Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Author: Mythical Libertarian Woman

  • MLW’s Guide to LGBTQWERTY

    By Mythical Libertarian Woman

    Lesbian: ladies who want to bang and/or be romantically involved with other ladies

    Gay: dudes who want to bang and/or be romantically involved with other dudes

    Bi: anyone who wants to bang and/or be romantically involved with either gender

    Pictured: A “Gay”

    AND HERE’S WHERE THINGS ALREADY START TO GET COMPLICATED

    There’s a controversy raging in the LGBTABCDEFG community about whether “bi” is a sufficiently woke term anymore, due to the ?Gender Is A Spectrum? crowd (see below). Technically speaking, “bi” means two, which means that being “bisexual” or “biromantic” (give me a sec, we’re getting there) is automatically cisnormative (you cis shitlords all know what cis means, right?). So:

    – Some people use “bi” to mean “I like everyone and I don’t care about their bits”

    – Some people take “bi” to LITERALLY mean “two” and they will use this in very interesting ways, such as “I am only attracted to cisgender women and demigirls, WHICH IS A REAL AND VALID GENDER (see below) and those are my two”

    – Some people really only like dudes and ladies and aren’t interested in made-up genders and they’re cisnormative scum

    Pan: Many who are of the first “bi” definition of “I like everyone and don’t care about their bits” have decided to abandon the term “bi” and are now using “pansexual” (or “panromantic” – we’re getting there, I swear). The pans and the bis get into angry flame wars on Tumblr for being the same thing as each other but not using each other’s preferred semantics. The pans have managed to convince the alphabet soup gods to add a P onto the acronym for them. Polyamorous people think it belongs to them. Further war ensues.

    Bisexual has a pretty pink-purple-blue flag, while pansexual has an ugly pink-yellow-blue flag! (YES, EVERY SINGLE THING ON THIS LIST HAS ITS OWN COLORS AND FLAG. It’s like the Panhellenic Council of identity politics.)

    Polysexual/polyromantic: This is not polyamorous. It’s actually yet another division of bisexuality. See, “bi” means “two” and “pan” means “all,” but what if you’re attracted to every gender except cis male scum? Then you are poly, which means “some but not all.”

    Multisexual: One more word for the same thing. This one is the umbrella ☂️™ term for all the orientations that are attracted to more than one gender. You know, bisexuality.

    Polyamorous: Wants to have more than one sexual or romantic partner. I guess this is an orientation? I don’t know if otherwise straight people who are polyamorous really want to be lumped in with the LGBTQQIAPPP2++ crowd, though.

    Asexual (called “ace” for short): Does not experience sexual attraction. This is really straightforward but the ace community is determined to make it about as mind-searingly complicated as the gender crowd. I’m not even sure I can define all these terms in a linear way the way I can for all the rest of them, so just try and stick with me here.

    Romantic vs. sexual attraction: Some asexuals are also aromantic*, which means they don’t want to have sex or date. This is also pretty straightforward. You know your spinster great-aunt who never had any beaux (and no female “roommates,” either) and didn’t seem to give a shit? She was probably aromantic asexual. I highly suspect St. Paul was, too, which is how he managed to be so “wtf is wrong with all you sluts, just be celibate like me” in his letters. There just didn’t use to be a word for it because in Biblical times people didn’t care about this crap.

    *Also, #NotAllAros are asexual. Some people are aromantic but not asexual. So I guess they want to have sex with people but not be in relationships? They get pissy with you if you say that makes them sound like dicks. #NotARobot

    Some asexual people experience romantic attraction without sexual attraction. This probably seems really weird but I think it’s actually not if you think about it? Picture how a lot of couples get when they’re older and don’t feel like banging anymore, except they’ve always been that way and neither partner cares. Their idea of a happy relationship is like snuggling on the couch and being June and Ward Cleaver or something. IMO, I don’t think asexual/non-asexual (called “allosexual” or just “allo” in the ace community) relationships can work unless the allo partner is not all that interested in sex to begin with. Or if they’re polyamorous maybe. Or I guess if the ace doesn’t mind having sex, even if they’re not into it.

    >Anyway, this is how we get all the -romantic suffixes on the orientations. Biromantic, panromantic, polyromantic, yadda yadda. That’s for ace people, since they aren’t sexual but they do have romantic feelings for people. Technically straight or gay is “heteroromantic” and “homoromantic” but most people just say straight or gay.

    With me so far? Because up to now the ace stuff mostly makes sense, but it’s about to get really ridiculous.

