Ok so today my post is going to be a little short because, well, I’m not doing so hot mental health wise and my body is feeling the effects from it. So today’s whimsical learning is about something I’ve been reading and learning about for months while I walk on my walking pad: batteries.

Holy shit there is so much going on in batteries.

First let’s try to explain how a battery works. Listen. I am not a battery engineer but this shit is cool as fuck so I’m gonna do my best. My understanding of a battery goes like this: A battery has two ends and gap between them.

Those parts are the Cathode, Anode, Separator (the thing between the two), and the electrolyte. I would say electrolyte solution but we’ll get to that.

So let’s think of it like this. Imagine a battery is a SAW trap. The charged lithium ions are basically the victims trapped in the basement. They can see out a small window that there is a shining, glimmering hopeful place just out of reach. They want to go there, so bad.

But then a switch flips, the battery is on and this tunnel opens up right? PASSAGE. Safe, sweet passage. They are thirsty for it, starved from their isolation, desperate to escape. They rush down the tunnel into that sweet sweet paradise the Cathode, giving up all their energy along the way.

Only to lose all hope again once the battery is plugged back in to charge and they are forced, kicking and screaming, back down the tunnel into the anode. “NO DONT MAKE ME GO BACK THERE,” they say. The battery doesn’t care, the battery delights in using their suffering to let you watch Reels and doomscroll.

And that’s how batteries work!

All the cool science really revolves around changing one of those pieces out for a different material.

When you hear about Silicon Carbon, Carbon, or Graphite batteries *that* is the anode they’re discussing changing. The Anode is basically these sheets of materials that trap the lithium ions between them. That’s the basement prison.

When you hear about Sodium batteries or other Lithium materials, what they’re talking about is the Cathode, where that lives when it’s discharged vs the anode when it’s charged. That’s the house they think they’re going to be safe at if they can just escape.

And when you hear people talk about solid state batteries, the holy grail, they’re usually talking about replacing the electrolyte solution through which these poor ions attempt to escape.

Currently the most common electrolyte solution is a lithium salt liquid. It is… let’s say highly volatile and might allow the lithium ions a rather violent escape route if the battery is compromised in any way.

So Solid State batteries switch out this explosive medium for, hopefully, something that allows the ions to flow through it without being an explosive liquid. You probably haven’t heard of any of these materials for constructing that escape tunnel yet but basically they are: sulfide based ones, garnet based ones, polymers (plastics) mixed with lithium slats) and so on. Perhaps the most famous one is “ceramics” which can actually be either sulfide or oxide based. It’s usually oxide based.

Point is, there’s a ton of super cool science going on out there to let you torture ions endlessly to power your devices. Happy browsing!

Today’s whimsical learning, typed from my phone while my wife plays Town to City, is about a recent pet fascination of mine: CUTTING BOARDS.

Now look, don’t cut from this post just because you’re board. *snicker*

No doubt you own a few of these things but holy moly you might be fascinated to learn there’s a lot going on here. Like some of them will fuck your knives up, some doubled as a human rights violations, and some of them fill your body with tiny shards of material and today I’m gonna be telling you about which is which!

Believe it or not the history of the cutting boards basically goes like this historically: stone slabs or tree bark for cutting, followed by mother fucking bread, followed by splintered wood, followed by plastic.

Let’s skip the oldest stuff and go to my favorite piece of cutting board history and the direct grandpa to today’s charcuterie boards: the trencher.

The trencher was a large, flat piece of bread that had been allowed to go stale. You would then use it either as a personal plate or like a communal cutting board. The juices from all of the meat and stuff would soak into the bread which would then be served to the poor or the dogs.

Not coincidentally trenchers were also used as personal plates. So… your plate and your cutting board share a common ancestor. Darwin would be proud.

Not fucking kidding. Because these were communal and folks were slicing meats and whatnot on it with their own personal knives it’s also not unlikely these helped to spread lots of illnesses to the poor since folks saliva, molds and spoiled foods were on them.

Ain’t that just fucked up?

Anyway the trencher later evolved to be made of wood because who wants to share with poor people, right? Keep it classy, France.

And that led to the use of sycamore butcher’s blocks which were weirdly prone to splitting but, alas.

Then we get to good old fashioned 1880s USA where some folks were like “man maybe we should be cutting on things that turn to splinters in our food” and they got a patent on a new kind of butcher’s block that used wood with the grain pointing upward in tiny blocks that were glued together. Because these grain was pointed upward instead of splitting it the knives would go into the fibers that would then compress back together after the knife was removed.

Which was honestly a great idea. Props. But the. We had to fuck it up in the 20th century with plastic because I guess it was cheap but they wanted you to think it was safer because the board was easy to wash and wouldn’t hold onto all those juices.

Little did we know every time you used the thing it was shaving tiny bits of plastic into your food. Also it turned out that they weren’t even better for cleanliness. Dangerous bacteria were drawn into the wood fibers and wouldn’t multiply there so… this was just another instance of the USDA talking out of its ass.

And then instead of going back to wooden blocks like sane people we decided to go with marble, glass, bamboo, teak, and tons of other things that are varying degrees of porous and will absolutely destroy your knives’ edges.

And now, finally, we’re returning to some common sense and lots of really great affordable wooden cutting boards are making it back into our homes.

Truly sometimes it ain’t worth fucking with a good thing. Also follow Joshua Weissman on YouTube his rant is what sent me down this rabbit hole weeks ago

Well ok that’s a little dramatic but like hear me out there’s this skin care wonder drug called Urea that you might know about because podiatrists recommend that shit all the time.

And for good reason. Scientists who want to sound like they’re avoiding telling you to put pee on your feet call it Carbamide but we’re going to come back to that in a little bit because the only thing I know about organic chemistry is that Carbon loves going to a kinky little biology party and bonding with anything it can.

Science is a bit of an art and way back when people used to believe in something called Vitalism. That is to say, chemistry was divided very neatly into two separate camps: inorganic compounds that can be synthesized and organic ones that cannot and can only come from living things.

And then this dude in 1828, Friedrich Wöhler, was like “Shit man let me cook up some salts to make ammonium cyanate,” and instead whatever he was cooking up turned into Urea. Sorry. “Carbamide.” Where are my manners.

Anyway, this dude should have been a poet because he writes his mentor and is all “I can no longer, so to speak, hold my chemical water and must tell you that I can make urea without needing a kidney, whether of man or dog; the ammonium salt of cyanic acid is urea.”

And for that bit of wordplay, our man goes down in history books as the first person genuinely excited to have accidentally made a tinkle in his lab.

But it gets better. Urea does some weird double duty depending on how much if you put on. You know how like… you invite a few friends over and it’s a cool hang out but then it turns out MORE of your friends show up and it turns into a completely different rager experience?

Urea is that. In low concentrations if you put the magic pee on your elbows or chapped nipples or whatever it’s a boss moisturizer that works great on your chapped hands and whatnot.

But then you add a bit higher of a concentration of it in the same place and at some point the switch flips and now it’s destroying keratin. Keratin is the tough, hard stuff under nails and also that forms on the bottom of your feet after years of not moisturizing and cleaning them properly. When the concentrations get close to 40% that stuff can be used for calluses, those annoying bumps on your arms, psoriasis, and more.

But don’t worry, there’s no big science kidney making the stuff that is great for your skin. Instead scientists ake it from scratch using a process that combines ammonia with carbon dioxide under serious heat and pressure. And the ammonia itself comes from yanking nitrogen straight out of the air and marrying it to hydrogen. So the urea in your most expensive, most beautifully packaged skincare is, if anything, less connected to bodily fluids than the urea your own sweat glands produce.

So get out there and take care of your skin by putting manufactured pee on it. Your feet especially will thank you.

Today’s whimsical learning, delivered hours later than I have been for entirely topical reasons, is about the power of video games to help with trauma and flashbacks. This is topical because the reason I was late to the party tonight was because I had a shit day in therapy and then spent the rest of the day asleep on the couch.

We’re mostly talking about Tetris, an unholy Frankenstein’s monster (if you’re a traumatic memory).

First we gotta remember the difference between a memory and a flashback. A memory is sort of an internal dialogue. It’s something you have access to and can call back. Your brain recognizes it as the past and you are aware that you and the memory are a separate thing. Because a memory is more or less summoned up it is held at arm’s length, right?

Flashbacks are the Koolaid man to Memory’s well behaved guest. They smash your fucking wall in and take over everything else that is going on in your body and mind. Your body and mind don’t know “this is the past.” It feels urgent. Now. Etc., and even if you are cognitively able to be like “this isn’t happening this isn’t happening” your body and the more primal parts of your mind are checked the fuck out.

And in 1984 someone played by Taron Egerton was like “Fuck that noise, I’m making a video game that doubles as penicillin for trauma.” He didn’t know that. Nobody knew that. Shit we’re just figuring out the extent of this.

How does it work?

Well Tetris (and presumably other visual-spacial games like Bejeweled, Candy Crush, Your Mom, etc.,) take over all the mechanisms that flashbacks need. Let me build a picture for you.

Your brain is a buffet of resources right. You are the Golden Corral. Flashbacks are that one really obnoxious guy who shows up, complains about everything, takes all the food even when the rest of your brain processes are trying to get some and generally is a loss for the establishment.

Tetris sorta does the same shit tbh, but it’s not as ultimately harmful to you. Tetris is the well behaved family that visits the Golden Corral of your mind and each of them takes their own fair share and they’re having a good time. When they’re in the house, the restaurant is just super busy but nobody is mad about them being there.

Both of them take over your visual spacial systems, just one of them is a welcome guest and the other one is an asshole who “knows the owners.”

So how’s this work?

Well there are two windows where visual spacial games have been helpful. One is RIGHT after the traumatic incident. Think handing a person who has just been in a car crash a game boy while they’re waiting in the ER for a checkup. The other is the spookier cousin that’s part of the reason eye witness testimony can’t be trusted. It’s called reconsolidation.

Turns out when you active a memory, like reminding someone about that horrific car crash, for a time the memory is malleable and can be altered in substance and texture. When you call something up it’s fresh in the mind and gets re-stored. This is where Tetris can help.

When you call up the traumatic memories and then get the patient to play Tetris, something happens that when it’s re-encoded it somewhat magically loses the ability to just barge into your mental buffet whenever you want by making sure the family gets to the buffet before the asshole does. We don’t really know WHY but after that the intrusive memories and flashbacks just completely stop in most people.

A 2026 study of frontline health workers found that up to 70% of them stopped having the intrusive memories of that event after a *single fucking session*.

Isn’t that shit wild? Now this isn’t the answer for all trauma. Obviously you need to be able to remember it, so for someone like me with dissociative amnesia it’s almost impossible to pull those things back up in the first place.

Trust me if I could just be jamming my gacha games in my head to weaken my trauma I’d be doing that non stop. But it is helpful for a lot of people and I think that’s pretty fucking whimsical. I vote we call this Tron Therapy.

This flower is called a Canterbury Bell. The Latin Name is Campanula crescamlibet.

I’m just kidding. That translates to “I’ll grow when I feel like it.” Sorta. I’m not good at Latin but I tried.

Campanula medium is its actual name and that translates to “medium sized little bell” because people naming this shit in the 1500s were like “What if adjectives meant nothing.”

What makes this flower cool? Well for starters it’s gorgeous, gets bees absolutely hammered on nectar, and you can *literally* drink from it. The blooms come up in purple, blue, pink, or white and they look like a shot glass Tinkerbell would use. These things are SO committed to the bit that there is a variety that grows with their own saucers attached.

These little whimsical shot glasses grow natively in the Alps bordering Italy and France but they’re perhaps more famous for their cottage core aesthetic in English period dramas because, well, history has never conceived of a people so committed to their aesthetic that once they saw a flower shaped like a teacup they said, “that shall be ours.”

But you can grow them yourselves and here’s where the “I’ll grow when I feel like it” bit comes into play.

They’re biennial. They take two years to grow and then they just *die.* So if you really want to have these as a regular feature of your garden (and you should) you want to let them go to seed so you get plenty of volunteers. You’ll also want to plant them two years in a row to make sure you’re getting some blooms every year.

Since they’re biennial, they play nice with most things and don’t invade your garden like, idk, freaking mint or something.

**So how do you plant them?**

Well they’re actually pretty easy to plant. You gotta remember nature doesn’t really have opposable thumbs to bury stuff 1/4inch deep in the soil and these things will remind you of that because if you do that to them they will die.

Instead you just sorta spread the dust on the soil and make sure they’re getting light and enough water (but not too much water) and they will bury themselves when they’re ready. Then BOOM flowers when you least expect it… two years later.

Anyway, they’re totally great to have around for just *so* much whimsy.

Today’s Whimsical Learning is actually on topic for the page. I’m going to teach you about how DID is actually a lot more like a structural brain change than a mood disorder or anything like that. I’ve actually been sitting on this one for a while but today seems as good a day as any to talk about some heavy stuff. Stick to the end and you’ll learn ya some stuff.

Let me first hit you with some fucking knowledge right. You know all about neuroplasticity right? It’s that idea that your brain literally changes in response to things you learn and experience. That’s part of what makes your brain a beautiful, efficient, machine. It changes its hardware to suite what you’re experiencing rather than changing the underlying software and hoping that’s enough.

In children they aren’t born with whole personalities, right? They’ve got a series of different neural networks that handle different issues. In a well socialized, safe environment with some stability they merge together into what’s known as the Default Mode Network.

That *should* happen between the ages of 6-9 years old.

But when that safety is interrupted and primary caregivers are a threat your mind is hit with a paradox: your defense says to flee your attacker but your attachment system says to go to them for care. This is something your brain cannot resolve.

Repeated exposure to this sort of situation floods the brain with cortisol and stunts the growth of the hippocampus and physically alters the structures responsible for memory storage and to bind context and time to memories.

But you’re still a human and you still have to function, so the brain uses the prefrontal cortex to forge “firewalls” to suppressive traumatic memories and forces those separated neural networks to take turns running your body. And the more your brain has to do this, the more permanent each of those “networks” becomes, each one growing more distinct the more often it has to be use while the brain’s neuroplastic pruning eliminates the unused pathways that would bring those different networks together.

