Cary Costello
LightNews LightNews
banner
profc.bsky.social
Cary Costello
@profc.bsky.social
260 followers 330 following 87 posts
Sociology professor, intersex advocate, bit of a loon.
Posts Replies Media Videos
profc.bsky.social
Passports do not need gender markers. They've not been there since time immemorial--they weren't around when I was a kid. And they've always been about gender policing. Just remove them, the way we removed race markers!
Text reads: Did you know that US passports did not include a gender marker until 1976? Then, under President Gerald Ford, conservative panic over “unisex” hairstyles and jeans led the State Department to add a gender marker to reinforce gender binarism. The M/F markers have always been about enforcing a conservative vision of gender against social change, and never about some actual security need.
November 9, 2025 at 5:38 PM
profc.bsky.social
In the spirit of Halloween season, here's something truly spooky! Have a post talking about eros and thanatos in consumer capitalism and politics!

asociologicaleye.blogspot.com/2025/10/eros...
A bookplate shows Thanatos as a skeleton in a long black robe holding a scythe, and Eros as a nubile young bride. Thanatos and Eros embrace and kiss, as Thantos slides his skeletal hand up Eros thigh, lifting her long white gown and exposing her flesh. This image is used to illustrate a post about how a century ago, when consumer capitalism burst onto the scene, it employed Eros to sell products. That is, it presented consumer goods as objects of desire, or as items that could make the buyer desired. Now, a century later, consumer capitalism has been joined by another force: the attention economy, in which entities and influencers compete for our clicks and views. And in the attention economy, it is thanatos rather than eros that is employed. That is, negative emotions of fear and hate are mobilized, as we are shown stories that generate outrage in our hearts, and glue our eyes to our screens to observe perceived threats. The post discusses how we are better able to deal with being manipulated by the erotic call of advertisements, after a century of facing this tactic, but much less well-equipped to deal with the more novel manipulations of the thanatotic call to anxiety and disgust deployed on social media to rivet our attentions.
October 20, 2025 at 2:28 AM
profc.bsky.social
I have a really fun post for you! It's got wacky Victorian folklore, the neo-Druid King Arthur Uther Pendragon, Ancient Aliens: The Game, and strange AI imagery. I think you'll like it! Even if yes, it's also all about racism then and now.

Enjoy: asociologicaleye.blogspot.com/2025/05/ston...
This image is titled "Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and Beliefs about Race." It depicts the relative sizes of the Great Pyramid at Giza and Stonehenge. The linked post discusses how racism has shaped our understandings of ancient monuments, and how current scientific discoveries about ancient DNA and skin color have triggered another chapter in the ongoing historical battle about who built these monuments and why.
May 22, 2025 at 1:34 AM
profc.bsky.social
Don’t overlook the power of being annoying! In situations in which they are big and you are small, it can be a superpower.

Don’t cooperate with evil. Misunderstand it. Repeatedly. “Helpfully” over-comply. Ask for clarification, and then for clarification of the clarification. Become the mosquito.
An image of a mosquito rising from a lake. Text at the top reads, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito.”
March 27, 2025 at 2:14 AM
profc.bsky.social
The politics of fragile masculinity are terribly destructive. They're also so cringey that they put your cheek muscles at risk of a sprain. Ow!
March 14, 2025 at 4:56 PM
profc.bsky.social
These are questions from a survey sent to teams who have federal grants or projects, giving them 24 or 48 hours to respond. They must attest that their projects do not contain "DEI elements," climate or environmental justice elements, or recognize the existence of trans people. 🧵
Survey received by recipients of federal grants and contracts, including attestations that there are "no DEI elements" in the project, no environmental justice or climate elements, and that the project "protects women and children" by refusing to recognize trans people in their lived genders or acknowledge that gender identity exists.
March 8, 2025 at 11:28 PM
profc.bsky.social
First they claim that only physical sex is real, and gender is a myth. Then they illustrate "biological women" with a SKIRT!

Because skirts are biological sex characteristics, I guess. You are born with one or you are not, and you can't change it!

Also Scottmen in kilts are biological women.
An idiotic sign on a bathroom door reads "BIOLOGICAL WOMEN" and illustrates this with a stick figure wearing a skirt.
February 23, 2025 at 8:16 PM
profc.bsky.social
I appreciated the accurate snark in this passage from a NYT article on Elon’s farcical press conference.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/u...
February 12, 2025 at 10:31 PM
profc.bsky.social
Folks, when even Ben Shapiro says your tossing USAID into a wood chipper is stupid, you know it's senseless.

