Transphobic Cruelty
When prejudice overrides simple humanity.
Two overlapping stories in the overnight news.
AP (“Trans girl misses Mississippi graduation after being told to dress like boy“):
A transgender girl in Mississippi is not participating in her high school graduation ceremony because school officials told her to dress like a boy and a federal judge did not block the officials’ decision, an attorney for the girl’s family said Saturday.
Linda Morris, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, said the ruling handed down late Friday by U.S. District Judge Taylor McNeel in Gulfport, Mississippi, “is as disappointing as it is absurd.”
“Our client is being shamed and humiliated for explicitly discriminatory reasons, and her family is being denied a once-in-a-lifetime milestone in their daughter’s life,” Morris said. “No one should be forced to miss their graduation because of their gender.”
The ACLU confirmed that the 17-year-old girl — listed in court papers only by her initials L.B. — would skip the Saturday ceremony for Harrison Central High School in Gulfport, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) south of Jackson.
The student “has met the qualifications to receive a diploma,” according to Wynn Clark, attorney for the Harrison County School District.
The ACLU sued the district Thursday on behalf of the student and her parents after Harrison Central principal Kelly Fuller and school district superintendent Mitchell King told L.B. that she must follow the boys’ clothing rules. Graduating boys are expected to wear white shirts and black slacks, while girls are expected to wear white dresses.
L.B. had selected a dress to wear with her cap and gown. The lawsuit said L.B. had worn dresses to classes and extracurricular events throughout high school, including to a prom last year, and she should not face discriminatory treatment during graduation.
King told L.B.’s mother that the teenager could not participate in the graduation ceremony unless L.B. wears ”‘pants, socks, and shoes, like a boy,’” according to the lawsuit.
Clark wrote in court papers Friday that taking part in a graduation ceremony is voluntary and not a constitutionally protected right for any student.
AP (“Using ‘he/him,’ ‘she/her’ in emails got 2 dorm directors fired at small New York Christian college“):
Shua Wilmot and Raegan Zelaya, two former dorm directors at a small Christian university in western New York, acknowledge their names are unconventional, which explains why they attached gender identities to their work email signatures.
Wilmot uses “he/him.” Zelaya goes by “she/her.”
Their former employer, Houghton University, wanted them to drop the identifiers in line with a new policy for email formats implemented in September. Both refused and were fired.
“My name is Shua. It’s an unusual name. And it ends with a vowel, ‘a,’ that is traditionally feminine in many languages,” Wilmot said in a nearly one-hour video he and Zelaya posted on YouTube shortly after they were let go last month. “If you get an email from me and you don’t know who I am, you might not know how to gender me.”
Ongoing culture wars in the U.S. over sexual preferences, gender IDs and transgender rights have engulfed politics, school campuses and many other facets of public and private life. At least 17 Republican-led states have severely restricted gender affirming care. Debates continue to rage in some communities about school curricula mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity. And pickets have sprung up outside public libraries hosting “drag story hours.”
Meanwhile, controversies swirl at campuses with religious affiliations. The recent firings prompted more than 700 Houghton alumni to sign a petition in protest.
In the Northwest, 16 plaintiffs are suing Seattle Pacific University, a Christian liberal arts college, to challenge the school’s employment policy barring people in same-sex relationships from full-time jobs.
In New York City, LGBTQ students are challenging Yeshiva University’s decision to bar their student-run club from campus.
Paul Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, a 2-year-old advocacy group for LGBTQ students at publicly funded religious colleges and universities, said actions such as these are cause for despair.
“There’s a backlash against the rise of LGBTQ rights,” he said, and not just with “white evangelical Christianity in the South … but in places like New York and Oregon that we wouldn’t think would be experiencing this backlash.”
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Oregon dismissed a lawsuit that LGBTQ students filed against the U.S. Department of Education claiming it didn’t protect them against discrimination at religiously affiliated universities receiving federal money.
Houghton University, an 800-student campus 60 miles (96 kilometers) southeast of Buffalo, says it offers a “Christ-centered education in the liberal arts and sciences.”
