You've been misled into believing inclusion and equity are noble goals. They are not. You've also been misled into the traditional female role of accommodating males and their emotions, at your own expense. Inclusion means having no boundaries. You "include" males into the female space when you refer to them as "she" or "transwomen," or when you qualify women as "biological women." I recommend dropping the "biological" as there is only one type of woman. Same with men. Catering to mentally disturbed men, at your own expense and the expense of other women and girls, isn't respectful to the deranged men, yourself, or other females put in danger due to the annihilation of boundaries. These male cross-dressers with paraphilias demanding and threatening if we (women) don't say the words they want, or don't allow them into female spaces, sports, or lesbian dating sites is classic neurotic aggressive male behavior. No surprise, since they are men. Non-neurotic males, including many gay men, are trying to help because they know what deranged males are capable of, but those males trying to help have to contend with women who are thwarting them by accommodating these males ("transwomen"). Reminds me of stories of law enforcement that have been attacked by female victims when trying to respond and deal with a domestic violence situation. Arrest the guy, throw him in jail, he gets out, she goes back to him, repeat. You've been censored and name called. You surely know these "transwomen" as you call them have tried to infiltrate lesbian spaces. These are dudes, no matter what they wear and no matter what parts are cut off. Still dudes. I hope you wake up.
Please tell me how many white Northern soldiers signed up to free black slaves, how many died and were buried hundreds of miles away trying to free slaves? Some died horrible deaths. Ever express a bit of gratitude.
Slavery was horrible, despicable. Please also blame Africans who sold blacks into slavery.
This constant attack on racist America is playing right into hands of Communists.
Our country very well may fall to Communists, and then you and I will be on a true Hell on earth.
The hilarious and tragic irony is that medium probably took it down as a result of a white biological male claiming a black lesbian was oppressing him. Lord god help us.
Monica, I am so pleased that you have moved over to Substack! I was going to suggest that you do so after first reading this post on via your Medium site, but I see that you don’t need any advice from your grateful readers about this. Thank you again for your brilliant, insightful articles.
Jun 3, 2023·edited Jun 3, 2023Liked by Monica Harris
hi, ex-Medium writer (and all those who read) ~there are a number of interesting things to be said now. I had 400 followers, you 1,000 (or you *had* 1,000 but that depends on what is going on over there in em-la land) and now none of them can read particular stories. There is a q of: Who does actually operate these firms? After all, only a shockingly few persons work at making these businesses. It is a tiny group that specialize in making businesses like this. It seems to be a small circle. These are the persons who create an "M." (my abbreviation for my old venue) or create a Substack. They need to know a lot about start-ups and they need to have probably a certain sort of personality to be interested in that stuff. I notice they are not really "content" people. There is a great pre-occupation with running a business. In doing so, these entrepreneurial agents seem to like putting things into the writers' hands, new buttons and "features" that to them are a lot more interesting than reading words. They like to work their business angle, to help the writer promote, so they will get more readers. There is a whole list of priorities that have but I doubt these are the priorities of those of us who tend to think a lot - or do the "content"! The entrepreneurial minds like to do stuff that has to do with making the business a success and these kinds of activities, the business activities, have, as said, little to do with the writing and little to do with what the goals of the writers are (get the idea out, cleanly). Unless they are crap writers, however, which are abundant especially at "M.," because the owners of that business encourage it in many small ways. But anyway, assuming that we writers are all angels what I see here is that a whole lotta writers are getting dragged around (and abused probably) by a very few entrepreneurs. Substack treats us way the hell better. Yeah, I know. Way better than Medium.com which honestly turns out to be run by morons. But, Um----why might that be? How much better are the Substack company's owners going to be? Do they really understand public discourse? How do we get an owner who does understand that? Have any owners ever understood writers? Or was that for a few good editors, back in the day? So, regarding Substack: is another shoe gonna drop? Who know? Really, it only has to last a given amount of time. If Substack crashes and explodes in two years we will have gotten a good rum. I'm realistic. I accede that we (the nice guys and good writers and angel writer people) need a commercial process. Somebody or something has to distribute the writings we may happen to do, and we do not live under Communism. Who decides? Right now, some guys in San Fransisco do. This is all fascinating to me as I do economics. (Oh, yeah. And: people could SEE that by going over to my beautiful Substack pages at silverman.substack or however that is spelled. Maybe SF knows....
Thanks for that info, Jacob. I definitely think you’re onto something. I’m holding my breath with Substack, which seems to be the case with almost every platform days: they’re user-friendly and refreshing — until the hammer falls. But as you say, all you can do is drink rum while it’s on the table! I’m guessing that as soon as Substack hits a critical mass of users and/or as we get closer to the 2024 election, when discourse will really get spicy, some deep pocket VC (okay, let’s face it — probably BlackRock) will make Chris Best an offer he can’t refuse, and it will go the way of Medium. Or I could be wrong. Hopefully I’m wrong.
