89 million views for videos of trans women being assaulted classified as “entertainment”

Content Notice: Violence, hate-motivated assaults.

In a report called Capturing Hate, a non-profit organization by the name of Witness has collected some statistics on the disturbing trend of “shock videos” as they pertain to trans women and gender nonconforming people. In most of these videos, the victims are being verbally harassed or physically assaulted, with participants on the offending websites advocating for further violence. Most of these videos are posted without the victim’s consent, a few of which have gone on record to say that these acts also sabotaged their careers.

Oh, and these shock videos aren’t even just being hosted by fringe websites feeding on a sadistic viewership. They’re on YouTube.

From the report:

Our analysis of the engagement with those videos — including ratings, comments and how the videos are captured, titled and described — proves that abuse and discrimination against transgender people is widespread and undercounted. And, the content condones, or even encourages, violent acts against them. The existence of these videos and the volume of hateful engagement pose a direct threat to gender nonconforming people and compromise a positive and empowered representation of these communities.

…

We studied viewer engagement only with videos that captured physical assault and we analyzed data from four very different sites. We included YouTube, where we found the most videos, but the content represents just a small segment of the platform’s total offerings. World Star Hip Hop and Fly Height are “shock” sites that solicit and promote these videos to drive traffic and to monetize as part of their business models. And, Live Leak, a video aggregator that promotes itself as a cutting edge news outlet known for breaking particularly gruesome content (e.g., the execution of Saddam Hussein).

Significantly absent from this study is the viewer engagement data from eyewitness videos hosted on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Vine. In our URL harvests we found thousands of video links on these platforms matching the search criteria, and tens of thousands of Facebook “likes” from platforms we did analyze. In test studies we found that most videos were uploaded to a hosting platform then shared to social media platforms furthering viewer engagement. Capturing and analyzing that data exceeded project resources in both cost and capacity.

Even with this small sample size, LGBTQ advocacy organizations we consulted were surprised by the number of eyewitness videos of violence against transgender people and stunned by how widely viewed and favorably rated they were. Most alarming are the vitriolic comments that are ongoing. We found videos posted years ago that are still being engaged with today.

Have some of their statistics:

64%

of total videos analyzed were found on YouTube
Despite policies that explicitly prohibit content that incites hatred or promotes violence against individuals and groups based on race, sexual orientation and gender identity, we found more videos on YouTube than on all three other platforms combined. We do not, however, know how many videos of this kind have been removed for violating these terms.

39%

of YouTube videos categorized as entertainment or comedy
The most popular category was the default “People & Blogs” at 42%.

99%

of total ratings were “likes”
Viewers gave the content favorable ratings — e.g., liked, LOL, thumbs up, hilarious, etc. — overwhelmingly more than negative or critical responses.

71%

of total views were on World Star Hip Hop
Shock sites World Star Hip Hop and Fly Height hosted fewer videos, but dominated viewer engagement. Several of the most brutal were viewed by millions on these platforms.

For trans folk, none of this really comes as a surprise. Even as we attempt to report our mistreatment to police, we are often treated as punchlines instead of victims. Most of us are already aware of the intense disdain expressed by violent trans-antagonists. And while it’s true that most people don’t deliberately seek out material of trans women being assaulted and murdered, it is also true that there are people who do–explicitly for the purpose of celebrating the violence depicted.

89 million views. 99% approval.

This is what trans & gender nonconforming folk are up against.

-Shiv

 

Private Christian school caught cooking its books

Albertan Christian thought leaders love to moralize about the dangers of the NDP’s “greed” or the risks of acknowledging Queer humanity. But, as it turns out, Albertan Christian thought leaders are willing to make exceptions for themselves when it comes to piss poor behaviour. I’ll pre-emptively dial the ambulance for you, as I’m sure you’ve been struck dead in shock by this news: Trinity Christian has been cooking its books, engaging in nepotism, and misappropriating public funds.

Eggen said the decision follows a recent three-year audit into the association that found numerous spending irregularities.

He said Trinity receives $5.5 million in public money a year, and that much of it was redirected to the Wisdom Home Schooling Society.

