America chose fascism and now we somehow have to find a way to live with that

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone, welcome back. My name’s Courtney, Royce is here too. Neither of us feel like talking because we only have terrible things to say, but here we are anyway, so let’s get it over with. As I’m sure all of you are painfully aware by this point, Donald Trump won the election.

Courtney: We have made no secret about our opposition to Trump. We have talked repeatedly about the harmful politics behind Project 2025, behind his Vice President JD Vance. And we’re going to talk just a little bit about what our kind of predictions are for what to expect in the next couple of years in terms of rhetoric, in terms of proposed legislation. Obviously, we’ve already talked about what these conservative think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation, have put forth. We’ve talked about that extensively. So if you want to hear about the actual politics and strategy side of it, you can go listen to those episodes.

Courtney: But I actually want to start today’s episode by talking about something that I fully intended to touch on even before the election, I have had this as a topic that is very important, we need to discuss it. But I think it dovetails very nicely into what I think we can expect going forward. And this is sort of the lesser known side of things. Obviously right now, turn on any news station, go to any social media platform, everyone has their predictions, everyone has their thoughts and opinions. So I think we’re just going to continue doing what we do best by analyzing the lesser discussed details with an ace lens.

Courtney: And to start off today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about mifepristone. Mifepristone is a drug for medication abortion that some of you may be aware that there are many anti-abortion groups who have been coming for this.

Courtney: They have been invoking just ancient legislation, 150-year-old legislation, the Comstock Act, trying to restrict abortion rights. Now the one little glimmer of hope that came out of our horrendous election night is that a vast majority of states that did have abortion protections on the ballot did pass them. When abortion is on the ballot at a state level, the people defend their rights. And I’m proud that we are from Kansas and Kansas was the first state to put it on the ballot after Roe vs Wade got overturned. So we set that precedent of protecting abortion rights. But that’s not going to stop the anti abortion crowd. And for as much as I would love to say, “Yay, Kansas, we’re doing so good.” And Missouri has– has joined us. Missouri’s coming around too. Missouri had those really fun trigger laws that, as soon as Roe vs Wade got overturned, they’re like, “No, banned.”

Courtney: So that was a weird morning to wake up and being like, “Wow, 10 minutes down the road, like just over the state line, people have vastly fewer rights than they do over here. What a weird way to be.”

Courtney: But I want to talk about this lawsuit that has been put forth by three states Kansas, Missouri, and Idaho, because it’s not so much, “Oh, they’re coming for our abortion rights.” We know they’re doing that. We’ve known they’ve been doing it this whole time. They aren’t gonna stop just because Roe vs Wade got overturned and they won on that issue. It’s how they are now fighting it. Because we have been sounding the alarm about people who are coming for platonic marriages, about people who are pushing aggressively pronatalist stances. Please go listen to our episode on pronatalism and effective altruism, because we’re gonna be talking a lot more about that in the coming months and years.

Courtney: So why are these three states arguing that we should restrict rights to access Mifepristone? [sighs] I don’t know. I keep going back and forth between whether or not I’m surprised by this or not. Because I know people think this way. I have seen and been outspoken about people who think this way. But it’s still a little bit jarring to me to actually see it written out in a public lawsuit, in black and white. It’s just right there. They actually put it in writing. Which tells me that they know that this is a winning strategy. And if it’s not yet, they’re on the cusp of this becoming a winning strategy. So we’re gonna start seeing things like this more and more. They cite a study that suggests that remote dispensing of abortion drugs by male common carrier or interactive computer service is depressing expected birth rates for teenage mothers. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Wouldn’t you think that would be a good thing?

Royce: Well, the interesting thing that that calls attention to is it strikes a line right through all of the conservative states that argue that sex education in schools is something that is either something that the parent should teach instead of the schools, or is something that shouldn’t be taught to that age group, or something like that. Because right here they’re saying, “No, the intent is to have more people having children at younger ages.” Because they’re citing a manufactured harm that that is causing to society.

