someone else’s agency or consent. Gatekeeping is dickheaded behaviour that serves no one, not even the gatekeeper.

Still the Same, Thirteen Years Later

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 20:04:25 +0100

Image by tove erbs from Pixabay

Even though I’ve been spending less and less time on TikTok, I’m seeing a discourse happening around bisexual men, and cisgender straight women not wanting to date them. MANY of the responses were claiming that bisexual men were trying to coerce straight women into dating them.

The responses reminded me of the reaction that many cisgender lesbians had to the “cotton ceiling” debate. It even made it onto the BBC, that trans women were forcing lesbians to date them.

In reality, the whole conversation revolved around bias, and asking people to examine their bias. That if a woman being trans was the only reason that you wouldn’t date her, that it was transphobic.

It would seem that cisgender women seem to have a hard time examining their biases. #transgender

Taming my Camera Roll

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 05:32:02 +0100

I’ve decided to get rid of my iCloud and Google accounts. One of things that I’ve done is bring all the photos from Google and iCloud and my personal library, and put them together. I’m currently sitting at 4,894,576 pictures, 24,230 videos, and that’s currently over 1 TB of space. I know there are a lot of duplicates, and a lot of TikTok videos I don’t care about. I’m gently letting Immich sort through them and categorize them. But it’s topping out my NAS quite often. My streaming PC is helping with the machine learning. I’m going to baby it until it’s done and I can run deduping scripts. I’m talking about a procedure that’s taking DAYS. It’s been three or four days, and I’m not under a million yet. Once I’m able to do a backup of the Immich database, I feel like I’ll be able to breathe a bit. Then it’s the tedious process of going through them all. Most of my TikToks that I like I’ve already backed up, so a good majority of the videos I’ve saved are of me making videos over the past few years. Once they’re organized, I’ll back them up in the employ the 3-2-1 backup strategy. The 3-2-1 backup strategy is a data protection method that recommends keeping three copies of your data, stored on two different types of media, with one copy kept off-site. Mostly right now It’s just a matter of trying to keep the server above water and not stressing it too much.

My Blogs on Micro.blog

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 20:52:47 +0100

I have four blogs here on micro.blog. My main site: Martiabernathey.com Tpartypodcast.com Stillnottrans.com.

Martiabernathey.com is my personal website. Tpartypodcast is set up to be like my own Linktree to social media sites.

StillNotTrans is an idea that I’ve thought about doing for a while. It’s a blog where I will post cisgender predators that are the real threat, rather than the made up by transphobes. Trans people are more often victims of sexual violence than cisgender people.

Andrea Dworkin had a Penis

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 07:57:13 +0100

What defines a woman? The common assertion from the “(trans)gender critical” crowd is that a woman is an “adult human female.” If we take that at face value, we are reducing individuals to their genitalia. Consider Andrea Dworkin—how can anyone definitively state she had a vagina? Is there a museum exhibit showcasing her anatomy? Do we have photographic evidence to verify her sex? Are her large gametes stored in an archive somewhere? If I were to argue that Dworkin was biologically male, how would you counter that without relying on gender identity or a birth certificate? Neither are a verification of sex, according to TERF ideology. It’s gametes or chromosomes, baby!

Recently, a TikTok comment claimed, “In no world do radical feminists say that’s all a woman is. They are also human and can have any personality under the sun. Our sex is simply the factor on which we are oppressed.”

NO.

Research shows that trans women face greater violence and poverty than cisgender women. Oppression is typically tied to perceived gender rather than biological sex. It’s not about inspecting genitalia; it’s about societal perceptions. Perception of gender identity significantly shapes the dynamics of oppression, more often more than biological sex. Those who don’t conform to traditional masculine roles face marginalization, regardless of their gametes, the appearance of their genitals, or their chromosomes. Individuals who don’t fit the mold of the “right kind of man” are scrutinized and discriminated against, regardless of their biological sex. Chaz Bono or Jamison Green won’t be oppressed based on whether they have a uterus, but because they aren’t considered the “right kind of man.” This layer of oppression transcends anatomy; it’s about societal expectations and the harsh realities faced by those who challenge them. Trans women (and trans men/non-binary folks) perceived as men endure higher rates of violence than cisgender women do.

When you say you’re oppressed because of sex, I frankly don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, and neither do you.

Sun, 31 May 2026 09:51:58 +0100

Facebook/Meta, you’re grim. Rebecca died in 2021. I think I’m good.

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:46:58 +0100

I’ve been thinking a lot about the growth I’ve had in the past 20 years. Then I saw Parker Molloy’s BlueSky account being retooted. Molloy once told another trans woman to “go drink bleach.” Seeing her account, it seems like she’s not grown at all. Same half baked, crass commentary, different decade.

Is Your TikTok Feed a Platform for Israeli Propaganda?

Thu, 14 May 2026 13:12:07 +0100

Israeli state propaganda has found a cozy new home on TikTok, infiltrating our For You Pages like a sneaky guest at a party. 🎭🤔 This trend raises some eyebrows, especially when you consider how it ties into the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Critiquing Israel is being rebranded as a no-go zone for free speech.

As discussions around this topic heat up, it’s essential to unpack what that really means. Are we heading toward a world where any criticism of Israel is automatically labeled antisemitic? Apparently we’re already there. #TikTokTalk #PropagandaAlert #AntisemitismDebate #IsraelCritique

Fri, 08 May 2026 11:02:49 +0100

So apparently it’s content violation on TikTok to hashtag #stillnottrans highlighting the fact that trans people aren’t the threat, but your father, boyfriend, or pastor is.

Postiz is a good idea, in theory...

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:35:01 +0100

As a side note, I tried Postiz on Elest.io, and while it’s a great idea in theory, it’s not ready for prime-time. Think of Postiz like a self-hosted version of Hootsuite. Bluesky was the only app worked out of the box. I looked at their own hosting costs…and yeah (over £200) it isn’t going to work for me. People smarter than me, over on the Unraid Reddit, can’t even get it working.

Homelab Realities

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:39:39 +0100

During my journey through POSSE driven social media with a focus on open source/federated applications, I’ve picked up a few insights. As a homelabber, I was curious about running my own social media apps on my private NAS.

While I know it’s possible to expose my NAS/network to the internet, I feel that, from my perspective of being “smart enough to be dangerous,” it’s not the best idea for me. If I want to host something online, like Actual, PeerTube, or Mastodon, It’s more cost-effective (in terms of my time) and safer to use a fully managed DevOps platform like Elest.io or Pikapod. I’m fine with running local applications that don’t need internet exposure, but self-hosting Mastodon seems like a daunting task for someone like me. I still have nightmares about the time I tried to run group WordPress blogs on Transadvocate.com and kept getting hacked with bad MYSQL injections.

For now, I’m sticking to locally hosted, in network apps that don’t go outside my home network. I know myi limitations.

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 19:50:32 +0100

Watching the TikTok from Victoria Derbyshire talk about puberty blockers and see the comments of cis people more worried about a child’s future ability to reproduce, while ignoring the mental health repercussions for #transgender children makes me ill.

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:11:26 +0100

So, I’ve moved from Mastodon, to Micro.blog. I was hosting my own Mastodon server, it just isn’t worth $20 a month (it was raised last month from $9 to $20) to have my own domain/instance. Micro.blog is limited in what it can do, but my old mastodon.social profile will do to fill in the gaps.

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 10:30:55 +0100

Post by @galacticstone@mastodon.social

Folks, if you have favorite TikTok or YouTube accounts that you follow, send a comment or DM to that account and tell them about PeerTube and Loops.Progressive voices are not welcome or safe on those broligarch venues and it’s going to get worse.It would be wise for these influencers and creators to not have all their eggs in one corporate basket. They should at least establish a presence and cross post.#TikTok #YouTube #PeerTube #Loops

The Death of the Open Internet in the Upside Down

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 09:46:48 +0100

I posted yesterday about Bluesky suspending #transgender authors. This type of nonsense will continue as long as people insist on algorithm based, centralized (no, Bluesky isn’t decentralised) social media. I feel like a grumpy old person (mostly because I am), but it’s pretty obvious where things are going. The government is shutting down every avenue of social media that doesn’t toe the line in terms of government policy (under the guise of “saving the children”). Supporting direct action is now illegal, but the state is supporting a genocidal religious ethnostate isn’t. Inciting violence is now called free speech, while advocating for peace is called terrorism.

DeGoogling Expectations

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 16:17:13 +0100

In the past year and a half, I’ve been trying to de-google or to extract myself from algorithmically based social media apps. I’ve had a revelation in doing that. You’ve probably heard it before, but, if you do not pay for an app, you are the product.. When you’re using an open-source software (OSS) for maps, YouTube, email, or calendars, you are never going to find a perfect replacement. Those “perfect apps” sell your data, have hundreds or even thousands of developers working on them, and millions of money in VC funding, whereas these open-source alternatives do not. A good example is TikTok. I’m trying to wean myself off it, and the open-source alternative to TikTok is Loops. The UI is very similar but the community and the controls are very rudimentary. You’re not going to get A one-to-one comparison app, and you shouldn’t expect that. TikTok is a $1 billion company with thousands of developers working on it, whereas loops has one developer working on it.

