An update on my procedure to shave the spinal cord in my lower spine. The people at the surgical center were grand. I can’t describe them any other way. One nurse even joked with Ron and me that she would love to spend time with us off work hours because she loved our sexual innuendo banter with each other, stuff like we can’t even think straight after 36 years together and that we don’t say move straight forward we say move gayly forward. But work required her to only join us around the fringes but we had her laughing so hard. All of the staff were wornder and one even walked me to the bathroom when I felt I needed to pee. It was relatively embarrassing, but as I had worked in ICUs before I realized it was totally every day normal for the nurses to see my butt. She did hang the IVs and give me privacy which was more than we were able to do for the ICU patients.
When they took me into the procedure room, I was worried that I might not be out enough and would feel pain. The anesthesiologist asked me if I had ever had a colonoscopy. I repiled yes. He said do you remember it? No I replied. Same here he said, once we get you positioned, you won’t remember anything. They got me positioned, and then he told me that once they got me an arm rest for my right hand he would administer the aniestha. I was gone even before the arm rest was set up. Totally out. Woke up in the recovery room, and once I was awake they went and got Ron.
I have a list of do and don’ts. But on the way home we stopped to eat, I had a large breakfast for me. Then we got home, and I went to bed until 12:30. Got up, ate again, and locked the Majority Report into the fun half so I can watch it free, and went back to bed. Then I slept until nearly 5 PM. Got up and started working on the cartoon / meme / news post that was to go out today. I will go out tomorrow. Sorry about that, the spirit is willing, but the body is very weak right now. On the plus side the pain in my right leg I have been living with seems to have diminished greatly and in some cases gone away.
The video below is very funny and points out how tRump is now just a befuddled grandpa who thinks everything must be about him and how he is the greatest even when he is clueless about what he is talking about. The host points out the mistakes and money interests of the entire cabinet. Hope you enjoy. Hugs
OK this won’t be a full post on my abuse because Ron is terrified of my being emotionally upset before my surgery tomorrow. This female sibling was pregnant at 13 and married at 14. But while she was in the house she was the defacto caregiver to me. She was the one who tied me to a stair banister and let her boyfriends and other boys rape me. Her soon to be husband wanted more so she arranged for him to force me to give him blow jobs and rape me in other places / context. He had a fascination with buttholes so you can guess what that meant for the 3, and 4 and 5 and 6 year old me.
She was the one who farmed me out to the guy across the street at age 3 who was a real little boy lover so while he used my body he never made me hurt like I was being hurt at home. He often got upset at my bruised body. He often gave me the only real affection I felt at that time. I just had to let him use my body to gain it.
She tried to get me removed from the will due to the fact I was adopted. In her own writings she said I was never a part of the family so shouldn’t have a share of the inheritance. She failed to mention how badly I was treated by the family for some reason. The courts disagreed with her. Her husband was the executor of the estate and he was informed and needed to be ordered by the court to change the legal paperwork to reflect my new legal name, but in her obituary she used the family name of my abusers. She knew better at this point, as did her husband who once was said to be a corrupt cop.
I am going to try to keep my mind from it. But what Ron doesn’t know is my mind went there last night. Just not bad enough for me to yell / scream out. I will have to deal with it soon. But not hopefully tonight the night before my spine surgery. Hugs
I am sorry this is so late getting out. Now that I can walk again I am helping Ron renovate the house and create my new office by making the meals and doing the dishes and laundry. But I am exhausted at the end of the day. I got to bed between 6 and 7 pm and get up between 4 and 5 am. I am not complaining, just telling the facts of my life. On Monday the 6th I got a spine shot that let me walk again. It is slowly wearing off and the pain and neuropathy in my right leg is again increasing. This morning I made breakfast of fried potatoes, two slices of bacon each, two sausage patties each, and three eggs fried over medium where the whites are fully cooked and the yolk is still yellow and runny. Ron wanted two whole muffins and I had two slices of toast.
Then I went out with Ron to the nearby Publix to get our 4 cases of Publix caffeine free diet cola which is 24 two litter bottles and while I waited for the store to bring them out to me Ron got a few snacks I wanted, such as peanuts and almonds, along with a few other things. Then when we got home I started the laundry of towels and sat down for a bit. Then got up to make Ron lunch but he saw how tired I was and told me he could get it himself so I started doing dishes.
