So I stayed up past midnight on election night. It wasn’t California returns that kept me up – California is always slow because so many vote by mail and anyway there wasn’t much on the ballot that I cared about except the billionaire tax (which unfortunately failed) and the measure to keep funding for Bay Area transit (which fortunately passed).
It was what was happening in the rest of the country. In particular, it was what was happening in Texas.
As regular readers know, I am a fifth generation Anglo Texan. And while over the course of my life I have actually lived a few more years elsewhere – first in D.C. and now in California – it is impossible for me to stop being Texan, despite knowing the history of the place far too well to not have very mixed emotions
So while I got excited about South Carolina sending a Democrat to the Senate – do you realize that this is the same seat that Strom Thurmond held for multiple years, initially as a Democrat – and the other indications that there was a blue wave (or tsunami) brewing, it was Texas I wanted to hear about.
I thought James Talerico had a shot at the Senate this time. I didn’t really expect any other Democrats to win statewide, except maybe Jon Rosenthal for railroad commissioner since the Republican had made such a bigoted ass of himself by attacking South Asian students at the University of Texas who were doing the most Texan thing possible: celebrating a football victory.
In the end, the Democrats swept every statewide race in Texas. The Senate. Governor. Lieutenant Governor. Attorney General. Comptroller. Railroad Commissioner. Land Commissioner. Agriculture Commission. All the open seats on the Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals. Open seats on the state school board.
The incoming Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court is not only a Democrat; she’s a lesbian.
Also, they flipped the Texas House of Representatives. The final results aren’t in for all the races, but the Democrats already have 77 of 150 seats.
And you know all those Congressional districts they gerrymandered to get rid of Democrats? Democrats won most of those, too. The whole Congressional delegation is still heavily Republican on account of the fact that the districts were already very gerrymandered, but they didn’t succeed in making it worse.
The state Senate is also still very Republican. But that’s it.
Thursday night at the World Fantasy Convention, I went to a panel on Fantastic California and it got me thinking, which of course is the point of going to panels.
There were a lot of stories of how growing up in, going to college in, and moving to California influenced people’s lives, but it all reminded me of something I figured out about 25 years ago:
Whatever happens in the United States happens in California first.
The thing is, when I figured this out, I wasn’t living in California – I’ve only been here 12 years. I was living in Washington, DC, and editing a legal publication on class actions. And I realized that I was heavily dependant on our three correspondents in California, because all the important legal developments started there.
You have to understand that people on the East Coast often don’t take California seriously. I mean, it’s three time zones away, and Californians who work in, say, finance, go to work at 5 am to be on East Coast time. In East Coast minds, that makes the East Coast more important.
But just as I couldn’t put out my publication without paying close attention to California cases and California court rulings, it is foolish to dismiss what goes on out here as “oh, that’s just California.”
That’s just California, the fifth (I think – maybe the fourth) largest economy in the world, the state with the largest population, the place where things happen first.
Now let me be very clear: I don’t mean only good things happen in California. Yes, California had the Free Speech Movement, the Summer of Love, and the Black Panthers (I’m a Boomer, so “the Sixties” are dear to my heart). But they also had Nixon, Reagan, Proposition 13 (which undercut so many important services by screwing up taxes), and anti-immigrant fervor (which has fortunately shifted back the other direction).
I often say that everything that’s wrong in California happened because it had Reagan first before he moved to Washington and started laying the groundwork that led to the current grifter.
I consider this a phenomenon of the last 100 years, give or take. It’s the Okies coming west after the Dust Bowl, World War II, and the explosive growth (which has been both good and terrible) out here. California was interesting before, but it wasn’t a presence.
I am now Californian enough to love many things about the place and get angry about the people who are out to destroy it. Unfortunately, those people are also in California (though they might set up their official residence in, say, Argentina), and they’re throwing money around left and right.
I think the most important thing on the California ballot is Proposition 40, the tax on billionaires. This isn’t just important for California, though we certainly need the money after the damage being down by the grifters in the federal government.
It’s important for the country. We need to show that you can tax wealth, that you can rein in the billionaires who think they should run the world. And for all those who don’t think this proposition is good enough: it’s a foot in the door. And we really need to start jamming that door open.