The report alleged conflict of interest in lease and contract deals along with public money being spent to cover off ineligible expenses like babysitting and funeral expenses. There was also double-dipping on mileage.

Public funds were spent on food, alcohol, gifts, gift cards, groceries, theatre tickets and other staff functions, said the report.

The report stated Wisdom has retained $988,000 in unclaimed parent funding over the past three years.

“Trinity and Wisdom spent approximately 32 per cent of expenses on payments for staff and administration compared to a 3.4 to 5.6 per cent range in public boards,” said the report.

Ah yes, must be some of that world leading education Jason Kenney keeps talking about.

Meanwhile the conservative Christians in this province will carry on bleating about the supposed corruption of the NDP whilst turning a blind eye to the owners of Trinity who just fleeced 3,500 Albertan kids.

-Shiv

Transition Reactions p11: Facts don’t care about your feelings

It cannot be understated that the sheer volume of ignorance about gender variance weighs down on me. I see the same shit repeating itself over and over. It is not the ignorance that is the problem, at least not by itself–but the belief that knowledge is somehow unnecessary to form an opinion on something, which is likely the sole contributor to my blood pressure problems. That is a belief which should be nuked from orbit, because if people actually practiced it, we wouldn’t have cis people passing shitty laws about trans people based off of knee-jerk “eww cooties” reactions or an entire lobby calling itself pro-“life” despite advocating for policies that continually endanger women.

i pun gud

i pun gud

As today’s Transition Reactions is about facts, I will not be including the usual disclaimer about anecdotes and personal experience.

So let’s dismantle one of the more irritating bludgeons used against trans women: “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”

Facts exist regardless of how we feel about them–that is true, unless you’re a solipsist. The problem is the people employing this deepity seldom understand the establishment of what makes a fact to begin with.

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Signal boosting: Back handed compliments for trans folk

Yeah yeah, two in a row. I’m busy.

James St. James has a piece on Everyday Feminism about four “compliments” you should never give to trans people:

1. ‘S/he Was Born a Wo/man? But S/he Is So Hawt!’

We’re going to refer to this as the Surprise Response.

The Surprise Response is the assumption that trans people are always identifiable as the freaks that they’re presumed to be and could never actually be mistaken 100% as cis (read: normal).

Ouch.

Also, this comment is a thinly veiled attempt to shield one’s own identity instead of trying to say something about the trans person in question.

Some manner of sexual binary-phobia is usually at play here, the speaker finding the trans person attractive, becoming startled by this fact, and then looking to cover it up with statements that reassert their heterosexuality (or homosexuality, since plenty of self-identified cis gays and lesbians have been not incredibly kind to the trans community

Having received all four–from healthcare professionals, even–I can certainly tell you that these are not only irritating to receive, but that they fit into a larger picture of excusing violence perpetrated against trans folk who don’t meet the criteria described in the article above.

So, uh, don’t do that.

Read the rest here.

-Shiv

Signal boosting: Make America White Again

Most of us have noticed the parallels between 1930s Germany and the situation in the United States today. But if we are willing to call the German obsession with the so-called Aryan race a form of white supremacy, it is curious that the designation largely slips past mainstream media when discussing Trump’s campaign, including his supporters.

I suppose it’s easier for a foreign paper to publish it. Content Notice: Paris attacks, not quoted here, but present in the rest of the article. (emphasis added)

Gallup’s goal was to create a profile of Trump supporters, describe their social and economic circumstances and locate them on the map of America. It collected more than 87,000 responses over a year ending this past July.

The resulting analysis is a dry read, some of which confirms what we already knew: Trump supporters are more likely to be white, older males; less likely to have a higher education; more likely to be Christian and to say their faith is important to them.

But the thing that is new and important is how the data upends what many thought was the economic and social experience of Trump supporters — namely, the belief that they are the people most deeply affected by a failing economy and rising immigration rates.

According to the Gallup results, those who support Trump are slightly better off economically and employment-wise than people who don’t support him. While they are likely to live in areas that have suffered economically, they are also likely to be better off than their neighbours, and to have been spared the worst effects of the 2008 recession.