When you use these open-source alternatives, you are trading perfection for privacy and security. You have to always keep that in mind when you are de-googling or de-algorithming (is that a word??) your online experience. When you take that into consideration, the experience becomes a lot easier to handle.

The Trading Game and Gary Stevenson

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 08:50:21 +0100

I just finished reading Gary Stevenson’s book The Trading Game 📚 and I wanted to offer some thoughts about the book.

I watched this interview with Gary on Novara Media:

and it’s what pushed me to buy the book. I thought that the book was going to be about economic theory. I expected it to explain how the economy works. It definitely was not that. Instead, it was a superb story about a young poor boy with a knack for numbers. He grows into a troubled teen who finds his way to the London School of Economics. Eventually, he becomes an adult from Ilford who achieves financial success as a trader with Citibank.

In my recent writing, I’ve talked a lot about reactive versus reflective people. From Stevenson’s book, I gathered that he is highly reflective. He has encountered many emotionally reactive people who don’t self-reflect. In the book he points out that people in the financial market are akin to most people in life. Many people don’t question the system. They just know that they exist in it. They’re trying to find financial safety, self-respect, or ego, but they never self-reflected on the why. They simply accept that they live inside it. They never think “hey maybe the system doesn’t work”, or “hey perhaps the system needs to be destroyed”, or “perhaps this system shouldn’t exist.” Most of the people in the book do not question the status quo.

If you’re in the market for a fast-paced, well-written look at the financial markets and the people inside them, it’s a great read.

The book and the interview had me thirsting for more from Gary. I’ve subscribed to his social media channels. He talks about politics and the economy. He explains what needs to happen and why it happens. He discusses the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Where Stevenson goes missing, is in the details of what needs to be done.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. How do we change that? The rich have all the resources. There are only a few levers that the poor can use to turn things around. Ultimately, there are three levers the poor have at their disposal:

withholding their labor (through something like a general strike)
severely limiting consumption

The wealthy have all the other levers. They have all the material wealth to use against the working class. They also control politicians, police, the media, and the state to affect laws and policies.

It’s not just Gary, but the folks of “alternative media” like Owen Jones, Novara Media, etc. rarely allude to the first two levers, but especially the last one. If the imbalance of power continues, it is increasingly going to become a more common choice. More of a desperate choice. For a long time, society mostly kept these people at bay because those in power understood the need for balance. This balance involved government responsibility, the rich and the poor, and the working class and the one percent. There were barriers preventing them from extracting too much wealth. Those barriers are mostly gone now.

Stevenson’s analysis of what has happened, and what is happening is spot on. But much like his peers in the alternative media sphere, he speaks of these actors neutrally. He describes them in a very benign way. They are not cast as violent thugs or people acting knowingly and with purpose.

Billionaires should not exist. The existence of billionaires is violence. People who presently are billionaires should be taxed to the point that they are not billionaires. It is unethical to extract wealth in such a reverse Robin Hood manner. That shouldn’t exist, and the framework that allows that to happen shouldn’t exist either. But it does.

One major aspect of the war in Gaza (or Ukraine, or Iraq, etc.) was that most people wanted it to end. Many people support Israel’s right to exist, but most were not cheering for this conflict to continue. But it did because the wealthy wanted to enrich themselves, and they continue to enrich themselves, regardless of public perception. The situation in Gaza continues to unfold in public. The truth has been revealed. There is no pretense of international law or rules-based order. The rules have been revealed for what they truly are. There are laws for friends and laws for enemies. How many times do we need to watch this play out? Protesting doesn’t work. Voting doesn’t work. At the end of the day, how do you change things if those don’t work? That’s the question that can’t be asked directly. If asked, it must be posed gently to avoid alerting or upsetting the rulers.

The revolution will not be televised. But it won’t be had by gently asking those with their boots on our necks to stop, either.

Leaving Another Social Media Account Behind

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 05:45:15 +0100

With the coming TikTok ban, I’ve realised that I’m doing something that I’ve done since 1997, which is leaving another social media site.

My online social media prepense since 1997: AOL community (1997), Livejournal (2001-2004), Friendster (2003-2004), Myspace (2004-2006), Tribe.net (2005), Facebook (2006-2019), Twitter (2008-2024), YouTube (2011), Mastodon (2018), TikTok (2020), PeerTube (2024).

This was never a linear event cycle, I just kind of floated from one app to the next with a lot of bleed over. At each site, I met different people and formed community bonds. Some of those connections lasted through those journeys, some did not. But at each part of the journey, there was always a sense of fear at not finding community again.

Here we are at the beginning of 2025 and TikTok is being banned in the USA. I’ve known for about a year that I’d be transitioning off TikTok anyway, but the ban has made me self-reflect on my journey. Things I’ve realised:

I’ll find community wherever I go. There’s always the fear of leaving community behind. Some people follow have followed me, others don’t. That’s OK.
Corporate ownership has turned the social media into a fucking rubbish tip. Corporate social media sites like TikTok/Facebook/Twitter get clicks and views through drama/outrage/rage bait. This has made social media a public cancer on society.
not everyone can do it, but those that can, should own their own social media sites. Self-censoring on social media is a thing. You can’t say can’t say “rape” or “killed” or “porn”. You’ll either get no views on your videos, or you’ll get a Community Guidelines Violation (CGV) that effectively silences you. So instead of rape, you’ll say “grape.” Instead of saying killed, you’ll say “unalived.” Instead of porn, you’ll say “corn”. It’s so ingrained that I feel uneasy writing the words here, even though there’s no censor here.
Most Millennials, and the generations beyond, aren’t really concerned about digital privacy or have any concept have how that data manipulates their everyday life. They’ve lived most of the life that they remember as a product on social media algorithms.
since the ban, many people on TikTok are leaving for RedNote. A mutual recently said, “I doubt that RedNote will be a permanent option, and it doesn’t really matter whether it can be or will be. We still need to be able to have our own comms based on our servers, protected by our nerds and our security. We will need to have global capacity. Our ability to be safe and have our comms protected means it must be able to move. It must be asymmetrical. It needs multiple servers across the global to do that.” That ability is already in place with Mastodon. I can spin a masto instance in a matter of minutes. Going to another corporate owned social media site isn’t praxis. You’re just going to find a new overlord.

I don’t see myself returning to corporate social media. As I’ve said recently, I’m going to focus on building community in a very specific way, namely POSSE. I’m no longer going to worry myself about the people who don’t come along for the ride with me, but on those that do.

Abbey Asks a Very Good Question! What is POSSE?

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 10:59:35 +0100

My mutual Abbey (OpenBookShelf), asked on TikTok what “POSSE” is. POSSE stands for “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”. You start with your website. For me, I start with my blog on Micro.blog, but you can use WordPress too. You can cross post or “syndicate” yourself automatically to most sites (you can find this post on Mastodon, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, Tumblr, and Nostr) You can spin up your own social media sites like Mastodon (think Twitter) or PeerTube (think YouTube/TikTok) yourself effortlessly. My tutorial on that is here:

With Mastodon (like Twitter) or PeerTube (like YouTube/TikTok) where YOU decide your own the moderation policies. This is possible because you are running the software on your own servers. The formatting with PeerTube when it comes to TikTok style content is a bit wonky, but even that has a decentralised (meaning running your own servers) answer on the horizon. Presently, you can post short form video content like this

over on the Loops app that is very similar to TikTok.

All of it can be tied back to Mastodon (or any other ActivityPub ran social media site that is under your control. There are no content guideline violations (CGV) on Mastodon/PeerTube.

Abbey mentioned Substack. Much has been written about the controversy over there. The bottom line with that is that any platform that controls/hosts your content, also can control your moderation. With POSSE, there’s no algorithm to throttle your content, and you’re leveraging existing social media applications that lead people back to YOU.

With this strategy, can go as light or as heavy as you want it to. There’s so much depth to it. It’s flexible and fun, and it’s ultimately bringing users back to controlling their content. You’re no longer the harassed/censored product.

If you blog at a place like micro.blog you can expand to things like your own podcast hosting, sending out newsletters of your content, telling people what you’re currently reading

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
by Ha-Joon Chang
Enemy Feminisms
by Sophie Lewis
Playing the Whore
by Melissa Gira Grant
Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse, Gaslighting, Codependency and Complex PTSD (4 Books in 1)
by Linda Hill
Revolutionary Suicide
by Huey P. Newton

and more. They’re innovating with new & improved services all the time (like micro.one for example). The sky is the limit. POSSE opens up all kinds of possibilities that are centred in ethically getting people’s voices back to the masses without monetizing their work for the benefit of social media corporation’s shareholders.