What worries me is that as California goes, so goes the nation. If we pass this tax, other taxes on the ultra rich will start popping everywhere. If we don’t, status quo politicians will continue to compromise with the broligarchs.
I don’t see the leading edge of the country moving to any other place anytime soon. So if you’re in California, vote for Prop. 40 (and against 41 and 42, which are meant to undercut it).
And if you’re in the rest of the country, pay attention to what happens out here. Our collective futures may depend on it.
In newly independent US, Americans debated whether public executions taught a lesson or just showed off the state’s power to destroy
A 1747 print of a public execution at the so-called Tyburn Tree, a gallows in London that served for hundreds of years as a site of hangings. William Hogarth
The proposed livestream of Nidal Hasan’s execution by a U.S. military firing squad gives an old question a new audience. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist convicted by a military court of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3, 2026.
Whether the broadcast will proceed remains uncertain. But as a historian of the early American republic, I recognize a familiar expectation behind it: that watching someone die will teach a useful lesson. Americans at the republic’s founding debated that premise — and doubted what the lesson might be.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution of Nidal Hasan will be a public event when the sentence is carried out later this year.
The power of government
On Aug. 17, 1797, New Yorkers gathered to watch John Young hang.
An English musician and music publisher struggling with debt, Young had shot and killed Robert Barwick, a deputy sheriff taking him into custody. Barwick left a widow and nine children.
Governor John Jay, a leading Federalist who placed greater faith in firm government than in popular judgment, had authorized the military presence after the sheriff reported fears of a rescue. But Jay also wanted the execution to impress its witnesses with the power of the government carrying it out.
Solemnity, however, proved difficult to arrange. The military escort played lively music as the procession made its way to the scaffold. One newspaper critic thought an uninformed passerby might mistake the spectacle for “the celebration of some Festival.”
Soldiers formed a square around the gallows. The crowd remained orderly. Young addressed a few words to the minister, sang a psalm “and with great composure pulled his cap over his face,” reported one newspaper. Then, before the assembled witnesses, he was hanged.
The display did not impress everyone as evidence of governmental strength. Writing in the “Greenleaf’s New York Journal” two weeks after the hanging, “A CITIZEN” accused Jay of “letting down the dignity of civil authority.” Calling out troops for the execution suggested, among other things, “a wantonness on the part of the Executive.”
To this critic, the military presence advertised executive excess. The spectacle could undermine the very authority it was meant to affirm.
That point mattered in a republic still deciding how its authority should differ from that of the European monarchies that Americans portrayed as corrupt.
In the 1780s and 1790s, American reformers took particular aim at England’s “sanguinary laws” – statutes prescribing death for offenses ranging from murder to relatively minor theft.
By 1776, nearly 200 offenses carried a possible death sentence in England. These laws had accumulated piecemeal over generations, but American critics portrayed them as a single system with bloodshed at its center.
England’s punishments became a measure of what republican justice must overcome. Independence required Americans to reconsider how readily, and under what circumstances, their own governments could take a life.
The contrast was partly an exercise in national self-definition. Americans cast English severity as evidence of an old, corrupt political order and imagined their own laws as rational, proportionate and suited to free citizens.
In practice, the distinction was harder to sustain.
Nevertheless, the aspiration entered constitutional language. New Hampshire’s 1784 Constitution declared a multitude of sanguinary laws “both impolitic and unjust.” Punishment’s proper object was “to reform, not to exterminate mankind.”
Reform did not necessarily mean abolition. In 1796, New York reduced the number of crimes punishable by death but retained capital punishment for murder.
Young went to the gallows the following year. Even if Jay favored milder criminal laws, he was able to see a carefully staged execution as a necessary assertion of public authority.
No guarantee of lesson learned
Other Americans pressed further.
Benjamin Rush, the Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, opposed executing even murderers. His argument went to the heart of the relationship between government and the governed.
“Capital punishments are the natural offspring of monarchical governments,” Rush wrote in 1792. “Kings consider their subjects as their property.”