They are also significantly less likely to live in communities where there is a substantial immigrant population. In other words, Trump supporters are less likely than other Americans — and less likely even than other Republicans — to have regular personal experiences with immigrants.

Jonathan Rothwell, a senior economist at Gallup, says that Trump has been misleading his flock.

Intuitively, I’ve been skeptical of any connection with reality concerning the “economic anxieties” line that’s often dropped when discussing Trump’s campaign. I understood that this was the perception, but tried to root around for numbers to substantiate it. The Gallup poll discussed here seems to indicate that while everyone was hit by the Great Recession, Trump supporters took the least of it. If Trump supporters are perceiving economic threats, they are missing the broader picture of who is actually shouldering the burden of the recession.

As is often the case. I refuse to believe that Republican supporters are simply “stupid,” and there had to be a reason they were so prominent among majority demographics.

They’re not rich by any means, but they’re well-off enough that the Republican’s assault on social services won’t generally affect them. That’s why they can support the racist and xenophobic policies of the GOP, policies bundled with a vicious assault on those living in poverty: As a demographic, they ain’t in poverty. By process of elimination, that largely leaves one motivating factor–racial anxiety.

You’re shocked, I know.

Many months ago, I sat down with Matt Heimbach, the leader of the Traditionalist Worker Party. He seemed calm, articulate and determined to sound reasonable — although that was before a YouTube video popped up showing him violently shoving a black woman out of a Trump rally in Kentucky.

I asked Heimbach what Trump meant to his movement.

“I’m not throwing in and saying I want Donald Trump to even be the president necessarily. What I do want is for him to keep saying these things, because it offers us a kind of political cover to be able to say, ‘Well, Donald Trump says it, we’re not that radical.’ It’s moving the discussion toward the right, towards nationalism,” he told me.

“He’s made immigration a topic here in America. He’s making the very question of what’s an American a question.”

That seems true. Trump has given broader license to the kind of political conversation that not long ago was relegated to the alt-right.

In my first chat with Ed Hunter, I asked him whether the people who supported Trump were mostly white people who resented having lost the power they once had in America.

“Well, they should be,” he jumped in, adding that they are struggling for “self-preservation.”

Man, I wish I could self preserve this aggressively. I’d go to jail, for a long time at that. The justice system is brutal to trans folk, trans women especially. That’s why I’m a pacifist–not out of any ideological aversion to hurting someone trying to hurt me–but because I have a better chance fighting a deadly assault in the hospital than I do a murder charge in the courtroom. But I mean, sure, let’s classify roaming lynch mobs in the making as “self preservation.”

“You know what they want more than anything? They want to be left alone.

Again, that’s an odd idea of being “left alone.”

They don’t want to be fighting off hordes and hordes of people from foreign cultures that are utterly changing their country to the core.

“You go into any airport, any public building, any public school and you look at what it is now compared to what it was 30 years ago, the level of security needed, the constant surveillance, the constant police presence.

“That’s not the America we grew up in. We didn’t need that. What changed? Who did they bring in that makes everybody so afraid?”

Immigration to America, both legal and illegal, has increased over the last generation. But crime has not. In fact, violent crime, including rape, has decreased steadily, and in some cases dramatically.

So what is it, really, that “makes everybody so afraid?”

Trump knew from the start.

Again, those pesky statistics can’t survive the lens of fear. It doesn’t matter to Trump supporters that the actual fact of violent crime is decreasing, they perceive it to be increasing and that’s good enough.

Read the rest here.

-Shiv

Institutionalizing gender roles

This topic would be more amusing to cover if it weren’t another example of trans kids having their lives ruined by trans-antagonistic parents.

In an ongoing parental custody dispute two Albertan judges have ordered that the child may not wear “feminine” clothes in public.

No, literally, I’m not making this up. Judges have decided to micromanage what clothes this child can or cannot wear.

What’s happening is the child, assigned male at birth, is questioning their gender. Their mother is supportive, indifferent to how her child chooses to express themselves as long as they are happy. Their father then told the courts that his child’s “gender confusion” was caused by the mother, and his tactic worked. The latest ruling gave primary custody to the father, who I assume is now forcing his child into a male gender role.

