Published February 21, 2025

Apologies for how disjointed this update is. Last night I had the most terrifying nightmare I can ever remember happening. That was a few hours after a horrific incident that set back my already rapidly declining health. After working on this post for three days, I am publishing it in as-is condition. Three days ago it felt super important to tell you these things. Now they feel like half a thimbleful of liquid tossed into a stormy sea.

Rebecca Traister came to Portland in October 2018 to read from her latest book. She signed my copy of “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger.”

I posted about that night on social media. I probably fangirled a bit too much about it in the weeks and years since. It was a special night.

She’s high on my list of favorite writers. She and Rebecca Solnit are the top two named Rebecca. I fangirl about them often.

I’ve never met Rebecca Solnit, but she thanked me on Facebook years ago, and I walked around with a goofy smile on my face for days.

Rebecca Traister? Well, I was pretty giddy after meeting her in 2018.

The end of this post explains what she wrote to me. That can wait. Right now you should read her story, “Woke Is Not to Blame for Trump.” Its subhead says: “How a misdiagnosis of the 2024 election has calcified into self-defeating conventional wisdom.”

I could not have written it. I would not have written it the way she did. As a transgender woman and not a cisgender woman, i come at this from a different perspective. No one is going to have a snapshot of 2024 that tells it all, but because of the misdiagnosis she cites, she’s saying things that need to be heard.

Especially this:

The walk backs of a party scared of its own woke shadow create silence that the right is happy to fill with grotesque fairy tales: schools that “trans” kids without informing parents; career women dooming the nation by failing to reproduce at a fast enough pace; immigrants eating cats and dogs. Republicans’ ghoulishly persuasive passion for identity politics, left unchallenged by Democrats, surely greased the slide of young and minority voters to the right over immigration and crime and transphobic fictions.

There’s no perfect explanation for where we find ourselves in February 2025. The reasons are many. But her story is a must-read.

I still believed in a future in 2018

I’d been “out” as trans for a year and a week when I met Rebecca Traister. I’d just gotten my ears pierced. I missed the original airing of the final episode of the fourth season of “Better Call Saul” to attend the book reading. That’s how big a deal it was to me.

Powell’s is the most amazing bookstore I’ve ever seen. If you come to Portland, go. You won’t be disappointed.

The reading was great. I’d listened to podcasts and interviews with her during her book tour, and the night at Powell’s tied it all together. The book and audiobook are treasures.

I stood in line to get my copy of the book personalized and to give her a bookmark I’d had made for the occasion.

As always, there’s a story about this.

About a month earlier, I’d seen a tweet of hers and quote-tweeted it with a comment.

She gave it a “like.” That pleased me, and I hatched my plan to turn that into a bookmark. After I gave it to her (keeping an identical one for myself), she signed my book with what will always remind me of the tweet.

And of course, I fangirled again that night when she followed me on Twitter.

It’s fun to remember that night. We didn’t know, but the worst was yet to come.

A bit of an update

I’m still on leave, still in bad shape. My health, mental and physical, keeps getting worse. Last night a thing happened that I will tell you about only once it’s resolved, if it ever is. Monday will be a critical day.

There’s too much going on, but if you have time, you should read this story about the USPS. And this one:

trump wants to be able to tell the USPS not to deliver ballots to blue states www.washingtonpost.com/business/202…

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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) February 20, 2025 at 6:47 PM

I try not to sound preachy about it, but a lot of people I know have a fundamental misunderstanding of racism and racists. (They are the people most likely to think there’s such a thing as “reverse racism.”) It’s worth noting that the USPS is one of the largest employers of Black women in the country. It’s worth noting how many cuts and layoffs across all aspects of government benefit white people and harm everyone else.

I suspect there’s a lot of willful ignorance and denial about it all.

Black women keep trying to save the country, but we don’t do our part.

Jasmine Crockett is shredding this solo. But it’s past time for the rhythm section to enter this song already.

— realKyleKeegan (@realkylekeegan.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 6:29 PM

Meanwhile …

The FIRST thing Kluwe says against MAGA is that they are trying to erase trans people from existence.

Did you doubt me when I said our community could lead America back from the brink by serving as a symbol of all the freedoms Americans are losing every day?

This is exactly what I meant.

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— Evan Urquhart (@evanurquhart.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 4:04 AM

Chris Kluwe is my new favorite former Minnesota Vikings player.

Just gonna drop this here

Books designed to be read only by human eyes are different from books designed to be read by machines, which is why Google will tell you that the phrase “shake my booty” can be found in an 1863 English translation of Don Quixote.

