Christine

breezy, firey, resolute
“if we’re going to heal, let it be glorious” - W. Shire
MA, MA, Ph.D
mother feminist humanist athlete poetry fan

[kyle @kylejunlong]

one of my favorite niche psychoanalysis ideas is winnicott’s Dead Mother Complex

the theory goes like this: when a child grows up with an emotionally absent primary attachment figure (symbolic Mother; could be actual mother or other guardian), they tend to grow up to be particularly charming and magnetic as adults. the reason this happens is because the child, unable to cope with the reality of having a detached caregiver, learns to “reanimate” the emotionally lifeless corpse of the Mother; the more detached and abandoning the Mother, the more the child learns to read subtle signs of pulling away + how to effectively entertain, validate, and bring life to the attachment object.

this explains at least in part some of the “charisma is a trauma response” hypothesis. there’s not much literature or research on it but i find it incredibly fascinating despite being relatively unknown

[Christine @christacs66]

@BortonDoug @Acyn @MeidasTouch It's about consent and who makes medical decisions - the government vs families and physicians. Obviously, male infants are not providing consent to have their ding-a-lings altered. Get it?

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

So, you want to know what I think about Sophie Cunningham and this unfolding drama within the WNBA regarding her remarks on trans athletes.

Do I want to be talking about this?

Let’s zoom out for just a second.

The disastrous War in Iran is entering its sixth month with no end in sight and there’s every reason to expect there will be more unnecessary and horrific and tragic deaths of Iranian civilians and U.S. service members — all cannon fodder in service to a narcissistic and deeply irresponsible foreign policy agenda.

The Midterm elections are in 94 days, and—I mean this quite seriously—no less than the fates of both American democracy and the NATO alliance hang in the balance while Russia and China are openly salivating.

A gallon of gas is 30% more expensive than it was two years ago. Food is more expensive, too. So is housing. So is childcare. So is education.

We are suddenly confronted with quite the unexpected thought experiment: should the average American be more worried over the odds of being detained or shot by an ICE agent because of no real government oversight OR should they be more worried over the odds of eating contaminated lettuce because of no real government oversight?

And on top of all of that, there’s a looming existential crisis in the form of the “AI revolution,” which, as best as I can tell, is rapidly dissolving every essential bond in our society, from public education to our legal system — but that’s okay because in five years, when there’s massive unemployment, you can cheer yourself up by asking ChatGPT to tell a few jokes and offer disembodied, soulless reassurance that you’re a special individual light in the whole of the universe.

You want to know what I think about Sophie Cunningham?

I don’t have enough time in the day to sort through all of the above, much less consider the public comments of any given professional athlete on any given political issue.

But here we are.

I’m a trans woman in the United States, and every day is a fresh cycle of public discourse on which rights (if any) trans people deserve and to which degree our basic dignity as human beings should be acknowledged and protected.

Actually, it’s much worse than that: the big question is whether or not we should exist.

And I’m a grown adult. Imagine what a trans kid is experiencing on a daily basis as they watch this all go down.

Since we know the vast majority of Democratic lawmakers and politicians are terribly afraid of the optics of rightly defending trans youth, it falls to the rest of us—the reasonable adults, trans and non-trans alike—to speak up and remind trans youth that their lives and their rights and their dignity are as worthy as those of anyone else.

I don’t want to be talking about this. I don’t think we can afford the distraction of this inane conversation at the moment. I feel as though I’m standing in front of a house engulfed in flames, and a jackass is inexplicably aiming the garden hose at me.

Why are we talking about this? Why is this an issue? Why are grown adults still attacking innocent kids?

Trans women have been banned from the Olympics and all NCAA women’s teams, and trans girls have been banned from competing at any level—down to kindergartners—in 29 states, restrictions which were upheld recently by the 6-3 conservative majority of the Supreme Court.

FIDE, the world chess organization, bizarrely banned trans girls and women from women’s tournaments, much to the bafflement of the vast majority of the chess world.

Somehow, it gets even more ridiculous.