    Possibly because asexuality is the trendy new identity for those who don’t want to commit to changing their genders, there are several subcategories that fall under the Asexual Umbrella ☂️™.

    Demisexual: People who don’t experience sexual attraction unless they have an emotional bond with someone first. This seems to be Normal to me, but I’m told it’s Not, so it’s an identity now. (This is not the same thing as “demiboy”/”demigirl”/etc! For that, see below.)

    Demiromantic: Doesn’t experience romantic attraction unless there’s an emotional bond I guess? But like…that’s just…what happens when you date someone, I think. Like, when you first meet someone you don’t immediately go HELL YEAH ONE TRUE LOVE. Even Disney movies don’t do that anymore. BUT IT’S AN IDENTITY NOW OKAY ☂️™

    Gray-A/Grace: Okay this is the one that really gets me. It is:

    sometimes experiences sexual attraction

    but not always.

    There’s not even a specific set of parameters the way there is for demisexual. It’s literally an orientation for I AM NOT HUGH HEFNER. Don’t get an erection every time you see a girl walking down the street? Congrats, you’re gray-A, you can pick up your Marginalized Identity card at your local GSA office.

    Finally: THE A IN THE LGBTQIA+ ACRONYM IS FOR ASEXUAL*, NOT ALLY #GiveItBack

    *”And aromantic!” scream the aros**
    **”And agender!” scream the snowflakes who aren’t happy with the 47 other gender options intersectional feminism has provided them

    Moving on from sexual orientation to gender:

    Pictured: A “Transgender”

    Transgender: You all know what it is. The term is generally just used for MTF (male-to-female) and FTM (female-to-male), but some of the gender non-conformists want the T in addition to some extra alphabet soup letters because they heard whoever has the most letters wins the gold medal in the oppression Olympics.

    Transsexual: The term for people who have actually had gender reassignment surgery. I think this is kind of being phased out, though, and people are just using transgender regardless of surgery status.

    Trans*: Someone on Tumblr started using this a while ago because the * made it inclusive of both transgender and transsexual. It was really popular for like a year and then the meme became that “trans*” was oppressive for reasons. (Supposedly whoever invented it was actually a secret Nazi spreading anti-trans propaganda or something. Or maybe a pedophile. I don’t remember.) Now if you use “trans*” you’re a shitlord, prepare to be roasted.

    Nonbinary: Someone who identifies as neither male nor female. Can use a variety of pronouns, from the relatively easy to parse “singular they” to the made-up but at least somewhat well-known “xe/xir” to a whole host of invented pronouns, such as those found here.

    Note that this is not a finite list! You can also make up your own brand new ones and expect everyone to use them (I know people who have!) under penalty of law. Go nuts!

    Genderqueer: Nonbinary

    Gender non-conforming: Nonbinary

    Enby: Nonbinary

    Agender: Nonbinary

    Two-Spirit: Nonbinary with a Native American flair (NOT TO BE USED BY WHITE PEOPLE YOU CULTURALLY APPROPRIATIVE SCUM ?)

    All these things are the same but they each get their own letter on the acronym! BECAUSE THEY ARE IMPORTANT AND VALID.

    Demigirl/demiboy/demiwoman/demiman: Not the same thing as demisexual or demiromantic. It’s someone who sometimes feels like their assigned gender and sometimes doesn’t. This is sort of the gray-A of gender.

    Bigender: One person. Two genders. At the same time. In practice, this can get a little Me, Myself & Irene. I think “genderfluid” might also fall under this, but sometimes people use “genderfluid” to mean “nonbinary” so your guess is as good as mine.

    Transracial and/or transspecies/otherkin: NOT A REAL THING, STOP THROWING THAT OUT THERE TO MAKE US LOOK BAD, WE WOULD NEVER

    Intersex: Previously known as hermaphrodite. They have a medical condition, I’m not sure what they’re doing here.

    +: Make sure to include the + at the end of the acronym to include any letters you might have missed! No matter how many letters you include, you will always have missed some. I’m sure I missed some on this glossary! People will still be mad at you for forgetting their letter, of course, and they will likely start a hashtag movement against you, but at least you’ll have the defense of having sort of included them with the +.

    Other terms of note:

    Queer: All of us ?️‍? Even the straight gray-As. It’s a beautiful term we reclaimed. YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO USE IT.

    TWOC: Trans Women of Color. The most holy of identities, trumps all other letter combinations.