In a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Saturday, the university said it could not speak publicly about personnel matters, but it “has never terminated an employment relationship based solely on the use of pronouns in staff email signatures.”
The university said it had previously asked employees to remove “anything extraneous,” including Bible quotes, from email signatures.
The university also shared with the AP an email outlining its new policy sent to staff. The memo cautioned employees against using politically divisive and inflammatory speech in communications bearing the Houghton name. It also directed them to use standardized signature styles and forbade the use of pronouns.
Also attached to the statement was a copy of a letter university President Wayne D. Lewis Jr. sent to students.
“I would never ask you to agree with or support every decision I make,” Lewis wrote. “But I do humbly ask that you resist the temptation to reduce Houghton’s decision making to the simple and convenient political narratives of our time.”
Zelaya said she received an email in the fall from administrators saying the school was mandating changes in colors, fonts and other aspects of email to help the school maintain branding consistency.
She complied, she said, but retained her pronouns on her signature, calling it a “standard industry practice” to do so.
In the dismissal letters hand-delivered to Wilmot and Raegan Zelaya, copies of which they shared on social media, the university wrote that the firings were “a result of your refusal to remove pronouns in your email signatures in violation of institutional policy.”
In a video posted on Facebook, Zelaya said she already has another job lined up. In their joint YouTube video, she and Wilmot urged their supporters to push for change in policies, but constructively and with civility.
“As a result of this whole controversy, as a result of having my pronouns in my email signature,” Wilmot said, “it’s given me the opportunity to educate people on this topic.”
While these are different situations legally, they’re alike in sheer boneheadedness and cruelty. A child has been deprived of her high school graduation and two people have been deprived of their livelihood out of sheer pigheaded stupidity.
In the first case, a public school in Mississippi is engaging in sex discrimination that’s almost certainly illegal. While I didn’t agree with the ruling, the US Supreme Court has held that Title IX protects the rights of transgender folks. It was a 6-3 ruling, written by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice Roberts. So, even if Amy Comey Barrett, who replaced the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, were inclined to vote the other way, it would still stand. That was two years ago, so surely the news has made it to Mississippi.
In addition to being legally wrong, simple humanity would seem to have demanded letting “L.B.” walk with her graduating class. What possible purpose does forcing her to wear “boy’s clothes” serve? Especially in a ceremony where all the boys are wearing a dress?
Legally speaking, the other case is different. The current iteration of the Supreme Court has stretched the Free Exercise Clause to its extremes, allowing people to cite religious objections to get out of following all manner of laws. And I suspect that, even aside from religious affiliation, a private institution is within its rights to demand conformity in its email signature blocks and to fire employees who repeatedly violate those dictats. The “standard industry practice” counter is not strong; it’s not standard in the private Christian school industry.
Further, I’m actually sympathetic to a private religious school taking the stance that the gender people are assigned by the Almighty himself is their gender and that the inclusion of pronouns in the email signature is subversive to that teaching. But, even taking that as a baseline, simple common sense would dictate making an exception for people who are clearly not taking an anti-church stand on LGBTQ issues but rather making clear their assigned gender because they have culturally-unusual names. Clarity in that case is good for all parties concerned.
The cruelty is the point:
In other words, the cruelty serves to maintain social hierarchies to the benefit of those who hold desirable positions in them.
Contrary to what we would like, simple common sense ain’t got nothing to do with it.
What if the teaching is that black people are naturally inferior to white people, and black people must include the fact that they are black in their e-mail signature blocks along with a caricature of, say, a monkey eating a banana?
Equal protection under the law does not get a religious exemption. The fact that transgender rights are not broadly normalized yet in the way that black people’s equality has been, does not mean that their rights are somehow less important or valid. Further, moratoria against the inclusion of preferred pronouns do not appear in any religious text I am aware of, so a Christian college doing so is merely exhibiting bigotry – which is decidedly not a protected activity.
Things like this are among the legion of reasons that I cannot take “the party of freedom” or “the party of small government” or “the party for parental rights” seriously.