Seven states (Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas) have banned trans boys from competing on boys’ teams. Not even an attempt at a logical argument for that one. No pretense about fairness or safety. They just don’t want trans boys competing. So, they banned them.

So, you see, Ms. Cunningham, I will admit that I don’t understand what you’re aiming at here with your public concerns about trans youth in sports. I don’t get it. The population of trans youth in sports in this country was incredibly low five years ago, and it’s practically microscopic now.

When you chose to be very public about this matter in that glossy ESPN profile, I’m sure you subsequently saw many of the theories being floated around in regards to your supposed “true motivation.”

Some say you’re prepping for a post-WNBA career and this is a highly effective launching pad for brand endorsement deals, paid speaking gigs, etc.

I don’t know if that’s true. I’d like to believe it’s not true.

I have noticed, of course, that you’ve been remarkably silent about the Heritage Foundation’s report published this past month that took direct aim at girls’ and women’s sports by essentially proposing the gutting of Title IX. It included this astonishingly blunt assessment:

"The current Title IX regime as applied to sports (and elsewhere) is part of a sustained social engineering effort that is designed to produce a new sort of woman—one that is more aggressive, more competitive, more male, less relational, and less oriented toward the goods of family and motherhood."

I mean, as a strong advocate for girls’ sports, this surely must have found its way to your inbox at some point over the past few weeks, right?

Maybe not?

And yet, to be honest with you, Ms. Cunningham, I don’t think it’s remotely close to being the most important thing here.

Nor are the people protesting in support of you outside WNBA games. They have the right to protest, and they’re entitled to their opinions. I don’t agree with them one bit, but I’ll defend their right to shout their loud and wrong opinions into a bullhorn.

Nor is the fact that so many WNBA players and officials—including your own coach—have made it abundantly clear they oppose your exclusionary mindset.

Nor is the unnecessary conversation on your career stats, which, believe it or not, I don’t think is germane to the conversation. The fact that you earned your way into the WNBA is enough. You’re a pro, and others attempting to downplay that are missing the point.

No, for me, the most important thing here would be your follow-up statement in response to the public outcry, which began with this:

"I truly believe there is a safe space and love for EVERYBODY. Biological girls, biological boys, trans women, and trans men. Everyone is welcome at my table! You can disagree and still be kind."

I find that curious, Ms. Cunningham. I find that very curious.

Because regardless of what you or me or anyone else believes about trans youth in sports (I did notice you intentionally left out trans youth in that sentence), regardless of any of our opinions, one thing is certainly true:

You have absolutely bought into hateful rhetoric.
It's been made pretty clear that not everyone is welcome at your table.

You've promoted content on TikTok that mocks undocumented families and justifies separating children from their parents. That downplays the existence of racist hatred in our country. That seems to promote aggressive bigotry.

You've used language in your public remarks about trans youth that you must have known is, at minimum, offensive and divisive. It feels pretty intentional.

You’re doing a lot of things with your public platform that appear to be the exact opposite of kindness and respect for others, even in disagreement.

You don't seem to want others at your table.

You don’t seem to want a respectful conversation about any of this.

Again, I don’t pretend to know your true motivations here. It could very well be that you’ve suddenly and genuinely landed on this particular issue—dead and buried though it is from a policy standpoint—as your chief advocacy cause.

Maybe you somehow truly believe trans girls are the greatest threat to girls’ sports, despite all evidence to the contrary, and meanwhile, you’ve entirely missed the burgeoning efforts in the conservative movement to defund girls’ sports.

Maybe you haven’t been paying attention. That’s possible.

But regardless of the issue itself, your public rhetoric does not appear to align with this claim that you want to welcome others in disagreement.

If that’s intentional on your part, at least have enough self-respect to be honest in your views and what you truly believe about trans youth instead of opting to back away like a coward and cynically hedge your bets for future marketing value.

There is no having it both ways here. You can’t pretend later that this has all been an unfortunate misunderstanding and trust that if things go the other way, you’ll get credit someday for one cynical tweet pushed out by your PR team.

