Practical Magic

Above: What deluded Christian bigots think a binding ritual is.

Daniel John Sobieski, Don’t Wanna be an American Idiot:
Trump Flushes Obama’s Transgender Restrooms

… sigh.

Okay, let’s knock out the elephant in the room that is Sessions removing the protections that tell schools they have to take trans kid’s seriously and not harass them or openly deny their gender identity in service to harassment.

I mean, it’s awful. Like, that ruling was largely the only thing in place at some places to allow a student to have their real gender respected by administration, use public facilities instead of holding it in all day*, not be dead-named in front of the entire class and thus signalled to every bully that you’re an open target, and in general just stopping treating trans kids unfairly under the law, discriminating against them and increasing the amount of bullying they receive.

*Bigots insist on reducing our existence to bathrooms no matter what is actually being done to us (like the NC “bathroom” bill actually removed local protections in the right to be employed, to have an apartment, and to otherwise participate freely in public life for trans folks). And so, let’s actually highlight the health result of that. When you’re trans and the restrooms don’t feel safe, you just don’t end up going. And we trans folks do a lot of unhealthy things to our bodies to avoid the entire hellish stress that is dealing with most gendered bathroom spaces in general and even more so when you’re the focus of targeted harassment by students and staff. For the first couple of years of being out, I would dehydrate myself and avoid eating lunches so that I was unlikely to have any bathroom functions on the job. And I avoided it, but plenty of trans folks have given themselves UTIs and bladder infections from trying to hold it in all day. And holding it in? Is distracting as hell and definitely makes you unable to focus on your tasks and so plays merry hell with learning for a trans student. But hey, your precious artifact daughter may be in the same general room and separated by a privacy stall from someone who may or may not have a different set of genitalia to her, so fuck the trans kids, amirite?

Cause it’s never been about just bathrooms. It’s about signaling from the top down that this person who says they are this thing, isn’t. That they should not be taken seriously when they say it, because the school doesn’t take it seriously. And if the authority thinks the kid’s lying for nefarious purpose, then gosh darn it, it’s up to us kids to make sure that kid gets the what for.

And the result of that is brutal.

The national suicide rate is at about 4.3% based on percentage of population that have survived attempts. For queer folks, that number was around 10-20% which was so staggering that national organizations were formed to counter the problem in schools.

The suicide rate for trans folks is at 41% of the population.

And no, I didn’t miss place a period there. And that’s only for adults. Among trans youth in particular, national numbers tend to hover pretty close to 50% as compared to a much higher 10% number among teens in general.

And when the reasons for that are broken down, the results are sadly unsurprising with lack of support, transphobic bullying or oppression, and cis actions against the trans community being frequently shown to be the reasons for the attempts.

And that’s apparent if you ever spend any amount of time at all with trans youth or trans youth organizations. Suicide prevention is frequently Task One of most programs and that’s frequently a tough ask and I’m not the only one whose mentored trans kids who’ve lost a few along the way.

Hell, in my current job, we currently have 8 trans students who are out to one degree or another. Of those, just looking at the last year, 3 of those had a suicide attempt (one owing to relentless misgendering and abuse from family, one from being sexually assaulted for being trans, and one from HB2 and other transphobic laws making him feel he didn’t have the space to be himself) and 1 had to put themself in the hospital to prevent a suicide attempt.

And I want that all as context when I state dispassionately and directly that this law will kill thousands of kids who otherwise would have had a chance to grow and live and add their lives to the tapestry that is society.

So you know I’m not being hyperbolic, but rather bitterly resigned. After all, I knew it was coming, every trans person knew this was coming and likely worse the second Trump won the election. And we know it’s going to increase the suicide rate, because the passage of HB2 in North Carolina massively overflowed the Trans Lifeline and The Trevor Project suicide hotlines in calls from despondent youth*.

*And also because we see the opposite seeing a drop in the suicide rates, per this study on the passage of gay marriage dropping the suicide rate among queer youth significantly.

And this is but the first blow against my tiny little fragile community of fighters just trying to survive. I’ve had to make my peace with the fact that I’m likely to lose more kids I’ve mentored in the days ahead and certainly will see an uptick in general transphobic bullying of trans students from both other kids and administrators (there’s a whole bitter story of my head of school bullying the kid that got assaulted into their suicide attempt, because it happened on campus and he ignored a direct warning that it was likely to happen and so thought bullying the kid into silence would be a good idea. Needless to say, I’m not a happy Ceberus about it all).