2024 You Were Mostly Shit, But I Learned A Few Things

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 08:10:48 +0100

I don’t really like doing New Year’s resolutions, for a few reasons. A. I don’t see the new year as the beginning of something. Yes, it’s a chance to reflect, but there’s nothing “new” about the year apart from the year I’m printing on forms. B. I save resolutions for when I get depressed. Even then, it’s not really resolutions, it’s more like goal setting. When I get depressed, I feel like I don’t see a way out. Setting goals helps me to keep going even if I feel bad.

That being said, I don’t mind self-reflecting on the previous year. So with that…

Things I realised in 2024

I miss writing. I found this blogging platform Micro-blog thanks to Zoyander Street. WordPress is becoming a lot more feature rich, but at a price. I couldn’t justify spending £20 a month on blogging, but £7? Yes, please. I already have my own Mastodon instance and my own Peertube instance. With that in mind…
Again, thanks to Zoyander Street, I found a name for the practice I’ve been pointing myself to regarding social media, namely POSSE. You can’t just remove yourself from popular social media apps without impacting your reach. But you can focus on creating a space that’s your primary base. That’s what my website is.
2024 was a lot about waiting. Waiting or my bariatric surgery. I’ve been on a steady decline since needing to have my lap band removed in 2021 due to slippage. Since I had surgery in October 2024, I’m 68 pounds (ca. 31 kg) down, with about 119 pounds (ca. 54 kg) to go to get into a “healthy” range. But I’m getting there.
How old I am. So much of the things I grew up with are fading away. The biggest realisation is a funny one, in Phil Collins (but I’m guessing not for him). Collins was a constant in the music of my life. Collins is 73. He retired from music in 2022, and the recent documentary shows how frail he is.

It really set in stone how much time, even if I’m not struck away with some disease, that old age is close. There are no constants in life. I’m about 16 years younger than Collins. Yesterday I had a concert of his on YouTube pop up from 1997. I remember 1997.

The concert from the Live and Loose tour in Paris has him dancing and smiling and being the Phil Collins I remember. The Collins in the Drumeo documentary is the harbinger of what is to come. For everyone, but especially for me.

I have more years behind me, than I do in front of me. Nik, my son, is in his 30s now. He’s got his life, and he’s making the most of it. I’m very proud of the man he’s become. I don’t intend on sounding like this is the end for me (or hell, even for Phil). Even if the bells aren’t ringing for me yet, I can hear them in the distance. It reminds me to always keep myself in the moment. I’m grateful for all the wonderful moments I’ve had so far, and am ready for more.

This year I got married to my wife. She really doesn’t realise how much that she means to me. I think that’s probably more my fault than hers. It’s hard unlearning 50 years of taking care of others and letting someone in to see you and take care of you. She doesn’t think she does that, but she really does. I am truly grateful for her love. Finding Marcele was at the right time, it allowed me to be the best version of myself that I know how to be.

I feel like 2025 will bring plenty of changes to my life as well. Marcele will finally be home, and we can start building a life together. I’m sure I’ll continue to lose weight. If I lose weight at the same rate I’m losing now, I’ll be at goal in June. There’s a lot to look forward to. 2024 felt like I was running in place, waiting for surgery. Now it feels like I can do things that will improve my life. I’m hopeful for 2025.

Book Favourite: A Demon Haunted World

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 11:09:07 +0100

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan 📚

This is one of my favourite books. So much of what is wrong with the world is within the pages of this book. Nostradamus would have been proud of Sagan.

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

And

“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

Sadly, Sagan’s children were the ones to experience this, life didn’t need to wait for his grandchildren. The “lowest common denominator programming” is now quite literally “programming”. Algorithms on social media sites promote behaviours to motivate the most base of instincts, all to keep you on the site for as long as possible.

Science, or more precisely, teaching the scientific method, is one of few ways I can see a survival for mankind in the long term.

“One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.”

Every day, I see more evidence of this kind of backsliding. A mixture of religion and emotive nationalism fuels it. MAGA ideology is based on emotion, rather than data and logical hypothesis.

“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”

I know it’s just me getting old, but it’s difficult to believe that Sagan died 28 years ago. The Millennium has long since past. Children born at the time of his death are well into the prime of their lives. But his words just keep getting louder as the years go by. The demons, they are a stirring.

But the book isn’t just a scary vision of the here and now, it’s a call to how to fix many of the world’s ills.

“Deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”

Sagan has a critical lens, yes. But that lens is rooted in compassion and hope for his fellow man. I often listen to the audiobook when I’m feeling despair about the state of the world. There is a way forward that doesn’t end in the destruction of the world we’ve created. This book should be near the center of any path forward. It definitely is for me.

Keeping My Posse Local: Working on Social Media Workflows

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 14:45:18 +0100

I’m working on new social media priorities, using the POSSE (Post on your Own Site Syndicate Everywhere) scheme.

You can read about it [here](https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-activitypub-standard-twitter-tumblr-mastodon). The focus is bringing back social media out of the hands of big corporations. Judging from the way people jumped from Twitter to Bluesky, it will take a while for people to get away from being the product. So, this is a strategy to leverage the social media platforms that are out there, but keep the ultimate focus local.

The Rise of Far-Right Leaders in Western Democracies: British Politics is Driving me Crazy Edition

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 14:26:13 +0100

Hi, my name is Marti Abernathey and I’m an American that’s settled in the UK. I’m happy here, but lately British politics and the thinking around it from the general public is gas-lighting me. From Davie Moo’s TikTok:

@daviemoo
Replying to [@Glen](https://micro.blog/Glen) Forde #fyp #foryou
♬ Cool modern chill out, 10 minutes(1001927) – 8.864

Did anyone else notice political shifts to the right around the world? Am I the only one seeing this? Donald Trump, a far-right populist, took the White House. The AfD, a far-right populist party, is strengthening in Germany. Le Pen’s National Front, a far-right populist party, is growing in France. In Canada, Justin Trudeau just barely escaped a no-confidence vote. Yet, he is way behind in the polls to Conservative, far-right populist Pierre Poilievre. There’s already far-right populist Giorgia Meloni in power in Italy.

And yet, the UK Labour Party can’t seem to see the writing on the wall. I wrote about this after the US election in November. A month out from that post:

and Starmer’s approval rating is plummeting:

If you dig into the polling from More in Common, it’s even worse than it looks.

More Britons prefer the last government than the current one

30% of the public think it would be better now if the Conservatives had won the election, compared to 24% who

think it would have been worse and 25% who think it would be the same.

Britons are also now more likely to say they prefer the previous government (34%) than the current one (31%)

and:

Labour have not convinced the public they represent something different
● The public are more likely to say sleaze and corruption has stayed the same (36%) or got worse (33%) than got better (17%) since the change of government.
● And the government is still not seen to have a clear direction – the public are more likely to think Labour does not have a plan for what they intend
to achieve in government (44%), than that they do (32%).

If this downward slide continues, Labour’s unpopularity will increase significantly. The swing will be strong. It will influence the electorate’s choice. They will choose leaders like Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage for the prime ministership. Like the Democrats in the United States, Labour will rely solely on the ‘don’t vote for the fascists’ rhetoric. Much like in the States, that rhetoric will fail. Not because it’s untrue, but because they stood by and did nothing except point.

Neo-liberalism has been dying for a long while now, and this is a sign of that death. Labour could revitalize the UK economy. This can be achieved with a dose of adrenaline through bold progressive policies in the coming years. Alternatively, it can do nothing and watch the UK descend into fascism.

Mastodon Reports

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 11:16:45 +0100

I’m quite amused at the moderation of my Mastodon instance. I’ve been reported by exactly two different factions: Zionists, and Democrats. That just about tracks. Silencing, for having opinions contrary to the narratives of both factions, is a tactic that’s been disastrous for both Democrats and Zionists. But I guess when it’s all you have, that’s what you go with.

Who Owns Bluesky and Why it Matters

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:34:51 +0100

My initial reservations about Bluesky were that it is algorithm-based, it is a closed platform (you can’t run your own Bluesky server), and it was first created by Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey.

Reading Cory Doctorow’s Bluesky and enshittification I had many questions. Simple questions centered around Bluesky seem hard to answer. They are hidden under layers of complexity. A question like, “can I run my own Bluesky instance?” is an example.

Laurens Hof over at the Fediverse Report explained it this way:

It turns out that once you start peeling back the layers of the technological side of decentralisation, more and more questions start to arise. This is because ATProto splits up the network into separate components, and makes each component open and accessible for others to use and run. This is good for making the network more decentralised, but funnily enough it makes understanding decentralisation all the more difficult. – Bluesky, decentralisation, and the distribution of power

and

Furthermore, what the protocol affords is not equal to what the average person can actually use. ATProto allows people to take full control of their own data by either self-hosting their PDS or using a hosting provider Doing so currently requires technical knowledge: easy from the perspective of an experienced programmer, but out of reach from the majority of the population.

You can run a PDS (personal data server), but your posts and all that data still get routed through Bluesky. Decentralization is great if you can pick up your data and go elsewhere. Where are you going to take that data if you leave Bluesky? There’s confusion through obfuscation in just about every part of Bluesky. Wikipedia provides clarity on this question. It lists the number of instances of both Mastodon (over 18k) and Bluesky (“mainly Bluesky”).