Courtney: Well, and where they take it is just so nauseating. And just a super cliff notes for any– anyone who isn’t super familiar with the Comstock Act, like Comstock was a dude in the 1800s. The legislation is from the 1870s and it was banning the use of mailing abortion drugs. It also lumped in things like mailing pornography. In the Comstock legislation, Comstock as the guy, a lot of it arose from the Civil War. Because the Civil War– I can’t get into an entire thesis about this right now. I really cannot, because then I’m going to start ranting about Abraham Lincoln again and nobody wants that. Maybe a few of you want that. [laughs] Maybe a few of you want that. But the fallout from the Civil War led to a rise in politicized Christianity in this country.

Courtney: So when we talk about the Christian nationalists of today, when we talk about the organizations like the Heritage Foundation, some of the earliest seeds of really mobilizing that very conservative Christian base to use politics came as a result of the Civil War. And specifically evangelical Christianity is what became heavily politicized and weaponized during the Civil War. To the point where evangelical leaders at the time stated that the Civil War was fundamentally a war for Christian civilization. And that is a war that they have never given up. That is a war that they are still fighting. And the Comstock Act was really just entrenched in the idea that any non-procreative sex is a sin. That’s what it was. So the same ideas that give rise to not only homophobia but acephobia, transphobia, all of these things we talk about, is that marriage demands consummation, it demands procreation. And we obviously still see all these conservative think tanks saying exactly the same thing and trying still to pass legislation. Sometimes new legislation, sometimes saying, “Hey, we have that Comstock Act on the books. I know other administrations have not been prosecuting it. I know we’ve sort of said we’re just going to ignore that for a while. But what if we stop ignoring it?”

Courtney: And I promise this is going to be my only Lincoln documentary jab. The people in the Lincoln documentary claimed that there was absolutely no prejudice against homosexual sex until Freud. Freud invented homophobia. Give me a break!

Courtney: But with all that in mind, we now have attorneys general for multiple states– and not just any states, states where the people have, by popular vote, decided to protect abortion rights. Kansas was the first one, Missouri followed along just now. So our attorneys general for these two states– I honestly don’t know what the state of Idaho is without looking it up. I’m sorry, idahoans. Is that what they’re called, idahoans?

Royce: Idahoan looks to be correct, yes. I did not know that their motto was: let it be perpetual. And that seems weird.

Courtney: That sounds terrifying. What’s going on over there, Idaho? [laughs]

Royce: Also, I wasn’t expecting an Idaho tangent. Shout out to anyone living in the potato state.

Courtney: We love you, potato state. Not your attorney general though.

Royce: Normally when I think of country or state or city anthems, it’s like something respectful or aspirational. The title of the Idaho State Anthem is just Here We Have Idaho.

Courtney: [bursts laughing] You know what? It’s humble, it’s honest. I like it. It’s refreshing. And, dare I say, let it be perpetual. Okay, enough, Idaho slander, let’s attack them on the actual issues. [chuckles] So yeah, we’ve got some rogue attorneys general here that are like, “I don’t care if the people of our state want to protect abortion rights, but I lost at the state level, so let’s file federal lawsuits.” Let’s get things banned in a different way. Let’s reverse tactics. So why are they saying that it is a bad thing that access to mifepristone is depressing expected birth rates for teenage mothers? This is a quote: [reading] “A loss of potential population causes further injuries as well. The state’s subsequent diminishment of political representation and loss of federal funds, such as potentially losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are reduced or their increase diminished.”

Royce: You know how I immediately know that’s bullshit?

Courtney: Tell me.

Royce: Most of these people are anti-immigration.

Courtney: [laughs] See, that’s a problem I keep coming back to with so many of the pronatalist stances. So many of them are like, “We must reproduce,” and many of them are overtly white supremacists. A lot of them claim to not be, but some of them are overtly white supremacists. They want to grow the population with ‘the right kind of people’. It’s nauseating and that’s why we’re going to be talking about them more in the future. I have listened to far too many hours of that pronatalist podcast. I’m deeply fascinated by that couple in a very morbid way. But we’re not going to get into them today. Because the issue at hand here is that they are no longer trying to be secretive about the fact that they do want to force underage mothers, often impoverished mothers, to have babies. And they aren’t even saying anymore like it is just inherently good to have babies. They aren’t even trying to say what about the rights of the unborn child? Like that is what we have heard for decades. The rights of the unborn child is what we’re trying to protect. They’re not even saying that anymore. They’re like, “Well, we need more people, we need more federal funding, we need seats in Congress.”