For Rush, a republic that put citizens to death still acted like a monarchy, treating citizens’ lives as its own to dispose of. Calling the killing a lawful punishment did not make it less an act of revenge.
A related debate concerned the audience. Even Americans who accepted capital punishment could doubt the wisdom of making it public.
In 1787, Rush had already questioned what spectators actually learned from watching others suffer. Sympathy for the condemned could turn them against the government: “We secretly condemn the law which inflicts the punishment – hence arises a want of respect for laws in general,” he wrote in a pamphlet titled “An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments upon Criminals and upon Society.”
Alternatively, repeated exposure to cruelty could harden spectators, encouraging the very violence that punishment was supposed to deter. “How often,” Rush asked, “do we find pockets picked under a gallows, and highway-robberies committed within sight of a gibbet?”
The crowd could pity the condemned, admire his composure or simply enjoy an outing. Gathering witnesses did not guarantee that they absorbed the intended lesson. The complaint about festive music at Young’s execution exposed that uncertainty: Officials could stage the spectacle, but they could not control its meaning.
In this publication, Benjamin Rush asked whether ‘we secretly condemn the law which inflicts the punishment.’ NIH
What harm does this prevent?
Young’s execution gives the proposed broadcast of Hasan’s death a particular resonance. The crimes, jurisdictions and audiences differ, yet the ambition remains recognizable: to make one person’s punishment teach everyone else a lesson – and demonstrate the government’s strength.
Cruelty concerns more than the pain inflicted. It also lies in treating a person as fodder for exposure, humiliation and public instruction. The condemned person’s body becomes a public demonstration of whom the state protects – and whom it has the power to destroy.
But spectators may come for the theater of death itself, drawn by fascination with what human beings can do to one another. What officials present as instruction can become the marketing of guilty pleasures.
Cesare Beccaria, an Italian criminologist and economist whose 1764 essay “On Crimes and Punishments” helped shape American reform debates, argued that punishment could not undo a crime, only prevent future harm. Suffering beyond that purpose was unnecessary cruelty.
For Beccaria, an execution’s fleeting spectacle deterred less effectively than lifelong penal servitude. Beccaria’s alternative was harsh, but his principle constrained the state: The power to inflict suffering did not establish its necessity.
At Young’s scaffold, the state could end his life without controlling the meaning of his death. A broadcast would vastly enlarge the audience, but reach is no proof of usefulness, and curiosity supplies no justification.
Beccaria’s question thus remains: What future harm does this additional spectacle prevent? If it prevents none, what justifies it – and what does it reveal about the government that stages it?
I may have too much time on my hands. In the last week or so I have watched seven different filmed versions of Jane Eyre, trying to see how each of them handled the question of Mr. Rochester.
If you’re paying any attention at all, Edward Fairfax Rochester is a problem. He hides his wife in the attic for fifteen years. His pleasure-seeking lifestyle on the continent does not command admiration. He is sarcastic–even snarky–to the people around him. And, of course, he attempts to trick his governess into marrying him bigamously. He is not a good guy.
And yet, when the book is done and Jane admits, “Reader, I married him,” I am happy for them both.
Why is Rochester a bad guy? Let’s assume that Charlotte Bronté’s version of the story is made of truth all the way through (Wide Sargasso Sea not withstanding). If you work the text backward, Rochester is 21 when he is sent, by his father and older brother, to marry Bertha Mason in Jamaica. It’s a purely mercenary action on the parts of Rochester pere and older fils: they need the significant money that marriage will provide and they don’t care who he’s marrying to get it. Young Edward is a sacrifice on the altar of Mammon. And the Masons (according to the text) have their own reason to hurry the marriage forward–Bertha’s Creole mother is mad, and they suspect some tendencies in that direction in bride. So this 21-year-old kid is sent, under orders, to marry a woman who is a stranger to him. She’s beautiful, and he’s naive enough to think he’s lucked out. Continue reading “Considering Mr. Rochester”…
In the wake of such things as the grifter’s even more erratic than usual behavior and Mitch McConnell’s carefully managed return to the Senate, my social media produced another deluge of demands for putting upper age limits on public office. I just flew home through the San Francisco Airport, noticed they’d named the international terminal after Dianne Feinstein, and couldn’t help thinking how embarrassing and disastrous her last years were.