The obfuscation continued when I just asked the question to myself “who owns Bluesky”? My first stop in this little adventure was the BBC. They claim that:

It is now run and predominantly owned by chief executive Jay Graber as a US public benefit corporation.

Wow, okay! What is a public benefit corporation?

It is a type of for-profit corporate entity whose goals include making a positive impact on society.

Currently, there are no legal standards that define what constitutes a benefit corporation. A benefit corporation need not be certified or audited by the third-party standard.

Who is Jay Graber?

In 2015, Graber began working as a software engineer for SkuChain in Mountain View, California. She then worked in a factory in Moses Lake, Washington, where she soldered together bitcoin mining equipment. In 2016, she began working as a junior developer for the Zcash cryptocurrency. In 2019, she founded the event planning website Happening, Inc.

Next stop, TechCrunch! They claim that:

Decentralized social app Bluesky announced on Thursday that it has raised a $15 million Series A round, following its $8 million seed raise last year.

The Series A round is led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Darkmode’s Amir Shevat, and Kubernetes co-creator Joe Beda.

Who is Blockchain Capital?

In 2013, Pierce joined brothers Bart and Bradford Stephens in founding venture capital firm Blockchain Capital (BCC)

Oddly, Brock Pierce isn’t listed as a co-founder on their Wikipedia page or on their website. Who is Brock Pierce? He’s a childhood star from the Mighty Ducks. He went on the run:

Fifteen years ago, Pierce cofounded a Southern California startup called Digital Entertainment Network. Despite raising tens of millions in venture capital, that company eventually went under. Not long before the company was slated to have its initial public offering in 1999, Pierce and two other cofounders were named in two civil lawsuits alleging sexual abuse of underage boys. Pierce was never charged criminally.

After the settlement, Collins-Rector, Shackley, and Pierce fled to Spain as a second set of victims filed another lawsuit in California against the three alleging sexual abuse. The three men never responded to the case, and a judge awarded a default judgment and $4.5 million in damages.

Later, he became a cryptocurrency tycoon with Steve Bannon. Yes, that Steve Bannon.

Before he became CEO of the Donald Trump campaign, and before he took over the alt-right media outlet Breitbart, Steve Bannon made his living selling virtual gold on the Internet.

The story focuses on the World of Warcraft marketplace called Internet Gaming Entertainment, where players could pay real money for virtual goods, like gold, in the game. The company was founded by former child star Brock Pierce, and Bannon was an investor.

I’ll continue to use sites like TikTok, Bluesky, and Threads to push my content. Still, I’m not going to build a community there. When it comes to Bluesky I have even more questions, than when I started researching this. I can’t trust that Bluesky won’t become another Twitter. There’s far too much venture capital and questionable alliances/history to feel comfortable there. “Trust us, bro” isn’t enough.

The Rise of the 4B Movement Post-USA Election and How it’s Transphobic

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 11:00:00 +0100

Since the election of Donald Trump in the USA, there’s been a resurgence of the 4B movement online. From Wikipedia:

4B (or “Four Nos”) is a gender critical, radical feminist movement. It first emerged during the South Korean gender wars during the mid-to-late 2010s on the misandric website Womad and related subcultures on Twitter.

The name refers to its defining four tenets which all start with the Korean bi 비, roughly meaning no. Its proponents refuse to date, get married, have sex, or have children with cisgender men or transgender women. Members affirm gender essentialism and oppose transgender rights movements, seeing them as furthering the oppression and domination of women and maintenance of patriarchal societies.

The movement to decenter men does not need to be transphobic. Three out of the “Four Nos” can be practiced in solidarity with cisgender women. The 4B movement focuses entirely on a rebranded version of political lesbianism. This version depends on bioessentialism/gender essentialism. It has right wing conservative ideology at the root of the movement.

The 4B movement predominantly sees transgender rights movements as incompatible with feminism. Developing out of transgender-exclusionary radical feminism (T.E.R.F.), the movement holds to gender-critical views on sex and gender, supporting gender essentialism and the exclusion of transgender women from feminist spaces. Advocates of 4B are opposed to what they call “gender ideology” (젠더론x) and promote excluding transgender women from feminist spaces, as well as romantic or sexual relationships with them (트젠 안사요). In South Korea, members of the 4B have created gatherings exclusively for what they call “biological females” and “real women”.

In the context of the current moment, it doesn’t make any sense. Women are already doing much of what the 4B movement calls for, but for different reasons.

There’s not one particular reason why fertility rates are on the decline in the US, said Sarah Hayford, director of the Institute for Population Research at The Ohio State University. A number of social and economic factors are probably coming into play, she said.

A “package of demographic changes” – people getting married later and less often, spending more years in school and taking longer to get economically established in a steady job, to name a few – align with birth rate trends, said Hayford, who was not involved in the new report.

“People are waiting to have children. And on average, when people wait longer to have children, they end up having fewer children,” she said. “I think there’s also greater social acceptance of not having children or having a smaller family. So as that has become more acceptable, people are more carefully weighing their decision to become parents.” – US fertility rate dropped to record low in 2023, CDC data shows

Lastly, trying to frame the election of Donald Trump to the President of the United States as a betrayal of men against women ignores:

that the problem isn’t with men, but with white men AND white women. The 4B movement ignores what an integral part that white supremacy had in electing Trump. If a protest movement against him is to be effective, it must delve deep. It must address the root of the problem that is white supremacy.

The Future of American Politics: Moving Beyond Party Lines

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 11:30:00 +0100

I woke up yesterday morning in my bed in Southeast England. I realized the country of my birth has elected Donald Trump again. I wrote this post in 2016 talking about the many reasons the Democrats lost to Donald Trump. Over the four years after the election, many individuals were blamed. Yet, the blame did not fall on the Democratic National Committee. Today I'm already seeing the blame laid at the feet of black/Latino men, Arab-Americans, and third-party voters. The blame is being laid anywhere but at the feet of those who run the campaigns.

The Democrats have not addressed the material conditions Americans are facing. This is the biggest issue over the past three election cycles. This is a significant concern, yet Democrats continue to play the “I'm not the other guy” card.

Ronald Reagan asked in the 1980 election, “are you better off than you were four years ago?”. Most Americans consistently have said no. Saying you're not Trump isn't going to put food on the table. It's not going to lower the price of ($3.00 a dozen) eggs, or a pound of bacon ($7.00).

A seesaw of power between parties will continue every four years for the foreseeable future. Both the Republican and Democratic parties use distraction, rather than point to policy change. How they distract is different. Republicans focus on social issues. Democrats focus on how bad the Republican candidate is. Nonetheless, the outcome is the same.

The electorate will continue to vote for the change candidate until people feel like their lives are improving.

A user on TikTok called @simkern said in this video that there are essentially four choices you have going ahead:

Continue your current level of political engagement
Fix the Democratic Party from within
Work really hard between now and the next midterm election to try to build third-party power
Try to build power outside the political system.

If I had to pick two, it would definitely be the last two. If I had to pick one, though, it would be number four. This is something that the anarchist YouTuber Anark has talked about quite extensively, especially in this video:

[youtu.be/yXOgbbHyi...](https://youtu.be/yXOgbbHyii8?si=9zEu1j3RTt_xOTY4)

He elaborates about a dual power strategy in this video. It really hits at the reality of number four in the above choices. This idea isn't something really all that new. The Black Panther Party (BPP) had the People’s Free Food Program that fed the hungry children breakfast. They also provided healthcare through the Peoples’ Free Medical Clinics. What the BPP did can be built upon to include worker run cooperatives, mutual aid organizations, reading groups, etc.

This is what I am going to focus on in the years ahead. There's a lot of work to be done that doesn't center US politics as a team sport. Building community, building dual power, is the way ahead that makes sense to me.

Debating Sex Work: Centering Real Experiences

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 10:56:10 +0100

I see countless videos on TikTok and YouTube saying things like “is sex work, work” or “is sex work empowering?” without platforming sex workers themselves. If sex workers respond in comment sections, content creators often block them. If they make response videos, they often get deplatformed.

I'm not a sex worker myself. But I am not trying to build a platform by speaking over sex workers for clicks and views. They are considered debate topics, rather than human beings with lived experience. This is commonplace on algorithmically driven video social media applications.

As a transgender woman, I understand the experience of having my life legislated and regulated. These actions are often based on fear and disgust, rather than the people at the center of the debate. Lawmakers should listen to those affected by the legislation and regulation.

If you're going to debate sex workers and their industry, include them in on the conversation.

[peertube.martiabernathey.com/w/snvNygA...](https://peertube.martiabernathey.com/w/snvNygAtir66SGw8Kj8FSV)

SWERFin' and TERFin'

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:56:02 +0100

When it comes to the sex work industry commentary on social media, it seems like the critics are big on speaking about the dangers of trafficking (many times conflating trafficking and sex work) but very quiet when it comes to the underlying causes of why the most toxic parts of it exist.

