Satire

PortlandOn Wednesday, California became the first state government in the US to adopt a law to study and develop proposals for reparations to descendants of enslaved people and those impacted by slavery. This is positive news and I am hoping it will set an example to encourage other states to follow suit. As a transblack individual and an immigrant to the United States, it’s pure coincidence that I’ve recently (since yesterday) been mulling over the idea of moving to California. I believe that I qualify for reparations from the white man who has kept me down and prevented me from achieving my full potential.

As a trans woman and a Harry Potter fan, every day brings fresh pain. She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has written a new book (ironically, under a male pseudonym), and according to Pink News, it features a cisgender male serial killer who murders his victims while wearing women’s clothes. The wailing and gnashing of teeth from trans rights activists on Twitter has been immeasurable since Pink News imparted this information. It would seem that Rowldermort has finally decided to go full TERF and is not even attempting to hide her seething hatred towards the trans community.It’s probably no coincidence Rowling’s pen name for her amateurish yet unfathomably popular crime novel series is ‘Robert Galbraith’.

Hey folks, it’s me, your friendly neighborhood antifa ringleader. You may recognize me from such news clips as ‘Small group of troublemakers seen smashing windows’ and ‘ANTIFA dude on fire in Portland’. That’s me in the black hoodie.I’m enjoying a bit of downtime ahead of another largely peaceful weekend (weather permitting!). Right now I’m changing flights — who knew there were flight changes in business class? — but I figured I’d take a break from my busy schedule of scheming to give you all an important message: vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on November 3.I know what you’re thinking: isn’t antifa a series of anarchist groups with little to do with center-left mainstream politics?

A university professor in Washington DC whose work focuses on Africa and the African diaspora apologized last week for ‘pretending’ to be black. In an emotionally raw, difficult-to-read blog post, Jessica Krug revealed she’s actually white and has been deceiving her friends and colleagues for years.  As I read the tortured words in her post, I became enraged. Her words brought back a torrent of memories from when I myself felt the need to keep my transracial status a closely guarded secret. Thankfully these days I feel comfortable enough to tell the world: my name is Godfrey Elfwick. I am wrongskin.

March 17, 2027Whenever the Pink Shirts come by for a check, Inez hits the discreet button beneath the kitchen counter that releases the trap door into the cellar where she now keeps her most expensive shoes and we’ve got about 30 seconds to get inside.Inez tells us much about the outside world that we’ve missed for so long. That the Pink Shirts are now knocking on doors daily to ask if any Deplorables live there. If so, they are immediately taken away to one of the Cal State campuses for reeducation but Inez says no one has ever returned. We fear only death awaits us at Cal State.They often have lists. Inez says the Beverly Hills Autonomous Zone District Commander is the foulest person she’s ever seen.

The presidential election hurtles towards us like a portentous comet; hailing joyous salvation, or foreshadowing unfathomable doom. Of course the latter of those refers to the possibility of decent Americans being forced to endure four more years of Donald Trump in the White House. Life under Trump’s hateful regime has been intolerable. Could you even call it ‘life’? More like simply surviving. Eking out a paltry existence each day like a season finale of The Walking Dead. Desperately holding onto the tentative hope that one day Trump will be overthrown, his army of MAGA zombies finally silenced, and his fascistic dictatorship brought to an end — via the means of a democratic election (seeing as every possible method of impeachment has failed).

Fall NewsletterOur Director, Eustace Stockstill, introduces the Fall issue.Dear fellow Soterians,I have tremendous news to share with you. Our membership drive during the last six months has been successful beyond our most imprudent hopes! Even now we can hardly believe it. The number of our members has increased by a power of seven! That’s a power, not a multiplier: we have doubled our membership seven times since March!I’m sure old members will remember the hurtful article a year ago in the Daily Gaslighter that dismissed us as cranks, mocking us as nothing but a tiny group of English eccentrics. Now we are having the laugh on them! Now we have 10 times more members than they have subscribers, and our influence is growing daily.