There are articles popping up lately that the anti-transgender movement is a concerted, organized effort on the part of a few groups.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/meet-influential-player-transgender-health-044505739.html
The modern Republican party will do anything to win elections. They will knowingly put people at risk. They only stopped going after homosexuals because it hurt the party, they would flip back to gay-baiting in two seconds if they thought it would help them politically.
I’m not sure I completely agree with drj in that the cruelty is the point, I think it may be a bonus for some of them. But ultimately it is all about winning and power.
The current iteration of the Republican party is evil. They’ve constructed an entire party based on identifying the “other” and demonizing them. Not all Republican politicians are individually evil, but in most red states they will support pretty much any anti-trans legislation, no matter how cruel (or impractical, I’m still waiting for the bathroom police in Florida since they just passed a bill about public restrooms).
@Steven L. Taylor: Yeah, it’s a shell game. They’re for the rights of parents but only if the parents agree with them. They’re for the rights of individuals but only if they agree with them. It’s like there’s a pattern.
Simple humanity is missing from today’s GOP.
As @drj: points out, cruelty is the point. It’s the cruelty that supplies the endorphin rush for evangelical Christians.
Looking at the trans issue as a product roll-out over the last decade it’s been awful. The thinking seemed to be that you could just tack a ‘T’ onto ‘LGB.’ But the LGBs don’t seem entirely enthusiastic about that and the population at large has still-unformed opinions around the issue.
I hope, and expect, that this will cause the trans movement to re-position going forward, focus on core goals not peripherals, find rational answers to the matters of athletics and minors. And for Christ’s sake learn to persuade not just denounce. It took years of Will and Grace and Ellen and Modern Family, and a lot of gay people coming out publicly, to move the needle on gay marriage. We skipped that step with trans folk. Now we have to go back and do it. At a guess it’ll be a decade before the first state rolls back anti-trans laws.
The US has a long history of nastiness to vulnerable minorities. Some, like the Irish, Italians and Jews (on probation, always) found ways into the mainstream. Some have had a much tougher road. I had hoped we’d avoid the worst of it for trans people, but Evangelical Christians gotta have someone to hate. You can’t be a good follower of Christ without finding someone to grind under your heel. Blessed are the assholes.
Then there’s this:
A cisgender lesbian who dresses in male clothing was forced out of a women’s restroom.
https://twitter.com/KarbonSays/status/1659966632926801920
Pause for a moment to take in the breathtaking Orwellian absurdity of a biological woman being forced to use the mens room.
Which gives away the underlying thrust of the anti-trans panic. The motivating impulse is to enforce gender roles, covering how we dress and appear and act.
That’s it, that the entirety of it.
@Chip Daniels:
So that women must do as men tell them. Like God intended.
The Right is even coming for no-fault divorce right now. Can’t have women decide to live independently and as they see fit, now can we?
The right will soon decide that Mommunes are a threat that needs to be eliminated.
@Michael Reynolds:
The “tell me you don’t know anything about the actual history of the LGBT movement without explicitly saying you don’t know anything about the actual history of the LGBT movement” challenge.
@Sleeping Dog: Their heads will explode.
@Sleeping Dog:
Sounds like a fine idea to me.
I can’t remember how long ago was the first time that I was in a public place that only had one restroom. My dad’s donut shop only had one. That was in 1962. I’ve been in countless “Unisex” loos since then. More recently many of the convience marts that have two heads that were formerly tagged MEN and WOMEN now have signs on the door that say Restroom or Family Restroom. This transition has been going on for several years.
I have yet to see a former public Men’s room that has had the urnial removed when the sign on the door was changed to a generic symbol. Doesn’t seem to stop anyone from using the can. When ya’ gotta’ go ya’ gotta’ go.
I just wish that those who sit to pee would remember to leave the seat up for the next guy.
@Stormy Dragon:
Like, he’s so cute and adorable with his lack of understanding and knowledge. It’s not like we haven’t been there from the beginning and dealing with the same I/ignorant garbage.