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— Q. Pheevr (@q.pheevr.ca) March 24, 2024 at 2:27 PM

Drop this here

Carville: USAID spent $41 billion the federal budget is 6 trillion. Actually comes to something like .014%. So take that and put it against the 6 trillion and see what you have done when your president is responsible for more federal debt than any president in the history of the United States.

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 6:28 PM

And drop this here

Steve Bannon, after calling for Trump to be President for life, did a Nazi salute on stage at CPAC.

The few remaining conservatives have a choice: either leave the party and obstruct it—or choose to be complicit.

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— Nick Hennen (@newsman.bsky.social) February 21, 2025 at 12:25 AM

We’re in big trouble. Pick a fight and get to work if at all possible.

Sending love.

If you appreciate what you find here and feel generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading. Here’s a butterfly for you.

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Featured photo by algobonito98 via Shutterstock.

Note: This story is a rambling mess, but it’s the best I can do. I spent three days on it. I don’t have sustainable energy. If I can turn the corner, I’ll do better.

The post You should read this Rebecca Traister story in New York Magazine appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published February 16, 2025

There’s nothing left in the tank. Every day there’s too much going on for me to give you updates. Maybe you’re aware of the big picture, maybe you aren’t, but things are bad.

Especially for trans and nonbinary people. It will get worse for everyone else.

If you’d like to keep up, the people and their websites below will take care of you. Please support them if you can. They are doing work that I can’t do right now.

My blogroll on the home page and the sidebar of each page has got you covered for other types of content.

I will continue to add to this list when I have the energy. If you want to know things before they hit traditional media outlets, I recommend creating an account on Bluesky Social and following all of these people and people they follow. Otherwise, you’ll fall far behind.

And I suppose I should warn you: If you live in the Trump/Musk/Vance/Fox/Breitbart/etcetera bubble, you might be shocked at what’s really going on.

If you’ve heard about all those 150-year-olds receiving Social Security and you believe that, I might be talking to you.

Correct. If the birthdate field contains corrupt or mismatched data, it defaults to 1875-05-20, which serves as a flag. May 20, 1875, is the day the international standards and metrics treaty was signed. Everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.

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— Karly Kingsley (@karlykingsley.bsky.social) February 14, 2025 at 9:53 PM

Do I sound bitter? You’d better fucking believe I’m bitter. And mad. And struggling to tell you how much I’m struggling.

Anyway, on with the thing.

Transgender news

Assigned Media

Erin In The Morning

Gender Analysis

Gillian Branstetter

Katelyn Burns

Katy Montgomerie (YouTube)

Julia Serano

Out of Your League

Riki Wilchins

Sydney Bauer

The Bugbear Dispatch

The Present Age

The Trans Agenda

The Transfeminine Review

Transgender Report

TransLash

Trans Writes

Uncloseted Media

What the Trans?

Current events and history

Law Dork

The Handbasket

Wired

As I said, the blogroll has other links you should check out.

A little bit of everything

Anxiety Shark

Charlie Jane Anders

Davis Ex Machina

Frequency Illusion

Saratonin

Tru

And for inspiration

“We’re not going anywhere. What’s more: we’re expanding.”

Nearly a dozen of Minnesota’s foremost experts on gender-affirming care collaborated on this beautiful op-ed in today’s Strib. No paywall.

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— Stacey Burns (@wentrogue.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 11:17 AM

I’ll continue to update the list when I’m able. If you want to be added, please use the Contact form to send me a note. Thank you.

A bonus

I wrote about the worst people in the world, charting the depths of their depravity and vastness of their incompetence, and offered some thoughts about the opportunity presented by their failure to acknowledge reality and their refusal to access any form of human virtue.

www.the-reframe.com/the/

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— A.R. Moxon (@juliusgoat.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 6:29 AM

One more bonus

A trans woman sent this message to me. I wanted you to see it.

Hi Carly –

I saw your post today about your tank running dry, and wanted to reach out, just to say something. 

As a preface, in your piece in January about your experience following the acquisition of The Athletic by the NYT, you had a line that jumps out to me: 

I spent two months trying to build the one sentence that makes people realize I am a person, that I matter. Somewhere between one sentence and dozens, I hope there are at least a few words that elevate me from political talking point to human being.