It is certainly true that some people who should have retired from their jobs much earlier keep hanging on. But I’m still opposed to age limits on most jobs, for one very basic reason: Human beings don’t age uniformly.
Nancy Pelosi was the most effective Speaker of the House the US has seen in decades. She pulled back from leadership posts and is now retiring from Congress, but she was very effective throughout her years in office. I don’t always agree with her, but I cannot deny her ability.
Nancy Pelosi is 86, two years older than Mitch McConnell.
The NY Times had a piece this week about the composer Thea Musgrave, whose opera Orlando, based on the Virginia Woolf novel, will premiere next year. The article starts with her working with a bassoonist on another piece and commenting that she is still learning.
Musgrave is 98.
I’ve just been at a writers retreat where the members ranged in age from 50s to 80s, with most of us in our 70s. All of us are still writing, all of us still smart. With the exception of the youngest of us, all have a few health issues that we pay close attention to, but none of them keep us from writing.
Of course, again with the exception of our youngest member, none of us have day jobs anymore. None of us want day jobs, but all of us want to write and publish our work.
In general, we are now producing the best work of our lives, because we are smart and have a lot of experience and both understand how to write and why we want to do it. What we do now is valuable whether it ever wins a prize or makes the best seller list.
I know people in their 50s who are old and stuck in their ways, people in their 60s with enough health issues to prevent them from doing a full time job. I know people in their 80s and 90s whose judgment is impeccable and who have fresh ideas. We don’t all age at the same pace.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, the biggest problem in politics isn’t that we have lot of old people in Congress; it’s that we have a lot of bad people there. Age limits won’t solve that problem.
So it’s been 25 years since September 11, and we’re awash in retrospectives, some of them even useful.
As someone then living in Washington, DC, with relatives in New York City who lived a few blocks from the World Trade Center, I was stunned and horrified, but I also had what turned out to be legitimate concerns about how our country would respond.
Which was, to put it in one word, badly.
We started unnecessary wars. We underplayed the dangers of the toxic air quality in New York, which has led to more people dying from the effects of the attack than died in the attack (and that’s not including those who died in the unnecessary wars).
And we undermined the civil liberties of the people of the United States. The New York Times has a good op-ed on that this week. I remember that happening in real time, remember feeling very angry about it.
The Department of Homeland Security – an Orwellian name if there ever was one – dates from that time. You have only to read today’s news to see how that turned out.
A month after the attacks I flew to Texas to visit family, traveling through a Baltimore airport that was crawling with armed members of the National Guard and being subjected to an absurdly long line for security. On that trip, I re-read two books: Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (also very relevant right now, though I find I can’t face it at this point) and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.
I wrote a major paper on Catch-22 in college. I’ve always thought that the major theme of the book was that Yossarian and his comrades were in more danger from what the powerful in our country were doing to get “value” from the war than from the war itself. That’s what I saw happen after September 11.
What I took from the attacks was that we needed groups on the neighborhood level ready to deal with problems in the community when disaster happens, whether that disaster is a terrorist attack, mass shooting, a “natural” disaster, or something else. I kept looking for government support for organizing such things – a way to get supplies, tools, training – but found nothing.
My desire to do something intensified with the Anthrax attacks that killed postal workers in Washington, but again, there was nothing in the way of support.
A lot of young people enlisted in the military only to get sacrificed in the unnecessary wars instead of defending the country. But there was nothing for civilians to do except “go shopping” (Junior Bush was such a fool). Continue reading “25 Years After September 11”…
Public opinion on abortion has shifted 4 years after Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade
People gather in front of the Supreme Court building following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling on June 24, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Nathan Howard/Getty Images
But four years later, one of the most impactful developments has been less visible: a significant, sustained and politically consequential shift in public opinion. In the wake of Dobbs, the debate over abortion rights did not simply return to the states. It fundamentally altered how many Americans think about the issue and how they vote.
In our recently published book, “Not Going Back: Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-Dobbs America,” we examined how and why these changes have occurred, and what they mean for U.S. politics. We believe the shift could have real consequences for the November 2026 midterms.
