Magneto the Magnificent

lovely Little Joel video about the "bonus hole" fearmongering

does someone have an audio/video transcript?

@wolf-loverboy here u go

[Transcript: Video of a person speaking into a microphone. They say;

"Hey everyone, can I just talk about something that's been on my mind the last few days? So recently, Ana Kasparian, host of the left liberal YouTube channel 'The Young Turks' went on the channel of long time friends of this show, The Sitch and Adam podcast, and she had a lot of things to say. In this video I just wanna zoom in on one particular claim that Ana makes, and I'll play it now.

[Ana Kasparian speaking]: "I think that protecting marginalised communities, protecting the transgender ocmmunity, is important. However, when you move out of- or move far away from making sure that they are not denied housing, making sure they're not denied healthcare, when you move into like, these more fringe areas, of like- I mean, there was a story out of the UK this week that blows my mind, there was an LGBTQ group in the UK who suggested that instead of referring to vaginas as vaginas, because it might be offensive to transgender men, one of the potential replacements or substitutes could be 'bonus hole.'"

[Little Joel speaking] "That's right. Because the word vagina is now offensive to trans men, according to an LGBT organisation in the UK, they recommend the word 'bonus hole' as a replacement. And this, Kasparian thinks, is the kind of fringe, nonsense political position that makes normal people dislike the trans agenda.

So while I freely admit that it's funny that when you go to the glossary of this organisation, the very first word you see is 'bonus hole', what Kasparian's saying here just isn't true.

Depending on how you read her claim here, what she says is either an outright fabrication, or just very misleading. Nobody in the entire world is suggesting that some trans men finding the word 'vagina' offensive should cause us to not use the word vagina. Nobody said that, nobody's threatening you with it, no woman going to the doctor's office is going to hear the word 'bonus hole', unprompted, esape her doctor's lips.

The actual story is a lot more boring. A UK organisation called Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust partnered with an LGBT organisation with the purpose of hgelping doctors communicate better with nonbinary and trans male patients. As they write:

"Using the correct language when referring to someone's gender identity is a simple and effective way to demonstrate support and recognition. If incorrect language is used without being corrected, it can cause someone to feel hurt or distressed. This may lead them to leave and to eventually seek support elsewhere."

And later on the page suggests that some patients may want to call their vagina a bonus hole and that their doctor should respect that, not continue to use words that make their patients uncomfortable.

This is for good reason, I think! Transmasculine people often need cervic screenings and some feel uncomfortable about that, they think it will be a dsyphoric experience [at this point text pops up on the video reading "this is well studied link in description"], they think their gender identites will not be respected. It's good, then, for the health of the people living in the UK, to respect what people want their genitals to be called, and there's really just very, very little cost to it.

So, why do I care about this story, about Ana Kasparian? Well first of all, that's wild, right? That this liberal leftish commentator sees and uncritically parrots talking points from Mumsnet forums, and conservative rags."

[Screenshots of headlines are overlaid on the screen, reading:

Screenshots end.]

"I think anyone watching this interview would rightly assume she's saying here, that this org claims the word vagina is now somehow offensive, or politically incorrect, because of trans people that were trying to come up with less offensive replacements, and that is just very ridiculous - it's a ridiculous thing to say.

What I'm more interested in, though, is the rationale of this event, the justifications that Ana used both in the interview and after it, to share this quote unquote 'story'.

When some people accused her of making things up, she tweeted "I don't make things up. And my point is that this stuff really turns people off. It's not really controversial."

[A screenshot of the tweet is on the screen whilst this is being read.]

And later on, she replied to someone with this:

"The right turns these anecdotes to national stories because they know it will turn people off. My argument is to be a little more strategic/tactful to secure healthcare/housing for the trans community. That's my point."

[The tweet is on screen whilst this is being read.]

And I guess the only question I can ask here, is how? How should people be more tactful or stategic?

Ana, in this interview, talks about the 'normie women' who are freaked out about this 'bonus hole' thing, but I don't actually think this is any of their business. How people prefer to be treated by their doctors is simply not within the purview of random, unrelated cis women.