That’s not me speaking. That’s the inevitable nature of history speaking.

Things are good right now. Folks are buying your jersey. Brand deals are on the way. Money’s rolling in. Maybe this lands you a commentator gig. Maybe you’re hired as the ED of a “protect women’s sports” org, for which you may or may not look the other way as Title IX gets defunded.

There will be galas where you’ll receive awards and cocktail parties with far-right luminaries where you’ll be toasted and offered partnerships.

Life is good for you right now in 2026. I wonder if you’ve thought ahead to 2036 and 2046 and 2056.

I wonder if you’ve thought about all these young, non-trans girls who are coming up and wondering why their friends who are trans girls are being viciously attacked by grown adults.

I’m not sure you have really have thought that far ahead.

History has a way of eventually preserving the past’s spotlights from the most honest angles.

I really hope that, someday, when you look back on your career (and post-career), there will be no confusion over why some tables are open to you and why some are very much not.

I hope you will have future clarity on that. I hope the unexpectedly awkward and cold interactions with others that are coming over the next few decades will never leave you wondering about their catalyst.

I truly hope that you will have at least the benefit of self-awareness down the road.

You ask me what I think about Sophie Cunningham?

I’ll be honest. I feel really bad for her.

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Link to full essay available here for easier sharing: https://t.co/HDDuGIzbK6

[New York Basketball @NBA_NewYork]

7 weeks ago tonight
We all had the same dream

[Acyn @Acyn]

Karl: Israel is a Jewish state. That’s in the charter. Do you support that?

Mamdani: I’ve said time and again that I support the state of Israel as a state with equal rights.

Karl: As jewish state?

Mamdani: I believe that any state that privileges one religion over another is one that I can’t tell you I support, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else. And a lot of that comes back to a fundamental belief that we should all be considered equal, no matter what our faith is.

[Waleed Shahid 🪬 @_waleedshahid]

Lamine Yamal grew up the son of a Moroccan house painter and an Equatorial Guinean waitress, in a neighborhood where he was taunted as a kid and where his own father was later stabbed. Nico Williams is the son of two Ghanaians who crossed the Sahara on foot, his mother pregnant, and entered Spain as asylum seekers. Today they won the World Cup in the same arena attended by men who've built careers keeping people like their parents out.

[Lorwen Harris Nagle, PhD @LORWEN108]

How to drop your CORTISOL by 43%
(backed by 300+ studies):

7 proven ways:

1. Use the Butterfly Hug for 60 seconds.

[Sarrah Bellus @sarrah_bellus]

The red cards work!

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

The little man absolutely nails it, and his dad can’t help but jump in too.

[mistii @mistiiprod]

I still can’t watch any of these without getting emotional. Like bro he deadass dropped 45 to lock up a title. I’ll spend the rest of my life telling anyone who will listen about this guy

[gomi @parveen__tyagi]

writing will genuinely change your life more than motivation ever will. not in some cringe “manifest your dream life” way. i mean in a very real, practical way. most people never actually stop long enough to understand what’s going on inside their own head. they just react to life all day. scroll when they feel uncomfortable. distract themselves when things get quiet. jump from one dopamine hit to the next. but writing forces you to slow down for a second and actually look at your thoughts instead of running from them. and the weird part is you usually don’t even realize what you truly think until you start writing it down.

writing doesn’t just record your thoughts it creates them. ideas start flowing that you didn’t even know were there. patterns start showing up. emotions start making sense. problems become easier to solve because they’re no longer this giant fog floating around in your head. writing organizes your mind. every high performer, every sharp thinker, every person who just gets it, they all write. It keeps showing up as the common thread. not the expensive stuff. not the complex stuff. Just pen and paper. they write because feelings are vague but words are precise. every time they sit down and search for the exact word to describe what’s inside them, they become a sharper, more powerful communicator.