We keep giving people the answer for Trans kids. Leave them alone. Let them be. Let them get the medical care they, their doctors and their families want.
We keep giving people answer for Trans athletes. It’s a minor fringe issue that Republicans in constant bad faith argue about. There aren’t enough of us to be a threat to anything. Let children do whatever they want, make teens have some sort of medical intervention on an actual case by case basis, let adults compete after whatever medical intervention their doctors think is necessary. Problem solved. Trans people are simply not dominating sports nor do people Trans people transition for sports.
What Reynolds wants from us is to get shoved into the closet of his choosing. Maybe it’s a little nicer than getting genocided but it’s the same place in the end.
Does he realize it’s now illegal for me to go to FL? If I get my teeth kicked in for using a bathroom EMTs and drs can and will refuse to treat me. Hospitals that take public money will turn me away out of fear that DeSantis will sic the mob on them.
I had to tell my kids that we can’t go back to Disney cause it’s unsafe for me and us as a family. How many of you get to have a discussion like that with your kids.
Heritage, speaking the quiet parts through a bullhorn:
The Trans Mind-Virus Is Mutating
Once we deny biological reality, the dissolution of moral order follows. When we profess that our eyes are lying about our sexed reality, high-headed notions of consent, capability, or natural law are that much easier to denounce.
The trans mind-virus is mutating. The time to find an antidote is now.
Bolding mine. Notice the open admission here. They insist that the outward physical appearance is determinative. If you have a vagina, you must, by law, dress in certain clothing and conduct yourself in certain ways. You live in a prescribed sphere of public interaction.
Those who disagree are mentally ill and unworthy of discussion or tolerance.
Then there is this:
What is more, the continued insistence that minors possess the maturity and agency to consent to irreversible “gender affirming” medical procedures supports an argument that they likewise possess the capacity to consent to other life-altering decisions. Like having sex with adults.
Keep in mind- These are the very same people who insist that children as young as 12 can consent to marriage and have sex with adults, and will force a 10 year old rape victim to carry her pregnancy to term.
@Stormy Dragon: @Beth:
Oh, such excellent snark. Understandable since the issue is going so well, absolutely double down on the attitudes and strategies that got us to the point where I now cannot visit half the country with my daughter. But hey, you know best. I mean that’s obvious as we go from victory unto victory. Huzzah!
You sure you’re not both Russian? The knock on the Russian Army is that it’s an army that does not learn.
@Michael Reynolds:
There is a teeny, tiny number of people online trying the “LGB Without The T” nonsense, because there will always be a few stupid bigots who think that if they roadie up to the more powerful bigots they will be spared. It didn’t work for Ernst Röhm, and it won’t work for them.
Every other queer person recognizes something simple — trans folks are step one and we are next. The people banning trans this and trans that are the same ones that passed the “don’t say gay” bill in Florida and the more recent “Doctors Don’t Have To Treat Any Queer People Even If They Are Dying” bill also in Florida. Even LGB folks who don’t understand trans folks and are personally a little uncomfortable with them realize this.
Trans folks have been part of the Queer Rights movement since Stonewall. The first rock thrown is traditionally believed to be by a trans-ish person*.
The ugly Progress Flag has mostly replaced the original Rainbow flag as Queer folks of all stripes want to be damned sure their support for trans folk is known — and it is an ugly flag, but it’s basically a battle flag.
There’s no separating trans rights from gay rights or queer rights. And the vast, vast majority of queer folks know this. We would all be wearing the same pink triangle in the death camps.
——
*: if memory serves, they prefer to be called a cross-dresser and I can’t remember what pronouns. They’re old. And they would be trans under the eyes of the law in Florida.
@Beth:
Are you being deliberately obtuse? Obviously fucking duh why the fuck do you think I give a fuck about winning this fucking fight? I’m trying to do what I can to make the world safe for my daughter. Her world is shrinking. I don’t want her to grow up in a diminished world. I also care about the large number of trans followers who are, similarly, caged.