Smith and the child’s father are separated and share custody.

Smith says she told the father what had happened and about her decision to support their child. Weeks later he served her with papers seeking primary custody, blaming Smith for the child’s gender confusion and anxiety.

When the two went to family court in Medicine Hat in December, 2015, Judge D.G. Redman kept Smith as primary caregiver, but in his interim order, said the child will not be permitted to wear clearly female clothes in public, but if he chooses, he could do so in private.

Then earlier this year in February, the case went before Judge F.C. Fisher and in his interim order, he again stated the clothing restriction and granted primary custody to the father. Smith was given limited access.

By this past September, the interim clothing order was revised by a third provincial court judge. Judge G.K Krinke said after consulting with a parenting expert, the parents must provide both boy and girl clothing options and the child can then choose from those options.

Thankfully the third judge in this case has the sense to get the father to fuck off and let the kid decide for themselves. Hopefully the kid feels safe enough to persist in doing what they want concerning their gender expression, even if the father doesn’t like it. But that still leaves a nine month period where two judges felt perfectly justified to restrict what clothes a kid could legally wear, and more importantly it seems extremely unlikely the father will allow their child to seek our gender affirmative care in the event they do understand themselves to be transgender.

It cannot be understated how much I loathe it when parents weaponize their kid’s gender variance in custody battles. Dog above the mom better win. Thanks to Bill 7, she can submit a human rights complaint, and has.

-Shiv

LOOK THEY FINALLY CALLED A WHITE TERRORIST “TERRORIST”!

The FBI in Kansas foiled a plot to bomb a Mosque and finally a media source–if not a mainstream one–calls the white plotters terrorists. Content Notice for violent racism and xenophobia:

The feds arrested three members of a right wing militia for allegedly planning to detonate explosives at an apartment complex in Garden City, Kansas, with Somali Muslims specifically the target, law enforcement announced at Friday.

The men were Curtis Allen and Gavin Wright, both 49, and of Liberal, Kansas, and Patrick Eugene Stein, 47, of Wright, Kansas, according to a Department of Justice press release. Their arrests Friday morning were first reported by CBS News.

The attack was allegedly planned for the day after Election Day, law enforcement said at a press conference. The men were recorded calling the immigrants “goddamn cockroaches” and “fucking raghead bitches” in recordings, according to court documents. They planned the attack as a response to the Orlando massacre, as well to the fatal shooting of Oregon occupier Lavoy Finicum, the docs said.

They are facing domestic terrorism charges, which, if they are convicted, could result in a maximum sentence of life in federal prison, law enforcement said.

…

An affidavit signed by FBI special agent Tracey Jenkins (embedded below) details law enforcement’s investigation into the group’s activities. The men were operating in a group that called itself the Crusaders and in an overlapping organization known as the Kansas Security Force, according to the affidavit.

“These are militia groups whose members support and espouse sovereign citizen, anti-government, anti- Muslim, and anti-immigrant extremist beliefs,” the affidavit said.

The investigation uncovered stockpiles of firearms and explosive materials, as well as a manifesto, Beall said at the press conference.

“One of them said, ‘The bombing would wake people up,'” Beall said.

According to the affidavit, the men were recorded numerous times by an unnamed FBI source discussing their plans while smearing Muslims and immigrants.

“The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim,” Stein said in a recording, according to the affidavit. He later added: “If you’re a Muslim I’m going to enjoy shooting you in the head.”

The suspects allegedly planned to attack the housing complex, where approximately 120 people live and where one of the apartments was used as a mosque, the officials said. They planned to use four vehicles, each filed with explosive and parked at each corner of the parking lot, to create a big explosion, according to the affidavit.

Yes, obviously the answer to a terrorist plot executed by an American citizen is to start a terrorist plot targeting American immigrants.

How did I not think of it sooner?

-Shiv

 

Edit October 23: Changed a reference to the targets being refugees to immigrants.

Alt right rallies behind U of T prof who refutes his own argument

When you blow the dog whistles, the dogs will eventually come. Or, so tenured University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson will hopefully learn.

