Support my work because it will undo the transgender coup

Steven Crowder, Cynthia Yockey and Chris Loesch at CPAC 2012 after Steven and Chris performed their new rap song, "Mr. America!!" HuffPo published a photo of me dancing to the music at the back of the room.
Steven Crowder, Cynthia Yockey and Chris Loesch at CPAC 2012 after Steven and Chris performed their new rap song, “Mr. America!!” The Huffington Post tried to smear them as racist using a photo of me dancing while they sang. It blew up in their face when Warner Todd Huston pointed out that they were the ones who were prejudiced because they were mocking a conservative lesbian! Check out my Dec. 11, 2017, interview with Steven for “Louder with Crowder” on CRTV about a Maryland lawsuit that demonstrates how the transgender coup has gotten control of public schools. But first, please donate by clicking my PayPal.Me link because that’s the most powerful way you can fight the transgender coup right now!

UPDATE, January 1, 2018: An expected check for work is still delayed. I need to raise $600 and pay all three months of my overdue internet bill on Jan. 2 or my internet will be turned off on Jan. 3. If you want to fight transgender activists, donate to me as generously as you can now because I’m putting secular arguments against the transgender agenda into the hands of conservatives so truth can win: just click here for my PayPal.Me link.

Transgender activists have conducted a successful coup of the public schools to recruit your children to become transgender. It affects everyone because transgender activists want your children to be taught in their biology class that the binary sexes do not exist–they claim sex is a fluid social construct, not an immutable reality.

In 2018, transgender activists’ next target is state legislatures and the Human Rights Campaign is pouring $26 million into federal, state, and local candidates who support imposing the reality-destroying transgender activist agenda. They will be canvassing door-to-door with lies that will go unopposed unless my readers generously see me through.

My upcoming book will expose the truth about the transgender activist movement, show you how it harms everyone, including transgender people, and tell you what you can do to undo the transgender coup. Its title is War in the Women’s Room: How to Get Men in Dresses Out of Women’s Spaces, Save Your Children from Confusion About Their Sex, and Undo the Transgender Coup, and it will be published by DANGEROUS Books. I’ll also be writing for the Bombthrowers blog of the Capital Research Center, a conservative investigative think tank, and Milo’s new news site, DANGEROUS.

But right now I’m stuck and have to ask for your help. Please donate as generously as you can by clicking here for my PayPal Me link.

I will send every donor a report listing what they can do to undo the transgender coup. UPDATE: I’ve received some donations but can’t send the donors their report because PayPal doesn’t include their e-mail address. To ensure I can e-mail you a thank you note with the report attached as a PDF, please put your e-mail address in the comment box in the donation window that pops up when you click the PayPal.Me link.

Thank you!

P.S.

I’m doing my work fighting the transgender coup by writing my book and for Bombthrowers, and soon, DANGEROUS. Right now this blog is where I can send readers who want to help me by donating. That’s why this post is a few weeks old–I’m doing my primary work on my book and elsewhere for larger audiences.

In February 2018, Dangerous Books will publish my book, War in the Women’s Room: How to Get Men in Dresses Out of Women’s Spaces, Save Your Children from Confusion Ab0ut Their Sex, and Undo the Transgender Coup.

Are you saying to yourself right now, “What transgender coup?”

Powered by a coalition of wealthy leftist non-profits, transgender activists have seized control of social media, magazines, news media, teachers’ unions, public schools, and universities, mostly by establishing policies that make it hate speech and bullying to say things like “women don’t have penises,” “men don’t have babies,” and “nothing changes your sex.”

In New York City, if you call a transgender person by his or her correct, biological pronoun, your landlord, co-op, or condo association will throw you out of your home in order to avoid being fined up to $250,000 by the New York Human Rights Commission. Your employer can fire you for the same reason. Why did transgender activists target New York City to compel speech? When you control speech in New York City, you control it for the world, since it is a center for the publishing and entertainment industries, major stock exchanges, investment and finance companies, and the location of the headquarters of many corporations and the United Nations.

In California, if you are a nursing home or intermediate care provider, you can be fined $1,000 and thrown in jail for a year for calling a patient by his or her correct pronouns. If a man in a dress wants to share a room with a woman, and use the women’s restrooms, it’s the women who have to pound sand.

