Gillian Branstetter
LightNews LightNews
banner
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Gillian Branstetter
@gbbranstetter.bsky.social
92K followers 890 following 9.4K posts
Opinions are my own //
https://linktr.ee/gbbranstetter
Posts Replies Media Videos
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Wrote about the surprisingly complex things Pluribus is doing with queer identity
Queer people are decidedly sensitive to the ways our society, economy, and culture shape human desires to yield specific outcomes. There is very little in the world that rewards you for being queer and quite a lot that punishes you for it, particularly if your manifestation of queerness is visibly deviant, embodied, and divergent from the mandates we are given at birth towards specific gender regimes. We are asked to believe these restrictions are just the natural order of things when we experience them for what they are—collective choices disguised as inevitabilities, demands for conformity in fear of our nonconformity. All of our desires are shaped by the context in which we’re raised and socialized, but it is queerness that is often portrayed as itself a virus, a “social contagion.” As the queer author of heterosexual romance, Carol is herself a begrudging architect of desires she does not share. Her resistance to the Hive should be seen in this light, as someone intimately aware of how human will is suppressed by external pressures and, more alarmingly, how those pressures can be internalized into our own choices.
December 20, 2025 at 1:17 AM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
"Has feminism failed women brought to you by bank of america" is my MKULTRA sleeper agent activation phrase
CBS News/Free Press program "Has feminism failed women" brought to you by bank of america and hosted by Liz Plank and Allie Beth Stuckey
December 19, 2025 at 3:30 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Gdansk, shipyards, the scars on her back, "after the country opened," mango ice cream
December 19, 2025 at 1:00 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Ahhh
December 19, 2025 at 12:17 AM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
"the feminism question"
CBS says that Vice President JD Vance, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have all agreed to participate in the town halls, with the debates set to address topics like “Does America Need God?” “Has Feminism Failed Women?” and “Should Gen Z Believe in the American Dream?” CBS has lined up people like Isabel Brown and Harry Sisson to debate the American dream, Steven Pinker and Ross Douthat to debate the God question, and Liz Plank and Allie Beth Stuckey to debate the feminism question.
December 18, 2025 at 1:57 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Reading through some old journals
December 18, 2025 at 1:52 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
I do think more people should appreciate that Sarah has to be selective about when she draws attention to her identity given the obsessive focus on it by some of her colleagues--she is in a uniquely impossible position. But it also makes it more impactful when she does.
"I was a kid once. I didn't have the courage to come out until I was 21, but it's a fact I have known about myself for my entire life," she said. "I didn't have the courage to come out until I was 21, and that means 21 years of pain, 21 years of unwavering homesickness that only went away when I was able to get the care that I needed. And my biggest regret in life is that I never had a childhood without that pain. I marvel at the courage of transgender young people today who are sharing themselves with their families and this world, despite the toxicity and the hate that too often emanates from the building behind me and from politicians within it." She concluded, "It is already hard enough to be a kid, and government should not make it harder."
December 18, 2025 at 12:16 AM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
When Jeffrey Epstein's close confidante isn't sure about associating with you
December 17, 2025 at 4:16 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
"It was DEI" or
December 16, 2025 at 7:20 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
It's literally the best human hair has ever looked
December 15, 2025 at 12:13 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
What even is this outfit. How can she be dressed like a fifth grade boy at church and make it look good
December 15, 2025 at 11:59 AM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Feels illegal to be starting a movie at 645 am and I don't care
December 15, 2025 at 11:51 AM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Beautiful campus and lovely people. Horrified by the news today.
December 14, 2025 at 1:24 AM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Saw Blue Moon and made the mistake of reading Lorenz Hart's Wikipedia page
Though Richard Rodgers became celebrated for his music for Oklahoma! in 1943, later that year he decided that he and Hart should reunite and create a revival of A Connecticut Yankee, their successful musical from 1927. [19] Hart composed new lyrics for many of the songs in anticipation of the revival's November 17, 1943, premiere at the Martin Beck Theatre. [20] At the theater on opening night, Hart showed up drunk in the audience. [21] His condition was noticed by his sister-in-law. [22] She persuaded him to accompany her to her Manhattan home.[23] Sometime after they arrived, Hart left, venturing into cold weather to resume drinking. [24] A friend of Hart's found him in the gutter of a bar that he favored on Manhattan's Eighth Avenue. Hart was shivering, and his friend accompanied him to a hospital, [25] where it was determined that Hart had developed pneumonia from exposure. On November 22, 1943, approximately four days after admission to the hospital, Hart died.[26] [27
December 14, 2025 at 1:07 AM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Is Sontag right about this
It's not "natural" to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little-have few verbal means. Eloquence-thinking in words is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.
December 13, 2025 at 3:58 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
December 12, 2025 at 1:37 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Flew through this book last night in one sitting. It's a collection of German people's dreams during the rise of Hitler in the 30s, collected by a Jewish communist journalist who fled the country in 1939.
The Third Reich of Dreams by Charlotte Beradt In the following months, but still before the race laws went into effect (though they did not apply to this woman in any case), she had a number of long, epic dreams on the theme of noses and identity papers, furnished with numerous elaborate and sometimes realistic details. As in many modern stories, only the starting point of the dream narrative would be unreal. Another dream about papers: Relaxed and peaceful family outing. We were at a restau-rant with outdoor tables by the Havel River. Mother and I were carrying some cake in a box and a folder with our genealogy papers. Suddenly there was a scream: They're coming! Everyone there knew who "they" were and what our crime was. Run, run away! I went looking for a high-up hiding place-up in the trees? on top of a cupboard in the restaurant? Suddenly I was lying at the bottom of a big pile of dead bodies, I didn't know how they got there, but at last I'd found a good hiding place. Pure bliss, a sense of salvation, under the pile of corpses with my folder of pa-pers under my arm.
December 11, 2025 at 1:27 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
A screenshot from the TV show Pluribus featuring Carol (Rhea Seehorn) staring at a flat screen television with John Cena on it, speaking directly to Carol "Hello Carol. We're John Cena."
December 10, 2025 at 5:28 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Reporting indicates this isn't even true but note the standalone charge DHS is making that the man is a "sodomite" and thus should be deported
December 10, 2025 at 2:44 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
That's right
December 7, 2025 at 5:20 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Update
December 6, 2025 at 7:53 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
Lazy sick day 🤧👾🔫🏍️
December 6, 2025 at 3:37 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
🌨️
December 5, 2025 at 1:31 PM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
It's because he's so trans inclusive
December 5, 2025 at 12:15 AM
gbbranstetter.bsky.social
I've always appreciated that my apartments walls are a nice warm off white (contrasted here with the strict white windowpane)
December 4, 2025 at 3:05 PM