In doing the homework for this piece I scratched my head with around 40 windows open, most of which were articles uncritically framing the issue we’re about to explore as being a fundamental case of freedom of speech vs. censorship, because that’s the debate Dr. Peterson claims he wants to have. In every single one of these articles, a mob of anti “political correctness” commentators floods the article with anything ranging from blatantly incorrect statements as to how free speech works to openly advocating for violence against the protesters criticizing Dr. Peterson. One of the articles even predicted this effect weeks before it would swamp other websites. Al Donato over on the torontist wrote with seeming clairvoyance “Let’s be real. Writing this is a trap. There’s no winning when critiquing U of T professor Dr. Jordan Peterson plays into what he wants: proof that “political correctness” is something insidious and the “social justice warriors” are out to get him.”

So since Peterson’s many proponents seem to think that any criticism of his argument constitutes a “mischaracterization,” and since we have about 4 week’s worth of evidence that you will swarm any article critical of him, I’ll start by getting one thing out of the way: My comments policy. Specifically:

So what gets you filtered?

  • Making a point refuted in the post you just opened.

Remember this when you’re railing against The Gods in the deplorables trash bin.

[Read more…]

Self care Saturday, Oct 22: Blacking some boots

I’ve been despondent for some time because I haven’t had many opportunities to engage in one of my favourite hobbies: Boot blacking. But a friend of mine got married at the beginning of October, and a few days before the ceremony asked me to polish his shoes. I was thrilled!

 

Before: Notice the scuffed toe.

With this pair of shoes, most of the polish was kicked off around the toe and heel. The scuff marks were a shade of light gray–by the time I was finished with leather conditioner, the scuff marks themselves had been rendered completely invisible to the black leather around them, with the toe having regained some of its shine. The groom only gave me one day to do this; if I had more time, I would’ve been able to apply several layers of polish and get the toe really shiny.

Regular Service

The first step is to clean the leather. I dampen a cloth and then apply a very small amount of saddle soap–about the tip of my finger–and apply the soap in a circular motion. The soap foams and wipes away the dust and dirt on the surface of the leather. I then take a dry cloth and make the same motion to wipe away the foam and water. This alone makes the leather much darker if I’m treating a brown or dyed leather.

The next step is to condition the leather. I like Huberd’s the most for this step for multiple reasons. For one, the product is non-toxic, and therefore safe to touch and breathe; two, it doesn’t stink too badly (it smells and tastes* like bacon); three, it’s inexpensive. The downside to Huberd’s brand shoe cream is that it only comes in black, as far as I know. I prefer to work Huberd’s into the leather with my bare hands, massaging it in a circular motion. Huberd’s restores some shine, but its chief purpose is to water- and winter-proof the leather.

The last step is to apply polish. For leather that has just been cleaned and conditioned, I typically apply a modest amount to the toe and leave it at that. Getting a proper shine takes one treatment a day for several days in a row. It’s not a process that can be rushed, which is why if you have your boots blacked somewhere and your boots are messy as hell, you’ll mostly get cleaning & conditioning rather than a good shine. In fairness, if you bring us boots caked with mud, then just cleaning your boots is probably enough to make them look shiny in comparison.

I figure I can be satisfied with essentially erasing the scuff marks and restoring some sheen in time for the wedding. More importantly, my kit has been restocked, and the new dungeon run by Not Dipshits in town means I might have a slough of customers with boots to service. Yesssss.

-Shiv

 

My sassy boots. Left: Before. Right: After

My sassy boots. Left: Before. Right: After. LITERAL REFLECTION

*Huberd’s non-toxicity comes in handy when you’re a kinky bootblack. That’s because: 1) if I like you; 2) and we’re flirting; 3) and you consent to it; there are–uh–alternative ways to deliver the leather conditioner besides with one’s hands or a cloth, a “special service” that I offer selectively. Hence why I know what it tastes like. Huberd’s isn’t particularly edible and I definitely don’t recommend swallowing it, but it has never made me ill when I’m going “up and beyond the call of duty” to a Dom/me who consents to receive it. It’s just beeswax and pinetar. That said, if you have any canker sores, it stings like a bitch. Depending on who you’re special servicing, that might be a feature and not a bug.