In the school systems throughout the U.S. where transgenders activists have gotten their anti-woman, anti-gay, child-converting policies adopted, girls are not allowed to object to showering with naked boys with erections, or to complain about being forced to compete with boys in girls’ sports, or to use the correct male pronouns for a boy in a dress, because those policies take away her rights and make it hate speech if she objects to the theft. Those boys, her teachers, and school administrators can ruin her life by recording accusations of transphobia in her permanent record and may even send her to jail for harassment.

Please donate as generously as you can to support my work. As a conservative lesbian, I’m in a unique position to lead the battle against the destructive, totalitarian transgender activist agenda because the left can’t attack me with bogus claims of prejudice without committing real acts of prejudice themselves. Also, in my book I have created a win-win agenda that will protect women and children without harming the rights of transgender people. But right now the payment for work I’ve done that would cover my bills this month is indefinitely delayed. I don’t know how I’m going to keep the lights and heat on, never mind the Internet connection I need to do my work and finish my book.

Please click the PayPal button below and donate as generously as you can because I will send every donor a personal thank you email and attach a PDF report on the easy ways you can help undo the transgender coup. Thank you!




Transgender activists fight counting real women in the U.K.’s 2021 census data

Four questions the United Kingdom Equalities and Human Rights Commission proposes to have the supposed social construct of gender replace biological sex as one of the traits tracked in the United Kingdon's 2021 census questionnaire.
“EHRC” stands for the U.K. Equalities and Human Rights Commission. These are the questions they propose to replace recording the biological sex of every person counted in the U.K.’s 2021 census with the supposed social construct of gender, otherwise known as a person’s taste in clothes and activities as seen through the filter of sexual stereotypes.

My new book, War in the Women’s Room: How to Get Men in Dresses Out of Women’s Spaces and Save Your Children from Confusion about Their Sex, will be published in a few months by Milo Yiannopoulos’s new company, Dangerous Books. I will be linking news items here to educate my readers about the dangers of the transgender activist agenda. My book will go into these dangers in more depth and explain why transpeople don’t have to destroy reality, women, children, lesbians, and gays to accomplish their stated goals. I’ll also examine the gap between the stated goals of transgender activists and the ones they actually pursue.

We are in a post-transgender age now: if people believe they can solve their problems with drugs and surgery, they will find a way to get drugs and surgery. They have the right to do that for themselves. But society must draw the line when they demand the right to force the world to exalt their “social construct” over the reality of the biological sexes because it is impossible to change your sex. Is there a win-win way forward that provides a path for transgender people to exist without destroying the existence and rights of others? Yes, and I explain it in my book.

However, transgender activists have just scored a major victory in the U.K. in obliterating the reality of the biological sexes, according to The Sunday Times (paywall):

The UK is to become one of the first countries in the world not to require its citizens to let officialdom know what sex they are.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is proposing to make the sex question in the next census voluntary, after protests that it discriminates against transgender and other non-binary people.

The protests that this erases women are being ignored. It’s not great for men, either, but women are hit harder because the majority of the transgender activism is about getting  transgender-identified men (TIM) who present themselves as women into women’s spaces, even when they are intact and straight. They do everything in their power to destroy the lives of women who object, or who even just want to have a discussion. Their vicious bullying, vandalism, and no-platforming mean that transgender activists have so silenced anyone who questions their agenda that the majority of the public doesn’t know there ARE objections.

I was pulled into this fight by an experience in the late 1980s when a TIM crashed a group I held in my home to create a space for feminine lesbians. Despite wearing a dress and make-up, he could not have been more masculine in dominating everyone in the group and demanding to be the center of female attention and approval. Previously, I had required that women wear a skirt or dress to be admitted to my meetings. I did that to keep out dykes, very masculine lesbians who created the need for a space for feminine lesbians by running them out of every other lesbian space in the Washington, D.C., area, where I lived at the time with my late life partner. I added a new rule: “Must have been born female.”

Since then, the lesbian community has been wiped out by transgender natal intact male demands to be included and centered in lesbian groups, and even for lesbians to validate their purported womanhood by having penis-in-vagina sex with them.