I really can't give much space in my head to those who voice their concerns about coercion in sex work but refuse to acknowledge the primary pillar of that coercion. Capitalism is at the core of the coercion they are constantly concerned about, but they never acknowledge it. Sex work is an industry for a lot of vulnerable people who wouldn't be able to survive without it. The root of that coercion that they're SO concerned about is based on actual material need. The ignorance of the root cause and focus on the people impacted feels like "I don't want to see you exist because of how I feel". It's a mixture of privilege and sanctimoniousness without genuine care or sympathy for the people doing it or providing a real alternative.

I'm not a sex worker, but I find a lot of reasons to form solidarity bonds with them. It's a common theme put upon marginalised communities, saying, "I feel icky about sex work (or trans people, or gay people, or immigrants, etc.), and they should just go away so I don't have to see them." Be clear about your intent: you don't want marginalised communities to exist, but if we do, you want us to suffer.

The Deprogram: S1 E2

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 08:09:39 +0100

I just started listening to a podcast called The Deprogram. You can find them on Twitter too. This episode of the podcast is about American Exceptionalism.

American Exceptionalism

Many Americans have never travelled outside of the United States meaningfully. They don't see how people in other places live, work, and thrive. I contend that those that don't travel outside the USA rarely travel out of their state. So they depend on their view of the outside world, the media they consume, and what they've learned from their schooling. 1. Pew research on international travel https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/12/most-americans-have-traveled-abroad-although-differences-among-demographic-groups-are-large/

American Media Plays Its Part

The news that Americans digest is mainly based on the audience's ideology; essentially, it's consumer-based. So you have the Fox News watchers that find information to the liking of the viewer's worldview.
Americans are indoctrinated from a relatively early age that America is the best country in the world. They hear this from their parents from birth (and their parents were taught it in their history classes), so it's no surprise that they don't know any better since they don't leave the country meaningfully .

When Americans Do Travel

The "gall" tourists or invaders is a colonial mindset that goes for the "helpful Karens" as well.

Americans think they're welcomed worldwide; why would they NOT believe this? The mainstream media feeds off the government like a parasite to promote its message. They employ reporters, not journalists, and they work to help the government manufacture consent.Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalised assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. - Wikipedia Hell, the press even embeds into the military and is financially supported by the military-industrial complex.

How the Rest of the World Sees the United States

Freedom of the Press, Equality Under the Law, Life-Liberty-Pursuit of Happiness, Representative Democracy, and Rugged Individualism

"Freedom of the press" is code in the States for an expectation that the news is nonbiased. The press is free to publish whatever they wish, so that freedom will result in unbiased news. Each catchphrase has a tiny pinch of truth, but not enough to make them accurate. They're simply propaganda, taught from when you're enrolled in elementary (primary) school until you leave university.

Final Thoughts on the Podcast

Overall, I enjoyed the podcast. One of the podcast's failures is to address why American exceptionalism continues to thrive and survive in today's world. They spoke of the history of the USA being a colonial project that continues to uplift and support the ruling elites while screwing the working poor. They pointed to why Americans want it to be the world's policeman and how they think of other people. I'm afraid I have to disagree. I don't believe most Americans think (or even care) about the rest of the world. The United States is a very insular, narcissistic country that huffs its farts and thinks it should earn the top prize at the county bakeoff.

Twitter is a Choice, Don't Opt Out

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 17:54:30 +0100

I see a lot of people I follow say they are going to leave Twitter, and I think that's a bad idea.

Something I realised listening to Chelsea Manning on the It Could Happen Here podcast, that the "pay to play" internet has been in the works for a long time. Chelsea isn't a conspiracy theorist; she's worked as an intelligence analyst, developer, and now as a network security expert.

TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook all make you think you have this large following when you don't, via algorithms. It is a mirage. Here's an example: @CaseyHammybone has 6.5 million followers on TT, but most of his views are 30k-150k on average.

Most posts are seen by 2% or less of his followers. And this is how social media works. There's an illusion of being seen, but it is mostly just smoke and mirrors to give the illusion of audience.

But there is an alternative that's been around for a while. Mastodon isn't an algorithm-driven social media site; it doesn't make money from access to content. Blogs and open-source media sites run on ActivityPub lists your timeline in a chronological order. And it's not as if you have to stop posting to these popular social media sites. Moaparty, for example, crossposts to and from Twitter and Instagram.

The default Mastodon desktop looks a lot like Tweetdeck:

Toot! (iOS)

Fedilab (Android)

Both are very "Twitter-like". Toots=Tweets, Boosts=Retweets, and Favourites=Likes.

Don't leave algorithm-based sites; use them to push people from those platforms to platforms that aren't algorithm-based. Push your Twitter followers to your Mastodon instance, your Medium readers to your blog, or your Youtube viewers to Peertube. Push content to Patreon and Fanbase (instead of TikTok), where you get paid to produce content. It may SEEM like you've entered a smaller universe, but that's just an illusion that algorithms produce. Leveraging the current parasitic social media platforms is key to taking back the power from those that have effectively silenced online discourse.

Reflections on Blogging: Lessons Learned Since 2008

Sat, 07 Aug 2021 15:29:54 +0100

This blog is back to where it was around 2008. I actually lost the domain because I forgot about it and someone snatched it up and basically wouldn't let get until the SEO rankings dropped.

Needless to say, a lot has changed since I owned this URL back in the day. Blogging isn't so much of a thing as it used to be. I live in the UK now, I'm no longer the editor of the Transadvocate, and the world has fallen apart more than I thought it could back in the day. After using different social media platforms, I've decided to come back to this platform (personal hosted WordPress blog).

I mostly have returned to it, because social media has turned into something I can't stand. Everything is monetized, even Twitter and Facebook. You don't have much reach these days unless you're outrage farming on social media for someone else to profit off of. That's not who I am, and not what I want to do. Mostly what I want to do here is write from the perspective of the life I've lived.

I've got a lot of cleaning up to do just to get this to look how it did previously. I might have a professional do an upgrade at some point but right now I just want to get this back to what it was. I've recently moved from Twitter to Mastodon, and I plan on centralising everything I do online here.

Who Is To Blame for Trump's Win?

Sat, 26 Aug 2017 21:08:05 +0100

I've seen many Facebook/Twitter friends post this story from Newsweek:

The implication is that if not for Sanders supporters, Hillary Clinton would be POTUS, not Trump. It wasn't Bernie Sanders supporters that sunk the Clinton campaign. It was a team effort. It also wasn't the fault of:

the Democratic National Committee (DNC), who tipped the scales during the primary for Clinton.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz's rigging of the primary for Clinton.
the lack of an anti-racist candidate with a day one plan for racial justice.
the DNC's memo that gave suggestions on how to ignore Black Lives Matter activists.
Donna Brazile's leaking of debate questions to the Clinton campaign during the primary debates.
Bernie Bros.
#neverhillary voters.
third party voters
Sanders' racist dog whistle of "going beyond identity politics" in an attempt to sway racist white voters.
DNC lawyers admitting they would be well within their rights to rig primaries and select their own candidate.
Russian "hacking."
Clinton supporters putting out the myth of violent Sanders supporters.
Republican voter suppression.
a corrupt superdelegate system.
an archaic electoral college system.
53% of white women voting Trump, or Clinton under-performing with Latinos or African Americans.

No, it's not any one of those things...IT'S ALL OF THEM.

WTF Comedy, Twitter Mobs, and the End to the Everlasting Podium

Sat, 04 Apr 2015 15:50:14 +0100

If you listened lately to people who have well established media outlets to speak from, pitchforks and torches are out of style. They would have you believe that the @ and # of Twitter are the new implements of mob justice.

Concerning the Twitter outrage over newly designated Daily Show Host, Trevor Noah, comedian Jim Norton said:

“[Noah] also neglected to take into account that Western culture as a whole has become an increasingly reactionary mob of self-centered narcissists who all have their own personal lines drawn in the sand. A comedian is fine unless he crosses their particular line, which, of course, in the mind of a self-centered narcissist, is the only line that matters."

and

"I read the tweets he was 'under fire' for, and some were funny, some weren’t. The thread that connected them all for me is the embarrassment I feel for anyone claiming to be offended by them. They weren’t vicious or written to be harmful. And everyone reading them knows that. But knowing his tweets weren’t intended to be harmful isn’t important when people who list ‘victim’ as their occupation smell blood in the water. Because their outrage is a lie and their motives are transparent. They are simply using his tweets to get their dopamine drip."

Comedians make a living off of outrage, mockery, and controversy. Oddly, It's considered an outrage for comedians to be held to to account for their jokes or their words.

