So, about Eurovision. One thing people haven't understood well is that the EBU who runs Eurovision is a union (that's what the U means) and therefore is beholden to its members, in this case the various European broadcasters, and especially the big ones like the UK's BBC and Germany's ARD.

*Of course* I'm doing a Eurovision livetweeting thread tonight, with little bits of information and background info about the songs and entrants and the occasional hot take.

Who did you think I am? Eurovision tonight is coming from the M&S Arena in Liverpool, temporarily renamed the BBC Arena, to save us the trouble of explaining Marks and Spencers to the rest of the world. It's quite the venue, right by the Mersey.

This seems wild to us now but it's honestly how most people react to trans folk in their lives, there isn't base hatred there, maybe some confusion, but goodwill still.

All the current 'debate' and fearmongering and handwringing over 'agendas' has been artificially manufactured.

https://twitter.com/ask_aubry/status/1652502209127489536

Trans controversy is largely a phenomenon solely in politics and the media because these are two spaces with universal reach that are actually controlled by a small number of people in privileged demographics, and they created this 'debate', this moral panic, out of nothing.

Every big tweet just having completely unusable replies because all the trolls posting emoji just get pushed to the top over any useful information is really bad for Twitter as a useful forum, both in terms of user experience, and in how appealing it is for orgs to use.

https://twitter.com/mcjulie/status/1649933568829980673

Everyone saying "just block all of them now they're in one place" probably hasn't had to deal with those crowds on here themselves before: you can never block everyone and coming on here just to block a hundred accounts spinning hate speech every time you open the app is draining

baby's first subcrawl 🚇🍻 I am way too much of a lightweight for this

People who write fanfic are also those who write history and imagining some kind of great divide between monumental serious politicians and the frivolous inconsequential artists is not only steeped in offensive assumptions but is also profoundly ahistorical.

https://twitter.com/fireh9lly/status/1594236109592182789

A large part of what I did in my history degree was show how interlinked political movements and social movements were within states to their art and their culture, and this holds true no matter where and when we look. What is this fawning misogynist Great Men historiography lol

In 2013 a random (cis) dude followed some women to London TDoR, interrupted it to give a weird rambling speech about trans people, spat in my face when I asked him to stop, threatened to sue me for it afterwards, and then two months later tried asking me out on a date in my DMs. Wild times, in many respects.

OK Twitter, I need to talk to you about the harmful version of conversion therapy I went through a teen - something called 'desistence therapy', which was basically gaslighting of a young teen into not only not transitioning but believing that not transitioning was their idea. What's worse is that this was done to me not by a shady illicit private business but by a NHS Gender Clinic. They forced me to undergo the wrong puberty, with me begging them to prevent it, and tried to convince me that it was what I really wanted all along, and it broke me.

LGB AlIiance members object to having gay men there, and yet still they get regarded by the UK media as a legitimate LGB rights group.

https://twitter.com/xma1e/status/1583408124995997702

Whole point of the "LGB" in "LGB AlIiance" is not to actually represent lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, but to exclude the "T". Everything they do is about excluding and marginalising trans people. They may as well be the "-T Alliance".

Went to see Ukrainian 2020/2021 Eurovision act, folk-techno group @_Go_A_ in Glasgow tonight and they were fantastic. So much energy in the venue, and so much support for Ukraine 🇺🇦 They even got into the Glasgow spirit.

A lot of people have already criticised this article but I'm quietly raging about how trans people *never* get to tell our own stories in our national media while cis people are free to talk about us and get every support in doing so. We are repeatedly denied our own agency.

https://twitter.com/AliceAvizandum/status/1579066722455539714

How many times have we seen this "my husband transitioned and now he's a woman! my life is ruined!" piece as opposed to trans people talking about how hard it was to make the call to transition knowing their relationships might suffer as a result? Why do we never get columns?

So this is occupying my thoughts today. Will discover if after decades of following the contest and having traveled to attend five of them, Eurovision will actually take place in the city I live in.

https://twitter.com/BBC/status/1578338747313184775

Most people are assuming it's cut and dry for Glasgow but as well as nothing in Glasgow being currently dry, it's also not at all certain. Liverpool have put in so much effort, their campaign has been full of passion, drive, and love for the contest, while Glasgow's has not.

This is a frustrating thread: Twitter just outright ignoring warnings from marginalised people and adopting their own, deeply naïve, ideas about how to temper extremism that anyone with literally any expertise could immediately identify as utterly useless.

https://twitter.com/_ElizabethMay/status/1566409756486541313

It's a pattern with those running Twitter and indeed other social media and the wider tech sphere. The people at the top who make decisions about their sites tend to be rich white techbros with no experience of marginalisation or mechanisms of abuse because they've never faced it

Joe treating the show with exactly the attitude it deserves, a show which promoted itself as being about politics but somehow without debate.

UK political coverage for some time has stripped the actual politics away and turned it into light entertainment

You can make odd sound bite of opposition but by and large these discussion shows are there to soften politics, to present absolutely crucial issues affecting us all as coffee break chats, and to create artificial ideas of consensus. It may as well be an early evening chat show.

In other words, KF started targeting people CF actually cared about instead of just trans people, queer people, sex workers, and so on.

Pretending like the site has only recently got really violent, as this blog post does, is quite simply farcical and cannot be taken seriously.

https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566190344680644610

Cloudflare also very keen to claim this had nothing to do with #DropKiwifarms before then essentially admitting it was caused by #DropKiwifarms.

Stop generalising the lifestyles, interests, and hobbies of your specific friendship groups as true for your entire demographic challenge 2022. I get it, you want to celebrate things you have in common, and share a collective identity in a world that often seems like it's trying to deny that. I do. But you can say that without claiming it's true for everyone, because you can end up isolating other people the same in turn

It is tragically funny seeing so many on this site defending a white comedian making racial slurs and publicly exposing himself, because they've convinced themselves he was making jokes about trans women as well and that was *really* why he was told to find another venue. Not only is a venue's right to decide who they book being once again being bad faith conflated with totalitarian censorship, but it seems no matter what reasons they have for doing so, it will made out to be about trans people thought police. Because the folk saying are obsessed.

Glasgow's West End looking very beautiful today (1/5) Buildings old and new (2/5)

Everywhere I walk in Glasgow this week I hear the distant drone of bagpipes on the horizon. There's a piping championship taking place at the moment, so lots of bands are here and practising. It's become very clear very quickly just how well the sound of bagpipes travels, which was the point I guess.

Within the anti-trans networks, there is an idea that the whole trans 'movement' is so fraudulent that it could collapse at any moment, and there is a lack of understanding why it hasn't - why there haven't been the predicted swathes of former trans kids regretting everything. There's this assumption that because it so clearly is fraudulent that it just be being artificially promoted through shady funding etc (hence blaming Stonewall)

So they tend to assume that every and any legal action or development will be the one that brings the whole thing down

The UK press today both reporting a legal challenge against StonewaII that failed against StonewaII as succeeding and reporting on the Tavistock closing without mentioning how it's being replaced with decentralised services. UK media is just SO inherently dishonest on trans stuff They genuinely believe that trans kids don't exist and any trans healthcare for under 25 years old or so is abusive. Meanwhile UK trans kids have been failed for decades now by a completely outdated chronically overloaded system that exists primarily to try and make them wait.