Unfortunately the people fighting for my daughter and the others are political cretins who cannot form a message or a tactic let alone a strategy because they cannot manage to separate issues of virtue from issues of power. You’re virtuous, congratulations. The other side are not, and yet they’re kicking your ass.
@CSK: The mommunes or the heads exploding?
@SenyorDave:
They never stopped, and are legislating against gay folk right now.
@Gustopher:
Yes. And so would I. There is no debate here about who is right and who is wrong on the issue. There is a frustration on my part when ‘my team’ keeps losing. Losing in Florida, losing in Texas, losing in Alabama and Mississippi and Arkansas and all the rectangle states except Colorado, losing both Carolinas.
It feels like I’m talking to crazy people, here. Napoleon on his way back from Moscow trying to pass it all off as a temporary setback. Hannibal looking around and insisting that everything at Cannae was going swimmingly.
But OK, I guess I’m wrong and the trans movement is doing everything right. I feel properly chastised. I’ve seen the light. It’s all fine. Yay!
@Gustopher: You are correct, I overstated things. I would say they went more stealth and cut back on the very obvious gay bashing on a national level. IMO after they lost on gay marriage (at least for now), they shifted strategy. The trans issue works well because many people have never met anyone trans, and most do not have a family member who is trans.
@Gustopher:
I’ve come to realize that most of the LGBTQ hatred springs from the same well of misogyny and a deep desire to police people into patriarchal gender roles.
Meaning that no one is safe. If somewhere there is a man who stays home and tends the children or woman who is the breadwinner, or a boy who plays with dolls or a girl who plays with trucks, this is to them an abomination which cannot be tolerated.
@just nutha:
Howza ’bout both?
@Michael Reynolds:
Why do you automatically assume that Republican misbehavior can only be caused by someone else?
Why would this even be true? Did women flaunting their abortions get us Dobbs? Do Republicans oppose Covid-19 vaccinations because Fauci used the wrong words? Do Republicans oppose even the most insignificant gun control measures because Democratic proposals were too extreme?
Come on, man.
@Michael Reynolds: Here’s what you wrote:
That first half is very, very wrong. Perhaps even offensively wrong*.
I will repeat that there is a tiny group that tries to make a lot of noise about “LGB Without The TQIA+” — I don’t know if you’ve been exposed to them online and think they are more representative than they are, but they’re the Log Cabin Republicans, a tiny group hated by all. And their British fellow travelers.
You are repeating their lies almost verbatim**. Either by pure happen chance, or because you have seen them online and think they are more popular. (Note: I do not think that you are doing so with their ill-intent)
They have no power anywhere. They frighten children online, that is all.
——
*: It gets my hackles up. I don’t want to be associated with the Log Cabin Republicans — which is something I have in common with most Republicans!
**: I haven’t seen LGB used rather than LGBT since the late 1990s or early 2000s. It’s as weird to see as “negro”.
@Michael Reynolds: Sometimes it’s not about winning, but rather holding a principle. Fundies needed to hold to principle (even though they were losing) for 5o years to move the needle back. Blacks have been needing to hold to principle even longer and are have not arrived yet.
(Sometimes it’s also about following orders from others closer to the battle. Just sayin’.)
@Michael Reynolds:
Nope.
Transphobes are responsible for their decision to hate and attack trans people.
Racists are responsible for their decision to hate and attack black and brown people
Misogynists are responsible for their decision to subjugate women.
Etc etc.
No one else’s attitudes makes bigots be bigots. Their own attitudes are responsible, and we need stop blame-shifting, and victim blaming, to absolve bigots of responsibility for their own awful choices. No one is making them do it. They choose to.
@drj:
Because God forbid America hold the dominant demographics accountable for anything. It’s never their own fault. Personal responsibility is only for blacks and poor people.
@Michael Reynolds:
Because what black people had to put up in America with from 1865-1965 was not the fault of white racists, it was because blacks were wrong and not doing everything right.
If the Jews had just done things right, things would have been peachy for them in 1930s Germany.
Stupid!