In an interview on WTF podcast Marc Maron said:

"That context of really following through with an earnest critique, or well founded intellectual critique, and following through with a reasonable discussion around the possibilities of the implications of what you're saying is just fucking gone. So if you're going to, you know, present it to the animals on Twitter, if you're going to say "here's some meat", and expect anything different than a frenzy. And it's a shame because the sort of time it takes to process and have a reasonable conversation about aesthetics or socio-political meaning, it's very limited. It's insulated. It's not going to happen on Twitter, really. Twitter is all frenetic. And in those moments you don't realize these are just idiots sitting at home. This is not some sort of structured debate on anything. And you're dealing with a media platform that feeds on controversy."

It's not the comedians who say fat shaming, sexist, homophobic or transphobic jokes that are the problem. The problem, in their mind, is the common, stupid "animals" of Twitter who criticize. Never mind that it's "just a joke" has been the justification bullies have used for centuries.

Additionally there’s an underlying suggestion that there are no boundaries to comedy. That just isn’t true. In the 1970’s it was acceptable to make ethnic or racial jokes:

[embed]www.youtube.com/watch

Today it’s unheard of for someone to make jokes about someone outside of their own race or ethnic heritage. Ask Michael Richards what doing that in today’s comedic landscape will do to your standup career. Comedic boundaries change over time. The world isn’t humourless because of a lack of Polack jokes.

Zoe Tur, who’s recently taken the brunt of her own Twitter controversy, pointed Jamie Fox (via Twitter) to Damon Linker’s post, “The shameful shaming of Twitter’s digital mobs” at The Week:

Twitter is an ideal medium for mobs because it is so democratic. Countless thousands mulling about an agora of infinite expanse, each person given the same 140 characters with which to pronounce, denounce, show off, and shine in a glaring public spotlight. To begin with there are only one's own followers. But there's always the chance that a well-timed, sufficiently clever and cutting tweet will get retweeted by a follower with more and better-known followers, launching the comment into a wider circle of readers who might retweet it again, and again, and again.
According to Andy Warhol, everyone will get to enjoy 15 minutes of fame. On Twitter, everyone gets 15 seconds to ride a viral wave. It’s that promise of attention and approval that provokes so many to pounce the moment they see an easy target for humor, mockery, and abuse. It’s standard-issue one-upsmanship raised to the millionth power. If you run in left-wing circles, you’ll jump on something that offends the left. The same holds for the right, and for dozens of other political-ideological-cultural factions. It’s the world’s largest high school cafeteria, with every member of every clique vying to become the most popular kid in the group.

after Foxx made transphobic jokes at the expense of Bruce Jenner. Of course when Tur was criticised for her critical social commentary, Tur said of those who dared question her as:

“condemning any diversity of thought” and characterized their criticism as a “form of violence toward women.”

Tur, Maron, and Norton share one in common. They all have a well established media platforms to broadcast from. The democracy of Twitter is a threat to that podium. The only valid commentary seems to be one that has a lens that's pointed out away from themselves.

Their outrage at the “outrage machine” would be comical if they weren’t trying to stifle criticism and debate. It shows an arrogance and lack of respect for their audience. After all, we’re “just idiots sitting at home.”

As ugly as Twitter can be at times, it’s still one of the best places for debate and critical analysis. Twitter’s 140 character limitation is only limiting discussion if your reading comprehension only goes one tweet deep.

If it’s true that Twitter can’t take a joke, social commentators like Tur, Maron, and Norton can’t take criticism pointed at them. Regardless of the cries from those of who swim in oceans of privilege and media access, Twitter and other social media commenters will continue to hold social commentators accountable for their commentary. We aren’t going to be silent and we aren’t going away.

Public Trials, Free Speech, and the Right to Name Your Rapist

Fri, 06 Feb 2015 06:48:56 +0100

Recently I was involved in a discussion with Twitter user @schnookiekins concerning people who publicly name people they say raped them. He supports Michael Nugent’s statement that:

“allegations of rape should be reported to the police, not to bloggers.”

as if it's an either/or situation. I don't know of a requirement that compels victims of rape, by the state, to report their perpetrators to the police. Many people have written about why victims don't report rape, so I'll leave that there (*smirk* though I do wonder why men don't report domestic violence? *smirk*).

Shookienis writes:

@Martiabernathey @MAMelby @micknugent Even if I accept 2%, that still does not OK trial by internet. Ever.
— VitisCivilization (@schnookiekins) February 5, 2015

(The %2 @schnookiekins is speaking of is the 2% to 8% rate of rape claims being false claims)

This is a very well worn argument that I’ve used in the past myself. It’s something I uttered when Sophia Banks took to Twitter to accuse Laurelai Bailey of rape. At the time I thought it was wrong for someone to accuse another person online, but my thoughts have evolved.

In reality, there’s no such thing as a “trial in the media” or a “trial on Twitter”. That line of reasoning is wrapped up in a logical fallacy (Black/White fallacy).

[embed]www.youtube.com/watch

A trial is a legal proceeding that judges a person’s guilt or innocence. A public accusation on Twitter isn’t a legal proceeding, it’s a public statement. Being that it’s not a legal statement (but can be used later in legal proceedings), unless it’s illegal speech (libelous speech), the accusation can be (both ethically and legally) made. If it is illegal speech (defamation cases are civil, not criminal law), the accused does have legal recourse. But the burden of proof for a civil case is MUCH LOWER than a criminal case.

If it isn’t illegal speech, the victim has a free speech right to publicly accuse their accuser in any public forum they which they deem appropriate.

As a bystander, I don’t have to have an opinion concerning the the validity of the claim to support it being made. I can also support the accused in following through on a libel claim.

Am I missing something?

Am I wrong here?

Suicide, Leelah Alcorn, and Living Openly Trans*

Fri, 02 Jan 2015 12:37:57 +0100

I’ve kept quiet much for the last few months because I’ve been mourning a loss, the equal I can only compare losing my father at age 11. I’m not going to share the particulars of this loss because it doesn’t really matter in the context of this post, and secondly because it’s extremely personal. But emotionally I’ve been hampered a bit in just getting by day to day. I’m just trying to work out a plan for my future and try to do all the things people do when they’re mourning a huge loss. Trying to move on when you don’t really want to.

The holidays haven’t made it any easier. My circle of friends in Madison, Wisconsin is small. This is the first Christmas without my partner. I’ve just been putting my head down, going to work, and trying to make it through.

And then I read the suicide note of a trans teen, Leelah Acorn. Her parents tried Jesusing the the trans out of her to the point she killed herself. Some cis-gender (not trans*) people (especially those people that can’t bring themselves to call trans women, women but feel the need to call them “penised individuals") have suggested that it’s irresponsible to post Leelah’s suicide note.

This is thorny territory for me personally. When I read it, it did trigger me. I’ve been pretty much staying away from social media the last few days because of her suicide. In her suicide note she said:

"I have decided I’ve had enough. I’m never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I’m never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I’m never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I’m never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I’m never going to find a man who loves me. I’m never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There’s no winning. There’s no way out. I’m sad enough already, I don’t need my life to get any worse. People say “it gets better” but that isn’t true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse."

That part of her note pierced through me like a knife. I understand her pain, because I feel like I am the embodiment of the comments of her future. I'm a visibly trans woman that struggles every day. As I said to a friend after this story broke:

"I'm not clinically depressed or having suicidal ideation. I'm currently mourning a loss and been having dysphoria related issues lately. Basically I'm the person she said she didn't want to live to be. That was a huge punch to the gut."

and

"I'm not saying it for hugs or attention (but thanks for the love), but that it's just hard. Especially what she said about it not getting better. If you don't have cis-privilege, life is fucking hard being openly trans."

But I don't think it's irresponsible to publish her note. I think it's wise and compassionate to warn people with "trigger warnings". But for someone that routinely fights for the right to exclude trans women from "female only" spaces without one shred of evidence that trans women are a threat (regardless of their genital status), I find Ditum's words to be both disingenuous and oppressive.

Irresponsible? That would be the Philadelphia Gay News publishing a story about an underage child’s genitals. Irresponsible would be the Statesman asking a TERF who openly mocks trans women to write a piece on a trans child’s suicide.

The answer to transphobia that leads to suicide isn’t more transphobia. The answer to transphobia isn’t silence. Not talking about it isn’t going to make it go away. Trans reparative therapy isn’t going to suddenly go away on its own. It needs to be talked about and people need to know how awful and destructive it is.

She says:

“Trans lives matter. We know that transgender people are at particular risk of suicidal thoughts. So why are people endorsing and sharing material that, if it has any effect at all, is likely to be the catalyst for a trans youth to attempt suicide?”

Ditum’s pity feels a lot like the pity trans people get from Focus on the Family. She knows that trans people are at particularly at risk for suicidal thoughts, but never seems to ask why. I’m suffering every day as a visibly trans person, and it’s not because I’m mentally ill or because I’m diagnosed with any sort of depression. It’s because being visibly trans in this world IS A HARD LIFE. It’s because there are people that other us, disrespect us, and objectify us on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis.

The answer isn’t silence, it’s education. The answer isn’t fear mongering, mis-gendering, or “gender nerd snark”, it’s treating trans people with respect and human dignity. It boils down to just letting trans people live their lives authentically without being attacked for who they are. Ditum and folks like her aren’t part of the answer, they’re part of the problem.

