#opeds

Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

In a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is defending his company’s attempt to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which would create one of the biggest media conglomerates in American history.  The proposed merger is opposed by a coalition of Democratic attorneys general representing 12 states. They argue that the combined media company would substantially reduce competition in the industry and is in violation of federal law against such mergers. In his column, Ellison contends that much of the opposition comes from fears of how he would interfere with the content at CNN, which is owned by Warner. Ellison claims that despite the close ties between his family—his father is billionaire Larry Ellison—and the Republican Party, fears of editorial interference are overblown. “[W]hen it comes to our news operations, I do not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views. I believe that news should be based on facts and truth,” Ellison wrote. This is not a credible claim.

[...] Moving to the right has been a ratings loser for CBS, with news broadcasts hitting record lows in viewership. The concern that Ellison plans to give CNN a similar treatment were voiced by longtime CNN contributor Christiane Amanpour in May at a journalism conference. “I’m concerned based on what’s happened to the other things that he has taken over already, like CBS News … hemorrhaging viewers, probably hemorrhaging money, this ideological realignment of CBS and the destruction—potentially—of ‘60 Minutes,” she said of Ellison. Ellison’s op-ed is a sign that despite his family’s billions of dollars and their connections to Trump, he is very aware of the widespread disapproval of his meddling in CBS News. He is using one of the world’s biggest and influential media platforms to gaslight the public on his use of CBS News to promote right-wing propaganda, and he is banking on misleading the world so he can increase his power and influence.

Daniel Villarreal at LGBTQ Nation:

When a transgender female track athlete recently placed first in a high school track meet, beating her second-place cisgender female opponent, Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby publicized it by going onto Fox News and accusing the trans athlete of “pushing many, many of our young women out of the way in their ascent to the podium.” Now, the trans runner’s cis opponent is speaking out against Libby, saying that her “ugly” and “hateful” actions spoiled an otherwise happy occasion. “Libby … recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run … to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first,” Anelise Feldman, the cis freshman student-athlete runner at Yarmouth High School, recently wrote in a letter to the Portland Press Herald. Feldman noted that, at the track meet in question last Friday, she ran the fastest 1,600-meter race that she had ever run in middle school or high school track, earning varsity status by her school’s standards. She added that the happiness she felt in completing her race wasn’t diminished by either her second-place finish or the fact that someone else finished in front of her. “I don’t feel like first place was taken from me,” she wrote. “Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bưlly who is using children to make political points.” Libby went onto Fox News last week to complain about the trans athlete’s first-place finish. Fox News noted that Stark-Chessa, the trans athlete, placed fourth in the state for the girls’ 5,000-meter cross county race after previously finishing 172nd among boys before her social transition. The right-wing media outlet also said that Stark-Chessa won a podium spot in Maine’s High School State Nordic Skiing Championships this past February.

This is how to respond to anti-trans bullies who complain about the “erasure” of women’s sports: Anelise Feldman, the 2nd placed cis girl finisher to the trans girl in a track meet, slammed Maine State Rep. Laurel Libby (R)’s anti-trans bullying ways in a letter to the editor in the Portland Press Herald.

See Also:

If you have been sent here, there is a chance that the sender is safe guarding their mental health. Please respect that possibility. Whatever their personal reasons may be--burnout, feeling overwhelmed, not able to give this subject the time and attention it deserves at the moment of sending, etc.--they did send you here for a reason. Please read through, watch videos, and use this opportunity to further educate yourself before broaching the subject again.

What’s this masterlist for?

This is by no means a complete guide to all things Harry Potter, JKR, or Hogwarts Legacy. This is merely meant as a starting point. A place one may come to educate themselves on what the trans community has to say, or what the issues at hand are. 

Once more for the people in the back, this is coming from a trans/nonbinary/GNC perspective.

Twitter Threads:

One Tweet Summary of Why Trans Inclusion in Hogwarts Legacy is Meaningless

(Author’s note: this is the category most likely to receive future edits/inclusions. Due to the nature of Twitter, it’s nearly impossible to find old threads. In fact, I’m having trouble finding them now.)

YouTube:

Death of The Author and JKR

Defining TERF

History of Transphobia in Cinema/TV

Op Eds and Articles:

JKR is Harry Potter, and the Issue of Continued Relevance

A Breakdown of Commentary/History

Summary of What Point They Completely Missed

On the Topic of Boycotting (with brief, incomplete summary of transphobic history)

A Brief History of HP games, WB commentary, and Confirmation WB Does Not Own the IP--JKR Still Profits

Why Trans Character Option is Tokenism

A Little More Info on Surrounding/Outside Controversy, Mentions of Games That Did Better

General Write Up with Quotes

Reddit Pulling Receipts (another masterlist)

Latest Robert Galbraith Book and Why it’s Transphobic

Stephen King vs JKR

Similarities of Inclusion Attempts Between Hogwarts Legacy and Cyberpunk 2077

Very few articles or videos that I have seen at the time of this writing have gone to any lengths to explain why mixing and matching voices to different body types is, in its own way, a form of transphobia. (Attractive women with deep “male” voices has been played for laughs and disgust at the expense of the trans community for decades.) 

The options so far discussed excludes trans nonbinary and nonbinary people, and I have seen little/no mention of this either.

As always, feel free to share this. Send the link to anyone and everyone. Especially send it if you need to safeguard your mental health on this subject. 

Elevate trans voices.

Author’s note: This has been compiled before the game launch. Depending on level of personal burnout, this list may be edited in the future to include further resources. The goal here is to prevent burnout in myself and others in the community. Considering the difficulty of discussing this face to face/offline and the fact that that’s where my highest risk of burnout comes from, there are zero guarantees of updates/edits.

Shareable Tiny URL:

want to get your writing out there? submissions are now open for The Corduroy Pants! we accept fun and unique opinion pieces, poems, and fiction (under 15,000 words) so if you have any of those, submit them to our email at [email protected]! we’re a small digital press, and we take pieces from all styles and age groups, so don’t be afraid to submit out-of-the-box stuff, or pieces that are hard to categorize.

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

Talk about desperate …  GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas caved to right-wing activists’ demands Wednesday, saying that he now supports nuking the filibuster to pass President Donald Trump's voter suppression bill. Cornyn’s newfound support for axing the filibuster is a complete about-face from his past position on Senate procedure, and it amounts to a naked attempt to secure Trump's endorsement in his existential runoff. “After careful consideration, I support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary for us to get the SAVE America Act and homeland security funding past the Democrats’ obstruction, through the Senate, and on the president’s desk for his signature,” Cornyn wrote in an op-ed for the New York Post. For years, Cornyn extolled the virtues of the filibuster, saying that eliminating the arcane procedure—which requires 60 senators to advance bills to a vote—would eventually blow back on Republicans when Democrats regained power. "Power is fleeting, and at some point the shoe will always be on the other foot," Cornyn said in January 2022, when Democrats were trying to pass a voting rights bill. "Liberal activists may like the idea of nuking the filibuster today, but they'll soon find themselves ruing the day their party broke the Senate." Also that month, Cornyn slammed Democrats for considering eliminating the filibuster to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. 

“Not only are our colleagues trying to seize the authority given under the Constitution to the states to manage their own elections, they’re willing to take a wrecking ball to the United States Senate itself and, particularly, the Senate rules,” he said in a statement. But Trump is hellbent on passing the SAVE Act—which would force Americans to show a passport or birth certificate when registering to vote, require ID at the polls, and demand that states run voter registration records through an error-ridden database to keep noncitizens from voting.  The bill has nowhere near the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster in the Senate, and thus is expected to fail.