Post-Roe stability
Drawing on several nationally representative surveys conducted before and after Dobbs, we examined how Americans’ abortion attitudes, political priorities and voting behavior have changed in response to the most significant shift in abortion policy in half a century.
For nearly 50 years after Roe, public opinion on abortion was remarkably stable. In 1975, Gallup found support for legal abortion in certain circumstances at 54% and support for a ban in all circumstances at 22%. In 2021 – the year before the Dobbs decision – these figures were virtually the same: 48% and 19%, respectively.
Despite heated political rhetoric, most Americans held nuanced views. They were neither fully anti-abortion nor fully pro-abortion. Instead, they supported legal abortion in some circumstances and not in others.
That underlying stability shaped both policy and politics for decades. Republicans were able to rally a committed core of supporters around opposition to Roe, while the underlying constitutional right to access abortion remained unchanged.
As states moved quickly after the Dobbs decision to enact abortion bans and strict gestational limits, public opinion moved in the opposite direction.
Today, more Americans identify as pro-choice than they did before Dobbs. And, as we document in our book, more Americans are now taking absolutist positions. They support legal access to abortion in all or most cases and oppose government regulation altogether.
How Dobbs shattered the equilibrium
One of the most striking changes in the post-Dobbs era concerns who cares most about abortion. For decades, abortion was a higher priority for Republicans and those identifying as pro-life.
That dynamic has now flipped. In both 2022 and 2024, Democrats and pro-choice Americans were more likely than Republicans to say abortion was a top political issue shaping their vote. In our book, we document how in both 2022 and 2024, pro-choice Democrats were especially motivated to vote and remained highly loyal to Democratic candidates.
At the same time, the considerable minority of Republicans who support legal abortion found themselves politically cross-pressured, meaning they experienced conflicting political influences.
Drawing on multiple nationally representative data sets, our book reveals that roughly one-third of Republicans hold views on abortion that do not align with the official pro-life position embraced by their party. They either identify as pro-choice or support legal abortion in at least some cases.
It was one thing to identify as a pro-choice Republican when Roe guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion. After Dobbs, however, Republican electoral victories could directly result in abortion bans and other restrictions. That makes partisan choices far more consequential.
We found that cross-pressured Republicans had lower turnout rates and were more willing to cross party lines, reflecting the growing tension between their abortion views and their party’s position. Given the size of this group, that presents a serious challenge for GOP candidates.
A group of abortion-rights supporters gather in front of the Supreme Court on June 28, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Nathan Howard/Getty Images
Reshaping US politics
At the same time, efforts to find a middle ground on abortion have proven difficult. Republican legislators in North Carolina and Virginia, for example, have sought to position policies such as 12- or 15-week bans as a reasonable compromise.
That might have worked in 1990. But public opinion has shifted in ways that make this strategy increasingly untenable. Our research shows that most Americans, including Republicans, do not see these “moderate” policies as meaningfully different from more restrictive bans.
One reason may be that, in the wake of Dobbs, abortion restrictions have become concrete rather than abstract. Extensive media coverage of women denied care during miscarriages, severe pregnancy complications and other medical emergencies has highlighted the consequences of gestational limits. This leads many Americans to judge these policies by their practical effects rather than the specific week at which abortion is prohibited.
In addition, our original survey data reveals that many Americans have only a limited understanding of how pregnancy is dated. That makes distinctions between six-, 12- and 15-week bans less meaningful than policymakers often assume.
Another major change is the emergence of a gender gap in abortion attitudes. For decades, men and women held remarkably similar views on abortion. That is no longer the case.
Since Dobbs, women have become significantly more supportive of abortion rights than men. For example, 56% of women say abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, compared to 41% of men.
This new gender gap reflects both women’s experiences with pregnancy and abortion and the changed policy environment following Dobbs. After the ruling, the consequences of abortion restrictions became far more immediate and tangible.
Rather than accepting these new restrictions, many women reacted against them. As abortion policy moved sharply to the right in many states, women’s attitudes moved in the opposite direction. This has resulted in substantially greater support for abortion rights.
