If you could sub and share with people you think would like it that would be super appreciated! I really want to share this with other people who think about these online freaks as much as I do.

I'm also blogging more casual (non-hetconned) stuff here: yeahrighto.substack.com/p/what-are-w...

Next draft is almost done (probably publishing later this week maybe), the second Restorative Past fantasy listed in there, the (fake) idea that feminism has "complicated" masculinity, or ruined or diminished it in some way (usually by withholding our labour). Here's a splash:

And my third post is the first example of deeper dives into that Restorative Past fantasy, specifically about the tradwife phenomenon and how it requires a huge amount of hetconning to convince anyone 'Going Back' is in any way a good thing for women: hetconned.substack.com/p/traditiona...

The second post is an example of a type of fantasy I'll be exploring in more depth (with more granular examples needing their own posts), and that's the Restorative Past fantasy, the (fake) idea we need to "go back" to when things were "simpler": hetconned.substack.com/p/the-restor...

The first post is explaining the umbrella concept a bit more, where I position hetconning as a kind of temporal engineering and a key political technology of the modern right-wing project. hetconned.substack.com/p/hetconned-...

ICYMI: I've been blogging about a framework I'm using to map the fantasies the right-wing are selling in a post-truth world to advance their creepy little agenda. 'Hetconning' is the retroactive straight-washing of history to frame queerness as a modern intrusion, & crucial to so many culture wars.

First one under the larger umbrella of restorative past fantasies, “traditional family values” explores tradwives and the hetconning required to sustain them: hetconned.substack.com/p/traditiona...

My first deep dive for the hetconned files: The Restorative Past fantasy. The belief that the past was pure & that we need to “retvrn”. Hetconned is me trying to understand the temporal engineering of the contemporary far-right and why their project relies on selling us a past that never existed.

wait a minute how are the "your body has gone soft from not eating the raw meats of your ancestors" guys also the "the computer should summarize the big scary email for your inadequate brain" guys

(I set up a separate bluesky account for work in that space so you didn’t have to hear all about it unless you wanted to! @hetconned.bsky.social)

I know a lot of my buds here are trying to avoid the Worst People of the Internet. ❤️

If we’re in a “post-truth” world right now, then I want to understand the fantasies the far-right are selling instead, how their affective economies work, how they perform and signal them (both inside and outside the group), what political projects it advances and whose power it consolidates.

There’s no historical basis for the idea of a uniformly heterosexual past, which leaves the tradwife fantasy (for example) exposed in that it has to avoid the fact a heterosexual nuclear family unit is a social arrangement that’s *always required active maintenance* & isn’t as “natural” as they say.

Fantasies like the “Restorative Past” fantasy (the first one I’ll be deep diving into), cover tradwives and some parts of the manosphere, nationalist medievalism, and even digital nostalgia for the early internet. These fantasies are sold and performed online, and rely on hetconning to function.

I’ve been swimming in online misanthropy for over a decade now since writing my first book, and patterns and structures and technologies are beginning to coalesce in my notes. Mainly the idea that the “fantasy” is essential to the recruitment and maintenance of the right-wing project.

I only went and bloody did it. Made a little spot to write about it, too: hetconned.substack.com

“Hetconning (n.) — the deliberate retroactive straight-washing of history to frame queerness as a modern intrusion. A pretext for justifying attacks as a “return” to a world that never existed”

Looking forward to having somewhere to put all these thoughts down. First fantasy in the firing line is the “Restorative Past” fantasy, coming soon.

hetconned.substack.com