In response to this event, some redditors created r/charityraid, with the goal of concentrating the power of thousands of users into a single charity at a time to hopefully break a few more sites.
As of 9/21/21, the site has updated with more wishes. The incredible spike in donations is amazing, but if you want to and are able to keep the momentum going, there are over 300 waiting to be filled at https://www.onesimplewish.org!
Hine also talked about the changes made in adapting the show, especially how it tones down the comics' more pointed political edge:
If I looked at it as a direct adaptation of the comic I did with Sapolsky, Di Giandomenico and the others at Marvel, I'd be disappointed.
Our version was explicitly political. We named names. We referenced the Friends of New Germany and the rise of actual Nazism in the US. Everything referenced was historical reality, except for the obvious elements of pulp weirdness.
Our Peter Parker was a radical communist along with Aunt May and Uncle Ben. The politics of the show are soft left. Aunt May would have been scathing. I'd have been overjoyed if they took a more courageous political stance.
They say socialism is bad because their masters told them to believe it and they do so without question. They don't actually know what half the shit they say means. And when confronted, they just make shit up and call you a leftist puppet when you prove them wrong.
Honestly though, I'd rather be a leftist puppet then a pedo supporter. But what do I know? I'm just a Canadian that know more about American politics then the average Republican.
You know what they haven’t given us in the United States? EMS as an essential service everywhere in all 50 states. Wake up everyone! When it comes to public safety, we need more than just POLICE and Fire.
a timeline, plus historical context and future implications
Julia Serano at Switch Hitter:
Back in 2022—the year that prominent U.S. Republican politicians began referring to trans people as “groomers” on a regular basis—I wrote an essay entitled Anti-Trans “Grooming” and “Social Contagion” Claims Explained. In it, I made the following points:
There is no credible evidence to support the idea that today’s trans children have been “groomed” by trans adults or “infected” by their trans peers. In a subsequent 2025 essay, I compiled even more evidence (with over a dozen peer-reviewed studies) refuting the “social contagion” hypothesis.
Similar claims of queerness being “contagious” can be found as far back as the late 1800s and seem to arise from people unconsciously viewing stigmatized outgroups as a “contaminating” or “corrupting” force that threatens the imagined “purity” of the dominant/majority group (and especially its children). I’ve come to call this the Stigma-Contamination mindset.
Unlike other anti-trans talking points or imagined causes of transness, the “grooming” and “social contagion” allegations are especially nefarious, as they provide a convenient excuse for “quarantining” trans children and eliminating trans adults from the public sphere in order to ensure that their transness doesn’t “spread” any further.
In addition to defaming trans people, these baseless accusations of “grooming” have the unfortunate effect of diluting or weakening legitimate claims of child sexual abuse.
Given how the concept of transgender “social contagion” arose seemingly out of the blue, in 2018 and 2019 I conducted a series of advanced Google searches to uncover its origins. The timeline I created, Origins of “Social Contagion” and “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” chronicles how the concept was invented by a trans-skeptical mother on the anti-trans parent website 4thWaveNow in February 2016, then quickly spread throughout conservative media outlets before reaching mainstream audiences. The timeline also provides a good overview of how the current anti-trans backlash initially coalesced and garnered momentum in the mid-to-late 2010s.
In the years since, I’ve carried out similar advanced Google searches for claims that transgender people are “grooming children.” The first of these searches was done in 2021, as I was working on Transgender People, Bathrooms, and Sexual Predators: What the Data Say. That essay contextualizes recent claims that trans people are “grooming” or “sexualizing” children within the long history of stigmatized minorities being caricatured as “sexual predators”—this includes Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign in the 1970s that smeared lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people as “child molesters” who were supposedly “recruiting children.”
[...]
Where Things Stand in 2026
The anti-trans/LGBTQ+ “groomer” slur still persists. A few examples of headlines from just last year include “Marjorie Taylor Greene calls Sarah McBride a ‘groomer’ and ‘child predator’ for reading to kids”; “Parent accuses Satellite High teachers of ‘grooming’ teen to transition”; and “Republicans accuse PBS of ‘grooming’ children with Sesame Street Pride post.” As for anti-trans legislation, well, that has increased roughly ten-fold since early 2022, with many of those bills invoking the false accusation that trans people are “grooming” or “sexualizing” children.
Take for instance, West Virginia bill SB 278, which was introduced by Republicans in 2023. It proposed expanding the state’s indecent exposure laws (which typically cover people exposing their genitals or engaging in public sex acts) to include “transvestite and/or transgender exposure in performances or displays to minors.” Based on that language, if I were simply playing guitar or giving a lecture, and a minor happened to be present, I could face jail time.
[...]
So according to this passage, I am “pornography” and a “child predator,” and I shouldn’t be granted any First Amendment protections. It would also categorize this article—the one you are reading right now—as pornography. And if you were teaching a class on free speech and censorship, and you included this article in your curriculum, you could be registered as a sex offender!