Lesbians know better than anyone why men want into the women’s room. They do not just have to pee.

If you don’t want men in women’s restrooms, please donate or subscribe so I can do this work full-time. Projects I had lined up to pay my bills for the next few months have been unexpectedly and indefinitely delayed, but my book deadline is fixed. The result is that I have to implement my plan now of building a team of donors and supporters who are passionate about keeping natal men out of women’s spaces and protecting children from transgender propaganda intended to confuse them about their sex.

I’m not just writing a book. I am founding a movement. Please join and donate as generously as you can because I will lead a movement that will keep women and children safe without hurting transgender people. I will send all donors and subscribers a personal thank you note. I will keep subscribers informed on my progress, plans, and transgender issues.


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Bake the cake, design the dress

President-elect Donald Trump will begin his presidency as a uniter, having managed to bring conservatives and progressives together on the subject of discrimination in public accommodations. These are businesses and facilities open to the public, such as bakeries, florist shops, professional photographers, and fashion designers. It turns out that conservative conniptions intended to assert a religious right to refuse services for same-sex marriages have provided progressive fashion designers with a rationale to vow never to design clothes for First Lady-elect Melania Trump and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.

Sadly, this new unity is not going to make government any smaller because it reveals that federal and most state civil rights laws are a couple of protected categories short: sexual orientation and political affiliation.

However, David French at National Review Online, tries to make hay out of this new unity to promote discrimination against lesbians and gays in public accommodations by trying to turn them into an idea and provide protection to people with poor boundaries, while wrongly claiming gays already are a protected class (boldface mine):

Consider the parallels [between conservative and progressive rationales for discriminating in public accommodations]. Photographers, bakers, and florists are using their individual artistic talents not just to document but to celebrate an event. Many of them enter their profession to express their own views about “beauty” and do their work to glorify God. Their art is their best tool for “communicating their world vision.”

But all too many on the Left just don’t care. All that matters is that they refused to use their artistic talents for a gay couple. And aren’t LGBT people protected from discrimination? But wait, aren’t Melania and Ivanka also women? And aren’t women a protected class under nondiscrimination law also? You begin to see the silliness of the argument. Yes, Melania and Ivanka are women, but that’s incidental and irrelevant compared with their political identity. The designers aren’t refusing to dress the Trumps because of their gender but because of their presumed worldview. Similarly, when a baker or florist works with gay men and women all the time and just draws the line when they’re asked to help celebrate a same-sex wedding, they’re objecting to a particular idea, not refusing service based on status. If a black baker refuses to bake a Confederate-flag cake, is he refusing because of the race of the customer or the symbolism of the flag?

First of all, French is saying that people must be allowed to approve of their customers and may refuse to serve them if they don’t. If their objections are religious, they may pick and choose the tenets they enforce. Thus, they are to be allowed to refuse service on the basis of one behavior their religion condemns, same-sex marriage, while serving others, for example, fornicators, adulterers, and the divorced. Their refusal is a declaration of belief in the inequality of lesbians and gays and their right to impose it. This gives their religion the force of civil law by protecting them when they refuse to provide goods or services for same-sex marriages. Religion trumps the rights of lesbians and gays to equality. On top of that, the assertion that bakers, photographers, and fashion designers are participating in an event and providing approval of it just seems like poor boundaries. They’re doing their jobs and getting money in exchange. That is not participating.

About the hypothetical black baker and Confederate flag: it is not a pertinent analogy because the baker’s only legal objections are political, not religious. The pertinent idea of same-sex marriage is whether religions can determine the right to equality of lesbians and gays. So the question is whether religions get the backing of the government to declare lesbians and gays unequal and therefore unworthy of service.

French also asks rhetorically, “And aren’t LGBT people protected from discrimination?” No, LGBT people are NOT protected from discrimination throughout the United States.

Regarding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, lesbians and gays have only one federally protected unalienable (can’t be voted away by majority rule) right: same-sex marriage, due to the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. Lesbians and gays have zero federal civil rights to public accommodations, employment, and housing. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders only have civil rights, subject to majority rule, to public accommodations, employment, and housing, at the state level.