@Michael Reynolds:
You know what makes me sad? You’re Dr. King’s White Liberal in the Letter from Birmingham Jail. If only we would do things your way, as you proscribe, in your incorrect view of history, things would somehow magically be better for us. It’s sad. I know for a fact I am not safe with you. I would rather have Dr. Joyner and commenter Jim Brown as my back up. At least I know that I wouldn’t get my ass kicked in if they were around me. I also know that they wouldn’t blame me for getting my ass kicked. I can almost guarantee they don’t understand what it means to be Trans, why we are here, or what rights we should get. But I am willing to be they have open minds and are willing to change them. Your mind is closed.
I believe it was Cracker that was honest about not willing to give up any rights to protect mine. You would give them away freely, knowing they don’t affect you. I feel bad for your daughter. I’m sure you love her, but you’re not doing her any favors. You’re not doing me any favors.
Tell me, exactly what did Dylan Mulvaney do wrong? She made a series of TikToks entitled a “Year of Girlhood”. She had the temerity to call it her “girlhood” and the Republicans and conservatives have used to to slaughter her.
The Trans community has done nothing other than ask for our rights and to be respected as fellow humans. Republicans are willing to lie and it’s my fault? What exactly are our missteps? Saying to stop killing us? That maybe we know what it’s like to be Trans, and that we know how horrible it was to go through the wrong puberty? Maybe, maybe, we should listen to kids when they say they are Trans and treat them with kindness and respect and let them access the medical care that we couldn’t?
What rights are YOU willing to give up.
@Chip Daniels:
This, so much this. Thank you!
Another problem with Reynold’s “you need better messaging” schtick is the fundamental problem that Trans people don’t have, and can’t seem to find, a good, simple, accurate, description of what Gender Dysphoria is like.
I’m sure if you’re old enough you’ve heard the old “born in the wrong body” shtick. I (and most other Trans people) hate that. It’s simple, but it’s not good or accurate. It also feeds into the same crap that Cis women get, our bodies are wrong. My body isn’t wrong, my brain isn’t wrong. I’m just different, and I don’t know why.
My current understanding of Gender Dysphoria is like this: Imagine someone screaming in your ear, constantly. It’s been that way since you were a kid so you tune it out. Sometimes you forget it’s there, other times it’s oppressive as hell. Sometimes you tune it out so well you think it’s gone. It never is. Always screaming, mostly gibberish, but sometimes it’s truly horrific shit. One day you decide to finally deal with it. You get some new clothes, and it gets a little quieter. You get some meds and it gets a little quieter. You change your name and it gets quieter. Finally you get some surgeries and the screaming is gone. Suddenly you know what it’s like to simply exist. Except now you have to deal with all the strategies you had to make it quiet, that never worked.
For me, I couldn’t figure out why they said I was learning disabled. I finally figured it out. I wasn’t learning disabled. I was a queer kid in the 80’s (what a nightmare) who was severely traumatised because of a wildly abusive home life. I can’t begin to tell you how jealous I am of the Trans kids today that are thriving because their parents love them for them, not as objects.
And even that explanation fails. It’s not simple. It’s kinda accurate. It’s pretty good. But it’s only one step different from “born in the wrong body”.
@Michael Reynolds:
Look, I know you’re never going to listen to me, because in your eyes I’m just a stupid f**, but whatever the optimum strategy for queer liberation is, I know for certain it doesn’t involve normalizing any of the following Republican lies:
1. Trans people showed up in the last 10 years
2. Trans people “tacked” themselves onto the queer community
3. That most, or even many, cis-queer people want to separate themselves from trans-queer people
Our trans brothers, sisters, and siblings have been here from the beginning, are an integral part of our community, and have in may cases been forced to be the ones leading the rest as they’ve always been among the most visible of us.
Let me also give you this warning: “LGB” without the T is a red flag. If you’re hanging out in a crowd that spends a lot of time using it, then you should be aware you’re hanging out with TERFs.