[An Ana Kasparian quote is on screen for a short duration during the previous sentences. It reads "People don't like this stuff, okay, they might not be on Twitter talking about how much they dislike this stuff, but on average every Normie woman I've talked to is like 'I can't stand this stuff'". Quote ends.]

So, what does she want people to do? If nothing bad is happening, if there is no outlandish position being described here, and if this has all been spun out of control by anti-trans journalists writing misleading headlines, then what exactly is the strategic method here?

[For a short duration the headlines from earlier are shown again.]

Make sure you never do anything a conservative will want to make propaganda out of? I just don't think that's effective at all - honestly, I don't think it's possible. After all, conservatives just began a massive hate campaign and boycott when a trans woman was in a beer ad. Like there was nothing to it at all. She just- she just was in a beer ad!

The story of Ana Kasparian and the bonus hole is a self defeating and tragic one. A person distributing hateful propaganda and asking trans activists and organisations 'why are you making me do this? Why do you look so bad? Why are you insisting on having this fringe position that I just made up?'

I want to be charitable here. I don't know much about the Young Turks but I have seen Ana speak really persuasively and intelligently, I'm sure she believes most of what I believe and I don't want you to encourage people to dig their heels in. So, I'll just say this.

Ana, this doesn't make any sense. You're here buying into media narratives that hurt trans people and your motivation in distributing these narratives, to encourage people to use more strategic rhetoric, simply does not add up.

What's really not good optics, what's really not good strategy, is acting as an extremely popular and respected leftist commentator, to lie about 'bonus holes'.

Anyway that's my interpretation, that's my take. I dunno man, I know this is like, old news on the internet at this point, but I'm still- I'm still on it, you know what I mean? I'm still thinking about the bonus holes. Ok bye." /Video ends.]

This is just like the way transphobes Left and Right freaked out about nonbinary and trans people who nurse calling it "chest-feeding" instead of "breastfeeding", when it was never about getting rid of the word "breastfeeding", just a word some nonbinary and trans people preferred to use.

Also the term "front hole" has been used by trans men and nonbinary people for a long time, I think it's great that there's a push for doctors to use gender-affirming language for their patients. Trans and nonbinary people with cervixes still need regular exams, but often don't go to the doctor because they aren't made to feel comfortable at gynecologist offices. Using language preferred by a patient helps reduce deaths and long-term complications from STIs and cancers.

hello. jew here

dont write jewish characters if u know next to nothing about us or our culture/religion pls. if u want to write a jewish character (or any character outside the scope of your personal knowledge, honestly), you MUST take the time to read about us and our beliefs, customs, etc. im not saying u have to be an expert on the torah or the tanakh or the talmud, but u need to do at least the bare minimum. and google isnt always reliable, if u have questions u should carefully analyze which websites u use. or have a jew beta your fic/writing!

im just tired of seeing “this character is jewish :) u can tell because they celebrate hanukkah” and that is it for the jewish characterization. like i get that u ppl know nothing abt judaism except for hanukkah but u HAVE to do better than that. because ur essentially tokenizing the character as ur Jewish Representation and it shows.

again, im not saying ‘dont write that hanukkah scene’, or ‘dont try writing jews at all’.

what i AM saying is that u need to actually do ur part in understanding judaism a little bit more before u decide to write a jewish character. if ur not willing to do the research or ask the questions, dont bother writing us into ur stories.

You (OP) 🤝 Me

Getting absolutely fed up with "you can tell this character is Jewish because look a menorah tehee :)" today

committed the ultimate fucking sin of being transgender online

[id: screenshot of a black screen with with text "Mature Content"; "This blog may contain potentially mature content"; with a button captioned "View blog" and red text reading "Go to my dashboard"]

In light of Tumblr labeling my self portrait of myself injecting T as "drug and alcohol use".....yeah 💀💀💀💀💀💀

Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?

They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.

Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?

So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.

And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn't compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn't sell.

And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at... putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.

If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn't have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that's what they did.

I don't know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.