It is important to understand that “LGBT” describes four very different groups with different claims to protection from discrimination. Lesbians, gays and bisexuals are grouped together under sexual orientation. Transgenderism in discrimination laws is euphemistically called “gender identity” or “gender identity, gender expression.” (“Gender identity” refers to the belief that one is the opposite sex to one’s biological sex. “Gender expression” means dressing or appearing like stereotypes of the opposite sex.) It is appropriate that sexual orientation and gender identity are treated differently in discrimination laws because transgenderism is a mental illness (often a constellation of various mental illnesses), while sexual orientation is not.

One example of why transgender people must be treated differently in anti-discrimination laws is that their quest for the right to public accommodations would allow intact men to expose their genitals in women’s locker rooms. (Did you know that most transgender fake women aka men keep their male genitals? And are sexually attracted to women?) Transgenders consider it prejudice for women to object to naked men exposing their genitals in spaces where they also must disrobe.

To digress for a moment, the legal remedy for this conflict that conservatives have overlooked so far is to pass constitutional amendments and laws defining sex to be both determined at conception and immutable, and to require that males must use male restrooms, etc., regardless of how they are dressed, while banning women who pretend to be men, or dress like men, from women’s spaces since they are indistinguishable from men.

Returning to the lack of discrimination protections, the following 28 states allow discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people in public accommodations, employment, and housing: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming.

The following 17 states and Washington, D.C., ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, employment, and housing: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

There are five states that provide different discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation than gender identity:

  • In 2015, Utah provided protection from discrimination in employment and housing on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is still lawful in Utah.
  • Massachusetts bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment and housing. It also bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in public accommodations. Discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of gender identity is permitted.
  • New Hampshire, New York, and Wisconsin ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in public accommodations, employment, and housing. They permit discrimination on the basis of gender identity in public accommodations and housing.

Here’s a summary tally of the states with discrimination protections:

  • 22 states and Washington, D.C., ban discrimination in employment and housing on the basis of sexual orientation (lesbians, gays, bisexuals)
  • 21 states and Washington, D.C., ban discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation (22 minus Utah = 21)
  • 17 states and Washington, D.C., ban discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of gender identity (the same 17 listed above)
  • 18 states and Washington, D.C., ban discrimination in both employment and housing on the basis of gender identity (17 plus Massachusetts = 18)
  • 23 states and Washington, D.C., ban discrimination in employment on the basis of gender identity (17 plus New Hampshire, New York, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Utah = 23).

In other words, most lesbians and gays live in states where they have no protection from discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and housing. So if they exercise their federal right to marry, they can be refused all the goods and services for their ceremony and reception, and then be fired and thrown out of their homes by their landlord.

Religion was correctly rejected as the argument for denying the right to same-sex marriage. It ought not prevail when it comes to denying access to public accommodations, employment, and housing on the basis of sexual orientation. It is not needed at all to justify laws limiting the rights of transgenders. Conservatives arguing that your religion allows you to refuse services to express your disapproval now find that progressives are happy to claim the same argument transposed to political affiliation. However, when would-be totalitarians embrace your argument that purported to protect a liberty, it is the opposite of vindication and instead reveals its true nature. When it comes to sexual orientation and political affiliation, personal or religious approval has nothing to do with the right to public accommodations, employment, or housing.

Bake the cake. Design the dress.

Hit the tip jar: If I can raise at least $3,115 by Monday, January 16, I will use it to attend the Creating Change Conference being held by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Philadelphia from January 18-22 and report on the truth about the transgender agenda. You need to know what transgenders really think about women, their drive to recruit children, and their success in silencing any opposition. There are now eight states considering bathroom bills to protect the privacy of women. In March or April, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a case involving transgender bathroom access, G.G. v. Gloucester School Board.

Click on the “Donate” button below because you want to keep men in dresses out of the ladies’ room!




Thank you, Amy Acker, Sarah Shahi, and ‘Person of Interest’ for healing my heart, but seriously, it’s time to stop killing the lesbians (and hey, ‘Me Before You,’ stop killing the quadriplegics, too!)

