northeast sun

A gay Canadian adult film star claims that he was detained for over eight hours by U.S. Customs before receiving a 10-year ban from the country. Milo Miles said he was traveling to Las Vegas from Toronto's Pearson Airport in January when a routine U.S. customs screening turned into a nightmare. "It was the worst and most painful day of my life," Miles told LGBTQ Nation. "I was subjected to derogatory comments, with an unsettling focus on my sexual orientation and my sex life." Miles said his phone and luggage were searched, and he was asked intrusive questions about his sexuality and line of work. “All of this happened on two hours of sleep. I was starving, dehydrated, and in a state of complete exhaustion. I was treated like a criminal despite having done nothing wrong. I felt coerced, manipulated, and powerless. I am devastated.” U.S. Customs has the right to deny entry to people they believe are sex workers, even if they’ve never been convicted, and will use coercive tactics to try and elicit a confession, according to Maggies, a Canadian sex worker justice organization. [...] According to Miles, who was planning on visiting his boyfriend in Florida after the award show, U.S. Customs accused him of "escorting with no evidence" and were fixated on the "gay clothes," fiber pills, and PrEP he had packed, despite finding nothing illegal in his possessions. Miles ended up missing his flight due to the lengthy interrogation. When he came back the next day to catch another flight, he was interrogated again, and this time they found evidence of his career in the porn industry. "This officer decided to be a lot more thorough with his search and interrogation," he said. "After about two hours of intense interrogation, he found evidence that I do porn on my personal phone. Then, over the next two hours found evidence of escorting on my other phone." Miles said that they never found any evidence of prostitution, but noticed text conversations he had with past escorting clients — who he mostly provides with a boyfriend experience — and current text messages where he was trying to make plans with a client in Las Vegas. "Escorting is an exchange of money for time spent with an individual," he clarified. "For example, most of my clients are looking for 'the boyfriend' experience. Or someone to go to dinner with. Prostitution is an exchange of money for sexual services. There was never any evidence of prostitution on my phone, only escorting." Getting banned from the U.S. isn’t just bad for his career — he shoots a significant portion of his adult film project in the country — but has also damaged his personal life. "I was planning on building a life in the United States with my [future] husband, with my partner, who's American," Miles said. When asked by LGBTQ Nation what advice he would give other queer travelers, he said, "Avoid the United States at all costs. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it to put your life at risk."

Even if he were a prostitute, the government should have no right to do this to any sex worker.

K.C. Undercover: dark skinned men, light skinned women. the one dark skinned girl is portrayed as mean, apathetic, sadistic, and cruel.

The Proud Family: dark skinned men, light skinned women. dijonay, the only dark skinned girl, is portrayed as "ghetto" and "rachet" alongside her entire family. and suga mama, who can be argued is dark skinned, is portrayed as mean, cruel, and abusive. additionally, trudy, the mother, comes from an entire family of dark skinned people. yet she herself is portrayed as very much light skinned.

trudy proud's family (left) vs trudy proud (right).

The Hate U Give: the dark skinned main character starr on the cover of the book (left), vs. in the movie, where she is played by amandla stenberg (right); a light skinned biracial actor.

nina simone (singer, left) vs zoe saldana (actress, right), who played her in the 2016 biopic "nina".

stagecoach mary (right) vs zazi beetz (left), who played her in "the harder they fall".

ororo munroe (storm, center) vs the actresses that played her in the x-men movies (alexandra shipp - left, halle berry - right). and alexandra shipp, herself, is also colorist.

monster high: clawdeen wolf (right), vs. the actress that plays her in the upcoming monster high live action movie (miia harris, left). it also appears that they artificially darkened the actress' skin for the role.

strawberry shortcake franchise: orange blossom, who was lightened between her 2003 design (left) and 2009 design (right).

Doctor Who (Steven Moffat specifically)

Sherlock (Steven Moffat specifically)

Actually Steven Moffat is basically just this sentiment given human form.

A version of this happened with The Magicians, tbh. Though instead of expectation: men, reality: women it was expectation: smug nihilists, reality: mentally ill queer folks.

Arguably Game of Thrones.

If we broaden it outside of television…I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can’t help but think of every band that’s ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.

In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want–and think they deserve–the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.

They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don’t want us. And they don’t really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience’s demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.

Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn’t perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn’t a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.

And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn’t necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.

Young Justice

Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don’t want largely female audiences

#WhereIsRey (initial)

#WhereIsRey (ongoing)

Simply, they’re trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. It’s not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. It’s that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.

I’d also love to hear your thoughts, as I literally wrote it for communities like ours to read, so, thanks.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.