But yeah… that’s all heavy and depressing and I’m not particularly in the mood to read some preening cis douchebag dancing over the graves of these kids cause they dared try to go to school and thus he no longer could pretend that kids like that don’t exist.

So instead let’s talk an all out war between Christians and Witches.

Thomas D. Williams PhD and Notre Dame legacy hire, Breitbart:
Witches Unite to Cast ‘Binding Ritual’ on Trump and his Followers

Yuuuuup, I’m finally ready to go to town on a Breitbart article!

Which, yeah, there was no way I was going to put this off forever. The person who runs this hate mag based on one man’s petty hatreds and bullying of the world is now the de facto president of the United States and openly trying to shape it to meet his and Trump’s white supremacist vision of a world without minorities where all the “dissidents” are in their place (and that place is dead or in prison, which is why all the states are trying to pass laws allowing them to lock up or run over people who organize peaceful protests and trying to stir up their ‘lone wolf’ fan base to “solve the problem” of people actually attending Town Halls for them).

And articles from here and other right-wing mags are very likely to end up on Illegitimate Leader Donald Trump’s desk to soothe his ego and ensure that mommy and daddy still think he’s a good boy and doing a good job (even if they have to commission some of those pieces themselves).

So tackling these fuckers is actually legitimately important. And hoo boy have I picked a winner today!

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):

  • XANDER: It could be witches, some evil witches! Which is ridiculous ’cause witches they were persecuted. Wicca good and love the earth and women power and I’ll be over here.

Okay, okay, you got me, the real shorter is that EVVVVVVIL scary witches in league with SATAN HIMSELF are trying to destroy our God-Emperor Donald Jesus-fucking Christ with Satanic black arts and only our holy prayers can save him and us in service to His holy mission of making people we don’t like’s lives miserable and hard to survive.

A group of witches is attempting to use black magic to neutralize U.S. President Donald Trump by casting a “binding spell” to prevent him from governing.

Oh, it’s story time, folks. Specifically story-time about a young Cerberus growing up in the middle of fundie bigot land.Cause see, I’m currently atheist, but I was raised Wiccan. Or at least secularly by a Wiccan. My mom was and still is a practicer of Wicca and I still have a lot of love for the practice even if I don’t have the belief needed to be a part of the faith.

For those who don’t know, Wicca is a form of paganism based on practical spell-casting. The tenets tend to be simple, seek not to harm others, seek to look inside and understand yourself, and connection with the environment and nature and understanding the interconnectedness of all things. Frequently Wiccans worship a Mother Earth Goddess, though some mix this in with paganism and worship some combination or portion of ancient Gods with some Wiccans viewing themselves as pledged in service to one particular deity or another who is your “patron god or goddess”.

As far as religions go, it’s fairly tame and mostly focused on internal introspection and using rituals to feel connected and to seek out a sense of protection and understanding. As such, most of the rituals are based on will (on putting your will out into the world and trying to make that will healthy) and belief and focus on mostly small introspective stuff.

And so we get to binding rituals. Binding rituals are rituals designed with regards to someone who is actively causing you harm or has caused you harm in the past and it’s basically a boundary of protection, invoking upon whatever the person’s chosen object of worship to place a boundary around the person who caused them harm so they can harm no others and heal in peace without creating new victims.

And that can be super useful for folks who’ve been harmed. Who know that their rapist is out raping others, that their abuser is probably doing the same to their current partner and kids, that the President who is killing trans kids, refugees, and children of immigrants will continue harming others.

It’s a small attempt to put out into the world that you’d like that to cease, that they rage, but not harm others in their rage. That they cause no more deaths or suffering.

So yeah… you can see why a right-wing that has openly pledged itself in service to actual literal Nazism would be a tad bit miffed about this.

The “mass spell to bind Donald Trump” will be performed at midnight on every waning crescent moon beginning Friday, February 24, “until Donald Trump is removed from office,” the group’s website states.

The mass ritual will allegedly be repeated again March 26, April 24, May 23, June 21 (the summer solstice), July 21, and August 19.