I don’t know you, but you are my sister, and I am facing a similar struggle now. I want to summarize my many feelings – to acknowledge the battles we face right now as trans women, to shout about the value of trans life, and assert my genuine desire to help you keep fighting – but I have to balance that with the reality that I don’t know you personally, and that I can very well imagine any kind of outreach feeling ignorant of your circumstances and inauthentic… 

So at the very least, please know that I have much to say, and want to offer my support, but I am erring on the side of (relative) brevity… 

I hope that you stay. I think you should stay.

There are people who are fighting against us. There are people who are fighting against themselves through us. And of course there are people who are completely unaware of our fight. All of these people are fucking ignorant. They will never know the joy and the inner peace that we’ve cultivated for ourselves by seeking, claiming, and then assembling our identities. They are simply lost. I don’t think most of them will find their way to anything meaningful. 

And of course there are the (fewer) people who convince others to fight us in order to gain power from the artificial fervor. They find those lost people and steer them from group to group. These people are sociopaths. You are worth more than all of them put together.

Transition taught me so much about love. I love myself, and from your posts it seems like you love yourself, too… You certainly should. You fought for yourself in order to get to this place, and it’s such a beautiful thing. And around the world, across time there have been so many of us who have done the same thing. There’s this beautiful tapestry of lives that exist because at some point we each loved ourselves enough to become the people we knew we should be.

I know things are so hard right now. And I can’t imagine how difficult your specific circumstances are. But in the midst of it there’s so much joy. At the risk of being callous by making any recommendation at all right now, I hope that you might be able to consider engaging in trans art. For myself, I had been in a haze since the election, and then read an 800+ page book about trans people written by a trans author in the UK, who is channeling her anger into some of the most thoughtful, hilarious, and meaningful (to me) fiction I’ve ever read. It pulled me out (and I think did the same for a lot of our sisters on Bluesky).

Anyway, I’m rambling. I hope you can get through this. I’m just one American, and I’m currently living halfway around the world, but if I can help in any way, please let me know.

I mean, wow. This deserves a better response than my brain can come up with right now, but I didn’t want that to stop me from showing you. Such a beautiful sister.

Grateful cry, sorrowful sigh

No one in my family has come close to saying things like that to me in the seven-plus years since I came out, nor have they given me any indication they have tried to educate themselves about us. It’s little wonder trans women mostly stick together in this world, I have come to conclude.

That’s all for now. I am having problems forming sentences. I’m terribly broken.

Sending love.

Thank you for reading

If you appreciate what you find here and feel generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading. Here’s a butterfly for you.

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Image by Billion Photos via Shutterstock.

The post I’m all tapped out. Here’s a list of people to follow and whose excellent work you should read appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published February 14, 2025

There are so many horrible things that have happened since I last posted. I can’t keep up. Not enough energy to bring you current on things you may have missed.

So here’s my Valentine’s Day gift to you. You’re welcome.

Never forget.

But if you have to, forget that these people are in charge of the country now.

Sending love.

Image by Didecs via Shutterstock.

Thank you for reading

If you appreciate what you find here and feel generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading. Here’s a butterfly for you.

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The post Never forget appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published February 10, 2025 

There was a football game Sunday, I’m told. I didn’t watch one second of it. That’s the first Super Bowl I’ve ever missed. I was in bed, unconscious.

The morning hours wore me out. I raged myself to sleep.

The New York Times Editorial Board wrote and published that with a straight face.

I won’t be providing you a gift link to read it for free. You’re on your own.

Why not? In case you’ve forgotten, here’s a refresher. Also, you won’t want to miss this update on the person who wrote the defense of JK Rowling mentioned in my story.

I have thoughts. Lots of thoughts. But no energy. So let me allow others to speak.

I got mad at the New York Times after their editorial board released an opinion piece condemning Trump’s anti-trans EOs and I decided to write about how the paper of record laundered transphobia into the mainstream and paved the road for Trump’s transphobia. www.patreon.com/posts/nyt-ed…

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— Katelyn Burns (@katelynburns.com) February 9, 2025 at 10:10 AM

Here’s more from Katelyn Burns on Patreon. You should read every word, no matter what it costs you. Most cisgender people I know don’t have any idea about any of this.

The New York Times has a lot to do to win back the trust of its now former trans readers and journalists. Hire a trans opinion writer now. Quote trans people in every trans-related news hit. Investigate reporters who are accused by innocent parents and Times sources of “betraying” them. Enforce your own editorial standards on your trans-related pieces.

There is certainly plenty of shame to go around when it comes to the treatment of trans people in today’s society, but it’s the Times’ leadership who needs to feel more of it.