Courtney: Think about the state, think about the state’s right. Doesn’t the state have the right to dictate that you have a baby that you don’t want? It’s disgusting. But these aggressively pronatalist stances are getting increasingly popular, increasingly more mainstream. And we’ve seen very socially powerful people such as Elon Musk espousing these things. And we’ve seen really off the wall takes from the likes of Musk, from the likes of JD Vance, about either we should take away voting rights for people who don’t have kids, or, if we can’t do that, then people who have kids should just get extra votes for their kids. This is about– It’s also the same political camp of people who are trying to gut public education because they want to incentivize private, evangelical Christian education. They are trying to create more evangelical, white, conservative babies and then indoctrinate them for their own future political gain. This is the state of the matter, and we now have states filing lawsuits outright saying we shouldn’t let these teenagers have access to abortion. Because what about the state? What about our money? What about our seats in Congress? Think of the poor, underprivileged states. What about the state’s rights?

Courtney: And in the immediate aftermath of the few days following the election, we know that Trump is putting Elon Musk in some kind of wildly powerful position within the executive branch. Elon Musk is already saying that he’s going to make such drastic cuts to the federal funding which means everywhere. It’s gonna have to be everywhere if we come anywhere close to what he’s saying. So every social safety net we have, every good thing that is probably already underfunded, that the government has available to protect its citizens, is going to have incredible cuts. And he’s already outright saying that necessarily involves some temporary hardship. He’s already saying it’s going to suck for you, it’s going to be bad, but we need to do it. But even cutting spending or looking at government efficiency or budgeting or anything like that is never apolitical. It’s not just a matter of simple math, like they’d like you to believe. It’s not just a matter of cut spending to live within our means. Everything is going to have a human decision and a human logic behind it.

Courtney: And this is obviously an immensely wealthy, immensely powerful man who’s going to become even more wealthy and even more powerful with every decision he makes. Do you really think he’s going to cut funding that’s going to his SpaceX program? No, he’s gonna justify this, because we’ve heard him talk. He thinks that the future of humanity, the future of civilization, relies on the fact that we become multi planetary. We have to do this. This is, this is in the best interest of everyone, and we’ll die out if we don’t do it. So he’s not going to look at any of this as wasteful spending. He’s going to say, “No, that’s the spending we need to ensure the future of humanity.” And it’s only going to enrich himself.

Courtney: And this is a man who is very pronatalist. He has said it time and time again. Even if he’s not directly responsible for an agency that’s going to be making rules and regulations in this arena, he’s going to be in the same room as Donald Trump. He already has been. He’s going to be on phone calls with international leaders. He already has been.

Royce: This urgency to spend all of this money to try to habitate other planets right now, at this stage of human development, is what makes me wish there was actually a super advanced alien civilization watching over Earth who could be like, “No, no second planet until you learn how to clean up your first.”

Courtney: [laughs] That actually goes against universal regulations. But that is the thing, right? Like, going back to our episode on the entire mindset behind effective altruism and how it leads to mindsets of pronatalism and AI and space exploration, a lot of those often go hand in hand. And they’re mostly being espoused by the richest men in the world. So we’re going to keep a closer eye on that, obviously. We already have been keeping an eye on these pronatalist stances. But another thing I’ve kind of been seeing in the first few days post election, a lot of people are seeing the horrific folks that Donald Trump is putting in positions, like RFK Jr. Just– Can’t wait to have an anti-vaxxer in charge of all of the health agencies.

Royce: That’s going to be particularly dangerous with how deregulatory these group of government officials are too, because we’re looking at a lot of potentially upcoming zoonotic diseases which, if our–

Courtney: Ugh, don’t remind me.

Royce: Factory farms are not regulated, are going to have a higher chance to incubate and spread.

Courtney: Well, and the thing is too, with Project 2025, with all those training videos we went through, we called attention to the fact that they were actively saying they were going to try to do as many things as possible without Congress, and they were like intentionally training people how to sabotage Congress so that it can’t unite. Now I don’t even think they need to do that, because they’ve won the Senate and the House. So we’re going in with a completely unified Republican government. So they’re still going to try to do things via the executive branch only as often as they can, because that’s going to be the fastest thing possible. But everything that they can’t do or anything they want a little more permanency to, they’re going to have a much easier time doing it than anyone hoped for. And just along the lines of the pro-natalist stances, there are many things they can do. Obviously, the tax system has been a big playground for conservatives trying to push traditional family values for a long time, so that’s certainly on the table. Obviously, now we’re seeing a push to use that ideology to continue restricting abortion rights, and who knows what else they can do.

