Then in September, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed and the nature of the story @manishakrishnan.bsky.social was writing completely changed. Despite the fact that the suspect in Kirk's shooting, Tyler Robinson, is not trans, trans communities got a lot of blame from the right-wing rage machine.

Brutality matches are hosted by Karl Kasarda, who runs InRange TV, a YouTube channel that embraces the idea of the Second Amendment being for everybody, but especially minorities. Trans and queer people made up about a quarter of participants.

🔗 www.wired.com/story/the-ha...

When I checked back in with my sources, there was a wariness and a sense that the temperature couldn’t be turned back down. But they also wanted their stories to be heard. Read the full story (with beautiful photos) here:
www.wired.com/story/the-ha...

That left me with grappling with a lot of questions, including how to tell this story in a way that wouldn’t add more fuel to the right-wing rage machine.

People there embraced a range of subcultures, from polyamory, to hacking, to cosplay. But there was an undercurrent of fear, bolstered by the current administration’s attacks on trans people. And after Charlie Kirk was killed, trans people and leftists were scapegoated and that rhetoric ramped up.

The event organizer, YouTuber Karl Kasarda, is a pariah in the broader gun community, because he champions the Second Amendment for minorities. He’s been doxed and the subject of years-long threads on hateful forums like Kiwi Farms

That led me to a Brutality match in rural Idaho this summer, a shooting competition made up of intense physical challenges, cosplay, and a leftist theme: a workers' rights uprising on Mars.

I was also curious how they were creating community after either being rejected by or rejecting mainstream conservative gun culture. I wanted to go further than just talking to liberals with guns

The letter adds that site-based age verification methods have “failed to achieve their primary objective: protecting minors from accessing age-inappropriate material online.”

🔗 www.wired.com/story/pornhu...

thank you! Really frustrating and silly, there’s nothing approaching nudity in it. The gay sheep are also so cute lol.