    AFAB: Assigned female at birth (now sometimes called “CAFAB: coercively assigned female at birth” to reiterate what shitlords parents and doctors are for indicating biological sex on birth certificates).

    AMAB: Assigned male at birth; see above for CAMAB.

    MOGAI: Some people are saying we should use this as a catch-all instead of adding letters to the acronym. It stands for “Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments and Identities” (I think). But someone on Tumblr said it was invented by a shitlord (like the “trans*” person). Then someone else said no, that’s “MOGII.” Then the #discourse devolved into a flame war.

    Folx: Colloquial use of the word “folks” jumped 8000% after Obama entered office! But “ks” is such a heteronormative letter combination. “Folx” is so much more inclusive!

    Queer-platonic partnership/QPP: Sometimes people who say they’re aro-ace want to date each other but don’t want to call it dating because they’d have to give up one of their letters. So they date each other anyway but call it a “queer-platonic partnership.” Aces who use this term for a m/f relationship get sternly admonished by the Rainbow Police, and then there’s an epic flame war over whether straight aces should even be allowed to sit with us.

    Sometimes QPPs are called zucchinis. Make of that what you will.

    Pictured: A “Queer-Platonic Partnership”

  • Maybe It’s the Internet

     

    The spark for this rant came from this piece on Oprah.com called “The New Midlife Crisis.” Though this one focused specifically on Gen X women, I’ve seen the details before in articles about millennials of both genders, about working people, about teenagers (Gen Z or whatever the heck we’re calling them), on and on: people are stressed. Diagnoses of depression and anxiety are at all-time highs. Humanity is in crisis, be it mid-life or quarter-life or whatever. Everyone is unhappy and no one knows why.

    I don’t deny that people are more stressed, depressed, and anxious. I’ve witnessed it firsthand. I’ve experienced it personally. Every article has a different theory: it’s because of the economy, it’s because of white supremacy, it’s because of capitalism, it’s the damn Republicans’ fault. But I think I know the answer and, in fact, I can almost guarantee that my theory is right.

    IT’S THE INTERNET.

    There are a lot of hand-wringing articles about younger millennials and the next generation growing up on the internet and spending most of their time on it. But no one seems to acknowledge the fact that older people use the internet too, you know. I am a millennial but I’m a bit of an older one (1985), so my family didn’t have a PC until I was in around fifth or sixth grade; we had no internet until freshman year of high school, and there was no such thing as smartphones until I was already out of college.

    I did spend quite a bit of my formative years on the internet, but it was in the “Web 1.0” era. Slow internet speeds, basic web pages and no social media. I made a lot of friends online, but the settings were very similar to those at Glib: we all interacted under screen names. Very few people knew my real name or what I looked like. I spent time on fandom message boards, LiveJournal, fanlistings and the very occasional IRC chat room. We’d leave comment threads pertaining to a specific topic, such as whether those who watched dubbed anime should be burned at the stake or not. (Full disclosure: I am a dubbie, not a subbie. Feel free to shun the nonbeliever.) The friends I made in those places didn’t know every single detail of my life—we’d just talk about Sailor Moon or video games or whatever. It was an escape from reality, a nice way to de-stress when I got home from school. Building fanlistings was a fun way to teach myself web design and Photoshop as a creative outlet. It was a more innocent age.

    Since the rise of MySpace and then Facebook, the internet has evolved, and you can easily see that the ways it has encroached more and more steadily into our lives is a recipe for stress overload. Moving away from the previous online culture of anonymity and limited sharing, social media has encouraged us to SHARE MOAR! SHARE MOAR! SHARE EVERY SINGLE DETAIL OF YOUR LIFE!

    People live on social media, blurting out every little thing that comes to mind. Status updates for every second of every day. Everyone knows the second you start dating someone, the second you break up, when you get a job and when you lose one, what time you get up in the morning and what time you go to bed. Photos of every meal, every drink from a bar or a coffee shop, every outfit, every haircut. Family drama gets aired like dirty laundry. And don’t even talk to me about people with kids. Every milestone in life gets a professional photographer involved. Proposal photos, engagement photos, wedding photos, anniversary photos, pregnancy announcement photos, shower photos, gender reveal photos, photos with a chalkboard saying whatever week you’re at in your pregnancy, BIRTH photos—women are literally having someone glam them up while they’re in the damn hospital and posing with the baby on their naked chests. I could make a collage of these. They all look the same. And then once the kid’s popped, it’s annual family photos, holiday photos, first-day-of-school photos, the photo cycle never ends.