Our survey research further finds that a better understanding of human reproduction, including how pregnancies are dated, is associated with greater support for legal access to abortion.
Taken together, these changes have reshaped American politics in ways that advantage Democrats. Abortion rights played a key role in the 2022 midterms, contributing to stronger-than-expected Democratic performance nationwide.
And it continues to shape voter motivation and turnout patterns heading into future elections.
‘Not going back’
That said, abortion is not the only issue that matters in modern U.S. politics. In the 2026 midterm elections, the economy and partisanship – especially in an era dominated by President Donald Trump – will remain central to electoral outcomes.
Abortion alone is unlikely to determine any single race. But it has altered the political landscape in ways that will matter this November and beyond.
The phrase that gives our book its title – “Not Going Back” – captures this moment. The changes we document are not temporary reactions to a single Supreme Court decision.
The stability that defined abortion politics for half a century is gone. The new normal is a political landscape in which abortion rights have become both more widely supported and more politically consequential. They are motivating Democratic voters while creating new tensions within the Republican coalition.
Perhaps most importantly, Dobbs transformed abortion from a constitutional question into an electoral one. As abortion laws became substantially more restrictive, public opinion moved toward greater support for abortion access. The 2026 elections will offer another test of how the U.S. responds when public policy and public preferences move in opposite directions.
This story was produced in collaboration with Rewire News Group, an independent nonprofit media outlet that covers reproductive health.
So last weekend I was trying to get a Covid vaccine and came up against a frightening development in our society. And no, it wasn’t the fact that after six years and change we are still dealing with this damn virus.
I have major travel plans in September, so I wanted to get the vaccine a couple of weeks before my trip so I’ll be at peak protection when I get on a plane. Travel plans have generally dictated how I schedule my shots, which I get every six months.
I checked the CVS website, but couldn’t find any appointments at the one nearest me. Then I checked Walgreens, and they had appointments through August 23, but not afterwards. The new vaccine drops in mid-September – while I’m traveling – so I assumed they weren’t going to order any more vaccines if they ran out.
So I made an appointment for August 22 at the closest Walgreens. Walgreens sent me 9 messages via text and email confirming my appointment and reminding me of it.
I showed up right on time, only to be informed that they didn’t have it. “But I have an appointment,” I said. The pharmacist looked at me like I was crazy for assuming I could get a vaccine when I had an appointment. He didn’t apologize, but told me I could complain to “corporate.”
I got a cancellation text 10 minutes after I left the drugstore.
I was furious, of course. Fortunately, a friend mentioned that a major grocery chain in her area still had vaccines, so I decided to check with Safeway.
Their website said they did and that they took walk-ins, so I walked over on Sunday afternoon to get one, only to discover that they don’t do vaccines in the last hour the pharmacy is open (no, the website doesn’t mention that).
But the clerk confirmed they still had the vaccine in stock. I asked if they would still have it Tuesday – I had plans on Monday – and she said maybe, but “corporate” might decide to have all the vaccines shipped back at any moment.
And that’s when it hit me, with that second reference to “corporate,” that big companies control a large part of our lives these days without us having any right to push back at how they do it.
I took the Safeway clerk at her word, changed my Monday plans, showed up when they started doing vaccines at 10 am, and got my shot from a very nice pharmacist. But “corporate” was still pinging in my head. Continue reading “Under “Corporate’s” Thumb”…
This is so important to those affected by LGBTQ+ stigma and those who love them, I am reprinting it in its entirety (under Creative Commons license).
Childhood experiences of LGBTQ+ stigma can harm romantic relationships decades later – psychologists explain how to reconnect with yourself and your partner
Childhood rejection, discrimination and bullying can affect your well-being as an adult. If your friends, family or community pushed you away because of your sexuality or gender, these childhood experiences of prejudice can also affect your future relationships.
We found that a factor called internalized stigma can notably affect the romantic relationships of LGBTQ+ people. Internalized stigma refers to when society’s negative views and biases toward a part of your identity shapes how you think and feel about yourself. This can influence how you view romantic relationships and how you interact with your romantic partners.