Courtney: Putin recently banned child-free propaganda. Made child-free propaganda illegal. Like this is not just a US issue and a growing ideology. This is all over the world. We see rhetoric coming out of South Korea. We see Russia, US… All over the world, people are panicking about low birth rates and arguing about what to do about that. So that’s something we can expect a lot more of. Keep an eye out.

Courtney: Another thing we can expect, I think, because I’ve already seen people start to talk about this is saying: “See, Trump isn’t actually enacting Project 2025. He’s not putting people from this training program in place. He’s just going to put whoever he wants in place. He’s just going to put the people who gave him the most money or sucked up to him the best.” And like, it can be both. And I think people who are like, “We can calm down a little bit about Project 2025,” are somewhat missing the forest for the trees. Because this Project 2025 mandate for leadership is not the first time the Heritage Foundation has ever made a document like this.

Courtney: They made a mandate for leadership ahead of Trump’s first term as well. Didn’t get nearly the same coverage, obviously. However, in 2018, the Heritage Foundation was bragging that 64% of the policy prescriptions were included in Trump’s budget, implemented through regulatory guidance or under consideration for action in accordance with the Heritage Foundation’s original proposals.

Courtney: So I think some people are waiting for the Republicans to come out and be like, “Aha gotcha! Now let’s– let’s dust off this project 2025. We tricked you all. We’re gonna do exactly this!” It’s not to be that clear cut, but these policies are still going to leach in. They’re still going to happen. It’s happened before. This is just history. This is a pattern of behavior. So don’t expect Trump to ever come out and say, “Yes, I’m embracing Project 2025.” Do expect that a lot of the policies therein are going to be passed or attempted to pass regardless.

Courtney: I also think we’re going to have to take a good hard look at who our actual friends are. As aces, as aros, as members of the queer community overall. We’re gonna get thrown under the bus by a lot of people, organizations. It’s gonna happen. It’s happened before and we can survive it. But again, already, in just a few days post election, I’m already seeing signs of massive populist shifts from corporations, from companies who are for profit, who are probably never going to fully be our friends. Take, for example– And as always links to articles, quotes, social media posts I’m referencing are all going to be in the show notes so you can check them out yourself.

Courtney: But Jessica Kingsley Publishers, for example, might ring a bell to some of you listeners because they have published so many ace and aro books over the last few years, like like 10 of them. I don’t know if that’s an exact count, but off the top of my head I think I can think of 10 books that they have published that are ace and/or aro.

Courtney: And the publisher itself, as well as the individual books, none of them are above critique. I have heard plenty of critiques already from within the community about this publisher. But on the whole they have seemingly, over the years, gone out of their way to find and commission certain types of books from certain types of authors. And that has included a lot of the A-spec community. Sometimes not even A-spec authors talking about A-spec issues. There are A-spec authors who have been signed by them who are talking about other marginalized communities, like the disability community, for example. So seemingly pretty progressive, seemingly allied to the queer community, to the disability community. Not so much because they still want to make money. So Jessica Kingsley is a division of Hachette, and I actually have here an open resignation letter from Alex DiFrancesco, who was an editor with Jessica Kingsley Publishers, and they write:

Courtney: [reading] “Though my remit at JKP was exclusively gender and sexuality books, the division works on books across a spectrum that are of great importance toward the project of making the world better, more understanding and more compassionate. I have felt in these two and a half years that not only our division but the wider company stood behind such work. After the announcement about the formation of Basic Book’s Liberty imprint, I can no longer say I feel this way. For those who don’t know, Basic Liberty is a conservative imprint headed by Thomas Spence, a man who works closely with the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is responsible for the writing of Project 2025, a political plan that would not only regress our country but also the world of publishing in general. In the view of the authors of Project 2025, books on gender and sexuality, the very books I have worked on for years, would be viewed as pornography. And, if they had their way, banned outright.

