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This post is in: Civil Rights, LGBTQ Rights Are Human Rights, Open Threads, The State of Being Trans in America, Women's Rights Are Human Rights
Phew, Malala turned out to be good. https://t.co/cN5PSGiheh
— Franklin Stove Expropriator (@agraybee) February 27, 2023
As we know, the bigots never stop; once they’ve managed to erase ‘those people’, they’re already planning how to erase ‘you people.’
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Baud
Rotating tag.
Alison Rose
Okay, at first I was confused by that shitty tweet, then I realized they’re TERFs, and so fuck them and hell yeah Malala.
Dan B
One of the best comments was about the arguments and propaganda about Trans lives were identical to the ones used about every minority going back a century or more. Endangering children! Perverted sexuality! Dangerous criminals! Threats to order! Etc. Fear and hatred are propagated by the same dangerous slander and lies.
MisterDancer
YES MALALA
FUCK TERFS
suzanne
LMMFAO hoooooo boy J.K. Rowling must be pissed.
Awesome.
WTG Malala.
Roger Moore
This is precisely why Jewish people tend to be liberal. Jews may not always be at the top of the list as a target of hate, but they know they’re always close enough to the top that it never makes sense to let hate get started.
cain
@Alison Rose: Didn’t they use that for divorce as well? Women can’t leave the marriage – think of the children!
IF they knew how kids were in the 70s in the U.S. they’d realize that we kids were a lot more resilient than you’d think.
StringOnAStick
I finally looked up TERF; I knew what they stood for but I didn’t know the words Trans-exclusionary Radical Feminist. That clarifies some comments here yesterday about just how radical they really are.
cain
Since it is an open thread – I saw this:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/india-failed-in-its-mission-to-stop-g20-countries-from-referring-to-russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine-as-a-war/ar-AA17Zp8v?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=197378f695994453ef1dcd421a29fb67&ei=18
It seems that India is still buying Russian oil and gas – and feeding the war machine. They didn’t want it to be called a war. Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck would you call it when armies are clashing and planes are flying above and launching missiles. Just jaw-dropping.
Modi is an idiot and of course, he loves him some authoritarian assholes.
Dan B
When I was ten we lived by a park in our town of 10,000. There was a rumor that some men had come to town and were seducing young boys in the park. This was a Bald faced lie. These were local guys, married men who were closeted and living as society allowed in smaller cities. Nearby Akron with several hundred thousand residents had no gay bar. How did gay men manage to have lives. If you were 25 and single you has n8 future in corporate America. You would be much less likely to be promoted and could be fired just for being suspect. “Pedophile” would haunt the discussions behind your back. “Invert” might also be bandied about.
StringOnAStick
@Roger Moore: My husband is Jewish and that has been the first screening level with each new person we’ve met in our new state; if there is even a hint of an issue, the answer is no. Living in a blue city on the edge of insane redneck eastern Oregon is interesting; we feel safe here but every once in awhile I’ll see some crazy tricked out pickup truck with a rageaholic driving and I worry a little.
Old School
Tennessee governor Bill Lee attempts to explain why drag shows should be illegal but a picture of him wearing women’s clothing in high school is completely different.
MisterDancer
I have no words for my rage about that person.
She’s like the Ultimate Form of “Justice for Meeeeeeee — but not for Thee!”. She represents so much that a lot of great women — especially Black and Brown women like bell hooks — warned about, decades ago.
Bill Arnold
@cain:
I’ll consider him dangerous until he is separated from the levers of power, and cunning.
UncleEbeneezer
@Dan B: Yup.
• “Our little girls won’t be safe!” – assumed black boys would prey on white girls, used as justification for school Segregation, now used to frame Transgender kids as some sort of sexual threat to girls.
• “They’re all Groomers/pedophiles!” – used to bash gays/lesbians in 80’s, now expanded and focussed on Transgender people and Gender Non-confirming artists (Drag shows).
• “It’s Unnatural! Adam & Eve, Not Adam & Steve!” – used to bash gays/lesbians in 80’s-90’s and frame them as an affront to Christianity. Many similar racist claims were also used to justify continuing Segregation.
• “They will take away all the spots from the truly deserving!” – used against Affirmative Action, Diversity efforts to give Black people a fair shot at jobs, college etc., now being used to keep Trans kids out of sports.
• “They have an unfair advantage!” – Fast-twitch, muscle mass etc., used as arguments against integrating sports (now an obsession with Trans Athletes)
Etc., etc. I’m sure there are more…
rikyrah
These TERFs are just awful people
kalakal
When you’re attacking Malala you’re allying yourself with some vile people.
They’re consumed by hate
Dan B
@StringOnAStick: My brother’s ex moved to Redmond to be near her daughter’s family in Bend. She’s in love with a big black man so they only see each other when she comes to Seattle.