The first time I saw two women kissing onscreen in a scene played for their love of one another, as well as their passion, I experienced such a flood of light and warmth in my heart that it lasted for days. I had to wonder if TV, movies, advertisements, which leave me cold, have that effect on straight people all the time, because they portray straight relationships. I expect that can be a two-edged sword, but overall, it seems very lucky to me.

So you might think that a show like “The ‘L’ Word” would have opened up a new world for me. And it did: the world of shutting down completely during romantic lesbian scenes on the first viewing because there was nearly a one-to-one ratio of the scenes being shot from angles that deliberately reduced their emotional power, or the couple was interrupted in some way that shattered the promised arc of emotional connection. (Sarah Shahi played “Carmen” in “The ‘L’ Word,” and deserves praise for putting her heart into the role.)

There’s added incentive not to get too attached to any lesbians in TV or film: “kill the lesbian” syndrome. This is closely related to “kill the quadriplegic” syndrome now in the news because (spoiler alert) the new movie “Me Before You” has a wealthy quadriplegic man find a worthy woman who reciprocates his love, but he goes through with his planned assisted suicide due to his disabilities. Both syndromes are caused by the inability of screenwriters to imagine their subjects having happy lives. So they will build up to a happily-ever-after moment, then drop the hammer.

I find both syndromes irksome because I am a lesbian who had a quadriplegic life partner. She had multiple sclerosis and could still walk with assistance when we met, but later became paralyzed and then quadriplegic. I was 12 years and four months younger than she was. When we met, it took me all of four days to decide I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Next I had to prove to her I’d read up on what I was getting into, and that I needed her at least as much as she needed me. And then we had over 20 happy years together, despite great adversity, so don’t tell me fairy tale romances don’t happen to lesbians and people with disabilities.

Our success wasn’t just because we had all the important things in common. She had the most amazing gaze of love, which always filled my heart with joy. Now it’s going on 12 years since she died. In that time, I’ve felt that my heart had dried and cracked and would not easily open again to love.

Then Amy Acker as Root poured out her terawatt gaze of love on Sarah Shahi’s character of Shaw at the end of the episode “Sotto Voce,” in “Person of Interest,” and Shaw stoically acknowledged it. Out of nowhere, the floodgates of my heart opened. Light poured into my body. My heart became open and warm, no longer dry and cracked. In just a few seconds, my heart became healed and ready for the love of the rest of my life.

I am a late comer to “Person of Interest.” I enjoyed Sarah Shahi’s work in “Fairly Legal” and when it was cancelled I noticed she was in “Person of Interest,” but I found it hard to follow the show without knowing its backstory. I stopped watching because she didn’t have many scenes then. But when I needed something to watch in January to keep me awake in my vigils over my father when he was dying, I found “Person of Interest” on Netflix and viewed it from the beginning on my iPad.

“Person of Interest” began with the premise that a billionaire, Harold Finch, single-handedly programmed software he calls The Machine, which is an all-knowing artificial intelligence that can synthesize surveillance data from thousands of sources and predict terrorism and other premeditated crimes. Resenting that the government only uses The Machine to protect its own interests by fighting terrorism, while letting “irrelevant” people suffer preventable deaths, Finch has gathered a team to prevent the premeditated crimes against or by a “person of interest” whose identity is sent to him by The Machine. But by the time Acker and Shahi were fully on board, it had morphed into a sci-fi show with The Machine battling a similar machine called Samaritan, which is bent on using its powers to impose a supposedly benign tyranny.

Acker plays Samantha “Root” Groves, a hacker who is the analog interface to The Machine and speaks with Her (!) directly. Acker brings a depth and range of emotion to the role that is mesmerizing to watch: an amazing mix of fey brilliance, sardonic glee, humor, and grim determination. She’s a joyful warrior who strides into battle firing pistols in both hands. She’s also a skilled chameleon, handling with wry aplomb the humorous range of identities The Machine assigns to Root to keep her identity hidden from Samaritan. And it will be a long time before anyone matches Acker’s badassery in the car chase that leads to Root’s death.