Courtney: [continues reading] “The announcement of the formation of Basic Liberty came the day after our nation elected a future president who has threatened to use martial law against dissenting US citizens, who has threatened to ban abortion, who has threatened to dismantle democracy, and who has spent hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars on materials that paint transgender people as a threat to America. The formation of Basic Liberty not only goes firmly against this stated company ideal–” And they go on to say that they no longer feel safe as an employee within this minority community, especially working on books that another division of the same company is actively targeting, trying to ban. Trying to ban politically, ideologically. And, yeah, it is kind of frustrating.

Courtney: We have talked about book bans, we have talked about how book bans have directly impacted ace authors. And there is just absolutely no subtlety in announcing the formation and expansion of Basic Liberty the day after the election. So it may have seemed like this publisher, this company, has been very supportive of our A-spec communities. At the end of the day we are not profitable. And they’re a company. Profit before people, always. In fact, I’m reasonably sure that that’s a big reason why they have signed so many A-spec books in such a short period of time also. Because most– They’re not a traditional publisher. You– you don’t get published through them via the traditional means of getting a literary agent, and having an auction from the big publishing companies and what have you. They often seek out and approach people to write books.

Courtney: They do take pitches directly, which is rare for publishers to take pitches directly, but they also actively look for people on social media. Which, unfortunately, also on social media, means that there are certain demographics of people that do have amplified voices online who are going to be the first or loudest people that they find. So it’s by no means a perfect system, but I am reasonably sure the only reason why they have gone after so many books is not necessarily because they’re trying to right a wrong and saying, “Oh, we don’t have enough A-spec books, we need more, we need to overcompensate for all the books that haven’t been written the previous several years.” I’m pretty sure it’s just a business decision.

Courtney: I think it’s probably the logic of, like, certain industries, like restaurants. Like a lot of people will say you can’t profit from a single restaurant. You have to have at least three restaurants and needing to have multiple locations. You sort of need to have multiple books before you can start seeing profit from them. But that’s just my cynical theory on the matter. But whether you agree with my cynical theory or not, there’s no debating the fact that the company who has published the most ace and aro books over the last few years is going to be publishing so many conservative think tank books and alienating their queer employees. One has already resigned.

Courtney: So I think my final prediction or thing to look out for, thing that’s going to become a much larger talking point, a much frequent– much more frequent motif, dare I call it political asexuality?

Courtney: So only preliminary thoughts here, because this absolutely can and should be its own separate discussion, because there are parallels to political lesbianism and that’s why I, in a tongue in cheek way, I’m saying political asexuality. There’s gonna be a rise in people discussing, debating, advocating for– what do we call this? Do we call it sexual warfare? Like “don’t have sex with men.” And– and some of some of it is directly tied to political ideology. I mean, we’ve already seen op-eds saying like, “Break up with your Republican boyfriend, divorce your conservative husband.” Like, people are already saying that, right? But I’ve seen just a massive wave of discussion on the 4B movement. And that’s been fascinating.

Courtney: Because I have critiqued many articles talking about either, you know, boy sober or de-centering men in your life, or even articles about platonic partnerships and platonic marriages that always seem to totally miss the fact that ace and aro people exist. And yet so many of these articles, over the last year I would say, have had like a one-off line about like, “Oh yes, the 4B movement also exists in South Korea.”

Royce: And we mentioned the 4B movement very briefly in a previous episode, but we didn’t really get into it much at all.

Courtney: I didn’t know much about it at the time. I’ve seen it several times now as a one – or two – off line in articles with similar topics, just saying like it exists but not really explaining what it is.

Royce: Yeah, this previous reference was in the sexless marriage article out of the New York Times.

Courtney: Oh yeah, the one that didn’t mention asexuals at all but was like, “There’s a 4B movement in South Korea.” [laughs] Yeah, so all these sexless marriage articles tend to mention it. And I have, admittedly, looked into it a lot more since that time. Because I didn’t expect it to get this big all at once as a result of Trump winning, but I kind of sensed that it would become a bigger talking point, since there were so many one off lines about it in multiple articles that I’ve read this year. And when we mentioned it before and said that we didn’t know much about it yet, there were some people who reached out to us that were like, “Oh, they’re just a bunch of TERFs.” And, admittedly, a lot of people prominent online in this movement are. There is a lot of trans exclusionary rhetoric within certain circles of this. But I’ve gone a bit of a step further and I’ve read some articles and listened to some interviews with actual Korean journalists, Korean women, who are talking about the movement and how it came to be and what it’s like, and listening to them.