MisterDancer
@Old School: Next, they’ll ban all the Looney Toons cartoons where Bugs Bunny rolled up in a femme outfit.
It’s just that stupid. Seriously, as a belly dancer, I would know 10000% percent if doing “girly stuff” makes you gay. After decades of wiggling my hips, I remain very much a Cis Het Straight fella!
cain
@Bill Arnold: It will be dangerous for the U.S. to say anything – the crowd over there have become hyper sensitive to perception and actions from western countries. They think they are in some existential crises with China coming after them and Pakistan.
rikyrah
People say that Black people are so understanding. We are not that understanding.
There is nothing in the history of America that could make a Black person believe that something which starts with another group won’t eventually wind up at our door.
NOTHING in this country’s history would tell us otherwise.
Roger Moore
@StringOnAStick:
I grew up with stories about my grandfather leaving Germany in February 1933 and having to go back a couple of years later to help the rest of the family leave. Jewish people know exactly how bad things can get, and how quickly.
Jay
@cain:
both India and China (and other countries) are buying Russian oil and gas at steep markdowns. As oil and gas are fungible, it often does not enter their markets at all, but is resold at a huge mark up and profit while still at sea, and sent on to a 3rd country.
not the only dirtbags, profiting off blood money, RedBull, Auchan, https://theins.ru/en/politics/259460
trollhattan
In light of East Palestine and their toxic ongoing nightmare, it’s instructive to learn just who is behind the railroad trend to run fewer, longer trains with far fewer employees. Surprise, it’s the fucking hedge funds!
cain
@MisterDancer: wow, respect! I think that stuff is pretty hard – good on you!
cain
@trollhattan: We really need to bring those assholes to heel. They are running all over the place and causing a lot of problems for everyone.
UncleEbeneezer
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Baud:
Seconded…
cain
@Jay: It’s the only way they can help fund things. I mean it was hard for Germany to let go of it.
We’ll need to make them burn money faster than they can earn it.
As long as neither country sends troops or other things to shore up their losing war – they are going to lose by attrition – the UKRs have been really good at both at messaging and being very competent at conducing this war.
StringOnAStick
@Dan B: Redmond should be renamed Redneck. It is changing a bit though; Bend has gotten very expensive so the priced out are going the Redmond and the rednecks are moving on to Madras, Prineville and some development NW of Redmond where there is barely any zoning so it is anything goes, including just parking your 5th wheel. We have friends who live in Redmond and they laugh about all the old locals complaining that they’re getting “Too Bend” and are moving away. Fine; I’d love to see Redmond go blue and the local D’s are active there.
Butter Emails
@cain:
When I first saw the term I didn’t realize how big of pieces of shit they were, but they honestly seem to believe that transwomen are some sort of attempt by the patriarchy to oppress women and deny them their rights, even as they cozy right up to the biggest assholes the patriarchy has to offer in order to help crap on the trans community.
Darkrose
@Dan B: I recently requested the documentary Cured for an instructor at my university. I was kind of curious, so I watched it after sending him the link. It’s about the fight to get the American Psychological Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. The arguments insisting that being gay was a mental illness are the same as the anti-trans arguments today. The film makes the connection explict at the end, noting the fight to get gender identity disorder removed from the DSM, and the final shot before the credits is a warning about the attempts to divide the community by going after trans people.
We all see it, except the TERFs.
Old School
Dan B
@UncleEbeneezer: You got the biggies. And drug laws! Reefer Madness had pot smokers turned into raging monsters. Who turns manic from pot? But the truth – couch lock, the munchies, would do the opposite of inspiribg fear.
StringOnAStick
@Roger Moore: My husband’s family has similar stories. One side of the family showed me a family tree where everyone but one teen son all died on the same day in 1944; that was when the Germans marched through their village as they retreated.
Dan B
@Darkrose: I was part of the action to disrupt anti gay psychiatrists at the 1971 APA convention in Chicago. One speaker had done all his research on prisoners and had Proof!! that gay men were 100% likely to commit crimes. The APA set up a task force and after their presentation at the next convention in 1973 it was removed from the DSM. YAY!
Roger Moore
@MisterDancer:
IMO, the worst thing about JK Rowling is that she thinks she’s wonderfully progressive. She does have some progressive tendencies, but she’s completely blind to her own bigotry. Like it’s nice that she thought to include a slightly more diverse view of Britain in her stories, but all the BIPOC characters are tokens. The important characters are all White.
Jay
@trollhattan:
LMFAO, I interviewed and got to stage 1 at CN Rail.
They were on a hiring binge, because they had spent the last decade and a half not replacing retirees, cutting staff, or training and staffing up. Then in 2019 an entire class of employees hit pension age, and retired, cutting their workforce by 25% and leaving trains, yards, warehouses, idle. Meanwhile, customers were screaming and the Feds launched an investigation.