Our next goal is to get the meat slicer out and make breakfast steaks and sliced ham for sandwiches out of the two medium hams we bought. It is far cheaper that way than buying individual ham steaks and sliced ham from the deli. Then Ron says he will make supper but I think if I can stand I will. But I am very tired. So now at 2:20 pm I am trying to finish the morning cartoons / memes / news posts.
But the real reason for writing this on this post is tomorrow. I have my spine surgery scheduled for 07:30 in the morning. Yes I am worried, but I have to have it. This is the one where they put me almost mostly under (the person who called me told me I wouldn’t be able to remember it happened). Heard that before. But I did remember. So nothing by mouth but my morning pills which they went over with Ron and I.
I admit I am struggling with the fact that I will be basicly nude and unable to protect myself during this. I have been drugged for sex in my childhood. So as I told people here I have to have a colonoscopy, and this is the same issue. The thing I have to help me is that this surgeon I have known and been getting epidurals from him that required my butt to be exposed. Therefore, I trust him.
I never told him but I know he knows of my childhood abuse because Doctor Brenda must have recorded it in my chart. Anyway the point is if I can get the cartoons / memes / and news post out tomorrow I will. I just don’t know how I will feel after the M.I.L.D. surgery to cut and trim the spinal cord in my lower spine. Oh Ron and I just trimmed up two hams into sandwich meat and ham steaks for breakfast. I will post that soon. Hugs
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Hey Tumblr guess what? For the next two weeks, posters are back in my online shop!! You get to choose between 4 rad designs. Get them while they’re hot!
Ron nad I have library cards. They let you borrow far more than books. They also have audio books, movies, TV shows, and games for every platform. When I want a book to listen to but it is too expensive, as audio books tend to be, we borrow it from the library app. The cool thing is if our branch doesn’t have it the main system will somewhere and we can still borrow it. Hugs
Yesterday, I stumbled on a forum dedicated to hate me, where people basically spend their lives spewing transphobic bs, obsessing over my body, making up stuff about me, sharing awful parodies of my work, etc. It really got to me, as I’ve been living with the knowledge that these people are constantly there, stalking each of my movements, for several years now. I will never understand this kind of hate. I cried a good deal of tears. It was important. I need to feel in order to find the will and energy to create. I remembered who I do all this work for : us. The ones I call my family. My trans siblings. That’s why my new book starts with “we”. That’s why I’m announcing it in the urgency, as a memorandum for these troubled times and a reminder that we are stronger together, and that we need to be there for each other.
Massie: "I don't think the problem is that our elections aren't secure because we control the House, Senate, White House, and to some degree we control the Supreme Court. So I ask my Republican colleagues, why are you complaining about election fraud? We won all the damn… pic.twitter.com/ij7Fu7BoQC
Trump’s shocking “bombshells” about China are totally bogus.
The fact is our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election. A single concurring opinion suggested China may have tried to sway voters’ opinions……
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 17, 2026
This is really incredible. Docs released by Trump tonight confirm RUSSIA tried to spread claims Biden was engaged in criminal activity vis-a-vis Burisma and that it advanced those narratives "with US officials" and planed a "high-profile corruption scandal… at the peak of the… pic.twitter.com/BUXEYEGnKs
one of the supposedly damning docs the White House released tonight says Russia tried to undermine BIDEN. Also says China "prefers that President Trump be defeated" but actually "Beijing did not intend to try to affect the election" (!) pic.twitter.com/Bs5hTsf6iz
The declassified documents Trump just released tonight to “prove” the 2020 election was “rigged” actually show that Russia tried to interfere to hurt Biden and help Trump. pic.twitter.com/UlCmXhxRFY
Trump says Democrats forgot to rig the election in 2016, successfully rigged it while *he* was president in 2020, then forgot how to rig it again in 2024. So the only election Democrats supposedly stole was the one he himself controlled.
Wow. The ICE shooter in Maine asked his ex-wife to "to lie for him and to cover for his character."She said he was abusive and had previously reported concerns about him to his military superiors.He was also a volunteer firefighter, but was removed after several spats with department leadership.