Courtney: The story that has been presented to me from their point of view is that it was sort of born out of a more broadly feminist movement that did start as a result of a woman getting violently attacked, stabbed in public by a woman-hating man. And that did sort of lead to a lot of– a lot of frustration, a big outcry from women. A big, sort of, radical feminist bubble arose. But this was many years ago and so it took some time before it started developing into 4B. Which is: don’t have sex with men, don’t date men, don’t have children, and don’t marry them. And, as we have very obviously seen with the prominent TERFs of the UK, there are many feminist circles who do not include trans women. But what I’ve also heard from some Korean women is that this is a very decentralized movement and it is very fractured and splintered, and there are people within the 4B movement who disagree with each other on this. So I do want to mention that because that seems obvious to me. A lot of decentralized movements do fight each other. They do have opposing ideologies.

Royce: Any movement that is fractured enough like that is going to have little extremist pockets too.

Courtney: Yes. But more so than, “No, not everybody in the 4B movement is a TERF.” The story I’ve been getting from these journalists that I’ve been looking into is that it’s kind of already over. They were loud and had a lot of energy for a brief, fleeting period of time, but they were fractured, they were decentralized. This started many years ago and it’s sort of died down now. So with all that in mind, I think it is silly that we are getting article after article after article right now being like, “After Trump’s win, Americans are turning to the 4B movement.” And, yeah, there are some people saying, “Hey, maybe we should listen to them, and also not date, marry, have sex with or procreate with men. That’s an idea.” And I’ll keep an eye on it, but I have zero faith that it will go anywhere or do anything. I really do.

Courtney: I think it’s not organized enough, it’s not cohesive enough, it’s not clear enough on what it demands. If you think of, like, a union strike, that’s a group of people getting together, refusing labor on the grounds of, “These are our demands. This is what we want.” It’s very reactionary in a way that I don’t think would be effective, even if you could get a large enough cluster of people on board with it. I might have entertained this a little more seriously before the election as a leverage to like, “These are our demands: don’t vote for Trump.” Maybe. But what are the demands now? It seems more– more either a punishment or self care, and maybe a combination of the two. Because obviously a lot of this is like we’re talking about heterosexual sex. We’re talking about straight women who are like, “Don’t have sex with straight men.” Even if we got a million Americans to just like hardcore sign onto this, even if we had a couple million Americans that are like, “I am living and dying by 4B, no relationships with men whatsoever,” they’re going to be all across the country. They’re going to be in different states, different cities, different counties, different precincts. What are you asking for? What is the protest? What are the demands?

Courtney: I don’t see it being politically effective. I really don’t. But, that said, if you want to do that just for your own good, if you’re like, “I just don’t–” Like, I’ve seen people already who are like, “I found out my boyfriend voted for Trump. I have broken up with him. I am devastated.” As personal decisions to protect yourself, full respect, full sign on. No qualms. As a movement that is so vague and so decentralized? I don’t think it’ll help. And more– moreover, I also– If anybody’s going to take the reins and become very serious about an American version of a 4B movement, if someone’s like, “This is what we stand for. These are demands. This is what we do. This is what we don’t do. Here’s our strategy going forward.” I will only take them into consideration if they have the utmost respect for the Ace and Aro community. I want them to work with us directly. I want them to learn what we know about where we stand politically and our political issues. I want them to fight alongside us. I want them to take guidance from us. And if they are not willing to do that, if they are so ignorant of our community that they don’t even think to do that, I don’t see a way I’m going to be able to take them seriously.

Courtney: And I don’t even think– Maybe, maybe this is controversial, but this is all very theoretical at this stage of things, I don’t think I would even inherently be mad if someone did come out and actually use, like, no irony, the phrase politically asexual. I know there are criticisms upon criticisms of the concept of political lesbianism, but I also have a lot of thoughts on that that I can’t get into right now. But there’s a very right way to do that and a very, very wrong way to do it. And I think most people are going to be more likely to do it in the very, very wrong way. So I think, at least in the interim, we’re probably going to hear a lot more about the 4B movement. I will be surprised if we see that energy continue and actually start to make something substantial. It kind of feels like the way people are talking about it now kind of reminds me of other social media campaigns that often end up losing the plot and becoming part of the problem that it originally was trying to aid. Like all the black squares for Black Lives Matter.