Why I'm Angry at Conservative, Corporate Media

Thu, 30 Oct 2014 17:16:37 +0100

In a Twitter discussion with LBC radio presenter, Julia Hartley-Brewer asked me:

@Martiabernathey that's a LOT of money and a BIG %. What are you so angry about? — Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) October 29, 2014

I AM angry. I'm angry because corporate conservative media outlets are engaging in a propaganda war against the poor. She and her station posted this:

A single mum of 5 says she shouldn't be forced by benefits cap to leave Westminster to move to Milton Keynes. Agree? Call 0345 6060 973 @LBC — Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) October 29, 2014

and

A single mum of 5 was made homeless after resisting her Council’s attempt to move the family 50 miles away. Should they be allowed to stay? — LBC (@LBC) October 29, 2014

I posted a response, saying that I thought this was just an attack on the poor. She responded by saying:

@Martiabernathey so you think taxpayers should foot the bill for her £52,000 annual rent in Westminster?!!! — Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) October 29, 2014

Since her housing benefit is .0003% of the benefit budget, the problem isn't one of impact. In America we call this dog-whistle politics.

"Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup."

"You should be outraged that lazy people are getting over on hard working people!" That's the dog-whistle that British conservative media are sounding. If you actually read the story, the woman has lived in the area for 5 years and the reason rent is so high is because the housing market changed around her, not some special deal she has received. This does anger me, because this kind of political propaganda has an agenda, and that agenda is to incite class division. It's done to mask real issues that matter, instead blaming the poor, immigrants, and the disabled. The most vulnerable people are blamed for the ills of Britian, but as I said in my previous post:

You can logically argue what banking practices caused the financial crisis in 2008 that still haunts the global economy, but you can’t say it wasn’t the fault of bankers.

The underlying push by conservative corporate media is that the economic collapse that happened in 2008 was due to immigrants, or the strain of the housing or employment benefit budget. I asked Hartley-Brewer what the percentage of the benefit budget housing is and she said:

@Martiabernathey as a % of working age benefits, housing benefit is actually huge. Around £20billion a year. — Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) October 29, 2014

But data from The Guardian will help put that amount into perspective: Around 20 billion? According to the Guardian data, it's more like £16 billion, but why quibble (if I was going to quibble, she still doesn't give a percentage)? By my crude math, that's about 12% of the total benefit budget. Pensions are about 44% (£74 billion) and paying interest on the debt is around £48 billion. If Julia is right, and the housing benefit is "huge", then you'd have call pensioner's pull on the economy as "gigantic" or "massive". With that being true, why doesn't Hartley-Brewer/LBC dedicate more time to pensions and debt reduction? I'm guessing they push immigration reform and benefit cuts for the same reason that UKIP pushes a false narrative about immigration. It might not be true, but it sure pushes buttons of angry, frustrated people. That in turn, brings listeners/voters. Talking about pensions and the strain they put on the budget would especially alienate (mostly older) conservative listeners/voters. Why do I care? Because the people who are the most vulnerable are used as scapegoats, while the rich and blameless continue to receive corporate "benefits"/"welfare".

Oligarchy lives.

That is why, Julia, I’m so pissed off.

update: (10/30 1800 GMT)

Because oligarchy media scapegoating has consequences:

Above is what British people think, verses what the reality actually is. Who is at fault? I’m looking at you, corporate, conservative media….

update November 09th, 2014:

Cost of benefit as a percentage of GDP:

Scroungers, Benefit Cuts, and the Tory Media

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 01:56:00 +0100

This morning I was listening to LBC radio and the radio presenter, John Stapleton (who was sitting in for James O’Brien), took a call from someone that said the Tories don’t care about benefit cuts and people in poverty: [soundcloud url=“https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/174327300” params=“auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=“100%” height=“450” iframe=“true” /] Stapleton called the caller “harsh,” then parroted the government line. I had a brief conversation with him on Twitter, of which there was little response. I’ve noticed that when callers hit pay dirt on talk radio, the presenters don’t like to talk about it.

You can logically argue what banking practices caused the financial crisis in 2008 that still haunts the global economy, but you can’t say it wasn’t the fault of bankers.

When I read Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History of the United States of America”, I often wondered how people could be duped into supporting policies that actually suppressed them. I now understand how that can happen, because I’m seeing it happen globally today. In the United Kindgdom some will blame the floundering British economy on immigrants, some will blame the fiscal malaise on the NHS budget, but still others will blame the UK benefits system. The media willingly promotes this myth by producing shows like Benefits Street, that seek to build a narrative. But that narrative is simply fiction when applied to the majority of people claiming benefit. If you look at the benefits pie as a whole, a solid majority of it goes to pensioners. Do you see UKIP/Tories going after pensions/pensioners? If they really were concerned about the economy, they’d focus on the majority of the burden. But that wouldn’t win them any elections. Pinning immigrants against the poor, has always been a tool of the wealthy ruling class to keep the lower classes busy. This war is no different.

It’s hard to form policy around the actual data that shows the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer, because that won’t fire many people up. It’s all rather glum. It’s a much easier task to blame those who can least defend themselves. The poor, disabled, and the disenfranchised don’t have friends in places of power to advocate on their behalf, but the rich do.

Apparently they also have their mouthpieces in the media, as well.

Update: Another example of this use of poor to forward an agenda:

Renee Zellweger, Abortion, and Trans Bodies

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 11:49:28 +0100

Wading through all the comments on Facebook about Renee Zellweger’s “new look” have made me think a lot about a common thread between abortion rights, trans bodies, and body modification through surgery. The common issue is between them all is bodily autonomy, the right to make choices about what happens to you your own body.

"But she looked good/better/different before the surgery!"
“She looks ok, but I think she was more attractive as a guy!"

According to who? I’m kind of dumbfounded when someone agrees a woman should have the right to choose what do concerning an unplanned pregnancy, but will comment on a person’s choice for elective body modifications. Why is that ok? It seems to me that it’s Feminism 101 to say that women should have the right of bodily autonomy.

I find celebrity culture to be a tad bit creepy. People will comment freely about a woman’s body as if it’s something of theirs to critique? It’s objectification at its highest level. They probably wouldn’t appreciate the same level of critique of their mother, sister, or partner’s bodies, but they seem to feel they have a right to comment on the body of someone they’ve never met and don’t know? How far is this from the religious fundamentalist (or TERF) who will say:

"The writers of Scripture viewed any attempts at overriding one's birth-sex as abhorrent, a sacrilege against the structures of maleness or femaleness created by God, and ultimately a rebellion against the Creator who made our bodies,"

The underlying theme is the same, regardless of who it's coming from. It's an assertion of ownership, outside of one's own body. It's an assertion that bodily autonomy is harmful, and that any change to the "natural body" is mutilation:

"Now one of the things I find puzzling about it is that, when I look at the House of Lords debate on this legislation, those I agree with most are the radical right. Particularly the person I find that I agree with most, in here, and I’m not sure he will be pleased to find this, is Norman Tebbitt… Tebbitt also says that the savage mutilation of transgenderism, we would say if it was taking place in other cultures apart from the culture of Britain, was a harmful cultural practice, and how come we’re not recognising that in the British Isles. So he makes all of these arguments from the radical right, which is quite embarrassing to me, but I have to say, so called progressive and left people are not recognising the human rights violations of transgenderism or how crazy the legislation is. – Sheila Jeffreys

My belief (regardless of if we're talking about trans people, sex workers, Renee Zellweger, or someone who is pregnant) that it is "my body, my choice." The right to make choices about your body is a basic, fundamental human right.

My Klansman Poppy Taught Me How To Love Republicans

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:41:24 +0100

Growing up in a super dysfunctional household, I had very little in the way of nurturing. Between working full time and regularly engaging in marital battles, my mom had little quality time with us kids. I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother and grandfather (who we affectionately called "Granny" and "Poppy"). Pop was a very mean man. I can remember times he would come home for supper, and if Granny didn't have the food on the table, he'd call her every expletive in the book (with "bitch" in 1st place). Granny often took to vent with me, telling me stories of how he'd been mean to her (especially the story of her catching him cheating).

He was also one of the most racist men I've ever known. I can remember him yelling at the TV and turning it off when Emmanuel Lewis came on television, grumbling about how "the n****rs were taking over the world." From what my mom has told me, he also was probably in the Klu Klux Klan. There were so many dark sides to my Poppy; it would be easy to hate him.

But I don't. While I saw all the ugliness, I saw a side of him that made me love him. More than any person in my young life, he nurtured me. He would often spend time with me one on one, offering me a father figure rarely present at home. I can remember many trips he and I took to White Castle just to hang out and talk. When I would complain about how my parents treated me (a difference in how my parents treated me and my brother, Granny and Poppy both acknowledged), Poppy would tell me not to mind that. He would enthusiastically comfort me, saying, "you are smart, and you are going to do amazing things with your life". That may not sound very profound, but those words coming from Poppy were. Those words have echoed in the back of my mind for the past 35 or so years, giving me strength.