The spell also invokes evil on “those who abet” Trump, which would seem to appear to cover his staff and political nominees, and perhaps the millions who voted for him as well.

Angry Trump-voter shoots at 3, murders one while shouting “get out of my country” because he thought they were middle eastern.

Good call witches*.

*Which, a simple aside to note the elegance in which literal support to fascism is normalized. Oh, are the people protesting fascism or literal nazis and coming up with ways to defend against that. Well, they view all of you as part of us, so you might as well jump over that last step and join us lest you burn in their rage, thus ensuring you will be nazis and collaborators and thus deserve that rage and backlash.

The spell involves such items as an unflattering photo of Trump, a tower tarot card, a tiny stub of an orange candle, a pin or small nail, water, salt, a feather and an ashtray.

“This binding spell is open source, and may be modified to fit your preferred spiritual practice or magical system,” the site explains. What is critical is “the simultaneity of the working” as well as “the mass energy of participants.”

“Some lodges/covens are doing a variation of this as a group working, while a number of solitary practitioners are planning to connect and livestream via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media,” the site explains.

Which yeah, this is supposed to conjure images of “ooh, scary witches with all their materials and “energy” and “will” and organization as if Christians don’t have organized rituals of putting their prayers and will into the world and do the very same beseeching of higher powers to intervene in their favor.

In reaction, a number of Christian groups and individuals have promised to pray for Mr. Trump, asking God’s blessings on his work and on the nation.

Speaking of which*…

*One of the fascinating aspects of fundamentalist Christianity is that it relies on reducing faith and being saved to a couple of ‘magic words’ as Slacktivist’s Fred Clark puts it. It also insists on viewing Christians as besieged on all sides by demonic forces entirely focused on removing you from those magic words. And so you get an ascendant Christian Dominionist movement in control of all branches of the American government through open theft and denial of mass swathes of the country from voting shitting its fucking pants at someone else doing magic because their whole faith precludes viewing every Wiccan’s or Muslim’s or Jew’s or Hindu’s or so ons attempt to practice their faiths an all out demonic war on them personally requiring them to say their magic words even louder and more passively aggressively than before in response. It’d be sad if these fucking people didn’t currently control whether I and most of those close to me will live through the next couple of years or not.

Next up we get a quoted tweet from someone with MAGA in their name and whose pinned tweet is them filming a video while driving a car about how trans people need to be harassed and killed to keep evil men from pooping in women’s toilets and making them stink. No. Really. They risked crashing their car and put other people’s lives at risk to record a rambling video where they presume that people will go through the hell of transphobic harassment just to see the slightly cleaner women’s toilets and pee on the seats. And this terrible injustice is why trans people are not allowed rights*.

*That shit like this is the winning argument against my full humanity is perpetually infuriating. Like, for fuck’s sake people, it’s not an ideological battleground, I just want to pee and get the fuck out of here as fast as humanly possible. Y’all are the ones who’ve stirred themselves into a tizzy about something we’ve been doing without incident on our parts (y’all have been much more liberal in your beatings for us and those you perceive as us) for literal decades now.

The witches’ spell involves a lengthy incantation, calling on spirits and “demons of the infernal realms” to bind Donald J. Trump so that “he may fail utterly, that he may do no harm.”

Calling on the spirits to work the same harm on “all those who enable his wickedness and those whose mouths speak his poisonous lies,” the hex beseeches the spirits to “bind them in chains, bind their tongues, bind their works, bind their wickedness.”

Couple of things here:

A) They also call on “heavenly hosts”, but then I’m guessing that’s why you only selective quote the invocation rather than linking to it directly. Trusting your Nazis-in-training readership to know that outside information is literally the demon Jews trying to twist their soul.

B) Oh yes, stopping those who actively harm others, how evil, it must be stopped. Cause the Republican Party has abandoned all pretense of being anything other than an overblown comic book villain at this point.

Which… if we want to understand how the Republican Party has been so easily pushed into becoming synonymous with literal Nazis and abetting them, we need look no further than the continued attempt to abandon anything good in fear of being tainted by the “antichrist” cooties of the left.

The liberals are for protecting the environment, so they must be for destroying it and any attempt to save the Earth must be evil. The liberals are for peace, so endless war is a good unto itself. The liberals are against torture and the extra-judicial murder of children, so time to break out those “freedom isn’t free” and “blue lives matter” magnetic bumper stickers. The liberals are for empathy and tolerance, so hate will now be your sole companion.