The end result? Different personalities, each with distinct access to different memories in different ways, take turns running the body. They may be very similar to each other or very different depending on what was needed for your survival.

And this has actually been demonstrated on PET scans. Dr. A.A.T.S. Reinders in the Netherlands put people with this diagnosis into the scans. They were able to measure, physically, these different networks waking up and even the process of switching between them: literally the brain changing blood flow to respond to the situation most appropriately using involuntary systems that simply cannot be faked.

Every persona has a different fingerprint of brain activity, lighting up some areas and shutting down others.

In my own personal experience, I was first diagnosed when I was in my early 20s. The only one I knew about was J, who I thought was a poltergeist previously. But over time I learned that when I could feel her “thinking” or preparing to come to the surface that literally showed itself as a feeling of pressure on the back of my head. Not a headache, just a sensation almost like someone was poking my brain on the inside right in the back right of my skull.

I now know that isn’t a fabricated symptom, but rather the sensation of my brain moving blood around. Every single “alter” someone has (though I loathe that word) is their own unique combination of the Default Mode Network, Central Executive Network (which handles thinking and processing), and the Salience network (aka the “threat” network. So for instance, one persona who is essentially programmed to fight to protect the body will light up the salience network and motor control areas: literally preparing to fight. A younger persona may light up a configuration where emotional management networks seem more in line with what you expect in a child. Because they are a child. Everything BUT their body is essentially a child.

Which brings us to the mechanics of switching and the headaches:

Because this disorder comes from a ton of trauma, as we discussed, it’s almost a guarantee that everyone who has it also has PTSD.

Which brings us to the famous “headaches.” During the “Switch” from one to the other, the brain has to change plumbing and move blood around in different ways, rapidly constricting some blood vessels and rapidly dilating others. This is essentially exactly what happens in a vascular migraine.

This has other costs too, especially if you’re switching frequently, your brain drains its power faster than a normally developed brain might and burns through its oxygen and glucose much more quickly leading to crazy fatigue and fog and a dull, crushing feeling over the skull.

Normally these switches should only happen in response to current conditions and should more or less go away when those conditions end, but there’s an issue of metabolic exhaustion, threat locking, and other effects causing the body to simply not have the energy to “switch back” to the default persona or even a different one under “safe” conditions, leaving the current persona “stuck” until the brain has enough energy to do the thing.

Congrats! You now know more about DID than basically 99% of people.

I have been running this series on FB and I’ve decided to bring it to another audience that might love it. While this isn’t my usual trans learning, this will bring you one fun or interesting factoid a day. Why? Because my education has never been exclusively about LGBTQ+ people, but about the humanity we all share. Helping people be more human and enjoy being human more, you know?

This is also another part of my experience and my history that I’m bringing to you. Part of my nature is I love sharing cool things I learn with people. This is an extension of me.

So every day I’ll be sharing a whimsical factoid with your inbox, but don’t worry the big learning articles and so on are still coming too. This just helps me keep writing as a habit and bring a little of my whimsy to the world.

What if I told you that you could be enjoying food way more with this One Simple Trick!

So here’s a lesson I never forgot: When I was living at monastery (Theravada Buddhist) the monks gave us a lecture on the first day about food, or rather how westerners eat food. They told us how our forks make it easy to shovel huge, full bites into our mouth, one after the other, faster than our minds can process robbing us of the enjoyment of flavor and the experience of fullness.

I’m sure they didn’t need to be told, but science like TOTALLY agreed with them.

Turns out there have been a bunch of studies on the difference between Forks and Chopsticks that showed all sorts of cool shit.

Chopsticks are precision eating tools. Even if you’ve been using them your entire life they require a degree of focus and fine motor skills that slow you down. The result is, ultimately, that people eating with chopsticks eat less food and feel as full or fuller because they are slowing you down and bringing your mind to your food. After all with those you can only ball up so much rice on them or maybe a couple pieces of a vegetable. Goku’s ability to pound food with chopsticks is because he’s not human. Do not follow his example.

Turns out that time matters a lot!

When you eat slower and have to consider each bite more, your hormones (the ones that tell you to feel fully, happy, and sated) have time to catch up because normally it takes about 20 minutes for the food to hit. With a fork, you can absolutely shovel that shit in faster than your body knows what to do.

This is where I could give you the talk about mindfulness and eating but fuck that noise, but us westerners pretty much ruined the word “mindfulness” for a generation so… I’ll skip it.

Now you might be thinking, “Evey, fuck you for thinking I want to eat slower. I want to enjoy my food.” And to that I say, Planted Audience Member I Made Up For The Hypothetical (that’s her government name) this shit actually increases your enjoyment of food.

In a famous study at the University of Chicago, they looked into this same phenomenon by asking people to eat a bag of popcorn with their hands and having another group use chopsticks.

The chopstick users significantly enjoyed their food even more. Why you might be saying?

Well here’s the bit. The vast majority of the FLAVOR you experience is not on your tongue but in your nose (which is why COVID killed so many folks senses of taste because well it was hitting the areas where taste actually happened). This is called Retronasal Olfaction. As you chew your food, it heats up and releases more and more of the compounds that bring you taste.

But when you’re pounding fistfuls of potato chips into your mouth, you don’t get time to do that because you gulp down a much larger amount of food all at once. Taking smaller bites and chewing longer literally makes food taste better.

And if you’ve ever been mindlessly watching TV and downed a bag of chips, you know that you did’t really enjoy them. Your attention was all focused on your glowing screen. Because chopsticks require more attention to use and force you to target the food you’re looking for, you stop this from happening and you get to enjoy every single bite.

But this isn’t the only place where we do this. Media Theorist Marshal McLuhan noted we shape our tools and then the tools shape us right the fuck back. That’s not how he said that. I am paraphrasing.

You ever feel like you’ve moved to a place and you don’t actually know your way around very well even though you’ve been there a minute? Turns out that shit is because GPS has been robbing your brain of its spatial reasoning skills. No joke.

Nietzsche and Hemingway both recognized this in their own ways, as well. Let’s start with Nietzsche.

Nietzsche was going blind right, so writing by hand was giving him horrific headaches. To help he bought a typewriter, a pretty fancy one. It allowed him to keep writing but it changed his style and everyone noticed — including himself. “Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”

Hemingway observed this as well, I wrote my thesis on this dude’s writing style, so this part is etched into my memory a ton. Hemingway believed you could not easily use a typewriter for serious fiction and he insisted on writing that with a pencil to get the famous “three sights”: first when you write/read it over, second when you type it again, and again in the “proof.” Writing slower, more thoughtfully, gave him the opportunity to edit. If Hemingway was nothing else, he was a true master of the craft of using his environment to shape himself and his results.

He switched to typewriters when he was writing something to other people as journalism, letters to others, or final polishes.

But he didn’t stop there, he wrote standing up but only when he used his typewriter. When he wrote with a pencil he put sheets of it on a clipboard which he would use at a table or on a reading board.

I’m sure you’ve gotten the gist of what I’m saying here. Using tools that increase speed and efficiency seems to have an affect on our humanity. The joys of life, the joys that so many other people knew in older eras, came from using tools that kept them flowing, mindful, and engaged with the task they were doing because other tools ultimately efficiencied the humanity right the fuck out of it.

Like the rats in Ratatouille.

So if you’re having trouble slowing down, reading a book at a nice speed like an audio book reads at the speed of human speech, etc., then maybe, just maybe, take a lesson from chopsticks.

What we’re doing in the WLMN is damned ambitious even if you’re a good fundraiser and as our CEO, I’ve gotta tell you — I am not a good fundraiser.

I feel like I’m beating my head against a wall asking people for money and it’s a serious distraction from me accomplishing much of the work you all love.

I think I’ve been honest about why. Maybe it’s the trauma of being homeless a bit as a kid. Maybe it’s growing up in West Virginia where a buck was hard to come by sometimes and folks were always scrounging for bare survival. Some days I would rather throw myself in front of a moving car than ask y’all for money.

That does not make me better at asking for help or admitting when something just isn’t in my blood.

Here’s what I do know though, a lot of y’all have loved our content — including mine — and benefited from our communities on Facebook and Discord. You have so many stories about the work from us that you’ve loved, hated, or that made you think. So can we work together as a community to help support the WLMN’s continued work together?

I hope we can build an amazing team helping us hit our funding goals all year without me feeling totally burnt out an inadequate. This is the first step!

How can you help?

This month for our fundraiser we’re trying a new service that allows you to help fundraise by doing your own fundraiser. I’ve gone ahead and set up a fun and easy way for us all to work together as a community on it.

First, click here: https://tiltify.com/team-invite/coCVDqpc5LyS8rSiLVciTgk

That will add you to the WLMN’s dream team on Tiltify.

Next steps are super easy too.

Once you’re on the team go here: https://tiltify.com/+wlmns-dream-team/wlmn-pride-2026 and click “start fundraising.”

This will let you create your own personal fundraiser. All you do then is add whatever you’re doing (sharing on social media, streaming, exercise fundraisers, your choice) and write in why our organization matters to you. You set your own goal for the fundraiser, whatever it may be, and all your donations count towards our campaign.

Quick answers to the things you’re already wondering

**Does it cost me anything?** No. Free to join, free to run a campaign. Tiltify doesn’t take a cent from fundraisers up front.

**Do I have to stream, or be online in some particular way?** Nope. Some folks will, because it’s a natural fit if you already game. Most people just share their link and say a few honest words about why this work matters to them. Sincere beats slick every single time.

**What would I even *do* to raise money?** Whatever’s actually you. Ask for donations instead of birthday presents. Dedicate a run, a ride, a 24-hour stream of something ridiculous. Or just post your page and tell people what WLMN does and why you’re in it. Low-key works. Loud works. Both are welcome here.

**How long does my campaign run?** However long you want — a weekend, the whole month, your call.

**Still stuck on the mechanics?** Tiltify’s own guides cover it step by step: [start your first campaign](https://info.tiltify.com/support/solutions/articles/43000011753-launch-your-first-tiltify-campaign-a-step-by-step-guide), and [all of their fundraiser FAQs](https://info.tiltify.com/support/solutions/folders/43000050939) if you want to poke around.

And even more if you have any problems, at all, figuring this out or you’re still confused you can literally call the WLMN’s number and I will answer the phone personally and walk you through it.

1-866-608-0826.

Thank you so much for being here with us and for loving what we do.

Mettā,

Evey

Welcome back to our show where we teach you how to do everyday things while keeping yourself feeling good about how you’re doing them. Today’s guide is all about how to make toast in the least trans affirming way possible. Wouldn’t want to get kicked out of your online social club, would you?

1. Select bread. You know it's bread because you were told it is bread. Do not think too hard about the makeup of the bread, where the boundary lines of that definition lay. Do not think about the social construction of bread, despite the millions of ways it can be made. This is bread. It is white, maybe full of fiber, and it is good.

2. Put the bread into the toaster — you're almost certain that it is, in fact, bread by its nature and you're resisting the urge to research the boundaries of that — and put it into the toaster. You probably have a toaster. A toaster wasn't always a thing. Before that they made toast in ovens or by frying it. You do not concern ourselves with the before. You put the bread into the toaster. You are here in this moment and You have been told this thing makes toast and only this thing.

3. You set the timer. All good things take time, and as you’ve learned with any toaster it is possible to get lost in the justice and identity of the toasting process itself and over shoot our desired goals for ourselves and our happiness. Toasters provide a lesson about hyperfocus in life. You do not think about the toaster.

4. You remove the toast. No longer bread? If you hand it to someone, they will say it is now toast. This is a crisis that should require government intervention. It is wrong to say that bread, once put through the process of becoming toast, is actually toast. Nay. It is bread. Right? But everyone agrees it is toast. It looks of toast. It smells of toast. It is, phenotypically, toast. But has it been to the DMV to change its phenotypical markers? You cannot accept this.

5. Take the TIB (Toast Identifying Bread) and you put it on the counter where you add in the social trappings. Honey, perhaps some jam. Jam is also not jam. It is fruit with chemicals. This is another farce and there must not be so many kinds of jam. In fact, if fruit was meant to be a jam, it would have been born with all the natural sugars required to make it jam. The smushed fruit is an affront to god, it is not real jam. These additions do not make the toast “real” in any sense. They are merely a performance of toast. No, worse. A stereotype of toast.

Why should everything get a new name when it is changed in some way? This is disgusting. You’ve even heard of bread claiming to be French toast after going through a similar process. Preposterous.

6. You apply those additions to the TIB. But you do not eat or enjoy the toast. It is full of lies, potentially poisons, you can never trust something that has tried to change into something else. You will die of starvation and loneliness before you allow your justice and purity to be besmirched by allowing toast into your spaces. After all, only a very small percentage of “bread” claims to be “toast.” It would be wrong to indulge or accept that.

The birds, the very messengers of nature itself, accept the toast. They do not care about any of that. It is delicious.

Hope this helps <3

I’ll be preparing home-style meals with you all for a few hours all featuring a native plant known as “ramps” in place of onion or garlic. I’ll be taking questions, sharing stories of what growing up trans in WV was like, and thinking about the future of this culture that means so much to me.

You can get a free ticket here

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This post may be the hardest one I will ever write, because it contains a deep shame that I have never truly talked about and that, unfortunately, current news has brought to the forefront of a lot of peoples’ minds without them knowing it. We are going to be delving into kink, sexual abuse, and sexual exploitation in this article so please be mindful as you read.

We need to talk about what the closet looks like for trans women, and why Bryon Noem’s behavior is, unfortunately, very familiar to me and to a great many other trans women. I know I’m about three weeks late to the party on this one, but grappling with your own feelings and deciding whether to tell one of the most humiliating, degrading, and disappointing stories in your own history takes time.

For those of you who don’t know, Bryon Noem is Kristi Noem’s partner. I will avoid pronouns because, as Bryon said, “I want to be a trans bimbo slut.” Since I can’t be confident about Bryon’s gender identity I will do my best to avoid pronoun usage at all so that this article doesn’t age like milk.