(Shapiro's reasoning is purely strategic, not ethical, and I revile that. But it just proves the point: even if you don't care how many people die, this is stupid.)
A Facebook post by Ben Shapiro stating that USAID should be carefully revised, not destroyed, because destroying it will send the impacted poor countries into the arms of China.
February 7, 2025 at 7:49 PM
profc.bsky.social
Here's my take.
February 4, 2025 at 5:14 AM
profc.bsky.social
This is happening all over governmental websites. Yesterday, the State Department's advisory travel page for LGBTQI+ Travelers was renamed the LGB Travelers page, and all advice related to gender identity was removed.
Screenshots of the State Department's advisory travel page for LGBTQI+ Travelers two days ago, and what appears now: the State Department's advisory travel page for LGB Travelers.
February 1, 2025 at 10:20 PM
profc.bsky.social
Those radical elemental ideologists, with their “oxygen” and “carbon” and “neon” and (shudder) “Californium!”
A pie chart illustrates that the universe is made up of 74% Hydrogen, 25% Helium, and 1% Other.
January 26, 2025 at 6:46 PM
profc.bsky.social
I think the Danish Prime Minister should call back and demand to buy Florida 😉
News headline, "President again demands to buy Greenland in 'horrendous' call with Danish PM."
January 25, 2025 at 9:07 PM
profc.bsky.social
Life may feel 😱, but at least our lunch does not consist of chicken aspic with peas, topped with chicken slices piped with chicken liver mousse and glazed with. . . something translucently white and drippy.
January 11, 2025 at 5:53 PM
profc.bsky.social
The idea that the conservative position on free speech is now that the First Amendment protects the right to distribute lies and misinformation is so dystopian--yikes!

#FreeSpeech #SCOTUS #TikTok #misinformation
January 11, 2025 at 5:48 PM
profc.bsky.social
Musk is blaming the LA fire destruction on. . . "DEI." It would be just a surreal eyeroll if his 80 posts on the topic in the past day weren't forced to the top of the feeds of people still hanging out in the hellscape that is now X.

#LAFires #Musk #SocialMedia #dystopia
January 10, 2025 at 8:57 PM
profc.bsky.social
A golden toast to you, Bluesky holiday celebrants! Glitter helps gird us for the times to come.
December 26, 2024 at 5:59 AM
profc.bsky.social
Season's Shriekings! Heh.
Lists Dystopia Approved Holiday Greetings, including May your forced social obligations be brief, I hope your work schedule is merciful, and season's shriekings!
November 30, 2024 at 10:28 PM
profc.bsky.social
Have you ever looked at the line drawings of skulls "transvestigators" use to supposedly prove that masses of celebrities and politicians are trans? Because I don't think the male skull is even human.
Image shows line drawings of two skulls, labeled male skull and female skull. The supposed male skull has a small braincase and huge jaw, while that labeled female skull has a large braincase and narrow jaw. Text reads, "Transvestigators are Weird. Transvestigators are people who are convinced a huge percentage of the population is secretly trans, and can be identified by "tells" such as how much their lumbar spine curves. This is one of their favorite tools: skull line drawings they superimpose on people's faces to determine their "true sex." Only the drawings look like different species! Males are some kind of alien Neanderthals, apparently. (In reality, skulls do not come in two flavors. There are pointy-chinned men and women with a pronounced brow, and many skeletons anthropologists identified in the past by skull shape turn out to have been misidentified.)"
November 25, 2024 at 10:11 PM
profc.bsky.social
Yes, and this list is so disturbing.
November 22, 2024 at 3:40 PM
profc.bsky.social
Well, that's one way to honor the Trans Day of Remembrance! Getting behind a resolution to ban the one trans member of Congress from using the bathroom.

#trans #stopthehate
A photo of Sarah McBride with the text It's the Trans Day of Remembrance, when we honor our dead. We also dedicate ourselves to keeping our community alive and vibrant! We have seen the studies showing that youth suicide attempts have risen in the states that have passed trans-restrictive laws, and we are determined to respect and protect trans, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming youth. So how did the Speaker of the House demonstrate his care for the vulnerable today? Why, by getting behind a resolution to ban the one trans member of Congress, Delaware's newly-elected Rep. Sarah McBride, from using the restrooms designated for Congresswomen. That resolution was proposed by one of the House's MAGA trolls who live to spew provocations for attention, rather than do any productive governing-- Nancy Mace. Hissed Mace, “Just because a Congressman wants to wear a mini skirt doesn’t mean he can come into a women’s bathroom." Johnson waffled for a day, then parroted Mace, saying “Women deserve women’s only spaces." Ah, yes, safe spaces! MAGA suddenly loves them. But safe from what? It's ludricrous. Nobody believes that Sarah McBride transitioned in order to one day be elected so she could see Nancy Mace washing her hands in a bathroom. McBride poses zero threat. This is about bullying and trying to humiliate the first trans person to integrate Congress, and impose segregation. And that should be witnessed.
November 21, 2024 at 3:36 AM
profc.bsky.social
Pretty but disconcerting! The rhododendron in front of my house is so confused by mild fall temperatures here that it thinks it is spring and produced a flower. In mid November. In Wisconsin.

I both love and do not love this.
A rhododendron bloom
November 16, 2024 at 5:39 PM