So they frantically launched hiring fairs all across Canada to try to backfill 15 years of neglect. Were they successful, nope. 80% of the people they moved on to try to hire, found other or better jobs during the 5 stage process. The plan was to have 2800 people make it to “hands on training” in Winterpeg and have 1700 graduate. They got 1500 to show up and only 450 graduated.
patrick II
@UncleEbeneezer:
But understood in a way that he doesn’t understand himself.
Anne Laurie
My Bronx home town, back in the mid-1960s, was relatively more sophisticated, I guess. As a nine-year-old unpaid babysitter, it was explicitly my job to keep my (not much) younger brothers away from ‘the perverts by the men’s bathroom’ when we went to the playground.
A few years later, those brothers would casually report on their altar boy training: the nuns warned them never to be alone with Father [X], just as they were warned that Father [Y] should not be allowed unsupervised access to the Communion wine.
cain
@StringOnAStick: When we moving on to Roseburg? That will likely be the last bastion of redness I reckon.
Alison Rose
@Roger Moore: Oh trust me, she’s not blind to it. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
Jay
@Dan B:
you forgot paranoia,……. and giggling,………
UncleEbeneezer
@Butter Emails: Which is all pretty easily refuted by noting that the people most devoted to Patriarchy (Conservative Christians) are very much NOT supportive of Transgender Rights. See also: MRA’s, Incels and countless other anti-Feminist groups.
kalakal
@trollhattan: That’s why it’s so important the bastards get to pay the clean up bill.
Make the railroads bear the cost of accidents and there’ll be fewer accidents
RaflW
@UncleEbeneezer: It’s been 19 years since the Goodrich case in Massachusetts. Conservatives still say that same-sex marriage will (and this is what makes me laugh, even though I’m angry) eventually destroy marriage.
I literally saw the addition of eventually recently on some prominent RW jerkwad’s twitter feed.
Um, first of all I have never, once, heard a credible argument how adding more eligible people to the institution of legally pairbonded bliss will in any way diminish any other two people’s special moment, or the durability of their I dos.
And second, if we’ve now had this, ahem, experiment for 19 years, what’s the timeframe for this purported later crash of cis-het marriage? Hmmm?
Dan B
@StringOnAStick: In the 60’s and 70’s feminists tried to keep lesbians out or at least invisible. Of course feminist issues like equal pay and better jobs and discrimination were double for lesbians. It was great to work with WITCH since they understood the overlapping issues. The founder was Rennie Davis’ girlfriend. He was the most intellectually advanced of the young radicals and I’m certain she was at least as wise as he.
Jay
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sask-rush-s-pride-night-drag-trans-outpouring-love-support-fun-1.6760704
Trans drag performer says Sask. Rush’s Pride night was an outpouring of love, support and fun
Despite negative, transphobic online comments prior to the game, Saturday night was all positive
cain
@kalakal: That’s what I was thinking – if you get rid of regulations because of “daddy govt” and something gets fucked up – they get all mad that they have to pay and try to avoid paying – that’s bullshit. You fucked around and found out – you don’t get to be protected from your mistakes.
Anne Laurie
Justice Margaret Marshall knew what she was doing when she ‘wrote the ground-breaking decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that declared that the Massachusetts constitution does not permit the state to deny citizens the right to same-sex marriage.’
The bigots warned of riots in the streets, public obscenity, etc… but what normie voters discovered was that nothing in their own lives actually changed for the worse. Maybe Aunt Loretta finally admitted her housemate Marianne was more than just a ‘good friend’, or those nice men in the house on the corner who always kept up their property and donated to every local cause threw a really major party… but for people who weren’t really committed ‘traditionalists’, those were *happy* changes. And ‘happy’ is what the bigots didn’t want people to be!
But eventually… well, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, and a mere half-century later Barack Obama became President. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another half-century for our first out-of-the-closet LGBTQ+ president!
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
The best explanation I’ve heard is that their idea of marriage is based on inequality. They see men and women as inherently different, and the whole point of marriage is to bring together those different parts. Same sex marriage can’t work that way, since two men or two women are inherently equal by that measure. The idea of a marriage between two equals is a direct threat to their concept of a union between unequal people.
schrodingers_cat
@Bill Arnold: Sangh Pracharak Modi and the ideology he subscribes to and the entire Sangh Parivar can be described in one word. EVIL.
Princess
@Roger Moore: Their version of marriage is an exchange of women between men. Dad gives the bride away to the groom. Two women deciding to get hitched with no men involved takes away their power. Same with two men, really. They’re giving themselves to the other as equals, not passing a woman down the line as they set up the next generation of patriarchs. The threat to their way of life is real.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Roger Moore: Yes. That is correct. Also, a good bit of homophobia is the fear by straight men that gay men will treat them the way they treat women.