    People get on Facebook Live or Instagram Stories or myriad other video sharing platforms even while they’re driving their damn cars and fill the empty space with the sound of their voices. It’s performance art. People are building an audience, whether they are looking for strangers to become their followers or just subjecting their family and friends to it.

    So many people, saying so much…

    Every second of everyone’s life is on display. And it seems like the general public is only acknowledging that this as a problem for the teens and young millennials. But I’ll tell you what, these Gen X women? I have gotten to know a number of women around ten to fifteen years older than me since I started publishing, which means that I’m seeing a bunch of moms whose kids are graduating high school and going to college, and HO-LY SHIT. These women have the millennial moms with the toddlers beat. They won’t shut up about their kids, and they’re tagging the kids in the status updates. One woman the other day posted a public Facebook post calling out a girl her college freshman daughter was friends with, shaming her for being ‘a backstabber’. AND SHE TAGGED THE DAUGHTER IN IT, so now all the daughter’s friends will see it.

    This is just one example of the pervasive oversharing that’s going on thanks to social media. But it’s not just the cringe factor that’s the problem. From all these pro photo shoots for every moment of someone’s life to the professional networking aspect of social media, social media is encouraging unhealthy levels of competition. I’d be the first to admit that some competition is a good thing, as it encourages people to excel; but there needs to be some moderation. Before the internet, competitiveness was limited to face-to-face interaction or specific tasks. With the internet, it’s 24/7. People are lying in bed trying to sleep at night looking at their phones and seeing Sally Supermom coifed and made up like a model in a hospital bed with baby number three posed tenderly on her bare chest. #blessed #wokeuplikethis

    When everyone around you seems like they’ve got their shit together and you feel like you don’t, it can be very difficult to ignore feelings of helplessness or desperation that ensue.

    For me personally, it’s very, very hard for me to be around other authors. Especially with the rise of indie publishing, there are a lot of Type A personality authors who are obsessed with maximizing productivity, and they can be overwhelming. “I wrote 50,000 words this week but I think I can get it up to 75,000 if I use dictation software so I can ‘write’ while I do chores and use my exercycle.” “I’ve been feeling a bit drained recently, so I’ve been doing thirty minute bursts of mindful meditation after every 5000 words, and I’ve found it lets me get my productivity up even higher—I’m averaging 30,000 words a day!” “You’re never going to make it in this industry if you don’t put a book out at least once every three months, so you need to focus on ways to write faster while also maintaining a well-balanced social life, running five miles every day so you’re not a fatty, raising 2.5 children and experiencing spiritual enlightenment through the teachings of Zen Buddhist monks!”

    American politics

    And you’ll notice I’ve not even mentioned politics at this point. Because I think we all know what the state of politics is like thanks to the internet. It would take a whole separate article to talk about that trash fire.

    My point is: I’m not surprised at all that stress, depression and anxiety are at all-time highs. And there’s a solution, as difficult as it is to accept—if you want to feel better, you’ve got to get off the internet. I know it’s hard. And sometimes you don’t have a choice, especially if you have a job that requires social media marketing. But we as individuals all need to make a conscious choice to cut back. If you can’t deactivate Facebook entirely, use it sparingly, and don’t be afraid to unfollow every person who says something stupid. Same thing goes for Twitter, Instagram, and every other form of social media. I’ve noticed a marked improvement in my mood since blanket-muting just about every author on Twitter and only having exposure to William Shatner, Emergency Kittens and my local branch of the National Weather Service. The other day, I took the day off and did nothing but play video games and comment on Glib, and I felt so relaxed and unstressed afterwards (probably because it was a day that Derpetologist didn’t post).

    Want to solve the “crisis” crisis? Be you man or woman, a Gen X-er, a millennial, or someone older or younger, try cutting out or cutting back on social media. I can guarantee you that you will feel much better in a very short amount of time.

  • Lesbian parents: Do problems stem from their gender, or their politics?

     

    A 2016 study from the Catholic University of America has come back to the forefront thanks to an article on Milo’s blog called “Having lesbian parents makes you fat” (Milo’s #1 priority). The study followed 20 sets of same-sex parents (17 of them lesbian) over a span of thirteen years, from 1995 to 2008. You can read the study for yourself here, complete with a virtue-signaling disclaimer at the beginning. The gist of it is that the study found that having same-sex parents made children “2.25 times more likely to experience depression than is the general population,” as well as more than twice as likely to be obese and more than three times as likely to experience suicidal thoughts.