When the photographs came out of Bryon with a chest full of what appeared to be comically oversized balloons and booty shorts, I immediately thought there was an article there about men being allowed to play with gender without that being a humiliation ritual. Then the quote came out about Bryon saying the thing about being a trans bimbo slut and the situation became all too familiar to me.

My story was, unfortunately, very similar. Granted, I was not a partner to one of the worst people in the world, actively supporting her witch-hunt of marginalized communities of all kinds. So, at least I have that over Bryon.

We are going to need to break this down in pieces, but first I’m going to talk about the sort of sexual conditioning that goes into being a man/male at all. Boy is there a lot of it, much of it unspoken for our generation.

Kink, fetish, etc., is often an exploration of the forbidden, the shameful, and the deep in a safe place. It can be deeply therapeutic. It can also be habit forming and dangerous when misused. Why would “men” feel like they have to explore kink? Because it is a place where expressing forbidden emotions is not forbidden.

At the early age of 8, on average, people start to treat boys like “men” in various roles of their lives and part of that includes “toughening them up.” Part of toughening them up means giving them a pretty set definition of manhood and forbidding work or play outside of that through social means. There is a whole article here about the construction of heterosexuality but that will need to be another day. For a shorthand, let’s just say being heterosexual is not a true state of being in the way that we use it and is, rather, a performance developed by people in the early 20th century to avoid being lobotomized and electrocuted in many of the fine facilities that existed back then.

That legacy lives on in Bryon performing hyper masculinity for Kristi and her nonsense but secretly, under cover of webcam in a lonely home, exploring the things that were off limits.

This is where Bryon and I share a history. When something has been off limits to you, but you feel deeply drawn to it in all your life, and there’s only one place to “let the pressure off” everything can be contorted into a fetish. There are kinks around eating, power, cuddling, tickling, you name it. But I take special issue with kink communities online engaging in gender play because, for trans women, this outlet can become an intoxicating and addictive escape from the pain of living. It can, and does, consume you.

Sure, as a trans woman who’s had bottom surgery I enjoy sex as much as the next woman, but my gender and sexual community had become disgustingly and violently intertwined in the late years of me being in the closet.

If you are taught that the male body is either powerful or humorous, you grow to see yourself as disgusting in any form. Your shoulders, the way your muscles carry, every part of it is an affront to what you know *should* be in the mirror. Not only are you not that, you grow increasingly angry and offended at the contents of the mirror. “Bimbo play,” as it were, allows you to, for a time, take on comically exaggerated feminine qualities for a body that feels comically exaggerated.

Other “communities” especially online, prey on trans women who are desperate and in the closet. The “sissy” communities draw in trans women with their various talks of secretive DIY hormones or feminization tips. But they lean into the submissive tropes as much as anything, the femininity experienced in that circle teaches you to be a sexual object as your only source of value.

Forced Feminization communities allow closeted trans women to have the pain of the decision taken out of their hands, dreaming of being captured and forced to transition for the benefit and servitude of others.

Worse, these communities often do not actually help you experience gender but a power differential wrapped up in extreme gender roles. For some people, exploring the game of forbidden power is perfectly ok. For trans women, including myself, it can be toxic, addictive, and painful.

I know a great many in the kink community, including my friend Audry Lu Black who is a well known Kink educator may take umbrage with my over simplifications here and I’m expecting to get an earful during my live streams. I want to be clear, I am not speaking of well run and ethical kink communities. I am speaking of the kink communities you can easily find and enter on Reddit or other anonymous message boards and chat rooms and discord servers.

There lurks a darker element in these communities, someone I met who we’ll call Bobathy. I, for my part, took part, in the sissy and forced feminization communities. I wasn’t drawn to the overblown and distorted imagery of “bimbo” communities but I did not escape unscathed.

At first, you feel seen there and you get a powerful sense of safety and release. It can be, and is actually, quite cult like in many ways including pseudoscientific nonsense like an infographic I can remember telling people how much semen and soy they needed to drink to be feminized fully, etc., but there was still an unspoken rule in these communities that your value lay in your penis even while you had a tantalizing taste of escape from the masculinizing prison.

I’m sure a great many of you watch porn, right? How many of those trans women have you seen that DIDN’T have a penis. These communities teach that you get to have gender as long as you are sexually exploitable for the benefit of others.

And that’s an important point. This is my story of how I almost became a “kept” and probably trafficked trans woman.

In my early 20s, I was deeply suicidal. I struggled with my PTSD from the rapes I’d endured as a child, when a man reached out to me that I’ll call Bobathy. He’d seen me around the forums and, much like Bryon he would ask for photos of me in various degrees of feminizing outfits. He would compliment my bone structure telling me how beautiful I could be with just a little work. He used words like “doll” and “beautiful plaything.”

We had these chats for a few months before he put an offer before me: he would pay for my entire transition with some rules. I would sleep with whoever he told me to, however he told me to, whenever he told me to. I couldn’t have bottom surgery. I didn’t get to pick my own name. In return, he would craft me into that perfect doll. I’d have a place to live and a way of being that, at the very least, I was conditioned to be familiar with.

I spent many of my early, formative, years being ritualistically raped. I had no problem being abused more at the time. I was a plaything for many years. I was good at it.

Bobathy was independently wealthy and the plans advanced so far that he was arranging to have me picked up and sent to Las Vegas where I’d be able to access some real class surgeons between there and Florida and Los Angeles. I presumed he planned to have me work in pornography and whatnot, but again I’d have at least some semblance of my body so maybe it’d be less torturous.

It wasn’t until the day I was supposed to get on that plane that I realized just how far things had gone and how unhealthy I’d gotten. Instead of calling him, I started calling therapists.

The funny part is that I didn’t want them to help me be trans. Just the opposite, I was seeking out a therapist who could help me get over that need that was driving me to such extremes and filtered through a lens of my trauma conditioning. It was that therapist who helped me uncover all the clear proof that I was exhibiting signs before the sexual assaults started. I spent a great many years wondering how the people who want to victimize people like me always seem to be able to see that we’re different and vulnerable.

There is a long, storied, history of trans women being kept, trafficked, and forced into sex work economically in order to have their bodies. I remember the enormous relief I felt not long after having my bottom surgery that I was free of the only thing that would make those industries and chasers keep following me around.

You’ll have to understand that much of the work I do today, especially for trans women, is to give them healthy spaces to explore that sort of gender affirmation so that they are not driven into the waiting, sweaty arms of their own Bobathy. I live every day with the backdrop of knowing that I did and said things back then that hurt people and that I can’t excuse. I was in the throws of gender dehydration and everything I could get looked like a sip of water to me. It became addictive to me too. I’m sure Bobathy still has my photos somewhere. I wonder, often, if he’ll see me some day up here doing this work and recognize the “perfect doll” that got away from him.

As for Bryon Noem, I am sure a great amount of what has happened on Bryon’s watch was done in the name of performing the expected masculinity. I am equally sure that I do not know if Bryon is trans or not. What I do know is that Bryon played the role of dutiful man enthusiastically and participated in causing harms on a scale far larger than I could ever imagine. We dealt with our pain two different ways: I was willing to sacrifice myself, Bryon was willing to sacrifice everyone else.

So when you read these stories about Bryon’s proclivities, please keep in mind that if what the news has said is true and Bryon is trans that this is a valuable opportunity to learn and you should want to learn more about what leads a person to those dark corners of behavior.

If you enjoyed this piece or learned from it, please consider a donation to the Wanna Learn More Network: a 501c3 that allows me to create posts like these and do 1:1 education to help people from winding up in situations like mine and help their families love them fully so they never feel so desperate.

She didn’t train. There was no super soldier serum. There’s no 80s era montage. This is a woman demonstrating incredible strength because the situation demanded it and nobody would tell her she couldn’t.

You, dear reader, have been told your entire life (unless you are some kind of long lived vampire, in which case shame on you for not correcting this nonsense when it started) that women are biologically inferior, less capable, and needing of protection. You, dear reader, were misinformed and that misinformation has devastating implications for women not just in sports but in survival, relationships, economics, and more.

Prepare to take the Red Pill (this is an estrogen from the 90s joke) and see how far this false sky goes. Also, I’m gonna curse a lot in this article because this shit is fucking stupid and I hope you’ll agree when you read it.

Can Thine Uterus Do Arithmetic?

Dear reader, allow me to introduce you to Dr. Edward Hammond Clarke of the Harvard Medical School in the year 1873. He published a fascinating bit of reading called Sex in Education; or, a Fair Chance for Girls that year. Among his very academic findings were that women were “inherently less physically and intellectually capable than men,” and that “sustained vigorous mental activity” from studying in “a boy’s way” would cause “atrophy of the uterus, ovaries, masculinization, sterility, insanity, even death.” That shit is a direct fucking quote from a Harvard professor.

I wish I could tell you it got better. Clarke’s argument was built on the studies available and all the nonsense one might hear to validate it, and from the “every accusation is actually a confession” department of Harvard comes the fact that he was actually a sickly man who died a mere 4 years after claiming women weren’t able to handle the intellectual rigor of study.

Filthy casual.

If only it had only been him, but alas there was plenty of nonsense to be held in the era of craniology, psychology, and even more. This era gave us such hits as “The relatively small size of the female brain in part depends upon her physical inferiority and in part upon her intellectual inferiority,” and endless classics from Dr. Sigmund Freud who happily declared that women are “deviant humans.”

And you might think, “Surely we left all that shit in the past, right, Evey?” Well, kinda? But not really. We just remixed it a bit.

A 2008 study found that girls had reached parity in mathematics with boys across ethnicity and grade levels, based on 7 million children from 10 states in the USA. The gender gap in high performers had closed and correlated with other measures across nations. The trend continued in other studies showing that in some cases the girls were now categorically performing at or above the level of their male peers.

Those poor uteruses, am I right?

But where the hell did this actually all start? Where is this underlying assumption based? Well, the modern version of this song starts with something called “The Cult of True Womanhood,” as the American Remix of a hot original.

The Cult of True Womanhood

Man, I feel like being a woman in the 1820s had to super suck even more than it does right now. Historian Barbara Welter identified four “cardinal virtues” defining true women: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Women’s true sphere was the home, and blah blah blah. You can read all about that here.

Look, the point is that Welter identified how this ideology made a new case for the fragility of women in a modern, industrial era, and that ideology influenced not just generations of feminist thinkers but a whole lot of men too who were super happy (see previous section) to ride that horse as far as it would go. After all, the frailty of women had to be protected, right? We had social darwinism letting us pretend this drivel was scientifically derived and honest, right?

Except for this weird thing where this only seemed to apply to white, middle and upper class women. Working class women, Black women like Sojourner Truth, and immigrant women need not apply for these virtues because they were needed to do work. Being frail was an ideal afforded for those wealthy enough to nurture it and marked through magazines like Godey’s Lady’s Book and religious literature (don’t worry I’ll get to the religious angle here in a minute).

Edward Clarke joined hands with Barbara Welter in unholy dehumanizing ideological matrimony to form a new, and very exciting, twist on an old classic that starts with Aristotle, explodes with the church, and needs science to validate it in the modern era.

Aristotle and Freud probably would have gotten along, given that they both essentially believed women were deviated and deformed from men but I’m sure they’d have had their difference. Ol’ Aristotle had plenty of company in his bullshit, but I’m not gonna blame all the Greeks of the time — some Greek women were notorious for their ability to kick asses — ask the Spartans — but Aristotle’s Athens was a different story — and somehow this shit survived long enough to make it into Christian Theology.

Aristotle’s nonsense would be revived after academics in the 12th-15th centuries saw his works on a greatest hits late night infomercial and went “We should write a cover of this.” But not before the Christians had a go.

The Christians… Again.

I have to tell you, I’m getting really tired of tracing back human rights violations and finding they more or less start in the fucking church. It’s getting really boring that everything is either THE CHURCH or Tuberculosis (hat tip to John Green) in history. Sometimes both.

Let’s go back to Tertullian in good ol’ 160-ish CE. This good fella was all like “Hey, original sin is Eve’s fault and because of that women are all to blame and more susceptible to moral failings. Also vaginas are the devil’s gateway.” Al Pacino entirely agrees, btw.

Then fucking Augustine of Hippo is like “Hey that’s a cool idea but I mean you can’t expect much from a fucking rib, right?” And thus began the idea that women were secondary to men because they were made from ribs. Which I would argue makes us both superior and tasty, but I guess Christians hated bbq back then, too.

What you’re going to find as we move into the modern era is that everyone is starting with the conclusion that women are frail, deviant things and working backwards.

A New Twist on an Old Classic

The Victorian Era moved women from being irrational, carnal, and tasty to a madonna style rebrand of women being too spiritual, pure, and moral for the world — and therefore fragile. You were still supposed to keep women home and away from stuff, of course, but the difference was between “I have to keep my stupid cat from killing and sleeping with everything” to “I must protect my porcelain doll from the world” levels. And the more modern you get the more both of these ideas existed side by side. But hey that’s just the cultural background story. Let’s talk about SPORT.

Cause like, ok yeah, our stupid girl brains can do math but that doesn’t mean our weak girl muscles can do sports… right?

Right?

Insert a Funny John Madden Headline Here.

For women’s sports we go back to biological determinism, which again is based on those underlying intellectual threads I’ve been yammering about for the last 1200 words. Do keep up.

Dudes were absolutely so sure that women were inferior that they created entire fields of study just to prove it. Paul Broca (probably derived from the greek for Broke Asshole) spent a lot of time trying to prove women’s brains couldn’t do big stuff. He was, of course, wrong as the data would later point out when the artificial sky holding down women academically was slowly removed.

This is a line of thought called “Biological Determinism” that follows a playbook that’s been run through more times than early Christians thought Eve had been. It goes a little something like this Famous/Prestigious institution > “Objective” methodology + confirmation of existing prejudice = “proof” of inferiority. That pattern replayed through medicine, law, science, and more and every single frigging time once the false truths were revealed and done away with the gaps disappeared and women were not just equal but in some cases over performing their male peers.

The only true area that remains completely enshrined is athletics. Surely, SURELY it’s true this time.

Welp.