And that has continued incessantly to the point we are in now where a party has controlling power (though heavily aided by theft and disenfranchisement) based on a political platform that is literally nothing than being as pointlessly cruel as possible and seeking the hurting of liberals as its one and only goal.

Cause once you’ve fallen that far, is it that really much farther to fall to be against democracy, a free press, or not being nazis and move accordingly in step?

And C) Here’s the relevant part of the invocation:

“Bind him so that he shall not break our polity
Usurp our liberty
Or fill our minds with hate, confusion, fear, or despair
And bind, too,
All those who enable his wickedness
And those whose mouths speak his poisonous lies
I beseech thee, spirits, bind all of them
As with chains of iron
Bind their malicious tongues
Strike down their towers of vanity”

And you see it in the pieces they quoted as well. It’s all about stopping active harm. Active harm that is happening. And the angry bigots are mad about this even though they acknowledge that active harm is happening and that that is the point of Trump’s actions, to “punish” liberals for daring to think they had an equal right to exist as Straight Cis White Christian Middle and Upper class Men do.

And this is the insidious part. What the right is seeking to do is undermine our ability to do anything to protect ourselves from our own demise. Whether it be openly threatening to kill those who show up for Town Halls, passing laws to justify jailing and running over protestors, the hoopla about Berkeley and the battery of shields that worked so well, or the eternal hand-wringing over punching nazis who when not preening in front of cameras are actively attempting a religious purge of their neighborhoods or nearly murdering folks.

And this is a thing that has been happening for a long time now. Making it unseemly for liberals in any way actively and effectively fight back against their own margainilization and suffering. It goes back to laws against slaves that allowed them to be beaten to death but which had punishments of torturing unto death any slave who dared stand up and seek to protect themselves or others.

And the Right is nervous because we were all supposed to fold-up and accept their fascism and their outright elimination of us with a concerned glance and a “well, we have to be fair to both sides” shrug. We weren’t supposed to rise up every week, actually stop cops from routing protestors, punch their movement leaders, show up en masse and angry for the Nazi collaborators in congress. Ready to fight back and win this country from their open theft.

And that’s what’s going to win the day. Not reasoned arguments, not disciplined debates, not civil dialogue, but instead putting the fear into those who have now made their political philosophy nothing more than seeking to hurt us personally for daring to exist that if they seek to kill us, that we’re damn bloody well taking them with us on the way down. Making them see if their Nazi philosophy really seems as sexy when you face even one iota of the shit we do for existence in a marginalized state. When you know you can be punched or dragged out of your safe offices if you push us enough. And that all the fences and guards have never historically been enough against an upset mob angry enough to swarm en masse (just ask Milosevic on that one).

Cause, if they are going to define themselves to being for everything against us and that hurts us, then bloody well let them see the angry bloodied mess they have made.

The climax of the spell involves a crescendo “with increasing passion” ending by blowing out the orange candle while “visualizing Trump blowing apart into dust or ash.”

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, so we all go into that eternal night.

This closing isn’t that. It’s just a standard ending to a ritual, no more threatening than someone praying before bed that their house doesn’t get foreclosed on or that their stalker doesn’t find their new address.

But, right-wingers would do well to remember that first connection they made so nervously in trying to fear-monger this. To stretch to view a protection spell as a threat to one’s life.

And that’s the story of the Chinese General who was told that the punishment for being late was death, just as it was for insurrection. And so, when he knew he and his army would be late, went full in on insurrection because hey, the punishment is the same.

The more you make our lives unlivable by any means. The more you put us at risk of death, the less we have to lose and thus the less we fear from draconic laws and cops and social protocols.

You’ve stated for years you’ve wanted a new civil war, to “cleanse” us all, but wars have two sides and no side goes fully unscathed and without casualties.

And those comfortable mewly-mouthed pricks have way more to lose than us and have never faced bitter angry protest the way we’ve had to.

We see it in congresscritters running away from their Town Halls and invoking anti-semitic conspiracy theories to justify their cowardice. In Richard Spencer’s betrayed tears at being punched. In Milo’s whine as the consequences of his actions normalizing child molestation finally caught up to him.