Rep. Balint on Hegseth's obsession with testosterone, his announcement of testosterone therapy for troops, and his attacks on women in combat:
"I think it is indicative of the fact that there are so many people in this administration that have some weird, intense, homoerotic,… pic.twitter.com/xS6hIya9Ue
Currently driving what I'm sure will be my last stick shift car. Even in 2010 we had to special order it. I admit this makes me sad even as I acknowledge the anachronism.
I watched this the day it aired on the show. My gods how horrific and horrifying. The out of control settlers try to kill these people because they are recording the stealing of Palestinian lands and murdering Palestinians. If the driver had been any slower these people in the cars would have been killed. And the IDF supported the attacks on helpless people. US citizens. The Israeli government takes our taxpayer money and supports the killing of US citizens and reporters. If there is anything that says the Israelis know they are committing war crimes it is the killing of the reporters for showing their crimes. The place these attacks took place is in a zone that no Israeli is supposed to be even allowed in. Israeli is out of control and they use our taxpayer money to do it. The reason the reporter wanted to go to that spot was because a palestinian man’s son was killed and those with him hunted for 2 hours by settlers. The settlers live in the homes that the Palestinians built for themselves. Israeli settlers are nothing more than thieving thugs, and the population of Israel supports them which makes all those in Israel supporting this nothing more than thieving thugs. The people in these cars were terrified. You can hear it in the cries of the people in the car. The US ambassador supports Israel in this killing of US people. Please watch and do what you can to stop these lawless attacks against innocent people by Israeli settlers. Hugs
Yesterday, I stumbled on a forum dedicated to hate me, where people basically spend their lives spewing transphobic bs, obsessing over my body, making up stuff about me, sharing awful parodies of my work, etc. It really got to me, as I’ve been living with the knowledge that these people are constantly there, stalking each of my movements, for several years now.
I will never understand this kind of hate. I cried a good deal of tears. It was important. I need to feel in order to find the will and energy to create. I remembered who I do all this work for : us. The ones I call my family. My trans siblings. That’s why my new book starts with “we”. That’s why I’m announcing it in the urgency, as a memorandum for these troubled times and a reminder that we are stronger together, and that we need to be there for each other.
NEW: The FBI has explored using AI to assess the validity of signatures on tens of thousands of mail-in ballots seized from Fulton County, Georgia, another push in the Trump administration’s continued reinvestigation of the 2020 vote.
The rule directed the USPS to only deliver mail ballots if states handed over a list of preapproved voters.A federal court in Massachusetts blocked the rule implementation last month, and another court in D.C. followed suit shortly after.Full story:
The reelection campaign of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died Saturday, has more than $2.3 million in leftover funds, according to a financial statement the campaign committee filed today with federal regulators.
Ken Paxton recently bought 3 Utah luxury condos worth $1.6 million. He then put them in a blind trust that shares an address with the Dallas home he appears to be sharing with a woman who is not his wife.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pushed back against a new, million-dollar funding scheme from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to support “free speech and religious liberty” in Europe.
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Billionaire TERF influencer J.K. Rowling has announced that she will cover the legal costs of anti-trans groups named in a report by Amnesty International (UK), which called them “anti-rights.”
The report was retracted shortly after publication and replaced with a statement from the organization saying the report was uploaded “without going through the established internal review processes” and that its “language does not reflect the position of Amnesty International UK, which is why it was promptly removed.”
But the withdrawal and public acknowledgement was not enough to sate the organizations that have fought tooth and nail to exclude and/or antagonize the transgender community in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is notoriously more perilous for free speech than the United States. For our neighbors across the pond, the burden of proof lies with the defendant to prove the statement is true; here in the United States, the burden of proof lies with the aggrieved to prove that a statement is categorically false, and published knowingly or at least recklessly regardless. The US also benefits from “anti-SLAPP” laws to prevent such frivolous lawsuits waged by wealthy individuals or powerful corporations against those who criticize them.
So Rowling capitalized on the spectacle to, in essence, help dozens of groups in what appears to be an attempt to sue Amnesty into oblivion.
