T.M. Shannon

Hi everyone,

It’s been a bit of a week, to make use of the Aussie penchant for understatement.

For me, it’s been yet more recovery setbacks, though Saturday I hit the requisite 3 outreach calls as the particular way of working my 12 Step fellowship asks, and it’s back to meetings today and Monday.

I got sidetracked on a quitting guide Friday that turned out to be repetition of the same points, my 1st call cemented it was useless. It also sent me to sleep, and that’s when I slipped, floodgates opened.

Main thing is I was honest about it, and feeling low and bleak. It does mean back to confession, but that’s after some preliminary Step 4 work and a counselling session Monday, so some efforts to show.

I also got a Jury Duty notice, and I’ve gotta say I’m pretty stoked about it, I’m in that small cohort that actually enjoys the prospect, though that’s up to selection and lawyers getting to make changes (c’mon, guys, it’s gonna be a long trial, cut the crap).

But that’s next month’s problem, for now, it’s the state of the place my kid calls home, and I gotta reiterate the fears I’ve already got lingering, because it could become a literal bloodbath.

And a certain tech bro at a certain social media company has decided to follow a certain other bro at a certain social media company has done – along the way to burning an approximate $36 billion.

But we all know that’s chump change, pocket money.

Anyhoo, here’s a way towards a decision I’m glad to make.

Second Stint

We all know who’s back, confirmed a couple of days ago, due for inauguration a week and a bit away, and we all know it’s worse.

It might be a paper-thin House margin, but it’s a very friendly Senate, and in this, we should already be afraid, even if you don’t live in – or have a kid who lives in – the U.S.

Marking my words that there’s no such thing as a moderate Republican (even those having a teensy shred of caveat emptor know they need the crazy vote to win), I honestly don’t know what the end result is going to be – a midterm dose of reality, or the Fourth Reich.

And while TikTok looks like it has a righty whitey buyer, the USD is up (I holidayed in October at 65 US cents to the AUD, now it’s 61 cents – courtesy of a Google), Bitcoin hit just shy of $77k in November (there was a graph below but I deleted it), though markets are subdued.

But it’s the crazy that’s really telling, from Musk baiting Trump to have a go at the current House, Musk going hell for leather on H-1B visas while Trump off and golfed, later to change his tune on the visas from 2016, setting MAGA aflame.

The BS about Canada, Greenland, Panama? Maybe dismissive bluster as usual, but you know somewhere in that mind it’s a pearler, and from what I recently read about the Trumpist militias, sign-ups from the cops and the Air Force to name a few, is there an Order 66 on the way?

Yes, pure distraction just to get us all talking about him. Good, bad, Trump doesn’t care so long as it’s about him.

Now throw in the California wild-fires, and by jeez is the blustering against DEI (read, their convenient N-bomb) and the conspiracy machine running well into the red, there’s question if Federal assistance will be waylaid.

And yeah, I worry there’s some Hitler S.H.I.T. coming, the way they’re going after trans people (the bathroom bans are designed to get people assaulted while the top can wash their hands of it, and it was never about the kids getting groomed), as a prelude to the rest of us.

Think I’m blowing it out of proportions? Go have a read of Project 2025, and what some out there believed Trump has nothing to do with – according to Trump, a pathological liar and chest beater.

It might be a Pacific Ocean away, but that’s still my queer brothers, sisters, themsters, and others. And I won’t pretend for a minute the LNP won’t try to bring that shit, along with the healthcare scam, to the Land of the Spiders and Drop Bears.

What pisses me off though Mark Zuckerberg, in his infinite arseholery, has decided that Elon Musk, in all his infinite arseholery, is onto something with Free Speech Absolutism – license to say whatever the fornication you want, who cares the consequences.

And I’m saying goodbye.

Open Slather

I’m sure you’ve heard the news: Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, citing “bias” – make of that term what you will when it comes to right-side thinking – has decided to cut all fact checking and run with Elon on Community Notes instead.

There’s a certain up-front benefit to not paying third parties to fact check your site, namely more money as you outsource well-resourced vendors’ work to people on your own site, so don’t be surprised there’s a nice bonus for the Zuck, and tidy dividends for the shareholders.

And there’s a nice little titbit in that Reuters article – Zuck’s trying to make friends with the incoming administration:

Last week, Meta elevated Republican policy executive Joel Kaplan as global affairs head and on Monday announced it had elected Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close friend of Trump, to its board.

Freedom of association and all that, but you can always tell someone by the company they keep (and who they want to open the floodgates for), because this is just the start of things – Meta is also changing what you can say on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Which is where I have to duly point out they called open slather on the queers, with use of that favourite right-wing buzzword “transgenderism” – reducing the trans reality to some sort of political movement when it’s a personal journey.