People with higher levels of internalized stigma report more conflicts and less satisfaction in their relationships. Research suggests that internalized stigma can negatively affect key aspects of romantic relationships that keep people satisfied with their partners, including trust, connection and intimacy.
Internalized stigma can also shape how secure you feel in romantic relationships. For some, these negative self-views can lead to difficulties with commitment and more conflict between partners.
In our study of 80 LGBTQ+ couples, we found that childhood emotional wounds tied to sexuality or gender can carry into adulthood, shaping a person’s relationships in their 20s and 30s.
Specifically, LGBTQ+ adults with more childhood anti-LGBTQ+ experiences reported less trust in their partner and reduced emotional and sexual intimacy – key ingredients in a healthy and satisfying romantic relationship.
Overcoming childhood trauma
It’s worth remembering that these negative beliefs about yourself don’t develop overnight. It also takes time to recognize and change how you react to them.
Exploring whether your symptoms of guilt, shame and low self-esteem are related to internalized stigma is a critical part of beginning to navigate it. Recognizing and pinpointing where these beliefs came from, which may include negative messages from society or your family, is an important first step.
Show yourself patience and acceptance after difficult moments, such as when you’re feeling undervalued, alone or ashamed because of your sexuality or gender. Adopting mantras such as “I am enough,” “I can overcome hard things” and “May I be kind to myself and give myself compassion in this moment” is one way to practice self-affirmation.
You may also want to explore how shame and guilt around your sexual or gender identities can show up in your relationships. Intentionally carving out ways to support and connect with your partner can create emotional safety by building intimacy and closeness.
Importantly, stigma and shame don’t have to become the only thing you and your partner talk about. Strengthening positive aspects of your relationship can help you continue finding ways to bond.
Finding and giving support
Talking with your partner or other community members who have had similar experiences may provide a sense of connection.
Online self-directed relationship programs that are tailored for LGBTQ+ relationships may be more approachable. Find trained providers who are LGBTQ+ friendly, affirming and willing to advocate for your needs.
Lastly, recognize that the onus for change is not solely on you and your partner. Change also needs to come at a societal level. You can empower yourself and others by connecting with other people in the LGBTQ+ community, including mentoring LGBTQ+ youth. Many face similar experiences, and you are not alone.
I did a podcast last weekend that focused on how the broligarchs miss the point when it comes to most science fiction, including the stuff they cite as influencing them. This was BCube Press podcast hosted by Cliff Winnig with myself and Wendy Shaffer as guests. You can watch it here on YouTube.
We had a great discussion, but there’s so much to be said on this topic, plus right now I’m reading Gil Duran’s new book The Nerd Reich, so I’m thinking a lot about what these technofeudalists are doing to undermine democracy based on their half-baked philosophy and complete misunderstanding of both science and science fiction.
(I’ll write about The Nerd Reich when I finish the book, but I can already tell you it’s worth your time even if you, like me, are obsessed with the subject and already know a lot of this. Duran is a journalist by training, so he marshals his facts and writes with clarity.)
Back when I was in college – an absurdly long time ago – there were four SF/F books (or series of books) that pretty much everybody read: the Foundation trilogy, Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune, and the Lord of the Rings. Those books didn’t get me into SF/F – that came later when I discovered the great feminist SF of the 70s – but they were part of the overall 60s-70s culture.
What gets me is that the broligarch crowd pretty much read the same books – and clearly missed the point of most of them – even though the oldest of those tech-adjacent guys is probably a generation younger than I am and many of them are millennials. And of course, Foundation and Lord of the Rings had been around quite awhile before my generation found them.
Now I’m not dissing those books. I embroidered a quote from Foundation on the backpack I carried when I went hitch-hiking across the country (“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”) I worked as a children’s book buyer for Grok Books (which didn’t have a great SF section, but did have that particular novel).
And I re-read the entire Lord of the Rings during law school finals every semester.
Dune was fun if you were smoking a lot of dope.
But you know, all those books were written before any of these guys were born. And there’s been a hell of a lot of good science fiction written since then. Yet these books still seem to attract their interest. Continue reading “The Broligarch Misreading of Science Fiction”…