Courtney: Or maybe more apt, I remember a few years ago getting very salty in some local, like, women in business groups that I was a part of. Because there was this, like, challenge accepted thing that was started by women in Turkey who were protesting and drawing attention to their femicide, and so they were posting black and white photos of women who have died, or black and white photos of themselves who are survivors. And somehow, just through social media, that got so, so watered down that by the time it got to my neck of the woods it was, like, boss babes going, “Challenge accepted. Women should support women. Here’s a very sexy black and white photo of me in my blazer, because I’m a woman in business.” And then everyone, being like, “You share your black and white photos so we can all support each other and girlboss together.” And I was looking at dozens and dozens of women I know just totally missing the origin of this, and the genuine social concern that people were trying to draw attention to, and make it just this very fluffy nebulous, like, women support women, hashtag girlboss. “Look at my black and white photo.”

Courtney: And I feel like most meager attempts at an American 4B movement are going to be kind of like those vibes. Like people who just see the idea, think that’s a good idea, post about it on social media without a clear vision and a strategy that tends to belie actual political activism. So we’ll see. I’ll be very curious. But if this does become a more established movement, if we start getting not only articles saying women are considering the 4B movement, if we start having like spokespeople for this movement out here giving quotes, talking about what the movement is, what it wants, how it’s moving forward, how it’s going to try to move the needle, it’s got to include ace and aro perspectives every time. Every time.

Courtney: So, on that note, this is probably going to be the last discussion of this election, at least for a while. Right now we are in this in-between phase where horrifying people are being appointed to horrifying positions. Every single day is going to be a new dreaded headline. Things are going to move fast and be very vague without specific policies we can fight back against yet. Because he’s not in office yet. And for the most part, I don’t think it’s going to be productive to talk about each and every one of those things, even as it may pertain to our ace communities. But a lot of these big picture ideas we’ll absolutely be talking about more, in the future. Pronatalism being probably chief among them.

Courtney: I’ve waded through the deep, dark depths of pronatalism for months now. I have thoughts. They will come when I have energy to get them out. But in the meantime, the best thing I think we can all do for each other is to find or reinforce our real communities. And I’m not talking about community in the sense of shared identity or shared orientation. I’m not talking about our bubbles on social media. I am talking about the friends you speak to on a regular basis. If you have an in-person community, your in-person people, your families, your friends, the places where you consistently show up, the people you congregate with, we’re going to need to get into an era of fierce protection for one another. And that starts now with our grief and our fears, but that’s going to continue for the foreseeable future.

Courtney: And, aside from finding and reinforcing those communities and fiercely protecting one another, if you are riled up, if you do feel the need to do something politically, to engage in activism, my best advice is to not get distracted with the buzzy – quote – “new ideas” that you’re seeing on social media right now. Things like, “Let’s start a 4B movement in the US,” among others. That’s not the only one I’ve seen, it’s just the one I find the most fascinating and I’m gonna keep a close eye on. Because with any given issue – queer rights, abortion protections – there are activists who have been working in those sectors for decades. They know what to do when the chips are down, they know what to expect from the political opposition, and they do need more hands. They do need more boots on the ground. There’s no reason to try to reinvent the wheel. If you haven’t been a political strategist for years now, you do not need to all of a sudden become one now. Find the people who have been doing this and take their lead. That’s another part of fierce community protection. Find the people who are already protectors and learn from them. Let them mentor you so that maybe one day you can be in a position to protect someone else.

Courtney: So, on that note, that will be all for my scrambled mismatch of political rants and observation and news bulletins for the day. I would love to leave us off, as always, with our featured MarketplACE vendor of the week. And this week we have Ben Kantt, where you can find zines and artist books by an ace transmasc artist. There is this lovely little satirical zine by Ben that we purchased – I want to say – a few years ago, called ‘Asexuals: your guide to the new acceptable targets and how to make fun of them’. But you can find many other works here, including Med Moments and the Robot Boyfriend Catalog. And it looks like even more recently, for all of my T-boys out there, we’ve got a whole line of merchandise that says, “Got t-boy swag?” There are t-shirts, there are patches. Definitely check it out. All of Ben’s links are going to be in the show notes.

Courtney: And hey, I will not lie to you, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. But take care of one another, because we will get through this. We will get through this.