@Beth: Speaking on behalf of Cracker, I would like to note that Cracker’s position probably isn’t as much that he’s not willing to give up rights to protect the rights of others (though he’s never been asked to, either, so he can’t say for sure) as it is that he believes that he’s living in a world where his willingness to give up rights will not protect the rights of others.
He also holds that his situation as an average straight white person means that at least for himself the nature of the government elected holds no sway at all–that he’ll do just fine in the next Biden administration or Trump administration, or in the next DeSatanist administration given that with no loved ones, family, or other complications, he’s largely not impacted by the decisions government makes*. The fact that you will be pitched under the bus will sadden him but is out of his control. The difference between Cracker and others who shall remain nameless and on whose behalf I am not speaking is that Cracker sees no “winning” for the near and mid-distance term. Only struggle.
He hopes that the people who claim to be on your side will stop shoveling dirt in the hole and start helping you out of it. But that’s the best he has to offer. 🙁
*And yes, these viewpoints DO contribute to the possibility that Cracker suffers from NPD. But looking at the world, he wonders how many people DON’T . ([Cracker’s inner Manichaean/Calvinist jumps repeatedly in the air doing fist pumps.])
@Beth:
Allow me to add that at the time you were in school, the statistic we were taught in our education classes about learning disabilities was that 85% of all special ed placements started as discipline complaints from teachers. And back then, you didn’t need to be the perpetrator to be the “one who needs to be removed.” The fact that you were learning disabled and still made it out all the way to law school and a successful practice says volumes about you. Good job at surviving/thriving.
You were targeted by the system, and it didn’t swallow you. That’s an accomplishment.
One more:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Csgyl6fsy7i/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Insta seems kinda wonky right now though.
Not “sheer pigheaded stupidity”, but malice born of bigotry.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Thanks. It was a bad paraphrase of a mostly remembered comment. I respected the original and like and respect the second more.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Thanks. I have no idea how I did it. I get that in the 80’s/90’s there were some terrible teaching ideas still in their heyday. I also get that it was impossible at the time to tell between a kid that was mildly disabled and one that was traumatized. I’m sure they only kinda of abuse they were aware of were sexual and physical, not mental/emotional like me.
That being said, I still would love to burn LADSE to the ground and salt the earth.
@Chip Daniels:
I was listening to a thing on NPR about the mistreatment of Native Americans and one thing that stuck out to me was one of the speakers talking about how there were generally two types of anti-indigenous groups. The first was the openly racist type of group that called for the suppression of Native Americans so that their property could be taken, and the other was the ostensibly charitable type of group that claimed they wanted to help Native Americans and happened to know what they needed to thrive, which just invariably happened to not be what the Native Americans community said it needed.
The speaker said that at first glance you’d think the two groups would oppose each other, but they actually usually worked together, the former providing the ruthlessness to actually go out and oppress the community and the latter providing the moral justification for not protecting the community from the oppression.
Lol, James
@Michael Reynolds: “Looking at the trans issue as a product roll-out over the last decade it’s been awful. The thinking seemed to be that you could just tack a ‘T’ onto ‘LGB.’ But the LGBs don’t seem entirely enthusiastic about that and the population at large has still-unformed opinions around the issue.”
No, it’s been the target of a very recent and deliberate attack by the right, as Target First of Many.
@drj: “Why do you automatically assume that Republican misbehavior can only be caused by someone else?”
Several decades ago, I am sure that people blamed Kristallnacht on Jewish people not understanding their place.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m always amazed at how self destructive the Trans community can be. Their tactics seem designed to repel and turn off people. DQSH??? Perhaps weigh the pros (?) vs. the cons – giving ammunition – lots of it – to the anti-trans movement, and for what?
Male bodies in women’s sports – which is slowly being restricted everywhere – is another self inflicted wound. It’s obviously unfair to female athletes and everyone other than crackpots know it.
It reminds me, more than anything, of “Defund the Police” and the people who thought that was a great idea. I know what they were trying to promote but that slogan did real damage to the Democrat party IMHO.
I think – and I’ve seen polls supporting this – that unlike Gay rights that became more popular over time, Trans rights are moving in the other direction.