These people are not used to shit happening where they are. So bring it to where they are. Repeatedly endlessly, so that our bodies cannot decay in the shadows like they have for so long.

Cause we can’t keep backsliding on this. Not and live.

Our lives are literally depending on it.


‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. I have scryed into the future and thus predict that most of my posts are going to end in support for active resistance to fascism. Truly I am the trans prophet of the modern day. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


 

Comments: 17

 
 
 

Can’t read it all just now – for now I’ll just say that the bathroom issue is about bathrooms the same way the drinking fountain issue was about drinking fountains.

 
 

Pupienus Maximus-

Yup, a means of making their overall goals of intentional inequality, disrespect, and barring from public spaces seem small and inconsequential so that they can blame the group they are abusing for “wasting everyone’s time” on “such a small issues” that “only affects a minority of people”.

Conservatives have been playing the same record on repeat for fucking centuries.

 
 

^^^^^^^ this ^^^^^^^^^^

 
 

“The man with nothing to lose, is the man with no fear.”

 
 

After all these years, where is Sadly?

 
 

Very nice Cerb…As I gain strength and recover some of my gifts and fitness, I have come to understand more clearly than before, that I have no more time for fear, nor patience for fools…

I will soon get to lose the blood thinners, which means get back on the bicycle, which means come springtime, after a winter of riding, I should finally be back and properly fit and ready to kick some wingnut flabby-assed nazi fools…In the ass

This will, I hope, coincide with the complete return of all of my gifts.

I am glad that you are on my team, friend….Its late, gotta sleep….peace!!!

 
 

Why do we have gendered bathrooms anyway?
I once lived in the dorms at a University in France and the bathrooms (and the showers) were all uni-gender. Which is to say everything was individual stalls with locking doors. Never had a problem. No one thought anything of it.

Oh, and Thomas D. Williams, PhD and witch hunter extraordinaire? He started out as one of the Legionaries of Christ, the outfit of beloved pervert and incest advocate Marcial Maciel. Enough said.

 
 

The fact they’re flipping their shit just goes to show that fascists are a superstitious and cowardly lot.

 
 

What IS all the fuss about bathrooms, anyway? After all, it’s not as if public bathrooms in places like schools, libraries and movie theaters have for decades been destination resorts for LGBTQ experimenters, voyeurs, exhibitionists and hook-up artists…

 
 

You forgot Congressmen in your list.

 
 

No I didn’t. Larry Craig’s either “G” or “B”. Maybe “Q”. Whatever the etiology of a letter category, the bog is the preferred LGBTQ proving ground.

 
 

Inkberrow’s fascination with, and understanding of the ‘bog’ seems to indicate some familiarity with the turf in question which is not to suggest anything untoward….BTW, etiology is a good one, thanks for reminding me about it.

 
The Dark Avenger
 

We’re supposed to procreate and society, god knows, is ferocious on the subject. Heterosexuality is considered such a great and natural good that you have to execute people and put them in prison if they don’t practice this glorious act.

Gore Vidal

 
 

Provider, if reminding LGBTQ apologists of traditional LGBTQ fascination with public bathrooms in the course of debate over suddenly nondescript public bathrooms is itself fascination, then I happily concede. Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

 
The Dark Avenger
 

Oddly enough, the majority of people doing it in the open or outside of restrooms of any sort seem to be heterosexuals.

http://lmgtfy.com/?t=n&q=Couple+having+sex+in+public

 
 

Well said Cerb. I don’t intend for these (was going to say vultures, but they’re actually are part of the ecosystem) heinous humans (okay I’ll reluctantly grant them that biological status) to enjoy any long term success. However that’s up to those who recognize their evil which is a naked desire for power, which they are trying to achieve by driving wedges of hate between fellow Americans.
I pledge to fight them as best as I can, as long as I can. We have to face that we may not win, but if that’s the case I’m going down swinging.
I must admit thinking that since Obama had two wins and the economy appeared to be on the upswing and all the polls showing she’d win, the next 8 years would flush the last of Bush crap out of my country. Now, unfortunately we’ve just a a bunch of foreign promoted toxic waste dumped on us. I worry for the country my kids are now facing.
Gorsuch (an apple that doesn’t appear to have fallen far from his mother) could be on the court for another 40-45 years. gag!

 
 

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