But I especially love the “given political and religious discourse about” these realities – this discourse comes only from one side of politics, and any “religious” stance comes unstuck on any failure to love your neighbour as you love yourself, though hypocrites love to hate.

Side note, I got some insight into this on an outreach call – that love of neighbour is to see the other person as the image and likeness of God, reinforced by the first greatest commandment according to my guy on the cross, love God with everything you’ve got.

I could say a lot about this, but given community notes on the Ex did nothing to stop the site becoming a right-wing hell hole people are now leaving left, left, and left, I reckon it renders any “community notes are successful” studies or think-tanking moot.

Yep, I said that.

And what I’ll say, too, is that Zuck is another “Free Speech Absolutist” just like his bro Elon, and you watch Facebook, Instagram, and Threads spiral down the toilet bowl to Me Speech Absolutist, Meta all good with the pustulant vitriol but banning any who besmirch the Dear Leader.

But I’ll come back to what I will say, being in such an oddly unique position as a 6-year Catholic bisexual with bipolar, with lessons of compassion, decency, morality found in the material world that coincides with the Catechism.

Misrepresentation in Extremis

I won’t bang on about the love your neighbour, my November 17 post (link above) has that covered. But there’s a lot said by religious leaders and laypeeps, backed up by Scripture, used to inform their approach towards queer people and the trans boogeyperson.

If you ask me, I won’t put stock in a bunch of intransients who resorted to genocide, who decided the front half of a cow is kosher while the back half is haram, who barred the disabled for coming into the tabernacle, as worthy authorities on who can’t have sex with who.

Granted, Leviticus isn’t all bad, questionable, or loony, and from a historical context these were a people who didn’t want to be like their neighbours – and I’m willing to bet Egyptians treated their slaves like sex objects just like the Romans.

But the hate starts early, then disappears, isn’t even in the Gospels. Nothing returns until St Paul’s letters, and even then after saying who won’t make it to heaven (not necessarily go to hell) – adulterers, drunkards, homosexuals – he talks of these people converting.

And being a 1st Century Anno Domini/Common Era tent salesman, I hardly expect Paul to understand a gay convert is still gay.

All that aside, there’s my hated Catholic catechism, that queer people’s actions in relationships/otherwise are “intrinsically disordered.”

Factor in that anybody considering such actions is intrinsically drawn to such union, sexuality and gender being intrinsic to humans no matter which way it goes, and you’re calling us disordered.

Thanks for the insult, guys.

That aside, we come to the mental illness and sexuality/gender identity side.

It should not be a secret that, courtesy of Wikipedia the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders first listed homosexuality as:

… a “sexual deviation” within the larger “sociopathic personality disturbance” category of personality disorders. The sexual deviation diagnosis included “homosexuality, transvestism, pedophilia, fetishism and sexual sadism”…

Sorry for the ancient slur, but more on the progress and thanks guys for that link to paedophilia, great stereotype you helped drive.

Thankfully, progress was made on this thanks to LGBTQIA+ activism, and as it stands in the DSM-5, homosexuality (and by extension all the other sexualities) isn’t included.

Non-heterosexuality isn’t an illness or aberration, which Zuck is happy for his customers to elicit and reinforce with who knows how much misinformation and disinformation courtesy of the crazies pushing the actual isms here.

My bisexuality isn’t caused by my bipolar – it’s an ingrained thing, and I know it in an ingrained sense. My bipolar happened because of a lot of trauma, and my addiction is the end result of unhealthy coping mechanisms trying to survive that trauma, because I saw no way out.

And I’d say, Zuck lost himself a customer. Zuck shouldn’t’ve had that customer in the first place.

End of the Line

If you’ve gotten here from FB, this is the last week I’ll ever be on FB. I will not stand for opening the floodgates on queer people (and there’s more they’ve now set sights upon), not as a queer person, and not as a human being.

This will greatly limit exposure when I go to release a book, as clunky as they are, FB ads are what got my first book moving. But the bridge must be burned, and I’ll wear the loss of a crowd with regret but also with pride.

If you’d like to keep following me, I’m now over in the fairer climes of Bluesky (@tmshannon.com), and no I’m not on Twitter, I got banned (yes, I was naughty). Instagram is gone, and the only Meta thing I’m using is WhatsApp to call my kid – speaking of, time I did.

So, I’ll bid you all adieu, stay safe on whatever social media you choose to use, but don’t ever expect Community Guidelines to protect you from hatred or the rightist rot.

Until next time,
T. M.