When it comes to recent controversies surrounding the very public life of the Conway family, we can only wish them the best. Kellyanne was a White House counselor, George was part of the anti-Trump ‘Lincoln Project’, and their teenage daughter is a young progressive who denounced both of her parents on social media. Kellyanne and George are stepping back from public life to focus on their family. We hope they can rebuild bridges and put all of this behind them.Having different political opinions within a family can be tough. We think, for example, of the Hitchens brothers. Christopher was an impassioned atheist and liberal internationalist. Peter is an equally impassioned Christian and social conservative.

Dear Twitter,The other day I spotted an elderly man not wearing a mask in the pharmacy. He had a badge pinned to his shirt which proclaimed him to have COPD, absolving him of his responsibility to do the decent thing. At first glance everything looked legit, but to my keen eyes, the kerning on his medical exemption badge was all wrong. A friend of mine is doing a graphic design course and after discreetly WhatsApping them a close-up, they confirmed to me it was indeed a clever forgery. I immediately opened my Twitter app so that I could broadcast me shaming him to my 128,000 followers, but my plan was abruptly scuppered. I tapped the familiar icon and was confronted with a message telling me that my account, MY account had been suspended! SUSPENDED! Can you imagine that?

After years of speculation, Lilly Wachowski has finally given us confirmation that The Matrix trilogy is an allegory of the transgender experience. Although it is obvious to anyone who filters popular media through the lens of woke issues that Neo’s struggle to understand and accept his identity represented the conflict every transgender person faces, to have it verified by one of the writers is a significant step forward in the fight for equality. Some might question the reason as to why it’s taken so long for Lilly, who is herself transgender, to speak up about this and why she chose to highlight it now: ‘(In 1999) …the world just wasn’t ready for it’ she explains in a video.

The Associated Press recently posted an announcement on their website detailing their decision to capitalize the ‘B’ in Black when used in the context of race and culture.'These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American,' writes AP’s Vice President for Standards, John Daniszewski in a blog post on the AP website.The following day a further announcement was made explaining why they had taken the decision to continue to use a lowercase ‘w’ in ‘white’ when used in the same context.

Portland, Oregon If you want to know whether you’re a racist, look in the mirror. If you are white, you’re a racist. It really is that simple. No matter how progressive you think you are, having black and brown friends cannot repair the innate racism of your birth. Your vanilla voice is not welcome. Your low-pigment opinions are invalid. The back of the bus is where you need to go when it comes to having a say about race. And don’t give me your white fragility. Thankfully two Women of Color have taken it upon themselves to educate white women on their privilege. The ‘Race to Dinner’ service offers liberal white women and other daughters of the Confederacy the chance to have dinner with proudly black Women of Color.

Professor Sprout has called out J.K. Rowling’s violently problematic comments regarding trans people in a recent article in the Times of London. ‘If you seriously want to become a woman you should be allowed to. You can’t be fascist about it,’ said the Hogwarts Herbology teacher, as she expertly re-potted a Bubotuber without wasting so much as one drop of its valuable pus. I could not agree more with the professor’s words. Since I transitioned, ‘Biology’ has become as problematic a subject as the Dark Arts. I am beginning to suspect Rowling had intended for us to see Voldemort as the hero in her books all along, seeing as she has far more in common with him than any Gryffindor.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s Picture the scene. It is the middle of the afternoon. The window blinds are closed, the lights dimmed. The eager audience sits cross-legged on a patchwork rug, a frisson of excitement filling the air. Just as enthusiasm gives way to impatience, a captivating vision of womanhood bursts into the room in a glorious blaze of sound and sequins, riding a glittering chariot (a new Pride Ranger 2.0 All-Terrain 8mph Mobility Scooter) to the strains of Miley Cyrus’s ‘Wrecking Ball’. Her hair is a breathtakingly intricate architectural marvel, two-feet high and bedecked with curls. The heels of her knee-high patent-leather boots are an unapologetic six inches long.