Pete Hegseth responded to all this with the smirking, adolescent sadism of a schoolyard bully pulling the legs off of a spider. Now juxtapose this with the horror experienced by a source who saw the imagery of the men being blown apart in the water:

newrepublic.com/article/2037...

marginalized people are targeted for censorship *regardless of their opinions* because the main thing people want to prevent them from saying is simply "I exist."

"viewpoint diversity" is bullshit because *the main danger to free speech is not the silencing of unpopular opinions.* The main danger is the *silencing of unpopular people.*

the way to protect free speech in this instance is to show solidarity with the trans person being silenced. it's pretty straightforward.

the student was trolling her instructor; her instructor tried to respond in good faith, the student enlisted the right wing hate machine and got the instructor put on leave *for being trans.*

I'm truly disappointed that people are engaging with this without taking into account that this is an op.

I'm really tired of people pretending that this is about whether or not the essay was bad! It's not. It's about trying to purge trans people from society. The student called the TA a fucking demon, man. Do you know what that's like?

This entire thing is an op to try to turn this student into the next Riley Gaines grifting on trying to purge trans people from society. It's insane that anyone is taking this at face value.

Has been more years for me but still feeling this. The grief, the anger, the loneliness of the journey and all that separation entails, but never giving into regret. It sucks, but I guess it's the cost of freedom.
Happy to be a reader/sounding board/supporter of whatever you decide to write.

"It's a hoax" is the ultimate TTC. And a decade into this it's still working. He's never made to explain what about (insert scandal-of-the-day) is fabricated or untrue. He just knows he'll get credit for a response, and when your only goal is to survive one news cycle at at time, it's good enough.

The nice white church-goin’ folks back home who chose this like what he is doing very much and want more of it no matter how much it hurts them or their community, so long as they feel like they’re sticking it to some imagined caricature of a liberal in a faraway city. Spite is a helluva drug.

They love him because he hates the people they hate and gives them permission to be their worst selves. That’s it. Everything else is rationalization to deny their responsibility for anything he does that looks bad.

They may be able—they just don’t want to. Because that means questioning their choices, which implies they have agency, which is something they must never admit. They are innocent: always right, always good, and the rest of us, their enemies, are not, and are always to blame for their bad choices.