As for Medium’s operations: I’m wondering if the rabbit hole goes a little deeper. When I first joined in 2018, almost every story I wrote was curated (because of the “high quality” of my writing) and published on the splash/main page in a particular category. For a while, I was even a top writer in Politics, back then I spoke highly of Bernie Sanders. But as soon as I started questioning public health policy around the pandemic, curation immediately stopped, and one of my stories was yanked for “misinformation.” However, I still managed to get my content out in a few high profile publications that were only slightly left-of-center, which allowed me to accumulate followers — not as many as I would have if I my stories had continued to be curated, but I was still making decent progress. However, after a few more pandemic-related stories were yanked for “misinformation” I notices that the pace at which I was accumulating followers began to slow dramatically.
I’m not totally sure how the algorithms work over there, but I suspect that even when stories don’t violate “guidelines,” writers who have been “problematic” in the past are put on Medium’s equivalent of a no-fly list, and their content isn’t pushed to followers, or maybe pushed to the bottom of the pile, or something along those lines.
Meanwhile, Umair Haque (part of the inner circle of writers you mention who actually manage to make Medium a worthwhile business) is hovering around 200K followers for recycling content daily in Mad Libs fashion (liberally sprinkling “collapse,” “catastrophic,” “Trump,” and “fascism” throughout every story — I’m half-convinced he’s beta version AI). He’s literally found a zillion ways to regurgitate the same story, every day, and still remain a “high quality” writer who accumulates followers at a stunning pace. And his stories are constantly pushed to the top of my feed. At this point, I don’t bother reading them; I just check the titles to see if he’s changed up his Mad Libs game. He never does.
Jun 2, 2023·edited Jun 2, 2023Liked by Monica Harris
I think we need to make the distinction between offending someone with a controversial idea versus deliberately attacking someone's identity. I strongly defend the right to state an idea that might be controversial to some, but do not defend the attack on someone's identity.
Stating that transgendered people who have gone through puberty as males and are therefore physically stronger than women as a sex class, and therefore should not compete in women's sports, is not an attack on identity. It is a statement of an idea. Therefore, this idea should not be subject to censor.
It does not meet the standard of something that can cause harm.
You've been misled into believing inclusion and equity are noble goals. They are not. You've also been misled into the traditional female role of accommodating males and their emotions, at your own expense. Inclusion means having no boundaries. You "include" males into the female space when you refer to them as "she" or "transwomen," or when you qualify women as "biological women." I recommend dropping the "biological" as there is only one type of woman. Same with men. Catering to mentally disturbed men, at your own expense and the expense of other women and girls, isn't respectful to the deranged men, yourself, or other females put in danger due to the annihilation of boundaries. These male cross-dressers with paraphilias demanding and threatening if we (women) don't say the words they want, or don't allow them into female spaces, sports, or lesbian dating sites is classic neurotic aggressive male behavior. No surprise, since they are men. Non-neurotic males, including many gay men, are trying to help because they know what deranged males are capable of, but those males trying to help have to contend with women who are thwarting them by accommodating these males ("transwomen"). Reminds me of stories of law enforcement that have been attacked by female victims when trying to respond and deal with a domestic violence situation. Arrest the guy, throw him in jail, he gets out, she goes back to him, repeat. You've been censored and name called. You surely know these "transwomen" as you call them have tried to infiltrate lesbian spaces. These are dudes, no matter what they wear and no matter what parts are cut off. Still dudes. I hope you wake up.
Great comment kmick!
Thank you for explaining the position of us Non-neurotic males.
I do think it's starting to change and our ideological and tangible support, is being more accepted, as the months pass.
The fight against this radical ideology and it's orchestrators, is one we all need to be in, side by side.
Please tell me how many white Northern soldiers signed up to free black slaves, how many died and were buried hundreds of miles away trying to free slaves? Some died horrible deaths. Ever express a bit of gratitude.
Slavery was horrible, despicable. Please also blame Africans who sold blacks into slavery.
This constant attack on racist America is playing right into hands of Communists.
Our country very well may fall to Communists, and then you and I will be on a true Hell on earth.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve written.
What class! Don't get that too often!
Pity you had to shoehorn in “Communism,” which has nothing whatsoever to do with what preceded it.
The hilarious and tragic irony is that medium probably took it down as a result of a white biological male claiming a black lesbian was oppressing him. Lord god help us.