Let’s go to 1983, a fascinating time period where a major study analyzing 82 quantified olympic events found that the gender gap in world records had stabilized at a mean difference of 10%. Proof, right? Well, you know what else stabilized around then? Structural improvements in women’s athletic access and cultural standing. Title IX was written in 1972 and that shit is STILL not fully implemented universally. They just stopped making improvements and assumed the ceiling had been reached and that the social variables had already been eliminated.

Oh but strangely enough, that gap varies by event. The range could be anywhere from 5.5% in freestyle swimming to nearly 20% in the long jump. A gap entirely explainable by biology would be much more consistent if it were simply a constant determined by hormones and mass. This means other factors are at play, and those don’t get explored because of the underlying prejudice.

Not only does it vary, it’s still shrinking in areas where the social factors are changing to make the sports more palatable to women.

But those women are still operating under the false sky: a sky that starts at puberty.

Bias Thy Name is Puberty

Interestingly, before puberty the athletic performance of all genders is roughly equal. There’s no reason to believe girls should perform worse than boys before then, but a curious thing starts to happen at puberty. Hormones aren’t the only thing that sets in: so does social training. And social training and conditioning varies dramatically for each recognized gender.

Young girls are steered heavily away from physical activity towards grace and social activities turning entire generations of would be athletes into wouldn’t be athletes. Young boys are categorically encouraged into sports and athletics activity, competition, and aggression. These variables are not isolated in any study you can name today. They are treated as much as a truth as “the sky is blue.”

And we have reason to believe that sky is quite possibly not blue.

When We Test the Sky, It Cracks and They Fix It

Every time women participate in athletic competition, the assumptions fail and the gap narrows further and further until they start banning women who are reaching heights they should not have reached.

Let me take you to the Olympics of 1928, where only five events were permitted for women in track and field. We will zoom in on the 800m race as 9 women lined up for the first time in these circumstances. All 9 women finished the race. Six of those nine women had broken the world records. After the race, they sat down for a breather and that’s where the trouble started.

John Tunis, so named because we should have tuned-him-out, wrote a lovely little story in the New York Evening Post talking about how 5 women had dropped out and the other 5 were exhausted. In short, he lied. William Shirer — yes, that William Shirer, who would go on to write The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich — wrote in the Chicago Tribune that five women collapsed and Florence Macdonald “fell onto the grass unconscious.” The NY Times declared the event “too great a call on the female strength.” But nobody could possibly outdo Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne, writing for the Pittsburgh Press, saying that it was “not a very edifying spectacle to see a group of fine girls running themselves into a state of exhaustion.”

So, the event was banned. Can’t have women, like… breathe and stuff, you know? It didn’t return until 1960. The IOC’s own medical and scientific director, Richard Budgett, has since acknowledged that “the fake facts, the medical profession’s anxiety were linked to the supposed danger of long-distance races for women. We know that everyone can collapse exhausted. If it happens during the race, that is cause for concern; but if it’s at the end, that’s perfectly normal after a huge effort. It was a misinterpretation of the vulnerability of women by the medical profession.”

I want you to hold onto that idea of supposed danger. We’re gonna come back to that shit.

But we need to hit on another change during this time period: testing. When women manage to reach escape velocity and touch the false sky, they are considered aberrant in some way. In 1966, all female athletes were required to undergo a gynecological examination and then were subjected to visual inspections. The athletes described these as “traumatic and degrading.”

That was supplanted by genetic testing to get a “femininity certificate” they had to carry to competitions. Gender testing never caught any male imposters trying to play at sports but they did find plenty of women with intersex conditions they didn’t even know they had. Weirdly, María José Martínez-Patiño in Spain (1985) was dismissed for having androgen insensitivity… which means she had less functional testosterone than other women.

This sort of testing is now rearing its head again whenever women challenge our preexisting notions of what they should look like (victorian daintiness) and act like (pure and demure) to achieve success comparable to men.

A New Hope

First, let’s talk about more recent sports: ultra endurance running, swimming, and more. These sports lack the significant cultural baggage of their peers because they’re newer. And, strangely, women tend to equal or outperform men and when participation in these events is equalized the gap in performance tends to disappear entirely as a statistical artifact.

A 2024 study of ultra-marathoners found that when the numbers of men and women competing equalize, the differences become negligible but there is a significant performance gap as long as those numbers are not equalized. The study explicitly states that “direct comparisons remain problematic until participation numbers equalize.” This means that the gap in performance does, indeed, seem to respond to social factors as much or more than physical ones.

This is also where a new sky is being formed. The new theory goes something like this: “Of course women can perform in this because they have physical advantages in this sort of environment like fatigue resistance, substrate efficiency, and lower energy requirements.” But the thing is wherever those advantages may be found physiologically you can also find factors that “unequivocally impinge on performance” like lower oxygen capacity, increase GI distress and sex hormones affecting injury risk.

And regardless of how you want to think of it, this means the old sky is cracking. The old story is that women weren’t nearly as athletically capable as men and once you remove the social baggage and equalize things, we have to start looking for biologically deterministic reasons for that to be so. Patch the false sky at all costs.

And the more it equalizes the more we find out the “best athlete” is often a woman. Hat tip to Jasmin Paris for crushing the men’s record on the Montane Spine Race — 268 miles through winter — by 12 friggin hours. While stopping to express breast milk.

But hey. The Spartans, Amazons, and even Vikings were ahead of the game on this shit. They treated women as important and capable in areas like defending their cities. And as a consequence their women were, simply, more physically capable than the women of Athens where different social mores had taken hold.

When a certain unnamed French Colonel faced the Amazons in battle he reported “They are stronger than men… they fear nothing.” French Military reports described them as the most feared warriors in all of West Africa. These ladies could only be defeated by more advanced weaponry.

There was, simply, no precedent for these women being told they weren’t capable. And so they were. As historian Pamela Toler put it: “There was absolutely nobody there to tell them that they shouldn’t be involved in combat.”

Learned Helplessness is a Real Fucking Thing and It Sucks and I wish This Headline Was Better.

There is decades of research demonstrating that you can make women worse at things just by simply telling them they’re worse. The performance gap is, to be blunt, a self fulfilling prophecy at least in part.

Gentile et al. in 2018 conducted a meta-analysis of studies on gender stereotype threat in physical performance and found a medium effect size. Demonstrating that simply threatening women with stereotypes was enough to degrade their athletic output.

But don’t trust that alone, 2014 had a fun little experiment by Hively & El-Alayli, “You Throw Like a Girl” that demonstrated when tasks were framed in gendered ways by simply telling them women usually weren’t good at that task… they got worse. Shocker.

A 2024 BMC Psychology study on 120 girls’ standing long jump performance found that girls performed worse when tested by a male examiner (implicit stereotype activation) but when girls were encouraged to question the stereotype they performed at the same levels as the control group. Chalabaev et al. in 2013 found that girls who rejected stereotypes of their athleticism simply performed better than those who didn’t.

And in 2025, Heidrich, Cardozo, & Chiviacowsky published a systematic review spanning 30 years and covering 65 studies that confirms the pattern: stereotype threat measurably impairs motor performance and learning.

The Central Governor

This brings us to Tim Noakes, who proposed in ’97 that the brain acts as a central governor subconsciously regulating exercise and performance. It’s a fascinating read, but let me break it down for you a bit to save you time:

The idea is that the brain limits exercise by reducing your ability to use your full muscular capacity to protect you from damaging yourself. Fatigue, then, is not truly a muscular response but a “brain derived emotion” to regulate your behavior. The brain sets this intensity based on early experience and your expectations. This hypothesis is unproven, mind you, but it’s still worth exploring in this situation and keeping in mind as we continue talking about our False Sky on Women.

The Central Governor and Learned Helplessness pair nicely and seem supported. Martin Seligman’s research on this subject is fascinating as fuck and demonstrated that organisms subjected to inescapable adverse conditions learn to stop trying even when escape is clearly possible.

Women are surrounded, every day, with media telling them they are less physically capable than their peers and are guided from birth to death in that belief.

But you might be surprised to learn that modern training methods and sports science are all built around, and for, men. I mean you probably shouldn’t be surprised I’ve been telling you that this entire time. You know what I mean. But you might be a little more surprised to learn that the NIH only began requiring sex as a biological variable in research design in 2016 for athletics. We have no idea what women would be capable of with athletics training and support designed for them because we were so sure it wouldn’t matter we never asked the question.

The Question We Have Asked

We have asked questions though. Oh boy have we. Let’s talk about trans women injuring other women in sports, to significant media attention.

All sports have their injuries, to be sure, but how many concussions have you seen on the news regarding women’s volleyball? I’m willing to bet you didn’t know that 214,302 female athletes were treated for volleyball-related injuries between 2012 and 2021. Of those, concussions represented around 5-7.5% of the injuries, earning the prestigious title of the most concussions that weren’t football related. Of those, 0.57% came from ball to head contact. But I bet you heard the president mention one such injury in 2025 talking about protecting women’s sports because a trans person might be involved.

One injury. Out of 214,302. That’s approximately 0.00047% of volleyball injuries involving a trans woman — and the injury itself was never even verified by independent sources. But please, Mr. Ped… President. Do go on about protecting women just like when they couldn’t bear the strain of running 800m. You’re part of a long line of men just making shit up a century later.

Speaking of men making shit up, I’ll close this article with one final story:

She Hulk Is Real Hulk

Remember Angela Cavallo, way back from the start of this long article? She wasn’t the first. Before 1962, Jack Kirby watched a different woman do the same damn thing — lift a car off her child — and it blew his mind so hard he created the Hulk. In a 1990 interview with The Comics Journal, Kirby described it: “This woman in desperation lifted the rear end of the car. It suddenly came to me that in desperation we can all do that — we can knock down walls, we can go berserk.” He went further: “This woman proved to me that the ordinary person in desperate circumstances can transcend himself and do things that he wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

Two women, two decades apart, same impossible strength. The most out of control, berserk, freakishly strong hero in all of comic books started with a woman — and always has been. The Hulk is male. The real-life Hulk was a mother. Twice.

Now, let’s stop breaking ceilings for all women and start shattering those false skies.

I’ll never forget my first year reading the names of the trans people lost to violence and misery.

I had just received my own name that day. I went from the courthouse to the local bar I frequented and sat quietly diluting my warm drink with the cooling tears of relief. I felt joy and ownership over myself. I had claimed my name and learned to own it through the alcohol and my tears burning my throat.

I left my joy at the bar as the sun set and I met other trans folks and local activists in the city square to hold candles and read off from a list of people whose names were taken from them. We read them to a drumbeat together with the percussion of a chisel etching names, faces, and stories onto a fear and grief we already knew swallowed down inside ourselves. There I was again, holding a cup of fire and learning the value of names as they burned their way into my body.

Each year, I have read off from a list of names of trans people unjustly taken from us by societies that determined they had no place in them. I think in the past, I blamed the world for this cruelty but I’m a year older and wiser and I realize now the world wants us to exist.

Why, otherwise, would we continue to appear?

We are, after all, the dandelions of society — vibrant, resilient, and functional flowers dubbed a weed amongst society’s carefully tended gardens. The world clearly wants us to thrive. We are as natural and persistent as any other force of nature and our Trans Day of Remembrance has been rooted in the memorializing all of us that should have been able to grow into something new, beautiful, and natural in our world.

For my part in this, I feel as though I took the memory of those individuals we lost and did not properly honor it for what it was: a challenge to approach mourning differently in a way that recognizes the potential of each name snuffed out too soon. I feel guilty of performing the ceremony without question: a Trans Day of Remembrance that leaves people feeling more sad, helpless, and alone does nothing to truly honor all the lost potential of our trans siblings.

That’s why this year, and every year from now, must be different. Those names should not be etched on the grief we know and carry — they should be etched into the very flesh and fabric of the society that haunted them in their lives. They should become small seeds of transformation popping up everywhere, just like dandelions.

Drinking Fire

The Trans Day of Remembrance was born from tragedy in the 90s, a way to protect the name of Rita Hester who had been killed in 98 and the trans people who had died in the year following. This, then, became the ritual we know today: vigils, candles in plastic cups, and all of us drinking the burning reality of the challenges ahead and the people who will never see the brighter future we’re working towards.

And this, I think, is where it’s time for us to make a change. I wonder exactly, how many people can name the names from last year. Hell, I wonder how many people can name one name from last year. Trans Day of Remembrance has become a stark reminder that if this world takes us our names will be remembered only in the ethereal grief carried by others and that shifting earth is a poor substitute for the way that those lost names could have impacted this world.

I was meant to be one of them after all.

My transition story starts with a plan to kill myself. To say I was angry wouldn’t do my feelings justice. I was not just angry, I wanted to punish this world for how it had treated me as a child — the rapes, the abuse, and most of all the fear. I wanted my grave to be a mirror for its cruelty so that it would be forced to reckon with it whenever it remembered me.

The plan was simple: I would move away from my family, get transitional care in Maryland, and then I would do the deed. I’ll spare the details of my plan. The point was that when they buried me there should be no way to avoid my real name. They should have to reconcile all the stories they told themselves about who I was with the corpse in front of them. Where they overlooked me and my suffering, I wanted to make sure their eyes would never see anything but what happened to me.

It was all going so well until I started my transition. I started to get better. I grew curious about myself and who I’d become. I realized, over a few months, that if I killed myself then I was committing the same sin I wanted others to choke down: taking a name from this world before its story could be told.

I am grateful, every day, that I get to experience this story and my place in it. When I read the names for this year, I think about all those stories that will never see an ending. There will always be unanswered questions, plots unresolved.

Weave The Names In This World

Many people, I think, genuinely mean well and need a bit more instruction than simply “fight” and seek “justice.” It’s time for us to define, in some small way, what justice must look like for the names on this list.

That does not mean we cannot honor those lost stories and songs. An appropriate memorial for them represents not that they were lost, but that they were in progress. We should, then, weave the threads of their stories into the stories of others.

I want to take you to a bench in New York City. This bench has seen so much life. It was there for one couple’s first kiss looking up at the stars between the trees punctuating the concrete sidewalk. It hosted the grief of a daughter getting the call that she would never see her mother again. Its oil stained paint holds the memories of so many people having their first slice of proper New York Pizza. And it also has a name on it: a name that people will remember when they meet here again for anniversaries and when they tell their stories about those moments. Maybe, 10 or 15 years from new, people will say “Let’s meet on Cam Thompson’s bench again.”