“people follow the person who can say what they mean and mean what they say. writing every day is how you build that muscle until it becomes second nature.”

over time, all that accumulated writing becomes a resource you can draw from forever. the more you write, the more material you have to solve problems, connect dots and think bigger.

the better you get at putting thoughts into words, the better you get at communicating in general. and honestly, communication controls a huge part of your life. like relationships, opportunities, business, confidence, influence, all of it comes down to how clearly you can express yourself. and no, you don’t need to be some amazing writer either. your grammar doesn’t need to be perfect. nobody cares. half the benefit comes from simply getting thoughts out of your head and onto paper.

some of the best writing advice i’ve ever heard was:

“write badly. just write.”

because the moment you stop trying to sound smart or perfect, your real thoughts finally start coming out.

even 30 minutes a day changes something in you. you become calmer because your mind isn’t carrying around a thousand unprocessed thoughts anymore. you become more self aware because you start noticing your own habits and emotional patterns. you become more articulate because you’re practicing turning feelings into language every single day.

if you write every day, your future self gets to sit down and read exactly how far you’ve come. i think that’s more valuable than any photo album.

who knows maybe one day all that writing becomes a book, a course, something you give your children. at the very least, it becomes proof that you were here, that you grew, that you tried.

that’s one of the coolest parts about it. writing lets you watch yourself evolve with time.

seriously. start writing. doesn’t matter if it’s in a notebook, your notes app, twitter wherever. just sit, think about your thoughts and write.

just sit down for 30 minutes and let your mind speak for once. and watch yourself becoming unstoppable.

[Decoding Fox News @DecodingFoxNews]

A Trump quote without his voice or face - Trump without Trump. This quote is unedited and 100% accurate. This is from the G7 Summit on June 17, 2026.

Granite is Strong

[Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC]

Statement from the Office of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).

[Boston Smalls @smalls2672]

Bro spittin'

[Jakelyne Loiola @Jakelyneloiola_]

DECLARAÇÕES FORTES!

O técnico do Egito, Hossam Hassan, fez duras críticas.

“Vou dizer o que penso independentemente das consequências. Esta foi claramente uma partida manipulada e o mundo inteiro viu isso.”

“E quero dizer mais uma coisa: se eles querem tanto que a Argentina vença, por que chamam todo mundo para vir e participar?”

[olivetree @not4selfbut4all]

Fuck the United States. 11 million people without electricity in an El Niño summer. This is beyond evil.
End the sanctions. End the embargo.

[soph is depressed @pwdrianti]

this is something that just never leaves me they full on murdered 11 million people in west asia from 2000 and never paid a single consequence for it they spread propaganda instead. 11 million people.. can’t even comprehend that

[Michelle @Michell33650674]

Donald Trump's name appears 1 million times in the Epstein Files. JD Vance's "sugar daddy," Peter Thiel, is in the Epstein Files. Elon Musk, who rigged the 2024 election for Trump, is in the Epstein Files. Melania Trump is in the Epstein Files. Cabinet members Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Mehmet Oz, Howard Lutnick, and over 30 others are in the Epstein Files. Trump's Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, previously worked for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in the Epstein Files. Long time supporter, Steve Bannon, is in the Epstein Files. I suspect that Karoline Leavitt's husband, who is an ultra wealthy Trump associate more than twice her age, is in the Epstein Files. Pam Bondi was the Attorney General in Florida who let Epstein and other child sex traffickers evade justice. Clarence Thomas is in the Epstein Files. Many of Trump's wealthy donors are in the Epstein Files. I can guarantee that several GOP members of Congress are in the Epstein Files. Trump's entire 2nd administration has been about covering up the Epstein Files...including bribing Ghislaine Maxwell, by moving her to a low security prison with special treatment, to keep her silence. This is no coincidence. The Epstein Class had to cover up their crimes, so they installed Trump, the Pedophile King, as America's President. It's time we all acknowledged that America has been taken over in a coup to hide a decades long, murderous child sex trafficking ring that was used to blackmail and control wealthy, powerful men from around the world.

[Wynner 🇩🇪🇦🇹🇪🇺 @EuroWynner]

Trump managed to turn a World Cup that was honestly turning into a major US PR victory into a total national humiliation. Genius.