O. Felix Culpa
@Roger Moore:
Ding! We have a winner! When Ms. O and I became engaged, her fundy brother asked sincerely and with furrowed brow, which of us will make the decisions? Because in his world of male “headship,” the man is the decider. A partnership of equals making decisions jointly and amicably was outside his ken.
Leslie
@Jay: Another story of support:
https://www.outsports.com/2023/2/23/23612187/johnny-haught-mma-drag-brunch-west-virginia
satby
@Anne Laurie: we won’t! Buttigieg’s already in his 40s 😉
schrodingers_cat
@cain: The one thing Modi loving Indians care about is how India and the PM are perceived overseas.
Dan B
@Princess: The first question we’d hear when people found out we were a couple was, “Who’s the man?” The concept of being equal partners was incomprehensible.
There must be hierarchy!!
Jay
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
the best part of going to “gay” clubs with SWMBO, her girlfriends and my poly friends was getting hit on by gay men, and trans.
My group would dance, ( old punk, I only knew any more how to do the white man overbite, samba and and slam), I would stand at the table, guard stuff and drink.
Get hit on, and those “pick up” attempts would wind up with actual engagement and conversations. It was nice, to start off as “meat”, and end up as a friend.
Jay
@Jay:
okay, swing, but that was because my Mom taught me.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I would say for a whole lot of men this is a truism. It’s changing slowly and has been for all of my life.
I’m not sure it will ever be a majority view.
StringOnAStick
@Roger Moore: Its funny, we’re a classic het couple but we are an equal partnership. No wonder my fundy S Baptist older sister has never been Ok with my husband or that we lived together for a decade before getting married. She visibly blanched when I told her we just went to the courthouse and bought a license filled it out and turned it on to be recorded. No minister/rabbi/priest/whatever involved. No MAN of GOD involved and to a Jew no less! Kinda blows up that whole “headship blessed by a religious authority” thing. Heh.
Frankensteinbeck
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
A huge factor in homophobia is fear of violence from other men if they suspect you have any homosexual leanings. It really screws men up.
KrackenJack
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Likewise for racists. The the fear that minorities are just as bad as they are is a core part of their worldview.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dan B:
One of my favorite parts of the movie Pride (about gay and lesbian support for the miners’ strike in 1984 Britain) was a Welsh housewife ask a gay couple “Which one of you…” and you could see them brace for it “…does the washing up?”
scav
See no reason for us as a society to fight free of the expectations (a subset of bossy) men place upon women’s allowable place/definition/role only to instantly cede control of same to (a subset of bossy) women.
RaflW
@Dan B: “Who’s the man?”
In terms of the dishwasher, I am. My partner loads it, and I groan and pantomime resentment at unloading it.
Cooking? My partner is the man. He didn’t starve to death before we met, but after 17 years together he still struggles to fry an egg. I cook from scratch 5-7 nights a week, and make a hot breakfast 6-7 mornings a week. (Happily, most of the time!)
Cars? I’m more the dude.
And so on.
This idea that only opposite plumbing can have “complementarity” in a relationship is just fundamentalist/patriarchal hoohey.
eta: LOL also what @Omnes Omnibus said. (That’s a great movie, too. So glad it was prominently featured on a Delta flight of mine months ago, or I might have missed it.)
Sister Golden Bear
Unfortunately late to this thread, but I wanted to thank Anne for posting about this, and thank others for your support.
I didn’t post about it last week thanks to not having power, but sadly things are getting even worse.
GQPers are now saying the not-so-quiet parts even louder. Daily Wire host Michael Knowles calls for states to “ban transgenderism entirely” in a rant that also attacks gay rights and marriage equality. When you call for the banning of people, the logical conclusion of that is genocide.
The AP catches on about how the rhetoric and invasive questions of anti-trans lawmakers is designed to humiliate. It’s meant to discourage trans people and our families from speaking up for our own rights. Trans people face ‘horrifying’ rhetoric at statehouses.
Tennessee is about to ban drag, in a law that’s so intentionally vague that I could be arrested just for singing or telling a joke. I wish I was kidding. I have few doubts that it will be used to persecute, and shut down, Pride events.
The good news, is another victor in Wyoming of all places, where a “Don’t Say Gay Or Trans” bill, just died. This article explains really well how they are doing it in Wyoming.
In West Virginia a MMA coach and fighters are offering security for a drag brunch. The show had been cancelled after threats were sent to both performers and patrons.
And if you want to support some trans Girl Scouts, here’s a list of those selling cookies (via Twitter). BTW, the Girl Scouts have been supportive of trans girls for years.
Darkrose
@Dan B: So many props to you! I was pretty sniffly by the end; that was a hard fight. I feel like the young folks need to see this to understand where we came from, and how the fight isn’t over.