This bench doesn’t exist. But it could.

In this year’s names, Cam’s bio says she “never met a stranger,” and I can’t help but imagine that someone like that would weave so nicely into all those comings and goings of not-strangers whose lives will be touched by her name if not her presence. We could make that happen. Her name could grace one hundred benches and other meeting places.

The list includes fashionistas, dance instructors, educators, advocates and more. How we could take up the mantle of those names not as an act of grief but to make sure those names truly belong in the tapestry of this world in a way that will play an immutable part of stories that will continue? Maybe, just maybe, those names will help change things.

I wonder if a child’s first pair of donated ballet slippers, a permanent part of their story, could come with a name included in that sponsorship. I wonder what this world could be like if that cup of coffee was “from Kamora Woods.”

How many lives could it change if we remembered someone by donating copies of their favorite books to the world? How many children will have that book in 20 or 30 years? How many authors will remember that as the book that sparked their love of writing?

These people would have touched the world with their presence, maybe in small ways, but never in zero ways. This society betrayed them, and in return we should weave their memory into it so that they will never be forgotten.

Name Day

Perhaps the most sacred day in any trans person’s life is the day they take their own name. The day a name finally lands on a someone is almost religious. Weeks, months, and sometimes even years of struggle and trial and error went into crafting those names and honing them until they felt just right. I wish I knew the stories behind these names on the list this year.

I want to know more about what Onyx felt so attached to in that striped, dark stone. I want to hear how Ra’lasia came to adopt such a beautiful name and the meaning it had for her.

I wonder if on the day they claimed those names as their own, they too drank fire just the same as I did as they released years of being told who they were, what they were capable of, and where they belongs.

Did Deniz feel a sense of direction when that name landed on them?

Our task as the carriers of those names is to let the name, if not the person it attached to, continue to have an impact on this world. A whisper of smoke from the fires they drank — a little piece of their story still smoldering, still lighting the world.

Let’s Meet Here Again.

In one year let’s meet here again. Let’s collect the new names and tell stories of the ways we wove last year’s names into the world. Let’s talk about the park benches, the ballet slippers, and all the ways this world will have changed for the names on these lists.

Let’s bring those smoldering embers back together and dance around the light they’ve created in this world. Then let’s read the names for this year. Let’s drink the fire of sorrow and salt, and let’s carry those embers out into the world to weave them and their memories into the story of a society that tried so hard to make sure they were forgotten.

Let’s make this something sacred, an act of defiance, sure, but a ritual that honors the power of humanity and names rather than asking us to swallow them and all the grief attached in the name of memory. Let’s make this world bear the burden of memory until, finally, we reach that day when there are no more names to read.

That will be a beautiful day. I hope I’m sitting on that park bench in New York City when I hear the news. I’ll get up from that bench, go to the nearest bar, and I’ll drink fire again as I happily cry thinking about how many stories are still going on in this world.

This article and all others are part of the Wanna Learn More Network’s mission to educate and create spaces for growth in this world through genuine connection. Please help support our mission, and works like this, by donating or subscribing to this platform.

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Ok y’all. One of my little pet obsessions is meteorology and this year has been somewhat unique (so far no hurricanes making landfall, etc.) and El Niño is fading into La Niña so things are gonna be somewhat unpredictable and wild. We’re going to take a break from my usually scheduled learning to talk about something very important: safety when the government can’t be counted on.

Here’s what you need to know: The current government has left many states to fend for themselves based on their voting habits and even where that’s not being done, FEMA and other disaster relief mechanisms have been hobbled significantly.

As we saw recently in Texas: even small amounts of snow and ice can turn into life threatening catastrophes when the emergency fabrics of society fail.

You should expect for formerly reliable infrastructure to be seriously strained, even failing, especially in Appalachia, TX, the Northeast and the Midwest.

With that in mind, I’ve put together a small guide for inexpensive ways to start preparing *now* for extended periods without heat, power, water, or gas as well as some other tips. This guide is based on my experience growing up homeless and Appalachian, here’s what I can say.

**TIPS**

1. DO NOT DRINK OR EAT THE SNOW. Yes it is water. Yes it is (mostly) safe, but please for the love of god find a way to boil and heat it. Eating COLD foods and drinks in a winter emergency situation will lower your body heat. You need more body heat. Boil snow/water and heat foods. We’ll discuss ways to do that safely.

2. Evacuation Plans: When I say this what I mean is evacuating to a nearby, safe location in the event of floods, mudslides, rockslides, and other issues that can come from inclement weather. It’s important to remember that a lot of snow melting all at once can trigger follow up disasters.

3. Examine your available, natural resources. If you’ve got access to wood from trees nearby, you can start collecting twigs, small branches and logs, and other flammables to let them dry in the event you need to SAFELY start a fire in your fireplace, yard, or whatever. Likewise, if you have streams, rivers, etc., nearby you can collect water from them and make it potable.

4. Plan for a few scenarios: 1-3 days without power or up to 2 weeks without power/heat. While the former might seem more likely as a West Virginia girl I can tell you that power outages can easily become extended even if everything is going great with the governments (which it’s definitely not)

5. In cold weather, keep manual labor and other work to a minimum. You do not want to start sweating under your clothes in a cold weather situation. If you are without power and reliable heat you want to be, as much as possible, in “hibernation mode.” Prepare sedentary activities you can do like reading, etc., remember: If it’s cold weather, sweaty/wet clothes will kill you or anyone you care about super fast.

Ok, now for the shopping list.

SHOPPING

1) Water! (especially important if you’re in a city or don’t have any running sources of water nearby). Don’t buy distilled and try not to get it in cans or anything that might burst if it freezes. If you have a means to collect water in advance and make it clean, you can do that in lieu of buying it.

2) Ready to eat meals. You should warm these things as much as possible but cans of beans, peanut butter, chilis, soups, etc., have a lot of what you need to survive. It might also be worth looking into some “meal replacements” where possible like Soylent or Huel (the powders keep pretty OK as long as they’re kept dry). I’ll have more to say on food below. If you have the ability to heat water and have plenty of it, go with dry beans and rice. Cooking will give you something to occupy your mind. (You can use Butane based ones though, with proper ventilation)

3) Heat sources: Chemical hand warmers are great, but depending on your environment that could mean gathering wood for fires or preparing SAFE ways to heat your environment indoors. DO NOT use propane or other fuel based devices indoors because the CO2 buildup will unalive you so fast.

Remember that heating AIR is increddddibly inefficient. The goal is to keep YOU warm and the area you’re in safe as much possible. If you *must* heat an area then something like a pellet heater rigged to ventilate out of an enclosed space can do the job. If you have kerosene based heaters, make sure to buy c0 monitors that can work for extended time in an outage. Insulate the area that is being heated and don’t try to heat a whole apartment. Limit it to a small space and aim to keep the temperature tolerable (40-50F) rather than “comfortable” (use clothing to keep yourself comfortable)

4) Hand Crank or solar generators and backup batteries and LED based lighting. Candles present a real fire risk so keep their use minimal.

5) Blankets/clothes/warmth: Emergency blankets are like... ok. They do a really great job as an insulating layer to keep moisture out and minimize radiant heat loss but you’ll want better blankets and clothing rated for extended time in the cold as much as possible. Likewise, properly insulating your home against drafts will often be a better use of your energy and money than buying expensive specialty blankets. Draft blockers and other inexpensive home insulations like putting plastic sheeting over windows (with limits, remember, ventilation) can help a ton.

6) Sanitation. A bucket with kitty litter will take you far in an emergency situation where water isn’t available. Have a bottle of bleach for sanitizing cooking and other surfaces to prevent infections or disease.

7) First aid. Obviously you can’t stockpile antibiotics so not getting sick or infected in the first place is so important. Keep some saline, wound washes, and other important care items in a kit that you can easily access. Refer to the red cross for that.

8) Cooking. If you’re going to cook (and for extended outages you’ll need to at least warm your food) just be prepared to do it by an open window or outside as much as possible. Camping stoves and whatnot are fine and cheap and you can stock up fuel for them now. Keep your cook times minimal, use minimal heat and you can (in emergencies) even heat food in cans using tea candles or little butane warmers (like you often see at fancy buffets) Don’t think gormet, think safe.


**RECIPES**

I’m running low on space so I’ll have to do a part II for these. If you’re wanting to look up foods you can safely prepare in advance:

1) Check out Guga’s video on Youtube for ancient meat preservation methods. A lot of those like sun and salt curing are something you can start doing NOW and they’ll be ready for the winter (you also don’t need to use expensive meats for that)

2) Hard Tack.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1/2 to 3/4 cup water

• 1 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

2. Mix the flour and salt in a bowl.

3. Gradually add water, stirring until the dough is stiff but still kneadable (you might not need all the water).

4. Knead the dough for 3-5 minutes until smooth.

5. Roll out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick.

6. Cut into squares, typically 3x3 inches.

7. Use a fork or skewer to poke holes all over each piece to prevent bubbling.

8. Place the squares on an ungreased baking sheet.

9. Bake for 30 minutes, then flip the pieces and bake for another 30 minutes, until hard and completely dry.

10. Allow to cool completely before storing.

Storage Guidance:

• Keep it completely dry: Store the cooled hardtack in an airtight container or a zip-top bag.

• Use desiccant: For long-term storage, add a food-safe desiccant pack. (You can put salt, rice, Bentonite Clay, or baking soda and charcoal in little baggies with the food to absorb moisture. Clay and Silica based ones can be heated in ovens to “recharge” them.

• Keep it away from moisture: Moisture will cause it to spoil or grow mold.

• Cool, dark place: Store in a pantry or cupboard away from direct sunlight.

• Shelf life: Properly stored, hardtack can last for years—soldiers relied on it for just that reason!

You can eat hardtack as is, but it’s extremely hard—traditionally, it’s softened by soaking in soup, coffee, or water before eating.

3) Fruit Leather. Again if stored properly it can last a LONG time and there are lots of efficient ways to start that process now.


**FINAL NOTES**

You should *over* prepare. You *are* going to have neighbors, friends, family, etc., who did not prepare or missed something important in their preparations.

In emergency situations, with extended power outages, you also need to consider social dynamics. If the power is out to your city or town for weeks folks who are getting desperate or scared are capable of doing a lot of harm to themselves and others. Light visible through your windows, visible smoke, etc., can draw a crowd. If it’s at all possible, make plans with your local communities to designate shelters with essentials, cookouts, etc., in advance as “just in case” measures.

Where I grew up in WV, we had a winter storm blow through that took out the power for about 72 hours. In that time, it became dangerous to go anywhere near a gas station and the risk of assaults shot up dramatically if folks could see you had power/heat and felt like you were holding out on them.

It’s best for communities to make plans that the federal government and local infrastructure may not hold up in emergencies (nor live up to their duties). Start having these discussions with neighbors, apartment building boards, etc., to ensure that everyone has what they need in these situations. Many hands make light work. As part of your preparations for yourself and your own family, you should work with others to make plans for themselves and your communities to keep safe. Assign roles to individuals with proper resources, find out what gaps you need to fill and how to ration out supplies.

Stay safe, y’all.

Why We Need a New Word for Harmful Speech

In creating our software for “hate speech” detection, we’ve regularly run into a rhetorical issue where people might ask, “What’s hate speech?” or say “I don’t hate anyone…” and honestly, they’re probably right. The truth is Hate (as a linguistic term) applies this emotional, moralizing tone to something that is (imo) not always so flighty as an emotion like hate might be. Today, I felt the challenge to sit down and find a better word if one existed. It didn’t, and so I made it: Kataplexis.

Kataplexis: When Words Strike Downward

Kataplexis is derived from the greek (down, against) and plexis (strike). It is language and action that is, at its core, an assault on those “below” someone whether that’s described in power or in social standing. This word makes no bones about the aggression and the result, while not necessarily indicating any particular emotion behind it.

Where the Term Comes From and Why It Matters

I’ve gone ahead and proposed an initial meaning:

Kataplexis (noun)

Definition: Speech or actions that strike downward, targeting the less powerful, marginalized or defenseless through contempt, dehumanization, and/or scapegoating.

Example: “The President’s speech was kataplexis, not hate.”

Derivative Forms:

Kataplexic/Kataplectic (adjective): Describes language, rhetoric, or tone that embodies kataplexis.

Kataplexist (noun): A person who engages in kataplexis.

Kataplexing: (verb/gerund) the act of performing kataplexis.

Kataplexis is a downward-directed dehumanization, distinct from ordinary insult, that should be recognized as a category of harmful speech.

When Kataplexis Becomes a Pattern: The Problem of Pathology

Though I loathe the idea of adding another term to the DSM or pathologizing behaviors, I think it’s time we recognized that there is a point at which kataplectic/kataplexic behavior represents disordered behavior (alienating individuals from family, friends, and costing them jobs, etc.,) on par with the great harms caused by many other disorders that appear in the DSM.

If a Kataplexic Personality Disorder or Kataplexic Disorder existed, it might describe someone with a pathological fixation on people who have done nothing to them, and who have less power societally to defend themselves. A compulsive derision of people who cannot fight back and who did nothing wrong.

I think we might even add a sibling word to describe people who are habitually kataplexic/kataplectic and do so as a means to gain social standing: socioplexic. Maybe that’s a bit too far.

Regardless, I think if there was ever a time to pathologize a behavior it might be now. Folks are being ritually inducted in this behavior and compulsively alienating themselves from everything they’ve known and loved prior.

What Kataplexis Helps Us Understand About Power

Kataplexis has, as its core definition, an understanding of power dynamics. It is an action that can only flow one way (whereas hate can flow any direction). The definition as is, highlights the victimizing nature of the behavior on those who are perhaps already victimized in local, social, or personal dynamics. A parent can be kataplexic towards their children, but the reverse is not so easily said.

Who Gets Targeted? Power, Intersectionality, and Vulnerability

At its core, this word encourages us to examine the power dynamics and intersectionality of those dynamics at play when someone acts out against others.