Pop taught me that people aren't one dimensional. While he was incredibly hateful to Granny, he was a loving and nurturing man to me. The duality of his life has made me look at people differently. Being a liberal Democrat on a Facebook account full of Indiana Republicans (mostly my Alumni from Southport High School), this skill has come in handy. I've been able to become good friends with people that are my ideological opposite. Poppy taught me to see the humanity in all people, and life taught me what Bernard Meltzer knew:

“If you have learned how to disagree without being disagreeable, then you have discovered the secret of getting along -- whether it be business, family relations, or life itself.”

*edit*

I wrote this post in 2010. Eleven years has given me a lot of time to reflect on this. It's still true, mostly. But most of those people from high school I'm no longer friends with.

I learned most of this navigating (and finally ending) my relationship with my mother. I don't have to agree with someone 100% to understand them, but I have some non-negotiable boundaries. I won't allow space in my life for people who:

don't supporI basic human rights
try to continue to gaslight me or want to debate my existence as a trans person:

won't own up to their mistakes/dishonesty

I understand the bigotry and narcissism that might drive someone to make this kind of statement on social media, but I don't have to accept that kind of toxicity in my life. That will get you a block on social media and in life.

I can love the part of the person that wasn't toxic, that nurtured me and allowed me to grow into the person I am, without having to accept that person into my life now.

Understanding the nature of human beings is pretty key in understanding and dealing with people in your life. People aren't all bad or all good. I can understand what drove Poppy to be the person he was without agreeing with or accepting his toxicity.

When Poppy was six years old, his mother, Bessie, died of tuberculosis. A year later, his father married Pearl. His stepmother (Pearl) told him never to mention his mother (Bessie) ever again, that "she was his mother now". My step-dad (Russell) died when I was 11 (I thought he was my biological father until I found my bio dad a few years ago). And that messed me up for decades. That kind of trauma impacts your development as a person. Trauma is passed down like a virus, and it mutates. Poppy passed down his trauma to his kids through who he was. They impacted their kids too. It's not shocking that between his three kids, there are 8 marriages and a lot of mental illness.

_{I considered changing the title of this post to "My Klansman Poppy Taught Me How To Love Understand Republicans", but you can't strikethrough a title. Also, I love the part of the man that nurtured me while despising the toxicity that dominated his life.}

_{-Marti Abernathey August 2021}

MYSPACE: The New AOL

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:19:40 +0100

Sheesh. Let’s go to the Ole Myspace mailbag, shall we? “hey babe,

my names john, i am a 22 yr old from chicago. I am very outgoing and willing to try anything once. I am a chef and curently going to culinary school. I have pics, but for now i am 5'7'' tan athletic body brn eyes n hair 150 pnds, and italian. I just wanted to tell you that you are georgeous and i’d love to talk to u. Also i am very very bi curious. hehe. Could i have your yahoo id so we could chat more, or aol? Thanks hope to hear from you soon! - John”

“YEA YEA YEA….

I KNOW I DON’T KNOW YOU AND YOU DON’T KNOW ME. SO WE GOT THAT SETTLED. I WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO YOURS AND YOU ADDED TO MINE…. ADDING AS A FRIEND, I’AM NOT GOOD AT THIS….

SO HOW DOES THAT SOUND! I KNOW I KNOW I’AM SORRY I COULD’NT SELL YOU INSURANCE WITH THAT STUFF. I KNOW! IT’S THE WAY YOU PUT THINGS MAINLY IN THE PART ABOUT YOUR SELF

P.S MY NAME IS JEFF

HOLLA BACK

I REALLY WANT CHAT WITH YOU I KNOW IT’S GONNA BE SILLY . I FILL A BATTLE COMING ON————– BETWEEN WORDS JUST FOR FUN “

“hi who are you doing tonight wanna chat hit me back -Gregg” “want 9 inches? - K-Bo” Sheesh. No wonder good men are hard to find.

But I saved the best for last….

“hey i can accept you being lesbian as long as your with me. sincerly ronnie i live in indy east side 632-2XXX” - Ronnie

The Rumors Are Not True... Elvis and I LIVE!

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 06:36:07 +0100

Hey there! Long time no see! :) You may have wondered why I’ve become silent for so long… or maybe you don’t give a shit ;) … but you’re gonna hear about my life anyways!

First of all, there’s Nik. Nik moving in with me (he’s lived with me since August) has drastically changed my amount of free time to blog. Not that I’m complaining, as I’m very proud of him. He turns 16 on June 10th. Wait, that can’t be…29 - 16=….NEVERMIND.

ahem

He’s adjusted pretty well, all things considered. We’ve got one year of school down, three to go!!! He’s about the most out teenager I’ve ever known, and he does it with (seemingly) little shame or guilt. He and his boyfriend went to the Homecoming dance, he’s fairly popular in school, and he’s not had any issues with being intimidated at school (that I’m aware of). He’s talking about going to school to become a Radiologic Technologist, like I am (and my mom before me). It pleases me to see this. He’s very aware of the level of security that his grandma and I have had because of our career choice and I think that has influenced his decision. So ya, he seems to be happy and heading in the right direction.

The second reason is that I’m developing my podcast, “The Fat Tranny Circus.” Ya, ya, I know that you guys voted overwhelming for “Every Nook and Tranny,” (I’ve decided to use that as the title of my autobiography) but after some consulting with fellow podcasters/broadcasters, I settled on the FTC. It encapsulates everything I want in a name. It’s funny, it’s catchy, and It’ll stop people in their tracks and say “what the hell is that?”

I’m going to start the FTC design this weekend. The awesomeness that is Shae, has already designed my logo. She did an AWESOME job!

Now I just need to build a template to use in wordpress using this great logo. I’ve already recruited two news correspondents for the show, Jerri Stance and Roadkill Rhonda. Their contributions to the show will surely make for some interesting segments. I have a vague concept for the show, which I’m going to work on more this weekend. In conjunction with The FTC, I’ve decided to rebuild TransSister Radio. I’m not at liberty to discuss the particulars, but I’m working on the site now. I’m going to try and finish the structure of the site this weekend. I’m setting a goal for July 1st as a launch date for The FTC and August 1st for TransSister Radio.

Another cause of bloglessness is my health. In August I had a sleep study that confirmed I have sleep apnea. My doctor switched my narcolepsy medicine so that my sleep patterns would even out and that has helped regulate my sleep. I’m being fitted for CPAP as we speak and I’m due for another sleep study soon.

Between last August and now, I’ve gained close to 60 pounds. Last May I stopped doing Atkins and my weight slowly crept up until August. After Nik and I moved in October my eating and exercise habits changed drastically. I eat out more often, I walk less, and I ride my bike less. This weight gain and lack of physical activity has taken its toll on my health. My cholesterol is sky high and I get short of breath easily. The only bright side is that my breasts are bigger ;). I also found out I’m anemic, and I have a heart condition. Yes, a heart condition. According to my echocardiagram I have an enlarged left atrium (the left upper chamber of the heart) and the cardiologist suggested I be tested next year for any change in size. I’m not sure how this will effect my life, or the seriousness of it. I plan on talking with my primary care physician more about it next week. As far as my weight goes, I’ve been put on a year long medically supervised weight loss program.

The doctor that is overseeing my plan is Dr. Eve Olson of the St Francis Medical and Surgical Weight Loss Center. I’ve worked with Dr. Olson in the past (as a male) but she hadn’t seen me since my transition. On my first visit she said, “I know you but I’m not sure from where.” I said, “well, I used to be thinner and I used to live as a man.” I know she was a bit stunned, but she took it all in stride. She even joked with me about my job covering my SRS surgery. She set me set up with weekly visits with a dietitian and an exercise planner. For the first time in my life I feel like I’m not dieting. I feel like I’m eating healthy, nutritious meals that will help me lessen my health problems.

Another side effect of the weight gain has been that I’ve become somewhat of a hermit. I put off going out with friends and dread public outings. I am embarrassed at how much weight I’ve gained. Oddly enough, it hasn’t really affected my passing ability. I very rarely have anyone referring to me with male pronouns. Most of the people that do use male pronouns are people that knew me before transition. I would say at least 98 percent of those that don’t know my history, use female gender pronouns. Most of my feelings have to do with the shame of being this fat, not gender issues or fears.

Lastly, I’ve been sucked into the world of Second Life. If you want to see me in SL, email me and I’ll send you SL name. Second Life is a way for me to explore aspects of my personality that I couldn’t explore “in real life” (IRL). I’ve met many new people from around the world and friended a few more. It’s a little bit chat room, a bit theatre, and a bit video game. I’m definitely hooked.

All in all, there have been many changes in my life that have caused me to not be able to blog. Once I have my diet and exercise regimen settled, I am going to sit down and figure out how I can post regularly to all three of my blogs. I miss writing so much. I hope that you see many more thoughts, opinions, and ideas from me for a long time to come…

at least that’s the plan.

I love ya, Marti Abernathey