Carly, you should be grateful. The Times finally came around! Well …

For those thinking the NYT grew a spine, hold tight… even in this piece they equivocate on sports and trans youth care.

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— Erin Reed (@erininthemorning.com) February 9, 2025 at 1:38 PM

2. The most recent article from the NYT editorial board is almost laughable. The idea that a paper which has stirred up so much hate and discriminatory policy towards the transgender community would even think about publishing this and not an apology is unthinkable.

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— Erin Reed (@erininthemorning.com) February 9, 2025 at 10:14 AM

3. The board compares Trump’s policies to past dark chapters in American history—opposition to civil rights for Black Americans, or the backlash against same-sex marriage in the early 2000s.

What the piece omits, however, is the paper’s own complicity.

— Erin Reed (@erininthemorning.com) February 9, 2025 at 10:14 AM

Today the @nytimes.com sought to whitewash its central role in laundering anti-trans falsehoods and turbocharging anti-trans attacks nationwide. My reporting showed that editorial leadership was aware of this depravity which is why this disingenuous piece can’t erase the scale of what they’ve done.

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— Imara Jones (@imarajones.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 6:41 AM

Any regrets? Apologies. Nope.

Nope.

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— A.J. Bauer (@ajbauer.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 4:56 AM

The absolute gall of the Times for publishing this after spending years platforming every anti-trans voice in the country and pushing for moderates to turn their back on these people when they needed them most.

Shameful doesn’t cover it. I don’t know how they sleep at night.

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— Jared Yates Sexton (@jysexton.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 7:57 AM

i know we all think the NYT op-ed board issuing a “hey wha hoppen with trans rights” piece is a little rich but don’t worry: about halfway through they make sure to tell us it’s okay to keep Just Asking Questions

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— mattie lubchansky (@mattielubchansky.com) February 9, 2025 at 5:47 AM

The idea that there should be a public debate about the appropriate medical care for a minuscule population of children remains one of the most absurd lies that these liberal transphobes, NYT edit board included, tell themselves. No there shouldn’t! It’s not an appropriate matter for public debate!

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— Julia Carrie Wong (@joolia.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 8:16 AM

To show “fairness,” the Times had to rely on a lot of links to coverage by other outlets. That’s what happens when your own coverage is mercilessly slanted the other way, whether covertly or overtly.

I noticed none of the links in the screenshotted portions go to a story from the New York Times.

In the full editorial there are a few NYT stories linked, but far fewer than you’d expect from an outlet which typically does not link out if they can avoid it.

(From www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/o…)

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— Evan Urquhart (@evanurquhart.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 9:41 AM

Here’s more from Evan:

If you want to understand what happened at the New York Times this story of mine from last month broke some news and also includes an overview of where we are and how we got here, linking others’ good work.

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— Evan Urquhart (@evanurquhart.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 9:46 AM

My friend and former NYT editor Billie Jean Sweeney and I are on the same page.

From me: Sulzberger and the newsroom leaders Kahn and Ryan saw trans ppl as prey. They could demonize us to gain favor with the right, and it could be done at no cost to them.

— Billie Jean Sweeney (@billiejsweeney.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 10:20 AM

I think this holds up pretty well

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— Ian Boudreau (@ianboudreau.com) February 9, 2025 at 3:59 PM

Fascinating how the New York Times editorial board finally acknowledges this, after participating in it for years.

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— Jack Turban MD (@turban.bsky.social) February 8, 2025 at 7:00 PM

Also available at Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/121944…

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— Parker Molloy (@parkermolloy.com) February 10, 2025 at 11:07 AM

It makes as much sense to have a public debate about trans healthcare as it does to have a public debate about hip replacements. You almost certainly know nothing about it and so you should shut up. The government knows nothing about it and should leave it to the experts

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— Katy Montgomerie (@katymontgomerie.com) February 10, 2025 at 7:17 AM

Honestly, I think this is true. Even some of the fake both-sides anti-trans “centrists” are sort of mumbling and upset with the way Trump is enacting the same policies they’ve been calling for for years.

Trump just makes bare exactly what’s behind anti-trans sentiment.

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— Erin Reed (@erininthemorning.com) February 11, 2025 at 11:28 AM

This from the Times’ newest “We didn’t mean it that way!” article, seems to sum your points pretty succinctly

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— girlsrockmovie.bsky.social (@girlsrockmovie.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 3:14 PM

Note it’s the “tone” that bothers her…as you say, gauche.

— girlsrockmovie.bsky.social (@girlsrockmovie.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 3:19 PM

It’s giving “Shhh! Not so loud…”

— lobleytea.bsky.social (@lobleytea.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 6:17 PM

The best part is that once trans rights become normalized liberals will act like they were fully supportive of them all along. Just like they’ve done with every other social cause for the past 200 years.

— Rodrigo Aguilera (@rodaimonia.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 11:44 AM

“Yes, we kind of wanted trans folks to be erased from society. But now that Big Scary is working on just that, but with snarls and chest beating and the dead-eyed billionaires grinning along, and it makes us look kind of like assholes. And we don’t like that.”

— Diana Boggs (@dianaboggs.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 11:51 AM

This is the Lincoln Project’s entire thing, as well. They aren’t opposed to most of his policy aims, they’re concerned that the brazenness and lack of proper procedure makes it more likely they’ll be ridiculed in the streets and have their meals spat in when they eat at restaurants.

— Fix your hearts or spork (@strivingally.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 1:19 PM

The Big (Beautifully Black) Game

As for the Super Bowl, I later saw the best parts, the beautiful celebration of Blackness — in New Orleans — with layers that surely sailed over the heads of so many.

Fabulous

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 5:47 PM

No doubt it made the right people uncomfortable.

Of course they’re mad. For fifteen minutes on the largest possible stage they were reminded that there’s a lot of power that they don’t have.

— Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a resolute floof (@evanbernick.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 6:10 PM

They might as well not have existed. That’s what they can’t stand. Defiance through joy that very aggressively signals that ultimately they do not matter at all and won’t last.

— Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a resolute floof (@evanbernick.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 6:16 PM

It was powerful. An American flag literally built and displayed on the backs of Black people, as several people noted last night (including one who has requested that their posts not be displayed on other sites).

No more martyrs, Kendrick Lamar seemed to say. Resistance to Trump is an “all of us” project. Dave Zirin looks at the brilliant, cooperative political art that was the Super Bowl halftime show.

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— The Nation Magazine (@thenation.com) February 10, 2025 at 8:18 AM

“They are pieces of soggy Wonder bread, reduced to attacking brilliance because it exposes their mediocrity. It’s just stupid to think some addled 78-year-old misogynist caked in orange is the peak of masculinity.”

I wrote about Kendrick Lamar Superbowl performance– its subversive messaging about America being a rigged, deadly game of survival– especially for Black people.

But we need to stop pretending revolution is going to come from celebrities. It’ll come from us.

Gift link here: wapo.st/42JVBs6

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— Karen Attiah (@karenattiah.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 8:44 AM

I’ve been updating this, as you can probably see. I’m probably asleep right now. I don’t even know if this is coherent, I’m so wiped out. Sixteen hours of sleep every day and I can still barely move.

I won’t be holding my breath waiting for an apology from the people running The New York Times. I’m going to need all the rest and recovery I can get to figure out a way to return from my medical leave (mental and physical health) to work for a company they own and control.

Photo by Matthew Nichols1 via Shutterstock.

Thank you for reading

If you appreciate what you find here and feel generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading. Here’s a butterfly for you.

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Further reading

Chris Geidner: Breaking: Defense Sec orders immediate “pause” on trans medical care, trans military recruits

Samantha Riedel: It’s Pathetic That Dems Can’t Stop Nancy Mace From Saying the T-Slur in Congress

Parker Malloy: The New York Times Discovers Its Conscience on Trans Rights — to an Extent

Amanda Marcotte: “‘Women’ is a banned word”: Trump uses trans panic to strip rights from all women

Margaret Sullivan: We need righteous indignation and truth-telling, not complacency

19th News: Federal Office on Violence Against Women removes funding opportunities from website

Jezebel: Rape Crisis Centers Say Federal Funding Disruptions Are Impeding Life-Saving Programs

Michael Harriot: Why White People* Didn’t Like Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Performance

*Not all white people. Some exclusions apply. Void where caucasity prohibited.

Finally

As is my custom, I will not be attending so they can’t accuse me of leaking information from it. I say what I have to say openly, with my name on it, at the risk of termination. Although I am on leave, they still own my life.

The post The New York Times really has some fucking nerve appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published February 6, 2025 

You’d think I have enough to deal with right now. It keeps getting worse. Here’s a short outline of what’s going on.

• Unless my healthcare provider and United Healthcare reach an agreement before then, my entire health and trans care will no longer be in network after March 31. That would be a disaster for me.

• If what I’m hearing is true, any week now my apartment building will be given notice that it’s going to be acquired and demolished for an infrastructure project. I will join 40 or so others in the building in having to find a new place to live within 90 days. We pay around $700 less than fair market rate per month, so this would be a major financial blow, even if we are able to find one of the best deals.

• My car insurance premiums just went up almost double.

• Other costs … well, you know.

• Things that I use that used to be free are going to cost money now, and become more complicated.

• Racists and Nazis are running this country. As the Super Bowl draws near, the NFL isn’t even pretending to put up a good fight.

• Although I am still on leave from work, I don’t see that I have much of a future there when I return. I just got my performance evaluation to cap off my fourth year there, and while the words from my boss were all positive, I’m still an entry-level copy editor. It’s absurd, and the restructuring of our team comes with some pretty scary prospects for me.

• It’s not a good time to be a trans woman in America.

• It’s not a good time to be a senior trans woman in America.

This says a lot of what you should know

Katelyn Burns has some things to say about being a trans journalist in America.

If I had the energy, I’d post about 20 links for you with news about what’s happening. Every day I am shocked by how little cisgender people know about what’s happening to us.

But I don’t have the energy. Maybe soon. Right now it’s all too much for me. It took me two hours to write this. My hands are shaking worse than ever.

(Well, okay, there’s this, from 2018, where anti-trans people admit that the “bathroom predator” scare isn’t based on reality.)

My nightmare last night was one of the worst I’ve ever had. I woke up screaming. I woke up from flinching and convulsing throughout the night. I’m damaged.

Right now it feels like I’m beyond repair.

Everything about me feels like it’s shutting down.

The punches in the gut are becoming too much. I don’t know what else to say.

Featured image by ArtMari via Shutterstock.

Thank you for reading

If you appreciate what you find here and feel generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading. Here’s a butterfly for you.

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The post It’s all too much for me now. I’m shutting down in every way appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published January 31, 2025

Content warning given with loving concern: references to suicide and suicidal ideation, hate speech and anti-trans campaigns. Protect your peace.

Government reports and resources that you and I paid for and have a right to see and access freely are being purged from CDC and other .gov websites. The erasure continues.

I spoke to former Treasury and OMB officials, and they said Elon Musk accessing government payment systems could give him the power to selectively turn off payments. They described what this really means in very clarifying terms. See below:

newrepublic.com/article/1910…

[image or embed]

— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) January 31, 2025 at 11:51 AM

This photograph was taken two days ago at the FBI Academy in Quantico and submitted to the NYT under the condition of anonymity.

If a picture is usually worth a thousand words, this one is worth millions.

[image or embed]

— Zach W. Lambert (@zachwlambert.bsky.social) January 31, 2025 at 10:55 AM

Elon Musk’s friends have infiltrated another government agency: the General Services Administration.

His former employees are trying to use White House credentials to access GSA’s tech, giving them the potential to remote into laptops, read emails, and more:

[image or embed]

— WIRED (@wired.com) January 31, 2025 at 3:30 PM

If you don’t understand how bad things are, you need better information sources. If you don’t think things are bad at all, your information sources have poisoned you and you are in for one hell of a shock.

Meanwhile, as is often the case after I write something, I discovered someone else’s words that say the same, essentially, but better.

That’s from 2017.

What I wrote a week ago was:

Republican and Republican-adjacent people I know who’ve practiced Catholicism/Christianity a la carte forever seem to think they can similarly justify voting Republican, telling me this week that people vote GOP for all kinds of reasons, not necessarily hate. But I say that anyone voting Republican since 2015 has no excuse for not knowing what they’ve enabled and are complicit in.

If you hang your vote on one or two issues that are important to you, you’re not electing a percentage of a person. You’re electing the whole person and all of their agenda. You’ve effectively co-signed everything they believe in and will fight for. If you decided your 401(k) or your religious beliefs are more important to you than protecting me and other vulnerable people from harm, own it. Own your shit.

‘Nobody joins a cult’

That’s a quote from something I wrote in 2018. It’s a story looking back on Jonestown, and on the greatest fact-checking lesson of my life.

If you still support this man and his administration, how much more do you need to see? His response to the air disaster this week was so awful, so cowardly, so hateful, it should be the end of this now and forever. But I’ve said that about him dozens and dozens of times since 2015. And yet, he got more popular in so many circles.

A lot of people I know belong to a cult right now, one that will do far worse damage than Jim Jones did in 1978. I don’t know what it will take for them to wake up.

In the few hours a day I’m able to stay awake, I’m frightened as never before. Nightmares wake me, screaming, to remind me that there’s no peace for me, not awake, not asleep. People urge me to stick around, to stay alive, but for what? What will the world look like in a year, in four years? A week from now?

News today that the person who died by suicide Monday in Syracuse was wrapped in a large transgender pride flag hit hard for reasons you can probably understand.

If you don’t know about what the Nazis did to trans people and trans research way back when, you’re way behind.

I’m begging people to see what’s happening.

If you appreciate what you find here and feel generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading. Here’s a butterfly for you.

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The post Historians have a word for it, and that word is: ‘Nazi’ appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published January 28, 2025

What’s that saying? Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it? (Don’t get bogged down in exact wording, lest you prove my point. It’s been said many times in many ways, and we all know what it means.)

And we’re doing it again while the country collapses around us.

What was that we all just saw? Was it this? Was it that? Who can say for sure?

This column in the Irish Examiner gets to the guts of it.

Then there’s this:

It is a deliberate nudge and wink to the far-right ideas you actively hold, bathed in a self-defensive layer of irony from which you can always wriggle, on the grounds that it was just a hilarious joke. “I’m an edgelord, not a Nazi,” you continue to tell yourself even as your every viewpoint calcifies toward the politics of Genghis Khan.

You should read the whole thing. And this:

Nazi bar

We are turning into a Nazi bar, and we are pretending it’s not happening by asking the same questions. Was that really a Nazi salute? How can we know what’s in a man’s heart? Pay attention to what Musk says, where he says it, and what groups perk up when he says it.

These questions about defining what we saw represent a lot of things, but they are also distractions designed to help steal our energy.

We can no longer see the forest for the trees, and that’s the point of the games they’ve been playing with us for years. Does what they did cross the line? We ask that while we slide inch by inch, yard by yard, into authoritarianism and fascism.

They keep moving the line.

Did we learn anything at all from the past? Do we remember it?

Image by Colored Lights via Shutterstock.

Thank you for reading

If you appreciate what you find here and feel generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading. Here’s a butterfly for you.

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The post We are doing it again, and this country is slipping away from us while we lose the plot appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published January 25, 2025

Today marks four years to the day since my first day of work at The Athletic. I started on Monday, January 25, 2021.

Today I have the same entry-level title I had that first day: Staff Editor.

After four years on the job, five pay raises in the last three years, good performance reviews each year, almost 42 years in journalism and a decade-plus of intensive learning about editing trends and best practices for readers in the 21st century, I haven’t cracked the next level: Senior Editor.

My new lawyer friends wonder why that is. They have some thoughts, considering that I’m a transgender woman working for a company that’s been owned by The New York Times since early 2022.

Yes, The New York Times that I wrote about in a story I published 12 days ago.

I feel pretty senior

My entry-level status after four years is especially curious given the context. I could rattle off a list of names of people with more senior titles than mine who’ve been alive for fewer years than I’ve been in journalism. Or who were born only a few years before I began my first newspaper job.

The only two people on my seven-person team still with entry-level titles are me and someone who joined it many months after I did.

The remaining context will have to wait for another day, whether it’s my day in court or another day. But it’s a good question: Is it because I’m a trans woman?

I’m not the only person who’s trans or nonbinary and under the Times corporate umbrella who wonders why they haven’t advanced.

I know it’s not because I’m old and out of touch. I’m much more liberated from zombie rules and other 20th century stagnation that marks The Athletic’s editing philosophy than most of the people with more senior titles than mine.

Today’s anniversary finds me still on leave, still struggling to function. If you have read the related story linked above, you probably understand why.

I didn’t want to let today’s milestone pass without comment. It’s … significant.

Sending love.

Thank you for reading

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The post After four years, still an entry-level job title appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published January 24, 2025 

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is a name I’m guessing most of you have heard by now. The backlash to her comments this week brought me here to ask, “What has happened to so-called Christians? What has happened to the Jesus people? To us as a country?”

Here is what the worst person to ever graduate from Captain Shreve High School had to say about her.

Calling upon the powerful to show mercy is radical ideology now? I ask again, what has happened to this country?

Shameful, indeed, but the shame is all on Speaker Johnson and his party.

If I thought I needed to actually explain what’s wrong about what he and other “Christians” are saying about her, I wouldn’t be able to find the words. Luckily, there are Bible passages that cover that subject matter.

Bishop Budde told Time she’s received death threats since her sermon asking Trump to show mercy to LGBTQ children & undocumented migrants (time.com/7209222/bish…). That’s sadly not surprising given animosity against her by Trumpian pastors & pundits (publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/brave-serm…)

[image or embed]

— Brian Kaylor (@briankaylor.bsky.social) January 22, 2025 at 1:26 PM

If her name sounds familiar …

“In June 2020, amid the George Floyd protests in Washington, DC, Budde criticized the use of police and National Guard troops to forcibly clear protestors from Lafayette Square”

Wikipedia

— Bob Booten (@bobooten.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 6:49 PM

“As bishop, Budde oversaw the removal of the Washington National Cathedral’s stained-glass panes honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.”

Wikipedia

— Bob Booten (@bobooten.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 6:47 PM

And most memorably:

Republican and Republican-adjacent people I know who’ve practiced Catholicism/Christianity a la carte forever seem to think they can similarly justify voting Republican, telling me this week that people vote GOP for all kinds of reasons, not necessarily hate. But I say that anyone voting Republican since 2015 has no excuse for not knowing what they’ve enabled and are complicit in.

If you hang your vote on one or two issues that are important to you, you’re not electing a percentage of a person. You’re electing the whole person and all of their agenda. You’ve effectively co-signed everything they believe in and will fight for. If you decided your 401(k) or your religious beliefs are more important to you than protecting me and other vulnerable people from harm, own it. Own your shit.

Trump: “Transgender operations, which have become the rage, will occur very rarely.”

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 23, 2025 at 8:21 AM

Editing to add something I read after publishing this:

“Being a good person isn’t about being harmless when times are good. It’s about being ethical when times are not.”

I think about Jesus overturning tables and conclude that he wouldn’t be popular with many of today’s “Christian” leaders in America. When asking a powerful leader to be merciful prompts anger and is called “radical ideology,” something has gone horribly wrong.

We are in trouble.

Featured image by Olga Gold via Shutterstock.

Thank you for reading

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The post If I hear one more Jesus person complain about what she said … appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published January 21, 2025

There’s a Jimmy Buffett song from 1985 called “If the Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me.” It tickled me when I saw the title, and every time I heard it.

It’s been playing in my head since the election, and at a higher volume since the hour of the inauguration. I figured out why.

A thing I’ve been saying lately is that “I’m worried about you” rings hollow to me when said by people who’ve consistently voted for the party that wants to eradicate me, to make my existence illegal. It’s not as if it was a secret the past few years.

There’s no room in my life for people who were complicit in what’s happening, who helped put my neck on the chopping block. Whatever they did to help me in the past, they undid by giving aid and comfort to my enemies. If you vote to feed me to the lions, you will not be on my visitor list while I’m imprisoned. I won’t be taking your calls.

If no one answers, it’s me.

Yesterday was a bad day

As you might imagine, Inauguration Day was awful, although it began with love.

My oldest niece, the only person in my family who reached out to me the day after the election (and the only one to ask how I was doing in the first 50 days after the election), checked on me again Monday. She sent me money and encouraged me to have a self-care day.

My brainstorming about that was derailed when the nurse who gave me my B12 injection spilled some of it on one of my favorite tops. The stain was blood red. Fitting. I spent a good bit of the afternoon dealing with that, and then I took a long nap. Several, really. Self-care day, soon. I promise.

My niece says she’ll never stop supporting me or fighting for me. I wish she weren’t an outlier in my biological family, but she is. No one else says such things. Two Canadian-born women who years ago claimed me as their sister, and themselves as mine, have lovingly stepped into that void. I’m eternally grateful.

People texted me on the no-good, very bad day. No one called. Would I have answered?

How could I? I don’t exist.

You need to know how alone most trans people are in their struggles. I’ve read so many of their posts. I’ll be reading more of them after publishing this. I’m one of the lucky ones. More than a few cisgender people around the world have asked how I’m doing. They’re helping me cope with the horror. So are trans people. Lovely, kind trans people.

They’re just not related to me. But they’re family now.

I had a bad dream

The night before the inauguration, I dreamed I was forced to travel to a convention with men’s clothes only. I couldn’t find the floor my hotel room was on, and no one would help me, not even the staff. I felt so awful and alien and started crying in the hall. There’ll be more dreams like that one, I imagine.

There’s no good ending to this story. Just an awkward stop and punctuation mark if I remember to put it there.

If the story just ends, it’s me.

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