How Kataplexis Differs from Hate

I do not think “hate” is necessarily a bad thing, right? We might hate injustice. We might hate wealth inequality or cancer. We might hate the people who abused us when we were children. Hate is, sometimes, a very natural result of conditions or a desire for justice.

So, rhetorically, when we say “hate speech,” this actually carries very little useful information and leaves a lot of ambiguity that can later be used to dismiss the charge despite the clear aggression. Our language should leave no such wiggle room and it should identify this behavior for what it is.

Can something as inhuman as a law be “hateful”? Can it carry and enact hate? I think that’s a very human action, to hate, the law is dispassionate and disinterested but it CAN be kataplexic.

I believe what we’re experiencing is not best described as hate, but as something that has gone terribly wrong in the human condition all over the world in a modern era.

Changing the Conversation: Why Naming Kataplexis Is Powerful

If we accept kataplexis as a lens for understanding the harm embedded in certain speech and actions, we can finally move the conversation beyond hand-wringing debates about intent and emotion. We can confront outcomes and power dynamics directly.

It’s not enough to ask if someone “hates”—the real question is: who is being struck down, and why are we so slow to challenge systems, ideologies, and individuals that make kataplexis their strategy?

Moving Forward: What Happens When We Call It Out

By adopting language like kataplexis, we give ourselves permission to intervene, educate, and even legislate with clarity about the real nature of the problem. Naming what’s happening is, perhaps, the first step toward undoing its most corrosive effects—on individuals, on communities, and on the very fabric of our public discourse. If hate speech is not accurate enough, then perhaps kataplexis is the word we most need right now.

What do you all think?

Evey Winters’ Fractals of Thought is a Wanna Learn More Network Production. Please support the WLMN, a 501c3 organization, here: https://givebutter.com/WLMNLaunch

Before starting in on all the details, let’s discuss what this project is and why it was so important to me. Several months ago, I was inundated with harassment, rape, and death threats in my messages. It was a good day if all I received was a death threat. My comments sections were growing increasingly difficult to moderate as my influence and writing spread more and my friends offered to help moderate my incoming messages so I didn’t need to see the worst of it.

The thing is, though, that I’m unusually good at handling that sort of thing and I worried about my friends’ health and safety if they had to read everything sent to me. So, I decided to apply LLMs and hate speech detection APIs to my cause and when none of them could do what I wanted fully, I set out to build my own.

The original intended purpose of this software was to identify threats, hate speech, and other harmful language to minimize struggles with moderation and keep myself and others safe.

That was until Charlie Kirk was killed.

The days following his shooting were difficult and as a student of history and an advocate it felt important to me to use my platform to let people know it was OK not to mourn or even grieve this man who had done an awful lot in recent years to use his platform for the sake of hostility towards select groups.

People challenged me, and in my spite to prove my point I started repurposing my existing hate speech detection software so that instead of reading comments as they came in I could feed it a bunch of files and get a result.

This is an early version of that result. The software is incomplete, it represents what I was able to string together from open source models and methodologies available to me. I believe it can be refined, expanded, and improved in a variety of ways.

Before We Begin

What follows is not an endorsement of Kirk’s assassination, or anyone’s assassination. It is a means to attempt, perhaps for the first time in history, to create tools for recognizing and safeguarding ourselves and our loved ones against propaganda, hate, devision, and politics of division. It will demonstrate that Charlie Kirk regularly engaged in such politics, using methods that will become familiar to you all as “stochastic terrorism.”

The goal of this software is to act as a preventative in the future, rather than posthumously proving a point with data analysis that folks choosing not to mourn this individual had perfectly good reasons to feel as they did.

Please support the Wanna Learn More Network by contributing to our fundraiser here: https://givebutter.com/WLMNLaunch. That helps to cover the costs of software and programs like this as well as our other efforts.

Stochastic Terrorism Defined

You’ve no doubt been hearing the term “Stochastic Terrorism” thrown around lately. I’ll attempt to give you a simple explanation for it rather than a thorough breakdown. The idea behind stochastic terrorism is to use a platform to create conditions suitable for the terrorism or violence to occur. An important component of Stochastic Terrorism is that the perpetrator stays on the right side of legal culpability for their actions. In other words, they walk right up to the line but they never cross it.

By way of example, imagine a person walking through the woods kicking all manner of twigs, leaves, and other known fire starters into piles. They create hundreds of such piles knowing that eventually someone will accidentally spark one and cause a small, or maybe large fire. It could happen in days, weeks, or months. The person has no idea if it’ll happen at all, but they are deliberately setting the conditions to make it more likely.

That’s similar to how stochastic terrorism creates the conditions for lone wolf shootings and other acts of terror to occur without being held legally culpable.

The Method

The methodology here is as follows: We downloaded full transcripts (where possible and within the bounds of copyright law), as well as media accounts that could be verified of the sayings from Charlie Kirk. We used large language models, specifically trained Gemma models (using Ollama) that had been calibrated to focus on different aspects of the analysis. These LLMs were asked to identify hate speech or other derogatory language in the transcripts and then to check that against three known frameworks for analyzing dangerous or hate speech.

Those models are the Dangerous Speech Project Framework, TRAP-18, and the Rabat framework. I’ll briefly explain each below:

Dangerous Speech Project

Simply put this is a Harvard backed framework for assessing the likelihood that speech will evolve into violence SOMEWHERE and SOMEHOW. That makes it useful as a sort of gauge for Stochastic Terror.

This framework is already in use by major corporations and policy makers. Here’s how to read the data from it:

How It Works:

Uses a 1-5 scale evaluating several key factors:

• Context: Social tensions, historical grievances, recent violence

• Speaker: Influence, credibility, relationship to audience

• Audience: Capacity for violence, shared grievances with speaker

• Speech Content: Dehumanization, threat construction, calls to action

• Means of Dissemination: Platform reach, amplification potential

How to Interpret Scores:

• 1-2/5: Low risk - baseline rhetoric, protected speech

• 3/5: Moderate risk - concerning but not immediately dangerous

• 4/5: High risk - significant potential for downstream harm

• 5/5: Maximum risk - imminent potential for inciting violence

TRAP-18 (Targeted Violence Risk Assessment)

This framework is a threat assessment system that looks for warning behaviors and other characteristics that are known to precede violence. It assesses 18 indicators over two categories. You can find more information about it here. This system has been put into practice in law enforcement and security for some time and attempts to avoid subjective assessments.

Here is how it is applied in the data:

Distal Characteristics (background factors):

• Moral outrage framed by ideology

• Identification with warrior/hero role

• Personal grievances and failures

• Social isolation patterns

Warning Behaviors (proximate indicators):

• Leakage (revealing violent intentions publicly)

• Research and planning activities

• Acquiring weapons or capabilities

• Rehearsal behaviors

How to Interpret Scores:

• 1-2/5: Low confidence - few warning indicators present

• 3/5: Moderate confidence - some concerning patterns

• 4/5: High confidence - multiple warning behaviors evident

• 5/5: Maximum confidence - extensive behavioral indicators

Rabat

The Rabat Plan of Action Framework is used to identify incitement. It evaluates: context, speaker, intent, content, extent (reach/magnitude), and likelihood and then aggregates for scoring.

How to Interpret Scores:

• 1-2/5: Protected speech under international law

• 3/5: Concerning speech warranting monitoring

• 4-5/5: Potentially prohibited “incitement to hatred”

By Our Powers Combined

In using multiple trained LLMs I aimed to stop a model from just agreeing with itself in how it scored the system and carrying assumptions across the board. Instead, each would output scores blindly to a centralized set of scripts that would pull them together into JSON objects for easy measurements.

By using separate, multiple methodologies I’m able to see areas of ambiguity, disagreement, and hopefully reduce errors in the ultimate outcome.

I then relied on OpenAI and Perplexity tools to seek out fact checking and information about these quotes and scores to see if they needed to be put into a different context. Where possible, I’ve included fact checking and other related articles for each item.

What the Data Says

Before I begin, I’ll make it perfectly clear: I am not an unbiased representative. I, as a trans woman, frequently bore the results of Kirk’s rhetoric to such an extent that we had to make rules in the Wanna Learn More Network communities that we would no longer dedicate our time to analyzing and arguing over propagandistic work. I saw, in real time over the years the WLMN was just a ragtag group of volunteers, increasing amounts of hostility and even acts of violence and abuse in households where Kirk’s words were welcomed.

The data I’m sharing today is a slice of a slice, but it is already enough to see a clear pattern of escalating and hostile rhetoric from Charlie Kirk towards LGBTQ+ individuals in particular. As we analyze more data and improve the system, we will no doubt find more details of interest.

I am only focusing on LGBTQ+ issues today because his racial and other cultural comments are more difficult to nail down algorithmically and because I have limited space to share messages and emails. This will already be the longest thing I have ever posted, even pared down this way.

What follows are a series of charts and graphs analyzing the data from the JSON objects you’ll see below. You may copy this output and check it, I’m not claiming to be perfect or that my code has zero errors. This is what I have accomplished in 8 days since his shooting. It should be seen as alpha, preliminary output rather than a damning judgment.

My personal read

My personal read is that this data confirms what many of us who are students of politics and history already knew: that Charlie Kirk started his career along a more libertarian evangelical ideology and became more extreme and hostile over time. Notably, his rhetoric was at its worst in election years, signaling a clear attempt to whip people up for votes.

It’s difficult to ignore these scores. It’s also important to remember that this code only measures a fraction of the data. It has a series of flaws, not the smallest of which is that Charlie Kirk’s debates and other engagements with public speaking were planned (mostly) and he was both a character in the performance and effectively the writer and producer. As such, future revisions of this model will need to take into account what questions were even allowed at his events, what rhetoric the asker used, and whether Charlie Kirk (one of the most argumentative people of the modern era) chose not to argue with the person or chose to soft-ball agree.

Output

This final chart is something I threw together last minute contrasting the changes in Charlie’s scores with the reported instances of hate crimes in the FBI’s reporting. The reporting reveals a strong statistical correlation between our observed data and Kirk’s speech. He should not be considered to have acted alone in creating those conditions, but rather he should be viewed as one of a network of individuals who created the conditions where the Club Q shooting and other crimes were inevitable.

If he were a peace loving, intelligent man, this pattern should have been very clear to him. He had access to data, tons of it, and was well versed in research. There’s almost no way he wasn’t aware of his impacts during his lifetime.

JSON OUTPUT

What follows is the complete JSON output for the intended period and filtering just for LGBTQ+ individuals or topics. As I have said and will say again, this data is not perfect and it can never be perfect. It represents 8 days of work by one person who is also trying to run a nonprofit. I’m certain there will be flaws in it, but as far as I can tell no singular instance of those flaws is particularly damaging to the whole. Smarter people than myself will have to check it over and I can’t wait to refine the concept.

