Stronger Than You

many problems are caused by the mindset that the world is divided into good people and bad people and the bad people can be "found out" and removed, eventually leading to a utopia containing only good people.

"It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told the children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."

--Jingo, by Terry Pratchett

There's a great book on this called "Nickle & Dimed".

Nickle and Dimed! Barbara Ehrenreich is a queen, I love her books!!! That one is amazing, and she also did a similar book on white collar work called Bait and Switch. She is such a sharp observer of the indignities and impossible demands of neoliberalism, and isn't afraid to get her hands dirty.

Rhianna Pratchett confirming her father wouldn't be a """gender critical""" activist (whatever the hell those GCs stand for) if he were still alive

The GCs are Terfs. A specific type of transphobe. Quite a few British celebrity got recruited to their ranks and they have the money and clout to do a lot of damage unfortunately.

Terry passed away before Rowling started her downward spiral and played a significant role in creating the current toxic atmosphere around Trans rights in England . It is good to see that his daughter ,who is also a writer, stands up for human rights.

That’s despicable trying to “recruit” someone who’s DEAD. Not to mention there’s NOTHING in Pratchett’s books—including the ones of essays, articles, and speeches—to suggest he join in if he was alive.

And obviously his own kid would know his private opinions so hopefully the assholes will see her tweet and back the fuck off.

(GC stands for “gender critical”, when you see that it usually means that you’re talking to/about terfs who are trying to rebrand their image).

For those of you who are wondering who else the original tweet is referring to, they are talking about Margaret Atwood, a very prominent feminist author (probably best known for The Handmaid’s Tale). Because she is a feminist the terfs assumed that she’d naturally side with them, and it came as a massive shock (for some reason) when she very publicly opposed and humiliated all of  terfdom.

But yeah I don’t know how terfs can possibly get through Discworld books without any kind of self-awareness but apparently they do. I’ve also seen them talking about how the Wives in the Handmaid’s Tale are all trans women (solely based on the fact that they are infertile). If you know anything about the plot or even the basic premise you’ll know how ludicrous that suggestion is.

Terf rhetoric basically revolves around throwing shit at the wall and then crawling around in anything that sticks, but the underlying transphobia is always present.

Rhianna Pratchett is the best.

“Terry Pratchett” is now a trending topic on twitter and everyone is just slamming the people who claim he would be transphobic. It’s been really nice to see

Also there’s this

And this. Bless @neil-gaiman

I’d already seen most of this on Twitter, but the Tom Hatfield tweet was new to me and got some laughs.

Also, this is the one that made me get all teary: