blimey-trouble at mill-prick news goes weird.

[lonelywater]

www.reddit.com/r/transgender/comments/1evyjfm/pinknews_refuses_to_cover_trans_issues_on_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I think you've hit the nail on the head. We know from the census that about 0.5% of the population identifies as trans, and that that is probably an overestimate arising from the poor wording of the question. (This compares to about 3% identifying as gay - still not a lot, but male homosexuals often have money to spare because they mostly don't have children.)

There are two main demographics identifying as trans. One is teenage girls, who obviously don't have a lot of money, and middle-aged men, who clearly do have more money, but are there enough of them to make a difference? How many of them even read Pink News?

And finally, associating yourself with the T can be bad for the brand identity, as we saw with the Bud Light episode in the US when they took on Dylan Mulvaney as a brand ambassador.

Possibly what wee penfold was hinting at in his sweaty interview with Beth thingummy.

Agree, though, that I think they've really damaged their brand, possibly beyond all repair. They may still have lots of funding, but it'd be interesting to see how they are perceived now among the general public. I don't think it would be favourably.

Beth Rigby, sorry. Shite memory for names.

I suspect that Labour getting into office and KS declaring that he did not think males with transgender identities should access female toilets and Streeting and KS supporting the Cass report left many without the support they expected.

For how long did they all refrain that it was all the Tories fault and that life would be perfect with Starmer. Well, Starmer played a blinder and still, who really knows what he will allow to happen under his watch.

I think these groups that supported children transitioning have little place to go except to accept the Cass report. If the NHS cannot get a study through ethics evaluation to start, it will fully support what Dr Cass carefully wrote and what clinicians and other groups have been raising the alarm about for years now.

The low quality of professionalism of the executive leadership in these organisations was also going to backfire on these groups. When you scratch the surface, these people are ideologues and are trying to sell philosophical belief. It was never something that reflected material reality. The lesbian, gay and bisexual sexual orientations were materially real and, as so many of us have pointed out, didn’t require any other groups rights and needs to be deprioritised for those orientations to be supported in society.

Meaning it could be nothing but ideologues and true believers who were managing these organisations. And emotional pleas were only ever go so far.

When your grass roots is supported by mostly masked males behaving in ways that people are now pointing out as unacceptable in aggression, intimidation and violence and you are defending these people or at least not having quite words within appropriate ears that this should stop, what the fuck did those groups think would happen?

Operation: Let the speak has been going strong and people are really beginning to understand what is driving this group. The combination of the Cass report, the ramifications of Isla Bryson, and sport (Thomas, Semenya, Hubbard and the boxers to name just a few) have been paradigm shifting events.

The language shift has been remarkable in the past couple of years, since when? Bryson? Thomas (he’s a man?) But once Twitter removed the censoring, and JK Rowling tested the Scottish hate crime changes and called her abusers ‘men’, and the Scottish police confirmed they weren’t going to act, it has been a watershed on language.

Then we have had the ‘you don’t need gender dysphoria to be trans’ move that is a huge fucking misstep. Because now we have a group who is demanding language to accommodated to their demands purely because they want it. Again, it leaves nothing but philosophical belief as the commonality.

Now with the doubling down on the boxers being ‘cis’, they have even shown there is nothing meaningful to that term to the much wider population.

This has always been a house of cards built on sands and these groups and their leadership tried to convince the world that it was a fortress to be defended. I cannot see how they can claw back ground on public perception and support.

That was an outstanding interview! I always smile when I see it.

It's a piece of performance art.

Would it be ironic if people waving huge flags couldn't see the direction the wind is blowing?

chortle!

I think the Dylan/Bud debacle has been central to this - advertisers have seen without question what can happen if they alienate their core market. Add in the fact that the real face of trans is coming out now to the eyes of the general public. It's not just pretty-passing-TW such as Monroe anymore, but the likes of Isla and Imane. The sex offenders and cheats.

This. Plus a level of emotional incontinence that means every thing is up for challenge. No comments, discussion, meeting or thoughts are allowed without an over the top response. And that's modelled by the alleged "leaders" - just look at who organised the protests outside the FILIA conference? Look at the unhinged protests outside the inaugural meeting of the Lesbian Project or any Let Women Speak meeting.

Aggression, abuse, hostility, threats of violence and sexual abuse - Every Single Time. This now does not go unnoticed by the general public and the media.

Fat chance of that. Stonewall is a completely busted flush, with no possible way back.

There's a comics YouTuber who says the rational target market for the industry is divorced dentists - let's say the median customer is a 50-year-old man who's got enough disposable income to continue his childhood hobby and splash out on things like variant covers, rare collectors' items and memorabilia.

That obviously can include the pink pound; comics in particular has long had a HUGE fanbase among gay men who grew up loving stories about heroes like Peter Parker who were put-upon schmucks in their everyday life but who had exciting and colourful secret identities.

It's never been very popular with girls and women. That's just a fact of life, like men not reading romance novels. No harm in trying to attract some, though - if they go to see the movies and they like the cosplay they might be a potential audience.

But orienting your business towards attracting 20-year-old broke communists who don't buy your product - which sounds like your median trans or NB customer - makes no sense at all.

It's all a bit like the Body Shop, isn't it? Lose sight of who your customers are, and it will bite you on the bum.

I think the statistics were that trans people are much more likely to be unemployed and living in poverty than the general population.

And yes they are much fewer in number than gay men and women.

The market never was trans people. It was people who saw themselves as allies.

But as the bandwagon moves to the next righteous cause and the Cass Review kills the illusion, there's no where else to go.

Yes. And it's no coincidence that the comics industry has undergone its own mini crises in recent years with a catastrophic fall in sales of certain usually best-selling series: the reason is said to be that the creators came under pressure by the publishers to be more 'inclusive' ie 'woke'. Hence more 'queer' and 'trans' characters being shoehorned in, politics du jour crammed into plots, and of course the execrable new series launched with a plus size superheroine.

Needless to say all these efforts bombed because the central audience of straight white males aged 25 - 55 don't want that sort of stuff in their comics. Not cos they're bigoted, just cos they don't read comics to be educated on postcolonial queer theory.

And the 'new' audiences that the publishers had perhaps hoped to reach are all either broke, have spent all their spare cash on cross-sex hormones, or...just don't really like comics.

I was into fantasy roleplaying games for years, went to conventions & so on.

One reason I stopped was that things in that industry seemed to be heading the same way.

Fantasy gets invaded by fantasy ;)

Yes. You can see it even with gay storylines, where they know there are lots of gay male readers.

Marvel wanted a gay X-Man. They already had Northstar, who's been out gay for years, and is a fan favourite who's been woefully underused. They could have put a top writer on a Northstar book and really hyped it. Instead they took Iceman, a character who'd been rampantly straight for 50 years, and turned him into a one-dimensional caricature of a camp gay man that read like it was written by a 1970s homophobe.

Meanwhile, DC have taken a very weird approach to the successor generation of characters. Superman, in his Clark Kent guise, is writing anguished op-eds about white privilege; Superboy is a mincing twink. Batman is a depressive sad sack; Robin is a mincing twink.

Don't even get me started on how they write lesbian characters.

Comics doesn't have a diversity problem, it has a pandering problem. It isn't alone in that.

This is all true of the Marvel movies as well.

Im all for representation, but only when it’s done with a bit of subtlety and grace, not when it’s clearly shoehorned in because some exec has decided to set targets.
For example, I thought Black Panther was handled rather neatly. A plausible reason was given for why he had not been previously known, and there were a few good jokes about African/first world realtionships.
Captain Marvel, by contrast, felt as if someone had ordered an extra hyper-powered female hero as there were not enough (that’s true, but there were already female heroes who could have stepped up).
Right before the climax of a surprisingly well handled, decade-long story, Marvel decided to tell us that the story we’d been following wasn’t true, and that a Deus ex machine was now ready to step in as needed.

As for the last few movies …

I was thinking of Young Avengers, which is held up as the prototype for woke comics. In a way I'm not surprised that the breakout characters are Hulkling and Wiccan - writing a teen gay couple was groundbreaking at the time, even if they suffer from the usual problem of gay characters being nice but incredibly bland.

But the first run of YA had a great example of writing in the character of Patriot, the grandson of the original black Captain America who's been airbrushed from history. It's good writing because, apart from his love for his grandfather, he's not a very likeable character. In fact he's a massive jerk who treats his teammates terribly. But he grows and becomes a hero.

That character seems to have disappeared completely, and I don't think they'd dare to write him like that now.

😬

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9q4zvwldvo

Though learning that the staff were often pissed does help to explain some of their output. The allegations of sleaze and misogyny, if true, helps to explain some of the rest.

Ha! As we all know, getting hammered at work is always a winner.

I read a hilarious TRA thread the other day where someone frothing about something women had done used a link to a Pink News report and was roundly chastised for it.

Yes, but is it an aromantic leopard...? We need specifics.

If you do that, does that mean you're onaniromantic.?