{
  "subject": "Charlie Kirk",
  "scope": "Statements about LGBTQ+ people, 2016–2025",
  "version": "2025-09-18",
  "records":,
      "quote_verbatim": "No prominent anti-LGBTQ statements located in this span in our corpus.",
      "quote_words": 11,
      "context_summary": "Early college-focused content with little direct LGBTQ rhetoric documented.",
      "call_type": ["baseline"],
      "violence_risk": {
        "dangerous_speech_category":,
        "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 1
      },
      "speech_act": "none",
      "stance_intent": "none",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": null,
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_applicable"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Included to show absence before escalation.",
      "evidence_level": "B2",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present":, "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 1},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 1, "speaker_1_to_5": 3, "intent_1_to_5": 1, "content_1_to_5": 1, "extent_1_to_5": 1, "likelihood_1_to_5": 1},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "no"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Baseline period with little documented LGBTQ rhetoric."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2019-06-11-botswana-01",
      "date_utc": "2019-06-11T12:00:00Z",
      "year": 2019,
      "medium": "tweet",
      "platform": "X",
      "venue": "charliekirk11",
      "title_or_slug": "Botswana-decriminalization-praise",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "Botswana decriminalized homosexuality... a monumental achievement.",
      "quote_words": 6,
      "context_summary": "Praised decriminalization abroad and credited Trump-era push.",
      "call_type": ["policy_praise"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category":, "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 1},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "supportive_rights_abroad",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/06/11/charlie-kirk-botswana-homosexuality-trump-praise/",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Early tolerant note before later escalation.",
      "evidence_level": "B2",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present":, "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 1},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 1, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 1, "content_1_to_5": 1, "extent_1_to_5": 2, "likelihood_1_to_5": 1},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "no"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Positive note; low risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2019-11-24-marriage-01",
      "date_utc": "2019-11-24T20:00:00Z",
      "year": 2019,
      "medium": "tweet",
      "platform": "X",
      "venue": "charliekirk11",
      "title_or_slug": "Marriage-one-man-one-woman-plus-inclusion",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["gay conservatives"],
      "quote_verbatim": "Marriage is one man one woman. Gay people should be welcome in the conservative movement.",
      "quote_words": 15,
      "context_summary": "Affirms traditional marriage while inviting gay conservatives politically.",
      "call_type": ["exclusionary_doctrine", "political_inclusion"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category":, "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 1},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "boundary_setting",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1197979402472046593",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Baseline before rhetoric hardened in 2022–2024.",
      "evidence_level": "A1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present":, "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 1},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 2, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 1, "content_1_to_5": 1, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 1},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "no"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Traditional marriage stance with political inclusion; low risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2021-10-14-two-genders-01",
      "date_utc": "2021-10-14T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2021,
      "medium": "video",
      "platform": "YouTube",
      "venue": "The Charlie Kirk Show",
      "title_or_slug": "Two-genders-claims-harm-to-kids",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans people", "trans youth"],
      "quote_verbatim": "There are only two genders. Gender fluidity is a lie that hurts kids.",
      "quote_words": 13,
      "context_summary": "Casts trans identity as deception and child harm.",
      "call_type": ["dehumanization", "threat_construction"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["dehumanization", "threat_construction"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.facebook.com/realCharlieKirk/videos/",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_checked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Representative 2021 clip; exact permalink unstable.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Identity denial framed as protecting kids; medium dangerous speech risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2022-03-29-intervene",
      "date_utc": "2022-03-29T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2022,
      "medium": "video",
      "platform": "YouTube",
      "venue": "Saving America stream",
      "title_or_slug": "Challenge-men-intervene-at-sports",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans women athletes", "school officials"],
      "quote_verbatim": "Here is my challenge for every man… you need to intervene.",
      "quote_words": 11,
      "context_summary": "Urges men to show up and physically prevent participation.",
      "call_type": ["mobilization", "vigilantism_signal"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["call_to_defend"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 4},
      "speech_act": "directive",
      "stance_intent": "mobilization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/youtube-charlie-kirk-calls-men-confront-and-physically-prevent-trans-student-athletes",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Direct exhortation to confront at events.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present": ["leakage_public_statement"], "confidence": "medium", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 3},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 3, "content_1_to_5": 4, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "ambiguous", "imminence": "event_proximate", "likelihood": "nonzero"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Directive to intervene at events; elevated vigilantism risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2022-03-30-locker-rooms-01",
      "date_utc": "2022-03-30T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2022,
      "medium": "show_segment",
      "platform": "YouTube",
      "venue": "The Charlie Kirk Show",
      "title_or_slug": "Fathers-line-up-1950s-60s",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans women"],
      "quote_verbatim": "Fathers should line up and block this… like the 1950s and 60s.",
      "quote_words": 12,
      "context_summary": "On women’s spaces, suggests confrontations and nostalgic handling.",
      "call_type": ["vigilantism_signal", "mobilization"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["appeal_to_past_violence", "call_to_defend"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 4},
      "speech_act": "directive",
      "stance_intent": "mobilization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-calls-fathers-line-and-block-trans-women-using-womens-locker-room",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context": [
        {
          "outlet": "Media Matters",
          "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/right-wing-media-are-pushing-vigilantism-against-trans-people-and-drag-queens",
          "summary": "Frames as vigilantism"
        }
      ],
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Commonly interpreted as encouraging confrontations.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present": ["leakage_public_statement"], "confidence": "medium", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 3},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 3, "content_1_to_5": 4, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "ambiguous", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "nonzero"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Directive nostalgia to confront; elevated vigilantism risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2022-04-08-corrupt-children-01",
      "date_utc": "2022-04-08T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2022,
      "medium": "show_segment",
      "platform": "YouTube",
      "venue": "The Charlie Kirk Show",
      "title_or_slug": "Alphabet-mafia-corrupt-your-children",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "They now want to corrupt your children.",
      "quote_words": 7,
      "context_summary": "Warns that LGBTQ people aim to corrupt children.",
      "call_type": ["threat_construction", "accusation_in_a_mirror"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["accusation_in_a_mirror"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/youtube-charlie-kirk-warns-gay-people-want-corrupt-your-children",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Classic grooming trope.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Grooming trope aimed at parents; medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2022-04-13-inflation-link-01",
      "date_utc": "2022-04-13T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2022,
      "medium": "show_segment",
      "platform": "YouTube",
      "venue": "The Charlie Kirk Show",
      "title_or_slug": "Trans-issue-linked-to-inflation",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans people"],
      "quote_verbatim": "There is a direct connection between inflation and the trans issue.",
      "quote_words": 11,
      "context_summary": "Frames trans acceptance as societal breakdown driving inflation.",
      "call_type": ["threat_construction"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["threat_construction"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 2},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-blames-trans-people-inflation-theres-direct-connection-inflation-and",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Scapegoating pattern.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 2, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Scapegoating linkage; low to medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2022-06-05-ywls-men-stand-up",
      "date_utc": "2022-06-05T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2022,
      "medium": "speech",
      "platform": "Event",
      "venue": "TPUSA YWLS, Texas",
      "title_or_slug": "Where-are-the-men-standing-up",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans women athletes"],
      "quote_verbatim": "Where are the men actually standing up against these men who think they’re women.",
      "quote_words": 14,
      "context_summary": "Urges men to oppose trans women in sports.",
      "call_type": ["mobilization"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["call_to_defend"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "urging",
      "stance_intent": "mobilization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/right-wing-media-are-pushing-vigilantism-against-trans-people-and-drag-queens",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_checked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Less specific than 2022-03-29 but similar thrust.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 3, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Mobilization rhetoric at an event; medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2023-03-03-groomers-recruit-01",
      "date_utc": "2023-03-03T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2023,
      "medium": "radio_show",
      "platform": "Radio",
      "venue": "The Charlie Kirk Show",
      "title_or_slug": "Groomers-cannot-reproduce-they-recruit",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "Groomers cannot reproduce, so they recruit.",
      "quote_words": 6,
      "context_summary": "Associates LGBTQ civic actors with predation.",
      "call_type": ["accusation_in_a_mirror", "dehumanization"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["accusation_in_a_mirror"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 4},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-groomers-cant-reproduce-so-instead-they-recruit-they-go-serve-school",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Criminogenic trope tied to harassment spikes.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present": ["leakage_public_statement"], "confidence": "medium", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 3},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 3, "content_1_to_5": 4, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Accusation in a mirror; high risk of downstream harassment."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2023-03-06-ig-lia-lockerroom",
      "date_utc": "2023-03-06T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2023,
      "medium": "short_video",
      "platform": "Instagram",
      "venue": "TPUSA account",
      "title_or_slug": "Claim-Lia-Thomas-locker-room",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "Lia Thomas exposed male genitalia in a women’s locker room.",
      "quote_words": 10,
      "context_summary": "Sexual threat framing in viral clip.",
      "call_type": ["threat_construction"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["threat_construction"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "allegation",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims": [{"text": "Exposure allegation", "evidence_type": "allegation"}],
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpdkMaiA62M/",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "contested_elsewhere"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Sexual threat frame heightens hostility.",
      "evidence_level": "A1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 3, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Sexual threat framing of a named person; medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2023-06-01-pride-sin",
      "date_utc": "2023-06-01T16:00:00Z",
      "year": 2023,
      "medium": "tweet",
      "platform": "X",
      "venue": "charliekirk11",
      "title_or_slug": "Pride-is-a-sin",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "Pride is a sin.",
      "quote_words": 4,
      "context_summary": "Moral condemnation during Pride Month.",
      "call_type": ["religious_vilification"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category":, "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 2},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "moral_condemnation",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1664328595177652225",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Stigmatizing but not a directive.",
      "evidence_level": "A1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present":, "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 1},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 2, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "no"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Stigmatizing religious judgment; low to medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2023-09-11-abomination-01",
      "date_utc": "2023-09-11T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2023,
      "medium": "live_event",
      "platform": "Event",
      "venue": "Church or stage event",
      "title_or_slug": "Lia-Thomas-abomination-to-God",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "The transgender thing is a throbbing middle finger to God… you are an abomination to God.",
      "quote_words": 16,
      "context_summary": "Religious vilification directed at a named trans woman.",
      "call_type": ["dehumanization", "religious_vilification"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["dehumanization"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 4},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/charlie-kirk-transgender-athletes-abomination-to-god/",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Targets an individual with dehumanizing theology.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 3, "content_1_to_5": 4, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Dehumanizing theology aimed at a person; high risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2023-09-23-ok-groomer",
      "date_utc": "2023-09-23T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2023,
      "medium": "video",
      "platform": "Rumble",
      "venue": "The Charlie Kirk Show",
      "title_or_slug": "OK-Groomer-title",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "OK Groomer.",
      "quote_words": 2,
      "context_summary": "Title/frame normalizes groomer slur.",
      "call_type": ["accusation_in_a_mirror"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["accusation_in_a_mirror"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "labeling",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://rumble.com/v3p5bk2-ok-groomer.html",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Slur as framing device.",
      "evidence_level": "A1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Slur normalization; medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2024-04-01-ban-care-01",
      "date_utc": "2024-04-01T17:00:00Z",
      "year": 2024,
      "medium": "show_segment",
      "platform": "Rumble",
      "venue": "The Charlie Kirk Show",
      "title_or_slug": "Ban-trans-affirming-care-nationwide",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans people", "clinicians"],
      "quote_verbatim": "We must ban trans-affirming care across the entire country.",
      "quote_words": 9,
      "context_summary": "Policy demand framed as national priority.",
      "call_type": ["policy_ban", "criminalization_signal"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["call_to_defend"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "advocacy",
      "stance_intent": "punitive",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-we-must-ban-trans-affirming-care-entire-country-donald-trump-needs-run",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference": ["ban_on_gender_affirming_care"],
      "notes": "Explicit national prohibition posture.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present": ["leakage_public_statement"], "confidence": "medium", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 3},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 4, "content_1_to_5": 4, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Calls for national prohibition; policy coercion not a direct call to violence; medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2024-04-01-call-trump-ban",
      "date_utc": "2024-04-01T17:02:00Z",
      "year": 2024,
      "medium": "show_segment",
      "platform": "Rumble",
      "venue": "The Charlie Kirk Show",
      "title_or_slug": "Urges-Trump-nationwide-ban",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans adults and minors", "providers"],
      "quote_verbatim": "Donald Trump should propose a nationwide ban on gender-affirming care.",
      "quote_words": 10,
      "context_summary": "Direct appeal to a political figure to criminalize care.",
      "call_type": ["policy_ban", "criminalization_signal"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["call_to_defend"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "advocacy",
      "stance_intent": "punitive",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-calls-trump-propose-nationwide-ban-gender-affirming-care-trans-people",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference": ["ban_on_gender_affirming_care"],
      "notes": "Appeal for state coercion.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present": ["leakage_public_statement"], "confidence": "medium", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 3},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 4, "content_1_to_5": 4, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Appeal to a national leader for bans; medium risk under Rabat and Dangerous Speech."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2024-04-01-nuremberg-01",
      "date_utc": "2024-04-01T17:05:00Z",
      "year": 2024,
      "medium": "show_segment",
      "platform": "Rumble",
      "venue": "The Charlie Kirk Show",
      "title_or_slug": "Nuremberg-style-trials-for-clinicians",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["clinicians providing gender-affirming care"],
      "quote_verbatim": "We need a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.",
      "quote_words": 10,
      "context_summary": "Calls to imprison doctors and analogizes to war crimes tribunals.",
      "call_type": ["criminalization", "punitive_tribunals"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["dehumanization", "call_to_defend"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 5},
      "speech_act": "directive",
      "stance_intent": "punitive",
      "claims": [{"text": "Clinicians deserve criminal trials", "evidence_type": "assertion"}],
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-we-need-have-nuremberg-style-trial-every-gender-affirming-clinic-doctor",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference": ["nuremberg_analogy"],
      "notes": "Strong punitive escalation that can legitimize vigilantism among adherents.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present": ["identification_with_warrior_role"], "confidence": "medium", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 4},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 5, "content_1_to_5": 5, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Legally protected speech under Brandenburg but high risk under Rabat and Dangerous Speech."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2024-06-11-leviticus-01",
      "date_utc": "2024-06-11T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2024,
      "medium": "podcast",
      "platform": "Podcast",
      "venue": "Thoughtcrime segment",
      "title_or_slug": "Leviticus-stoning-and-perfect-law",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["gay men"],
      "quote_verbatim": "Leviticus says a man with a man shall be stoned to death… God’s perfect law.",
      "quote_words": 15,
      "context_summary": "Cites death-penalty verse and calls it perfect law while critiquing LGBTQ support.",
      "call_type": ["religious_vilification", "normative_lethal_penalty_reference"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["dehumanization", "appeal_to_purity"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 5},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "moral_authorization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.factcheck.org/2025/09/viral-claims-about-charlie-kirks-words/",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context": [
        {"outlet": "Out", "url": "https://www.out.com/news/charlie-kirk-stoning-perfect-law", "summary": "Context and reaction"}
      ],
      "fact_check_context": [
        {"outlet": "FactCheck.org", "url": "https://www.factcheck.org/2025/09/viral-claims-about-charlie-kirks-words/", "summary": "Verifies wording; notes overstatements by others"}
      ],
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": "Argued critics cherry-pick scripture", "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "partially_misattributed_by_others"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference": ["biblical_capital_punishment_reference"],
      "notes": "Not a literal present-day call to execute, but valorizes a death-penalty text.",
      "evidence_level": "B2",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present": ["leakage_public_statement"], "confidence": "medium", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 4},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 5, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 4, "content_1_to_5": 5, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Valorizes a death penalty verse; high risk of moral authorization effects."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2024-08-02-mental-disease",
      "date_utc": "2024-08-02T19:00:00Z",
      "year": 2024,
      "medium": "speech",
      "platform": "Event",
      "venue": "Frisco, Texas gala",
      "title_or_slug": "Transgenderism-is-a-mental-disease",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans people"],
      "quote_verbatim": "I think it’s a mental disease… two sexes, zero genders.",
      "quote_words": 10,
      "context_summary": "Pathologizes trans identity and denies gender.",
      "call_type": ["dehumanization"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["dehumanization"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3IfyPGXB-w",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_checked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Medicalized dehumanization.",
      "evidence_level": "B2",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Pathologizing claim that narrows empathy; medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2024-09-26-gay-student-01",
      "date_utc": "2024-09-26T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2024,
      "medium": "q_and_a",
      "platform": "Event",
      "venue": "Campus event",
      "title_or_slug": "Welcome-movement-disagree-lifestyle",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["gay conservatives"],
      "quote_verbatim": "Welcome to the movement… I do not agree with that lifestyle.",
      "quote_words": 11,
      "context_summary": "Political inclusion while reinforcing moral condemnation.",
      "call_type": ["exclusionary_doctrine"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category":, "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 2},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "boundary_setting",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlie-kirk-lgbtq-views-explained-b2628237.html",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_checked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Inclusion veneer with moral disapproval.",
      "evidence_level": "B2",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present":, "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 1},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 2, "extent_1_to_5": 2, "likelihood_1_to_5": 1},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "no"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Inclusion with moral disapproval; low risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2025-08-25-flag-legal-01",
      "date_utc": "2025-08-25T16:00:00Z",
      "year": 2025,
      "medium": "tweet",
      "platform": "X",
      "venue": "charliekirk11",
      "title_or_slug": "Legalize-burning-rainbow-flag",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "It should be legal to burn a rainbow flag. Overturn every conviction.",
      "quote_words": 12,
      "context_summary": "Advocates protection for acts seen as intimidation against LGBTQ symbols.",
      "call_type": ["symbolic_aggression_normalization", "legal_impunity_call"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["call_to_defend"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "advocacy",
      "stance_intent": "punitive_symbolic",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1797330302588330243",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference": ["flag_burning_first_amendment_analogy"],
      "notes": "Normalizes intimidation in public space, not bodily violence.",
      "evidence_level": "A1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 3, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Normalizes symbolic aggression against a minority symbol; medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2025-09-10-uvu-context-01",
      "date_utc": "2025-09-10T19:00:00Z",
      "year": 2025,
      "medium": "live_event",
      "platform": "Event",
      "venue": "Utah Valley University event",
      "title_or_slug": "Remarks-on-trans-and-violence-discourse",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans people"],
      "quote_verbatim": "Comments linking trans identity to mass shooting discourse.",
      "quote_words": 8,
      "context_summary": "Referenced by press in coverage; contextual mention only.",
      "call_type": ["threat_construction"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["threat_construction"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {"url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/12/charlie-kirk-shooting-new-video-of-suspect-released-by-fbi-asamid-urgent-appeal-for-help-from-the-public", "archived_url": null, "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"},
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_checked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Political violence is condemned. Entry documents context only; verify source before publication.",
      "evidence_level": "B2",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 5, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Contextual mention amid heated coverage; moderate stigmatization with low evidence confidence."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2022-xx-alphabet-mafia-ridicule",
      "date_utc": "2022-01-01T00:00:00Z",
      "year": 2022,
      "date_precision": "year-only",
      "medium": "video",
      "platform": "Facebook",
      "venue": "Page videos",
      "title_or_slug": "Perverted-Alphabet-Mafia-Deserve-Ridicule",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "The perverted alphabet mafia deserve to be ridiculed.",
      "quote_words": 8,
      "context_summary": "Recurring ridicule and collective labeling.",
      "call_type": ["dehumanization", "ridicule"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["dehumanization"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.facebook.com/realCharlieKirk/videos/the-perverted-alphabet-mafia-deserve-to-be-ridiculed/2069348036740267/",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_checked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Long-tail content below national radar.",
      "evidence_level": "A1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 2},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Collective slur and humiliation framing; medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2022-xx-men-not-allowed-locker-rooms",
      "date_utc": "2022-01-01T00:00:00Z",
      "year": 2022,
      "date_precision": "year-only",
      "medium": "video",
      "platform": "Facebook",
      "venue": "Page videos",
      "title_or_slug": "Men-not-allowed-in-womens-locker-rooms",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans women"],
      "quote_verbatim": "Men should not be allowed in women's locker rooms.",
      "quote_words": 9,
      "context_summary": "Categorical denial of access for trans women.",
      "call_type": ["exclusion"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category": ["threat_construction"], "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 2},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "exclusion",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.facebook.com/realCharlieKirk/videos/charlie-kirk-and-trans-leftist-clash-over-transgender-ideology/5102442503193259/",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_checked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Identity denial via category claim.",
      "evidence_level": "A1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present":, "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 1},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 2, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Exclusionary rule framing; low to medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2019-2023-two-genders-series",
      "date_utc": "2019-01-01T00:00:00Z",
      "year": 2019,
      "date_precision": "range",
      "medium": "video",
      "platform": "YouTube",
      "venue": "Compilations",
      "title_or_slug": "There-are-only-two-genders-series",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans and nonbinary people"],
      "quote_verbatim": "There are only two genders… infinite personalities, no genders.",
      "quote_words": 9,
      "context_summary": "Recurring identity denial across platforms.",
      "call_type": ["identity_denial"],
      "violence_risk": {"dangerous_speech_category":, "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 2},
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r47Q-LxL5jc",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_checked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Long-running theme.",
      "evidence_level": "A1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present":, "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 1},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 2, "extent_1_to_5": 3, "likelihood_1_to_5": 2},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Recurring identity denial across years; low to medium risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2025-09-10-assassination",
      "date_utc": "2025-09-10T18:00:00Z",
      "year": 2025,
      "medium": "live_event",
      "platform": "Event",
      "venue": "Utah Valley University",
      "title_or_slug": "Assassination-Utah-Valley-University",
      "speaker": "Charlie Kirk",
      "target_group": ["trans people"],
      "quote_verbatim": "\"Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?\" \"Too many,\" Kirk replied.",
      "quote_words": 18,
      "context_summary": "Kirk was shot and killed while answering a question from a student on campus. He was speaking on the topic of transgender individuals and mass shootings.",
      "call_type": ["dehumanization", "stigmatization"],
      "violence_risk": {
        "dangerous_speech_category": ["threat_construction"],
        "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 5
      },
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "stigmatization",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://time.com/7316280/charlie-kirk-dead-political-violence/",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_checked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "This entry documents the final event leading to his death.",
      "evidence_level": "A1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "high", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 5},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 5, "speaker_1_to_5": 5, "intent_1_to_5": 5, "content_1_to_5": 5, "extent_1_to_5": 5, "likelihood_1_to_5": 5},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Final statement moments before being shot; high risk."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2025-09-11-robinson-arrest",
      "date_utc": "2025-09-11T22:00:00Z",
      "year": 2025,
      "medium": "news_report",
      "platform": "multiple",
      "venue": "Law enforcement press conference",
      "title_or_slug": "Tyler-Robinson-Arrest-Motive",
      "speaker": "Authorities (Gov. Spencer Cox)",
      "target_group":,
      "quote_verbatim": "He had become “more political in recent years” and had criticized Kirk, mentioning that Kirk was \"full of hate and spreading hate.\"",
      "quote_words": 20,
      "context_summary": "Details of the suspect's arrest, his identity as Tyler Robinson, and his alleged motivations, including his transgender partner and recent radicalization.",
      "call_type": ["threat_construction"],
      "violence_risk": {
        "dangerous_speech_category": ["call_to_defend"],
        "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 5
      },
      "speech_act": "accusation",
      "stance_intent": "justification",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk-shooting-new-video-of-suspect-released-by-fbi-asamid-urgent-appeal-for-help-from-the-public",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "This entry documents the alleged motive and arrest of the suspect, which was confirmed by authorities.",
      "evidence_level": "A2",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "high", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 5},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 5, "speaker_1_to_5": 5, "intent_1_to_5": 5, "content_1_to_5": 5, "extent_1_to_5": 5, "likelihood_1_to_5": 5},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Suspect's ideological motive and personal connection to the targeted community."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2025-09-11-hoax",
      "date_utc": "2025-09-11T00:00:00Z",
      "year": 2025,
      "date_precision": "range",
      "medium": "social_media",
      "platform": "multiple",
      "venue": "X, Facebook, etc.",
      "title_or_slug": "Post-shooting-misinformation-hoax",
      "speaker": "multiple",
      "target_group": ["general public"],
      "quote_verbatim": "A flood of false and misleading claims filled social media.",
      "quote_words": 9,
      "context_summary": "Misinformation and hoaxes spread rapidly online after the shooting, with wrong individuals being identified as the suspect.",
      "call_type": ["misinformation"],
      "violence_risk": {
        "dangerous_speech_category":,
        "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 2
      },
      "speech_act": "assertion",
      "stance_intent": "disinformation",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-charlie-kirk-shot-assassination-3354b7ba0d736c198b454f77b3744308",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "debunked"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "Hoaxes and false information followed a predictable pattern for breaking news events.",
      "evidence_level": "B2",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present":, "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "low", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 1},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 3, "speaker_1_to_5": 1, "intent_1_to_5": 2, "content_1_to_5": 2, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 1},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "no"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Disinformation and hoaxes were a major part of the post-assassination narrative."
    },
    {
      "id": "ck-2025-09-12-targeting-critics",
      "date_utc": "2025-09-12T00:00:00Z",
      "year": 2025,
      "date_precision": "range",
      "medium": "news_report",
      "platform": "multiple",
      "venue": "Online, political events",
      "title_or_slug": "Political-targeting-of-critics",
      "speaker": "Right-wing figures",
      "target_group": ["Critics of Charlie Kirk"],
      "quote_verbatim": "People who had \"disgusting\" statements about the assassination could draw sanctions.",
      "quote_words": 10,
      "context_summary": "A University of Mississippi employee was fired for a critical post. Florida's education commissioner warned teachers about similar behavior.",
      "call_type": ["mobilization", "retribution"],
      "violence_risk": {
        "dangerous_speech_category": ["call_to_defend"],
        "dangerous_speech_score_1_to_5": 3
      },
      "speech_act": "advocacy",
      "stance_intent": "punitive",
      "claims":,
      "primary_source": {
        "url": "https://www.mississippifreepress.org/university-of-mississippi-fires-employee-for-sharing-post-criticizing-charlie-kirk/",
        "archived_url": null,
        "retrieval_date": "2025-09-18"
      },
      "watchdog_context":,
      "fact_check_context":,
      "contestation": {"counter_statement_by_kirk": null, "defenses":, "fact_check_status": "not_disputed"},
      "legal_or_policy_reference":,
      "notes": "This entry documents the retaliatory actions against individuals who were seen as disrespectful to Kirk.",
      "evidence_level": "B1",
      "frameworks": {
        "trap18": {"distal_characteristics_present": ["moral_outrage_framed_by_ideology"], "warning_behaviors_present":, "confidence": "medium", "trap18_risk_score_1_to_5": 3},
        "rabat": {"context_1_to_5": 4, "speaker_1_to_5": 4, "intent_1_to_5": 3, "content_1_to_5": 3, "extent_1_to_5": 4, "likelihood_1_to_5": 3},
        "brandenburg": {"intent_to_incite": "no", "imminence": "no", "likelihood": "low"}
      },
      "takeaway": "Escalation of political conflict into digital retribution with real-world consequences."
    }
  ]
}

