I'm often leery of sharing stories like this because the point isn't, and cannot be, that anti-trans policies and the dehumanization of trans people in our society is bad, because it also affects cis people, particularly women, in horrifyingly negative ways. One of the primary reasons we've facing down a politically empowered fascist Trump regime, is that Americans as a society have already accepted the idea that some people don't matter, and aren't human enough for the full spectrum of human rights; even if the folks making those arguments rarely admit what they're actually arguing for in a big picture sense. As in the case of Muslims, migrants, student protestors and women who want to control their own bodies, our society's casual disregard for the human and civil rights of trans people has acted as a permission gate for the Trump regime's larger project to strip the rights of anyone they don't like, or who dares to speak out in dissent.

Despite my reservations about centering cis experiences when talking about the anti-trans pogrom however, the fact is that cis women *are* negatively affected by the war on trans existences in both a micro and macro sense; whether it's hate-fueled transinvestigators invading women's bathrooms to "protect women," or the way anti-trans propaganda serves as a stepping stone for larger patriarchal efforts to possess women's bodies, this is a very real consequence of a normalized anti-trans pogrom that dehumanizes, otherizes, and criminalizes trans people (particularly trans women.) Furthermore, as the story of Dani Davis, a Florida woman fired by Walmart for being tall enough to trigger abusive behavior from a raging transphobe, demonstrates - the reality is that a society that isn't prepared to stand up for the human rights of trans people, isn't likely to stand up for the human rights of women, or workers, either.

For more on that, let's turn to this short (14 minute) video by Mike Figueredo from THR:

The Humanist Report: Walmart Fires Cis Employee *BECAUSE* She Was Harassed by Transphobic Customer in Bathroom

"A Walmart employee named Dani Davis was accosted and threatened by a transphobic customer during her shift, and she was subsequently fired because of it. The customer followed her into the bathroom and accused her of being a man and yelled transphobic slurs at her. Days after she reported the incident to her supervisor, she was fired because she supposedly posed a “security risk” to others in the store. In this video we’ll talk about this disturbing story and discuss how transphobia harms ALL women; both trans and cis alike."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nauz7001Q0U

If you're wondering why the pundit class and the mainstream media organizations that employ them have been so tepid in their criticism of Trump, so unwilling to name the fascist beast and draw the logical conclusions the regime's actions imply, perhaps it's because they know they've been complicit in this fascist nightmare? As Joan Westenberg notes in this brilliant March 15th drag out piece, the normalization of the fascist ideology the Trump regime is running on now has many fathers in American society, and not all of them are folks who'd want to be known as supporters of MAGA fascism; but that's precisely the role they've served, for personal gain:

https://www.theindex.media/the-pundit-class-played-devils-advocate-now-the-devils-at-the-door/

The Pundit Class Played Devil’s Advocate. Now the Devil’s at the Door.

"A revolving door of New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post columnists made a career of platforming people who—either blatantly or through implication—argued that transgender people shouldn't exist. That democracy had "gone too far." They raged against "wokeism" because they couldn’t conceive of a world where it wouldn’t prevail. They bemoaned "cancel culture" not because they cared about free speech, but because they mistakenly believed the right-wing ideologues they dined with had been cast out for good.

In their intellectual stupor, they decided that the forces of social change were so overpowering and unstoppable that the world needed a voice to speak up against them in an infernal balancing act. And it felt daring, didn't it? To be the literary equivalent of the Cool Girl—not like those Other Girls who care about freedom, equity, history, and common sense.

They dressed themselves up as the beatniks of cultural commentary. They convinced themselves of their "underground" status. They basked in institutional protection, indulging in a self-congratulatory circle-jerk of mock dissent where the stakes were always someone else's problem. They positioned themselves as lone voices against an imagined tide of unthinking dogma, pretending that they were fighting against orthodoxy when, in reality, they were just reinforcing the status quo with a hipster filter. They weren't holding truth to power. They were selling a brand: rebellion without responsibility, provocation without principle, and the posture of dissent with none of the burden of consequence.

They dined on the aesthetic of courage without ever taking a risk. And why not? The market for disaffected liberals playing footsie with fascists was lucrative and full of opportunities for highbrow grift."

@ajsadauskas @skribe

I would dearly love to agree. However: the workaround is elegant in it's simplicity, the aggressor state purchases media outlets in the target country.

By their nature they will be to some degree self-funding.

If done correctly, the person doing the purchasing can even get a seat in the House of Lords and thus contribute to writing the laws that will govern the target country for generations to come.

It also helps the person doing the purchasing become a household name, which is a soft-power of a separate sort.

I'm always slightly wary of using New Statesman as a source but in a pinch, they have a good summary of it. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2023/02/what-does-evgeny-lebedev-want-evening-standard-independent-newspaper

@GRA3432 : same here in the Netherlands. Just now in the news on TV:

"Israel last night bombed Beirut, like they did Friday. That was the first attack since the ceasefire started in November."

They should have said "the first attack ON BEIRUT" but even that I doubt (but did not look up).

The text in
https://nos.nl/liveblog/2561789-nieuwe-aanvallen-israel-op-beiroet-israel-helft-gijzelaars-vrij-voor-40-50-dagen-wapenstilstand#UPDATE-container-85143455 is slightly less wrong:
"Vrijdag voerde Israël ook al aanvallen uit op Beiroet. Dat was toen voor het eerst sinds een staakt-het-vuren dat in november was ingegaan tussen Israël en Hezbollah."

It is #Hasbara, #Propaganda for "our" friend #Netanyahu and ally #Israel.

Correction 08:35 UTC: "yesterday" -> "Friday" and added "" around the first quoted text (which was translated by me).