From their first moments together onscreen, when Root flirts with Shaw as she prepares to torture her, Acker and Shahi have a powerful chemistry together. Shahi plays Sameen Shaw, who was an ISA government assassin taking out “relevant” threats on orders from The Machine. Shaw is a sociopath, capable of few emotions. The restrictions on Shaw’s range of emotions would sink a lesser actress, but Shahi wisely digs in and goes deep instead, giving Shaw an ironic sense of humor, and profound stoicism coupled with boundless courage. This makes the contrast when Shaw finally acknowledges she reciprocates Root’s attraction by kissing her all the more an engaging and astonishing revelation. Acker and Shahi later use that chemistry to have the funniest and most romantic banter during a shoot-out ever. Although for my money, their most endearing moment is when Root takes Shaw’s hand and says it’s the first time she ever felt she belonged.

While I’m primarily concerned with Acker and Shahi because they played the lesbian characters in “Person of Interest,” show creator Jonathan Nolan and his writers made the straight female characters of Joss Carter (Taraji P. Henson) and Zoe Morgan (Paige Turco), just as strong. Henson and Turco were brilliant in portraying them.

Every day there’s something I want to write about here, but I haven’t because I write from the heart. With my heart feeling dried up and sore, it was just too hard. But Root gazed at Shaw with love and Shaw answered her gaze with all the love she could manage. I can’t thank Acker and Shahi enough. My heart is healed. I can love again. I can write again.

And I want to praise and thank Amy Acker and Sarah Shahi here because of the following passage in the book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams. He is writing about the effect that words of praise from an instructor had on a woman who could barely get out a few words in her first effort to speak in their Dale Carnegie course. The instructor said, “Wow! That was brave!” (boldfacing mine):

There are several things to learn from this story. The most important is the transformative power of praise versus the corrosive impact of criticism. I’ve had a number of occasions since then to test the powers of praise, and I find it an amazing force, especially for adults. Children are accustomed to a continual stream of criticisms and praise, but adults can go weeks without a compliment while enduring criticism both at work and at home. Adults are starved for a kind word. When you understand the power of honest praise (as opposed to bullshitting, flattery, and sucking up), you realize that withholding it borders on the immoral. If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect to humanity insists you voice your praise.

‘Wow, that was brave,’ is the best and cleanest example I’ve seen in which looking at something in a different way changes everything. When the instructor switched our focus from the student’s poor speaking performance to her bravery, everything changed. Positivity is far more than a mental preference. It changes your brain, literally, and it changes the people around you. It’s the nearest thing we have to magic.

I would love for Hollywood to stop with the “kill the lesbian,” “kill the quadriplegic” stories and learn how to imagine the happily-ever-afters of our lives. I see I have a duty to tell my own story to show them how.

But right now, to encourage Hollywood down that road, the most important thing I can do is to say thank you to Amy Acker, Sarah Shahi, Jonathan Nolan, and the writers of “Person of Interest.” You told a lesbian love story and thereby healed my heart. I am profoundly grateful. Thank you.

 

 

 

With no warning or explanation, Twitter suspends Stacy McCain for tweeting while conservative: #FreeStacy

Last night my friend Stacy McCain was suspended from Twitter with no warning or explanation or any apparent path to appeal. Surely it is just a coincidence that this happened shortly after Twitter created a Star Chamber, ahem, Ministry of Truth, no, that’s not it: a Trust and Safety Council, and appointed as a member a frequent target of Stacy’s anti-feminist and pro-Gamergate critiques, Anita Sarkeesian, feminist and anti-Gamergater.

There is no First Amendment issue here because Twitter is a corporation, not the government, so it has the right to suspend, ban, and censor its subscribers. But it is a poor business model to do it secretly and as a type of gaslighting, to push a political agenda, as Twitter does, which elevates progressive points of view while suppressing those of conservatives. Conservatives are right to be outraged. Specifically, Twitter has been doing the following:

  • Removing the checkmark showing an account authentically belongs to a prominent person, as happened recently to Milo Yiannopoulos, who is @nero on Twitter.
  • Shadow banning: keeping lists of accounts that are white listed or black listed, and hiding the black listed ones so they do not appear in search results.
  • Suppressing certain trending hashtags, such as #FreeStacy, by turning off autocomplete for them.