    In their disclaimer, one thing Hindawi notes is that the small sample size of the study may be skewing results. I would agree with that, but for perhaps a different reason than either the author of the study or the editors at Hindawi had in mind. I suspect, that with a sample size that small, the odds of political diversity in the sample are probably very slim—and I would like to suggest that that, more than the gender of the parents, may be a large part of the problem.

    The most recent photo-graphical evidence of a libertarian woman in the wild

    As background, I am bisexual and have dated men and women roughly equally (I’m currently dating a woman, though it’s been very short-term so far, only about two months). I generally prefer dating women, and would probably prefer to marry a woman, with one small caveat: lesbians are overwhelmingly fucking lunatics politically. Conservative and non-political lesbians do exist (no libertarians, though, since I’m the only libertarian woman), but like the fabled STEVE SMITH, they’re rare and require patience to spot.

    Lesbians, being both women and homosexual, fit this perfect double-whammy market for the left. It is known that if you’re one of those, your vote automatically belongs to the Democrats; so, obviously, if you’re both, you doubly belong to them. Thus, lesbian Democrats are doubly insane. The vast majority of them are screaming feminists. They’re angry often, possibly even most of the time. They’ve bought into victimhood culture and they milk it for all it’s worth.

    It’s easy to see how a climate like that could affect a child. But I feel this has less to do with the fact that the child has two women for parents and more to do with the fact that rabid progressivism (and postmodernism, third-wave feminism, identity politics and all the other bullshit theories that have been infecting the left for the last two decades) creates a toxic environment. These theories have been particularly strong in the LGBT community, where they became dominant much earlier than they did for the “mainstream” left (fitting the 1995-2008 timeline of the study). And you can see how the symptoms reported in the study could stem directly from those ideologies.

    Higher rates of obesity? Not surprising in “body positivity” culture.

    Higher rates of depression? Remember that this study was conducted primarily during the tenure of “Literally Hitler” the First. Imagine spending your formative years listening to your moms rant daily about how BOOOOOSH (or, perhaps, the real evil mastermind, CHENEYYYYYY) was going to bring about the apocalypse.

    Higher rates of suicidal thoughts? I have suicidal thoughts after spending too much time on Twitter, something I can turn off. I can only imagine the effect being steeped in that ideology 24/7—as a child—would have on my psyche. The study concluded in 2008, the year of Sarah Palin and Prop 8. Not sure if it ended before the Anointed One ascended the throne, but I could see how the preceding months of “THOSE DAMN KKKORPORATIONS ARE FUNDING CAMPAIGNS TO DESTROY OUR FAMILY” might impact someone.

    The “gold standard”

    The issue with a study like this is that they compare overall results with those of other studies that look merely at two-parent, one-man-one-woman households, without considering differences in the parents’ political beliefs. If a significantly more politically diverse sample was taken of the “standard” families (not even specifically conservative, but just politically neutral), I suspect the results look better just because the kids grew up without being mired in negativity. I would be interested to see the results of those studies broken down into leftist families vs. non-political or conservative families. I suspect that the results for the left would look closer to the results Father Sullins got, with the non-leftists bringing up their scores thanks to averaging.

    Maybe, statistically, the results would still show that one-man-one-woman households are the healthiest environments for kids. But that’s also the case compared to single parent households and blended families, and they make it work. And I believe that same-sex couples can as well. But it involves leaving politics (identity and otherwise) at the door, for the sake of your kid. After all, being a lunatic is not an intrinsic, inherent part of being a lesbian; it’s an individual choice.

    I can’t help but wonder what the difference would be in a household with two moms like that, rather than a household with Big Red as Mom 1 and Trigglypuff as Mom 2. A household like that of many opposite-sex couples, where politics doesn’t matter—family does.

  • Milo and the Publishing Industry

    In December of last year, Simon & Schuster, one of the large traditional publishing houses known in the industry as the “Big Five” ( formerly Six, announced the upcoming publication of “Dangerous, an autobiography by “alt-right leader” “professional agitator” whatever, you know who he is Milo Yiannopoulos. The publishing world immediately proceeded to lose its damn mind. From preachy virtue signaling from literary review magazines to preachy virtue signaling from bestselling authors to preachy virtue signaling from Simon & Schuster’s own U.K. division, the last two months in the Publishing World have been nonstop outrage, boycotts, Twitter rants, and general hysteria.