Ha! You’re probably right. And he would probably accuse me of being a “black white supremacist” (that’s a thing now, you know) 😂
Monica, I am so pleased that you have moved over to Substack! I was going to suggest that you do so after first reading this post on via your Medium site, but I see that you don’t need any advice from your grateful readers about this. Thank you again for your brilliant, insightful articles.
hi, ex-Medium writer (and all those who read) ~there are a number of interesting things to be said now. I had 400 followers, you 1,000 (or you *had* 1,000 but that depends on what is going on over there in em-la land) and now none of them can read particular stories. There is a q of: Who does actually operate these firms? After all, only a shockingly few persons work at making these businesses. It is a tiny group that specialize in making businesses like this. It seems to be a small circle. These are the persons who create an "M." (my abbreviation for my old venue) or create a Substack. They need to know a lot about start-ups and they need to have probably a certain sort of personality to be interested in that stuff. I notice they are not really "content" people. There is a great pre-occupation with running a business. In doing so, these entrepreneurial agents seem to like putting things into the writers' hands, new buttons and "features" that to them are a lot more interesting than reading words. They like to work their business angle, to help the writer promote, so they will get more readers. There is a whole list of priorities that have but I doubt these are the priorities of those of us who tend to think a lot - or do the "content"! The entrepreneurial minds like to do stuff that has to do with making the business a success and these kinds of activities, the business activities, have, as said, little to do with the writing and little to do with what the goals of the writers are (get the idea out, cleanly). Unless they are crap writers, however, which are abundant especially at "M.," because the owners of that business encourage it in many small ways. But anyway, assuming that we writers are all angels what I see here is that a whole lotta writers are getting dragged around (and abused probably) by a very few entrepreneurs. Substack treats us way the hell better. Yeah, I know. Way better than Medium.com which honestly turns out to be run by morons. But, Um----why might that be? How much better are the Substack company's owners going to be? Do they really understand public discourse? How do we get an owner who does understand that? Have any owners ever understood writers? Or was that for a few good editors, back in the day? So, regarding Substack: is another shoe gonna drop? Who know? Really, it only has to last a given amount of time. If Substack crashes and explodes in two years we will have gotten a good rum. I'm realistic. I accede that we (the nice guys and good writers and angel writer people) need a commercial process. Somebody or something has to distribute the writings we may happen to do, and we do not live under Communism. Who decides? Right now, some guys in San Fransisco do. This is all fascinating to me as I do economics. (Oh, yeah. And: people could SEE that by going over to my beautiful Substack pages at silverman.substack or however that is spelled. Maybe SF knows....
Thanks for that info, Jacob. I definitely think you’re onto something. I’m holding my breath with Substack, which seems to be the case with almost every platform days: they’re user-friendly and refreshing — until the hammer falls. But as you say, all you can do is drink rum while it’s on the table! I’m guessing that as soon as Substack hits a critical mass of users and/or as we get closer to the 2024 election, when discourse will really get spicy, some deep pocket VC (okay, let’s face it — probably BlackRock) will make Chris Best an offer he can’t refuse, and it will go the way of Medium. Or I could be wrong. Hopefully I’m wrong.
As for Medium’s operations: I’m wondering if the rabbit hole goes a little deeper. When I first joined in 2018, almost every story I wrote was curated (because of the “high quality” of my writing) and published on the splash/main page in a particular category. For a while, I was even a top writer in Politics, back then I spoke highly of Bernie Sanders. But as soon as I started questioning public health policy around the pandemic, curation immediately stopped, and one of my stories was yanked for “misinformation.” However, I still managed to get my content out in a few high profile publications that were only slightly left-of-center, which allowed me to accumulate followers — not as many as I would have if I my stories had continued to be curated, but I was still making decent progress. However, after a few more pandemic-related stories were yanked for “misinformation” I notices that the pace at which I was accumulating followers began to slow dramatically.
I’m not totally sure how the algorithms work over there, but I suspect that even when stories don’t violate “guidelines,” writers who have been “problematic” in the past are put on Medium’s equivalent of a no-fly list, and their content isn’t pushed to followers, or maybe pushed to the bottom of the pile, or something along those lines.
Meanwhile, Umair Haque (part of the inner circle of writers you mention who actually manage to make Medium a worthwhile business) is hovering around 200K followers for recycling content daily in Mad Libs fashion (liberally sprinkling “collapse,” “catastrophic,” “Trump,” and “fascism” throughout every story — I’m half-convinced he’s beta version AI). He’s literally found a zillion ways to regurgitate the same story, every day, and still remain a “high quality” writer who accumulates followers at a stunning pace. And his stories are constantly pushed to the top of my feed. At this point, I don’t bother reading them; I just check the titles to see if he’s changed up his Mad Libs game. He never does.
Go figure.
Haque may have a gimmick but culture is not a gimmick
I always work "live," M. Harris, so do re-check the final version...!
I think we need to make the distinction between offending someone with a controversial idea versus deliberately attacking someone's identity. I strongly defend the right to state an idea that might be controversial to some, but do not defend the attack on someone's identity.
Stating that transgendered people who have gone through puberty as males and are therefore physically stronger than women as a sex class, and therefore should not compete in women's sports, is not an attack on identity. It is a statement of an idea. Therefore, this idea should not be subject to censor.
It does not meet the standard of something that can cause harm.