Thanks to the above practices, Twitter is revealing its transformation from social media platform to cult. The best conservative response would be to build a better mousetrap. But right now, feminists, it’s time to toughen up, buttercup, and win by the strength of your arguments rather than your power to silence your opposition: #FreeStacy.

P.S. If you aren’t winning by the strength of your arguments, it means you need to discard them and get better ones, not seize the power to control or destroy the people you can’t persuade.

UPDATED, THANK YOU!: My dad is dying, please help me pay for a budget cremation

Hubert P. Yockey works on a 60-inch cyclotron. Photo from the National Archives Catalog taken by Donald Cooksey, 7/26/1949.
Hubert P. Yockey works on a 60-inch cyclotron. Photo from the National Archives Catalog taken by Donald Cooksey, 7/26/1949.

Right now I am sitting next to the bed of my 99-year-old dad, Hubert P. Yockey, and for the next few hours or days, he is still one of the last living nuclear physicists of the Manhattan Project. He shortened the war with Japan by improving the design of the Calutron, the machine used at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to separate uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. After over 20 happy years caring for my late life partner, who died of complications of multiple sclerosis in 2004, I came back home in October 2006 to live with my dad and provide his care. But I need help from my friends to do my last service for him. I need to ask for donations to cover the cost of a budget cremation for him. My goal is $2,050 $1,275.

I know there are people who think I should have saved up this amount in that time, or my dad should have. Long story short, by the time I’d conquered various health problems and it looked like I could figure out how to make some money while caring for Dad, the level of care that he needed changed and made that impossible. For the last few years, I’ve had to stick very close to him when he was awake and get up two or more times a night to keep him alive. But it was worth it. My father is a wonderful man and very pleasant company.

As an example of his kind nature, a few years ago I volunteered to put a lot of music and videos onto a friend’s iPad to entertain her during her dialysis sessions. I wound up working about 30 hours straight because one video just would not convert to a playable format. Then I had to take Dad to a game played by our local minor league baseball team since we had season tickets. On the way, I explained my marathon session mastering the iPad. Dad immediately became very sympathetic, and replied, “Oh yes, it was just like that for me–when I was learning to use the cyclotron.” (I still think his equating his mastery of the cyclotron and mine of the iPad is one of the funniest things anyone has ever said to me.)

To be able to share all the photos I want of my dad’s Manhattan Project days and my last year with him, taking him on adventures, I’m linking a Facebook post I’ve made public.

If it is comfortable for you to help me out, please click the PayPal button below. I’m using PayPal because funds are available the fastest from it. My father is going much faster than I expected. The funds donated will go into a special bank account I’ve set up for my father’s care. Thank you.

UPDATE, 2/20/2016, Sat.: My beloved father, the center of my life since I moved back home to care for him in 2006, passed away on January 31 with me at his side. Thanks to my blogger friends who linked this post and their kind and generous readers, I was able to pay for my father’s cremation. For the first few days after Dad died, I stayed in my usual hypervigilance mode. I felt like Wile E. Coyote for the few moments he remains suspended in mid-air after he runs off the cliff. And then I crashed into catatonia and sleeping in my late life partner’s lift recliner chair. In the last day or two I crossed over into searing pain and periodic sobbing. Dad was happiest going out for rides in the car, so driving is the worst because I miss him so much. His wheelchair lived in the trunk of every car I’ve driven since I moved home. Opening the trunk now and seeing it empty reminds me he’s gone and I get hit with waves of pain. The bottom line is I’m doing the best I can, but my heart has been ripped out of my chest and I’m finding it hard to get much done without it. But it is a big priority for me to write my thank-you e-mails to every donor. Please be patient with me for a few more days. Thank you.




Jenny Lawson is ‘Furiously Happy’

 

Ro-Ro, a 20-year-old calico cat, reposes on a seed warming mat in front of thriving young heirloom tomato seedlings. I am including this recent photo for its gloom-dispelling power.
Ro-Ro, a 20-year-old calico cat, reposes on a seed warming mat in front of thriving young heirloom tomato seedlings. I am including this recent photo for its gloom-dispelling power.