While that Project 2025 passage is (thankfully) not on the long list of anti-trans/LGBTQ+ measures the Trump 2.0 administration has implemented thus far, it’s not for lack of trying. Just recently, Republicans in the House of Representatives introduced H.R. 7661—literally called “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act”—that would essentially be a nation-wide book ban on “sexually oriented material.” And of course, their definition of “sexually oriented material” explicitly includes anything that “involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism” (aka, anything involving trans people).
Given all this, it is beyond frustrating that many mainstream Democrats are still expressing “concerns” about trans athletes, as though we were still back in 2021 when that was Republicans’ main anti-trans talking point. They have blown way past that in the years since. They are now restricting trans healthcare for adults, and passing laws that censor, disenfranchise, and criminalize us. And much of this latter legislation hinges on the notion that trans people constitute “sexually oriented material,” “pornography,” “indecent exposure” and “sexual predators.”
The “groomer” slur explosion of early 2022 was a low hanging fruit that Democrats failed to grab. The average person finds these sorts of accusations irrational and despicable. It was the perfect opportunity to highlight how defamatory and extremist Republican rhetoric on the issue has become. But instead, most Democratic politicians failed to counter at all, as Katelyn Burns lamented in “America is drowning in anti-LGBTQ attacks. Where is the Left’s lifeboat?” (from April 22, 2022 in the timeline).
The VICE article “Democrats Are Doing Basically Nothing to Counter the GOP’s ‘Pedophile’ Attacks” (from April 13, 2022 in the timeline) includes this quote from current House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries that sounds indistinguishable from similar feckless boilerplate statements he makes nowadays: “the best thing Democrats can do is ignore the attack and focus on the pocketbook issues that polls show Americans care about the most.”
[...]
I would add to that list that Democrats must directly challenge the “groomer” smear that undergirds much of Republicans’ anti-trans/LGBTQ+ legislation. While conservatives accuse us of “sexualizing children,” the truth is that they are the ones sexualizing trans and LGBTQ+ people—conflating us with “pornography,” “indecent exposure,” “sexual predators,” and so on. As I put it in my book Sexed Up (which ironically came out in May 2022, on the heels of the “groomer” slur explosion): “If we truly wish to eliminate anti-LGBTQIA+ prejudice, then [we] must confront sexualization head-on.”
Julia Serano delivers a quality story on how the anti-trans “groomer” libel and “social contagion” myths spread.
There is a very specific kind of sadness in realizing your parents loved you, and still did not always know how to meet your emotional needs.
Because it is confusing. It would almost feel easier if there was no love there at all. But sometimes there was love. In the way they tried to protect you. In the sacrifices they made. In the ways they worried about you, cared for you, wanted a good life for you.
And at the same time, there were still things missing.
Maybe comfort did not come in the way you needed it to. Maybe your feelings were not always understood, or noticed, or handled gently. Maybe you learned to keep certain parts of yourself quiet because it felt easier than trying to explain them.
That kind of hurt is difficult because it does not always come from cruelty. Sometimes it comes from people who loved you deeply, but did not know how to emotionally connect in the ways you needed. People carrying their own wounds, limitations, fears, or ways of surviving.
And you are allowed to acknowledge both truths at once.
You are allowed to recognize their love and still grieve what you needed but did not receive. Those things do not cancel each other out.
Forgiveness, for a lot of people, is not pretending nothing hurt you. It is slowly accepting that someone can love you and still fall short of understanding you completely.
That does not make your pain dramatic. It does not make them monsters either. Sometimes it just means everyone was trying with the emotional tools they had, and some of those tools were not enough.
And I think many people quietly carry guilt for still feeling hurt by parents they know tried their best. But being loved imperfectly can still leave wounds. It makes sense that it affected you.
At the same time, you do not have to stay trapped only in anger forever either. Sometimes healing looks like understanding that your parents were human before they were parents. People shaped by their own experiences, their own upbringing, their own emotional gaps.
That understanding does not erase your feelings. It just softens the sharp edges around them a little.
You deserved emotional safety. You deserved gentleness. You deserved to feel understood, comforted, and emotionally close to the people raising you.
And if they could not fully give that to you, it is okay to mourn it.
But I hope you also know this: the love you needed is still something you can experience in your life. Through other people. Through chosen family. Through the way you learn to treat yourself now.
The story does not end at what you did or did not receive growing up.
Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real: Nature.com
I'm a bit frightened for the time when someone less ethical than the person that did this decides to repeat the experiment but leave out the part where they come in later and announce that it was fake and people wind up diagnosed with the fake condition and all kinds of wacky hi jinks ensues.
Those monuments are to pro-slavery traitors. Period. There's no other honest explanation for them. The fact that she knows that and doesn't care is the problem.
