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Opinion: Republican Laws Are Badly Worded on Purpose

Opinion: Republican Laws Are Badly Worded on Purpose

Opinion: The Importance of Letting People Help You

Opinion: The Importance of Letting People Help You

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Opinion: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Looks Like a Story About Being Queer With Abusive Parents

By Jef Rouner
Mar 1, 2023

I can’t get the latest trailer for Guardian of the Galaxy Vol. 3 out of my head because, when you subtract the talking trees and space lasers, it looks like the story of a queer or trans person who has to confront the abusive parent who tried to destroy them...
Opinion: How the Hogwarts Legacy Boycott Did and Didn’t Fail

By Jef Rouner
Feb 24, 2023

It’s safe to say that the backlash against the latest Wizarding World video game, Hogwarts Legacy, didn’t impact the sales enough to matter. The game continues to sell extremely well, a fact that every horrible person on Facebook feels the need to scream about in the comment sections of gaming...
Opinion: The Significance of Houston's Squad of Black Coaches (and One GM)

By Jeff Balke
Feb 3, 2023

In the end, wins and losses are the only things that matter when it comes to coaching and managing a sports franchise. It is the singular gauge of success and failure. Sports is, after all, the ultimate meritocracy with an unforgiving finality that is judged by simply looking at a...
Opinion: This One Weird Trick That Lets You Buy a House

By Jef Rouner
Jan 31, 2023

As a millennial (well, xennial) I thought I would never be able to buy a house. This past week, we finally had an offer accepted on a dream home, and it was all thanks to one neat trick that you’ll never pick up from the rich commentators on the subject...
Opinion: What’s “Highly Disturbing” Is Texas GOP Hatred of Trans Kids

By Jef Rouner
Jan 17, 2023

Monday, State Rep. Bryan Slaton (R-Greenville) issued a statement begging Attorney General Ken Paxton to please make life a nightmare for trans kids in the state. “Today I was joined by Representatives Brian Harrison, Tony Tinderholt, and Mark Dorazio in requesting AG Ken Paxton to review the highly disturbing ‘transgender...
Opinion: New Year's Dieting is Not Automatically Wellness

By Jef Rouner
Jan 4, 2023

It’s a new year, and that means that millions will flock to the gym as part of a resolution to lose weight and “get healthy.” Here’s another idea: don’t bloody do that. There are decades of scientific proof that diets do not work, and the only consistent weight lost is...
Opinion: 10 Things We Can Learn From the Downfall of Andrew Tate

By Jef Rouner
Jan 2, 2023

Andrew Tate is a former kickboxer turned raging misogynistic podcaster who built a name for himself as an alpha male guru. His blatant bigotry got him booted from most social media platforms, but he was let back onto Twitter following Elon Musk’s purchase of the company. Last week, Tate decided...
Opinion: Without Action, School Anti-Bullying Policies Feel Like Gaslighting

By Jef Rouner
Dec 28, 2022

Every day, the Kid With One F comes home from their Cy-Fair ISD school and hangs their ID on a thumbtack near the stairs. On the back is information for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline and the Harris Center Crisis Line. By my count, the kid has called those numbers...
Opinion: Can We Just Admit Now That Jordan Peterson is Right Wing?

By Jef Rouner
Nov 22, 2022

Elon Musk let Canadian clinical psychologist and self help author Dr. Prof. Jordan B. Peterson back on Twitter this weekend. Peterson had previously been suspended because he refused to stop misgendering and deadnaming actor Elliot Page. Now that he has access to the social media site again, he’s used it...
Opinion: Opposition to Gender Affirming Care for Children is Part of Denying Trans People Exist

By Jef Rouner
Nov 8, 2022

I was in a Facebook discussion the other day when I ran across this comment from a self-described moderate Republican. “I don’t care what adults do, but I have a problem with minors having hormones and surgery, especially at a young age. Top and bottom surgery is permanent.” On the...
Opinion: Conspiracy Theories Are Not Just Amusing Novelties

By Jef Rouner
Oct 26, 2022

Last week, I was invited to speak to a Houston area high school along with five other local horror authors. During the question and answer session, a student asked us what our favorite conspiracy theories were. Here is an extended answer to what I told them. I don’t have a...
Opinion: Santa Fe School Board Was Right Not to Put Memorial to Mass Shooting on School Grounds

By Jef Rouner
Oct 25, 2022

This past week, parents at Santa Fe High School were outraged when the school board voted unanimously not to erect a monument to the victims of the 2018 mass shooting. The attack killed eight children and two students. Instead, the memorial will be built on land owned by the district...
Opinion: 10 Red Flags The Guy You’re Dating is an MRA or an Incel

By Jef Rouner
Oct 19, 2022

Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) and their near-cousins Incels (involuntary celibates) are what largely make up the anti-feminist part of the internet. These dudes generally spend their time in forums reinforcing misogynistic nonsense and insisting the world would be a better place if women were more submissive to men. However, sometimes...
Opinion: Black Ariel and the Algebra of Bigotry

By Jef Rouner
Sep 14, 2022

On the one hand, it’s pretty easy to dismiss the racist backlash of casting Halle Bailey as Ariel in the upcoming live-action(ish) remake of 1989’s The Little Mermaid as the most ridiculous thing ever. How can we possibly be expected to take people seriously who are mad about the skin...
Opinion: Why Biden Needs Congress to Truly Fix Student Loan Debt

By Jef Rouner
Aug 26, 2022

This week, President Joe Biden unveiled a plan for student loan forgiveness to be enacted entirely under the powers of the executive branch. While the $10,000 loan forgiveness (plus another $10,000 for Pell Grant recipients) got all the headlines, other aspects will have potentially life-changing benefits for borrowers. These include...
Opinion: Immune Compromised People Still Treated Like Collateral Damage as Pandemic Goes On

By Jef Rouner
Aug 2, 2022

I think I’m more pissed off now than when COVID-19 first sent us all scurrying into hidey-holes. Despite the coronavirus continuing to spread, mutate, and kill, it seems like the country has moved on and let at-risk populations live in isolation and fear. Here in Harris County, we’re still averaging...
Opinion: The 5 Most Ridiculous Anti-Union Comments

By Jef Rouner
Aug 1, 2022

This year has seen a huge spike in workers unionizing. Everyone from counter workers to nurses are taking the labor shortage as a chance to organize. Currently, petitions to unionize are up 57 percent over last year. Naturally, that brings out the bootlickers who treat worker solidarity like Chairman Mao...
Opinion: Transphobia Is How the Alt-Right is Recruiting Feminists

By Jef Rouner
Jul 29, 2022

In the past year, I’ve lost several cisgender women friends over transphobia. These were good people, upstanding feminists and progressives outraged at the repeal of reproductive choice and who believe that #BlackLivesMatter. The seed of social justice lives in their hearts, but the siren call of transphobia gets them. They...
Opinion: Are You SURE You’re the Good Guy With a Gun?

By Jef Rouner
Jun 30, 2022

When you write about gun control as often as I do, you get a lot of angry communications from people who have made owning weaponry their entire personality. “So, law-abiding citizens will no longer have guns to protect their family, but the Bad Guys will still have guns, so we...
Opinion: What I Learned From Getting Starbucks With QAnon

By Jeremy Parzen
Jun 28, 2022

The sound of water flowing swept over the lobby atrium of the Hyatt Regency in Dallas as conventioneers streamed in earlier this month. A classic example of the post-modern architecture that defined hotel design in the American 1970s, the Hyatt was completed the same year as the city’s iconic Reunion...