    Undoubtedly, the bigwigs at Simon & Schuster were very relieved when they were given an easy out for severing ties with Milo after The Pederasty Incident. But now that his book deal has been canceled, the question is: Where will Milo go? And what does his choice mean for the publishing industry?

    It’s entirely possible that he will decide to just shelve Dangerous. But if he decides he wants to continue to pursue publication, he has two choices—try to court another traditional publisher, or self-publish his book. And which route he takes could have long-term effects on the industry as a whole.

    To better understand the implications of what direction Dangerous takes to publication, it’s important to understand the nature of the modern-day publishing industry. Until about ten years ago, publication via a traditional publishing house was considered the only legitimate means of publishing a book. Though the stigma of self-publishing has lessened slightly with the explosion of ebooks and hugely successful self-published authors like Andy Weir and Hugh Howey, for the most part, traditional publishing is still considered by the elites to be the only “true” form of publication. The Big Five have a stranglehold on brick-and-mortar bookstores, on libraries, on literary awards*, and even on bestseller lists (which by no means reflect a straightforward measure of sales). Everything about the industry is designed to give legacy publishers an advantage over digital imprints and independent authors who try to skirt the gatekeepers.

    Not unlike the Fourth Estate, publishing is suffering from the changes in consumer expectations brought on by the digital age. However, market analysis shows that despite predictions to the contrary, the digital age hasn’t killed traditional publishing just yet. But ebooks aren’t its only threat. An arguably bigger problem that may ultimately hasten the traditional houses’ demise is the disproportionate influence on the industry held by the progressive factions of what is colloquially known as “Book Twitter.”

    “Book Twitter” is an extremely vocal faction of readers, authors, editors, agents, small publishing houses,
    and others involved in the publishing industry that skew overwhelmingly left. They exist in an echo chamber, where each reverberating talking point bounces back and gets louder and louder. One refrain that became deafening over the last year is that all writing is inherently political, and as True Artists we have a Sacred Duty to preach Rightthink in any and every aspect of our lives. Thus, previously non-political, bestselling authors have been chiming in almost incessantly, contributing to the industry’s pronounced and rapid shift leftward.

    So what does this mean for Dangerous? It means that, regardless of the fact that the book hit #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list twice while still in preorder—despite the fact that there may (and undoubtedly will) be a huge consumer demand for his book— Dangerous is likely going to be a very tough sell for other traditional publishers, particularly any of the remaining four major houses. They saw what happened to Simon & Schuster over the last two months, and my prediction is that their desire to avoid controversy and save face with the insiders of their industry will outweigh any concerns for freedom of speech, and likely even the prospect of the monetary gain that could come from publishing his book.**

    Achtung! Those frosted tips are sharpWhich leaves self-publishing.

    If Milo chooses to self-publish Dangerous, it could be the first sign of a changing tide. The backlash that Simon & Schuster experienced over signing a deal with Milo is likely to continue with future book deals with other authors. Despite their exclamations to the contrary, considering their track record, it is almost certain that the rage machine will continue to work its way down the list of authors who are conservative, libertarian, or anywhere to the political right of Karl Marx (or at least Bernie Sanders), targeting them as proponents of hate speech who must be silenced for the good of society. And as long as the echo chamber continues to consist of prominent members of the traditional publishing industry, the Big Five will continue to be puppets to their whims.

    This means that as the traditional publishing industry grows increasingly leftist in nature, it seems likely that conservative and libertarian voices may start to shift towards an independent/self-publishing model. The implications this could have for the industry are multifold. First, it would likely mean that the slight increase in legitimacy that self-publishing has gained over the last few years will abruptly decrease, at least for the purposes of the gatekeepers (the aforementioned professional reviewers, brick-and-mortar bookstores/libraries and, of course, lists and awards). But additionally, as in the case of the declining legacy media, it would likely lead to a simultaneous increase in the market share of self-published books—particularly in nonfiction, a genre previously dominated by the Big Five. And as their sales dwindle, no amount of Rightthink will be able to keep them afloat. It will be Trump’s election all over again.

    The rage brigade of “Book Twitter” think they are saving traditional publishing by silencing voices they don’t agree with. But more than likely, they are hastening its decline.

    ———

    * I won’t go into the Rabid/Sad Puppies vs. Hugos drama, as that would be enough for another article entirely, and it’s already been covered in other places.

    ** The exception to this would be if there is an independent/small press that caters to a specifically conservative or right-wing audience that doesn’t mind the blowback from Pedophilia-gate. Which there may well be. I’ll be interested to see what comes out of the woodwork over the next few months.