CAPTION: Screenshot from Rowling’s Twitter, where she offers “women’s organizations” backing to sue Amnesty International (UK) through her own charitable fund. She quote tweets a group of people who self-identify as “trans widows”—referring to cisgender people whose spouses or ex-spouses came out as transgender.
The saga began earlier this month, when Amnesty International (UK) released a report titled “A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK.” It released a similar report last year, but this year, it added a new category for what appears to be the anti-rights movement’s most rapidly growing sector: “Gender critical” groups, or groups that are antithetical to transgender rights and inclusion.
Rowling rushed to tweet about the situation.
CAPTION: Rowling tweets a group’s response to Amnesty International (UK)’s report on “anti-rights” groups.
She lauded “LGB” groups—another anti-trans buzzword, which, as the name suggests, describes groups that wish to erase transgender people from the queer liberation movement—like the Gay Men’s Network, an organization that has pushed for anti-trans policies. That group posted a public letter indicating it might sue Amnesty International for defamation. The Network demanded a retraction of the report and then claimed that Amnesty is guilty of “trying to control gay and lesbian free speech.”
In the day or so that followed, Rowling retweeted around a dozen similar letters. The posted letters include groups like Genspect, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group that threatened Amnesty International with legal action, as well as groups like LGB Alliance and Sex Matters.
Amnesty International (UK) did not formally reply to a request for comment for this piece.
Gender critical activists, often financed by Rowling, rely on legal “guerilla warfare” said one U.K.-based trans rights organizer, who could only speak to Erin in the Morning if granted anonymity. The tactic is familiar: Wear down non-profits and individuals who dare speak out against anti-trans and anti-rights groups. They don’t have to win a lawsuit; they can just file again, and again, and again, draining valuable time and resources.
“They have sued organizations into the ground,” the advocate said.
Some context for just a handful of these groups so up in arms about being labeled as hateful: Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy for Sex Matters, gave a speech at a Genspect conference (both are groups on the anti-rights list) about how “beauty” is “inimical to trans bullshit.
She also boasted about manufacturing a moral and medical panic about how, although only a “small” segment of trans kids are prescribed puberty blockers, it has been a strategic “rhetorical device” to erode the rights of transgender people more broadly.
Depending on who you ask, TERFs are considered either a self-branded liberal faction of gender critical ideology, or a different term for what is essentially the same movement. TERF stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist,” a term to describe self-proclaimed “feminists” who oppose giving transgender women and cisgender women equal rights.
Many of these TERF or “gender critical” groups have close ties to far-right Christian groups. DonorsTrust, the conservative donor behemoth and primary financier of initiatives like Project 2025, also forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups like the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine and Thoughtful Therapists, both of whom made the “anti-rights” list because, as Amnesty International (UK) among many others have put it, they promote “conversion practices.”
One major point of contention was the inclusion of Rowling’s own organization, Beira’s Place. It does not primarily seem to function as any sort of advocacy organization. Rather, it’s a women’s shelter for those fleeing domestic violence, but it also has an explicit anti-trans policy, banning transgender women from accessing its services.
However, as the report explained, none of these groups exist in a vacuum. “These entities must be understood as an ecosystem sharing values, goals, strategy and tactics and, for some of them, formal collaboration,” it reads.
Amnesty isn’t the first or last institution or expert to call out gender critical ideology for being anti-rights. UN Women has published materials saying as much.
Meanwhile, University of Sheffield sociologist Dr. Sally Hines has called this framework “deeply conservative.” In the Journal for Gender Studies, she writes that “despite its origins within a branch of radical feminism, [gender-critical ideology] has a profoundly misogynist agenda that stands opposed to the rights of women.” It is a “key force within a current conservative pushback against the rights of women and minoritized sexual groups.”
Gender critical activists continue to use the language of oppression to characterize their plight. Many say “TERF” is a slur. Others believe criticizing a group because of its arguably regressive politics is grounds for a lawsuit.
Despite the fact that the report was pulled down, Erin in the Morning was able to retrieve a copy reposted by an anti-trans news outlet. You can read a full version of that archived version below.
Report A Growing Threat The Anti Rights Movement In The Uk July 2026