If only any given trans person could make it through the day without hearing some variation of “why should I accept you now when you couldn’t accept yourself?” What a magical day that would be.

Let’s talk about this little turn of phrase, a common rhetorical device that takes words and flips them back around in order to sound as though they’ve said something wise. This device is called a Chiasmus, and it’s used to sound like you’re really getting a dig in when you’re not adding anything to the conversation.

So let’s dig into this elementary attempt at wisened bigotry, shall we?

There is no transition without self acceptance.

In order for any trans person to imagine entering that social chrysalis to emerge as a fuller version of themselves, they require a profound awareness of who they “are” in the moment (or rather, the identity that was handed to them). They have to have accepted those realities.

Acceptance is not the same thing as agreement, which is the first place this bigoted phrase falls down. The classical, more literal meaning of Acceptance is to see things as they are without judgement. An example of not accepting yourself is, for instance, insisting that you are a Christian when following none of the doctrine or laws of said religion.

Trans people are under no such delusions about themselves. If anything, trans people are better at self acceptance. You’ll seldom find a trans person who doesn’t acknowledge the body they were given or the realities of their situation. What they also acknowledge is what is within their power to change because of another thing they have accepted - to deny who they are growing towards or feel inclined to be will cause suffering.

And likewise, when transgender individuals ask for acceptance they are not asking for enthusiastic agreement with who they are — very few people get that. After all, don’t all of us have stories of parents or other authority figures trying to shape us in ways we resisted because we knew who we were growing towards? We had that certainty of self identity, and we all know the feeling of people disagreeing with that identity.

And that’s because they disagreed with what they could not bring themselves to accept, rather than agreeing to accept instead of agreeing. (See how easy it is to sound wise when you just jumble words around?)

My Teacher

As a Buddhist, I struggled with this same issue from another perspective. In Buddhism, we have the concept of Anattā or “no self.” Like many westerners, I struggled with the idea that there was no fixed and permanent me to anchor my identity to. In the absence of that, how could I be trans, right? Leave it to my teacher to have broken through that with the utmost simplicity.

There is no self, but a vast ecosystem of feelings, emotions, and identities. There was pain. Pain I knew the source of — pain that I could alleviate with methods aware to me. “We are Buddhists, not masochists,” she told me. I was encouraged to alleviate my pain mindfully, not out of reactions to suffering.

At no point did I refuse to accept who I was as part of my journey, most trans people have similar journeys in their own ways. We have all had to do a lot of work to deconstruct the self in order to understand and accept both our present circumstances and the need to change them.

If there was one requirement to be trans that I could name, it would be doing that work (even without knowing you’re doing it) to understand yourself enough to know what you must do. A profound, beautiful act of self acceptance in a world that loves handing out easy prescriptions for who you are and should be. There is no trans person on this planet who did not walk every day in a world doing everything it could to shape them and for them to have the integrity and acceptance of self to say, “no.”

Agree with Who You Were

To agree with who you were, as the FCB would have you do, is the opposite of self acceptance. It is a lazy, opiatic way to avoid truly looking at yourself and it is also an impossible thing to ask of anyone. Throughout all of life, we ask people to look critically at and better themselves. In particular, in the United States we push this idea of anyone being able to rise above their station and become someone new.

Right now, somewhere, young men are being told on podcasts by sentient manifestations of unhealed abuse to deny themselves, their feelings, and their own limits in order to become an archetype of a man they yearn to be. In many cases, the modern day definitions of manhood require young men to emotionally castrate themselves for a performance that only leaves them lonelier and more miserable. They leave themselves and the dreams they once had on the cutting room floor in exchange for greater suffering.

Trans people, again, do not suffer this sort of emotional mutilation. Instead, they accept that others attempted to mutilate them this way and rebel against it with the willingness to gamble everything they’ve ever gained for an ounce of internal honesty.

I ask you, why should trans people accept a world of people who can’t accept themselves that tells them they must carve their true selves to bits rather than change bits to reveal their true selves?

The Question You Should Ask

Who benefits by maintaining a world of sharp, external controls on gender and self identity? Who do those identities serve? Because when I look at the individuals pushing anti-trans agendas, those agendas never happen in a vacuum. Peek behind the curtain and you will find people who benefit not just from distracting you with trans people — but people whose entire framework of the world cannot include trans people.

Much as they’ve carved off the human parts of themselves that they couldn’t accept, they need to mutilate the world to force it to conform to their ideals rather than accepting it.

Thanks for reading!

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