I stopped writing this blog regularly after the November 2010 elections for a few reasons. First, as a new conservative, I was stunned and angry to learn that social conservatives run as fiscal conservatives but govern primarily to advance their religious agenda. I was in the process of losing weight, which took my sense of humor and patience with it. I didn’t want to spoil my brand by losing my temper. Second, I didn’t see how blogging would help me make enough money to live on or get me a good job after my father passes on. I do now, but I didn’t then. Third, I couldn’t figure out how to keep every post I considered writing about my personal life and challenges from sounding like a suicide note.

But a couple of friends and my therapist (thanks, Obamacare!) have encouraged me to do the writing I refuse to do for my own sake for others who are facing similar challenges. So I am taking the plunge. It will be awhile before I can tell the story in any organized way. For now it’s enough to dive in.

In addition to not writing, I stopped following the blogs of many of my online friends because I couldn’t be on the computer and look after my dad. And it’s not a great thing to do what I’m doing now: writing after seeing Dad to bed. That’s because I have to be awake when he’s awake, so to get enough sleep I have to have the same sleep schedule.

But being back at the computer tonight, I see my friend Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess, has her second book coming out, Furiously Happy, about her struggles with mental illness and suicidal ideation. She’s learned from writing her blog and first book that she has attracted a tribe with similar challenges, many of whom have told her she has inspired them to live when they were actively planning their suicide.

I should mention that longterm caregivers like me often are living their suicide, since it’s an occupation with a death rate of one in three who do not survive the loved one they’re caring for, rising to two in three after age 66. I’m 61. I’ve been doing end-of-life care for loved ones since 1984, starting with my late life partner of over 20 years. I suspect the ones that die are taken by illnesses caused or exacerbated by overwhelm, isolation, exhaustion, fear, worry, lack and sadness. So it’s worth your life in that kind of situation to figure out how to overcome those challenges. I’ve come through relatively unscathed and have a thing or two to say about how I’ve done it.

What I relate to about Jenny’s new book is how frightened she felt of telling her story because that is how scared I’ve been of telling mine. But in the last month, I’ve gotten emotional support from a therapist and a couple of friends that has given me the courage to start writing again and tell my story. I don’t know if my writing will save anyone else’s life, but right now it will save mine.

Why is my Dropcam disconnected?

My father has obstructive sleep apnea, so it is dangerous for him to fall asleep in his recliner chair away from his respirator. And when he is sleeping in his bed, I need to be able to check on him without walking in the room and waking him up. So I have one Dropcam Pro by his bed and another one by his recliner in the living room.

After seeing Dad to bed, one of the last things I do before going to sleep is check on him with the Dropcam app on my iPhone. Last night the bedroom Dropcam reported it was disconnected. I stayed up another two hours doing unsuccessful troubleshooting: unplugging the USB cable from the Dropcam, unplugging the USB cable from the power outlet, turning off the router, unplugging the router, and using the settings in the iPhone app to connect to the camera and to my wifi network. Nothing worked.

This afternoon I called Dropcam’s tech support. The rep ran diagnostics, which checked out. My wifi signal was fine. Then she had me switch the USB cable. The Dropcam still would connect for a second, then disconnect. Finally she elevated me to a higher level of tech support, a nice young man who ran more diagnostics and found the problem: my ISP’s router changed channels automatically to get a better signal, but the Dropcam can’t connect with all the router’s channel options. I had to call my ISP to get them to set the router to the Dropcam’s preferred channel. This solution is not in any of Dropcam’s online tech support forum pages. This problem is something I hope Dropcam fixes immediately because seriously, when routers are built to change channels to get a better signal, why isn’t the Dropcam built to be compatible with that?

It was late in the afternoon by the time I’d gotten the Dropcam working again, but I’d promised my father ice cream at our favorite local dairy. I splurged and got us bowls of cream of crab soup and biscuits with butter, too, and I think they were the best I’ve ever tasted. We ate in the car, which is more comfortable and safe for Dad, and looked out over the farm fields and listened to “Prairie Home Companion” podcasts on a Bluetooth speaker. One of my end-of-life care secrets for getting my loved ones to live longer is to make their lives so happy they want to live. I’m glad to have the technology that helps me do it.