Attack in Baghdad claimed by IS

IS claims yet another bombing attack, this time in Baghdad, where 165 people (so far) have been confirmed killed in the attack that occurred on a market square:

The number of people killed in Sunday’s suicide bomb attack in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, has risen to 165, interior ministry officials say.

The government has declared three days of mourning after the huge blast, which injured 225 others.

A lorry packed with explosives was detonated in the Karrada district while families were shopping for the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

It is believed to be the deadliest single bomb attack in Iraq since 2007.

So-called Islamic State (IS) has said it carried out the suicide attack.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was greeted by angry crowds when he visited the mainly Shia Muslim area in the hours after the bombing.

…

IS, which follows its own extreme version of Sunni Islam, said in an online statement that the attack in Karrada was carried out by an Iraqi as part of “ongoing security operations”.

The US said on Sunday that the attack strengthened its resolve to support Iraqi forces in their fight against IS.

UN Iraq envoy Jan Kubis said IS militants who had “suffered defeats at the battlefront are seeking to avenge their losses by targeting vulnerable civilians”.

-Shiv

One step forward, two steps back: CBS adds trans women to MSM deferral

As part of an ongoing series investigating the research CBS claims to have in support of their new policy, you can follow the progress of my communications with related parties here (list updates with every new related post):

  1. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
  2. That’s Not The Question I Asked
  3. You’re Like, Halfway There

Canadian Blood Services has announced a new policy that will defer trans women from donating blood if they’re pre-op and sexually active with men:

But many activists are upset with the policy because it focuses on whether or not a trans person has undergone gender confirming surgery.

Goldman says the criteria will create a countrywide, streamlined mandate for all trans blood donors.

According to Canadian Blood Services, there has been an increase in potential trans donors and this prompted the organization to implement criteria for those individuals.

The policy specifically targets trans women and is similar to Canadian Blood Services’ updated guidelines for gay blood donors. On June 20, Health Canada announced that gay men would be allowed to donate blood if they had abstained from sex for at least one year.

Trans women who undergo gender confirming surgery will have to wait one year before they can donate blood. After the wait period, Canadian Blood services will also identify them by their reconfirmed gender. “If a trans woman has not had [gender confirming surgery], that person would be considered as a male having sex with a male,” Goldman said.

Canadian Blood Services says there are regulations specific to trans women because that demographic is at high risk for HIV.

According to the Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development, an estimated 27.7 per cent of trans women in Canada are living with HIV.

“There is a very high HIV prevalence rate in trans women,” Goldman said. “So we are obliged to treat (them) as a high risk group.”

There seems to be a taken assumption made by Dr. Goldman that post-operative trans women are less likely to contract HIV than pre-operative. Now as a demographic the stats hint that we do experience higher rates of HIV, but the exact extent to which this is a problem is difficult to pin down with existing data for reasons I’ll get to in a minute. And I suspect the elevated rates of HIV in our community have far more to do with socioeconomic discrimination than our genitals. So what does the Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development even say?

Let’s find out: (emphasis mine, plus I’ve added paragraph breaks to make it more readable)

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3 ways to celebrate Canada Day properly

Canadians take their national birthday very seriously, and being clocked as a foreigner can be dangerous. If you happen to be an expat living in Canada, follow these simple steps to ensure you celebrate your Canada Day properly in order to avoid the mild-mannered scorn of Canucks.

  1. Order poutine:  Ensure your poutine has been made with cheese curds. If it’s made with shredded cheese, send it back. Ensure your poutine’s gravy is hot enough to melt the cheese curds, if it’s not, send it back. Ensure your poutine is made with proper thick chip fries and not slim snaky fast food tries, if it isn’t, send it back. Make it clear you’re disappointed with the establishment, but remember to say “please” and “thank you.” Bonus points if you can get the waiter to make a “sorry mom” face. Acceptable variants from standard poutine include vegetarian gravy or a combination with a cultural dish (i.e. butter chicken poutine)–we are multicultural after all.
  2. Wear plaid: You don’t want to be mistaken for an American.
  3. Drink beer: Literally anything but American beer.

Common punishments for violating these screeds include: 1) Disappointed head-shaking; 2) Well-intended lectures; 3) Strongly worded letters; and 4) Issuing apologies to other Canadians on your behalf in order to shame you.

Additional regional customs might modify expectations for Canada Day:

  • Speak French. Anglophones are not well received in certain parts of the country.
  • Speak English. Francophones are not well received in certain parts of the country.
  • Mock America.
  • Praise the Queen.
  • Scorn the Queen.
  • Mistake Aussies for Brits and vice versa.
  • Mistake Parisians for Quebecois and vice versa.

All in all, issue apologies often and preemptively, and you’ll likely be accepted as a Canuck.

-Shiv

Source: Scandinavia and the World

Nazi training camp in all but name

In a feat that is truly so ignorant, so completely fucking oblivious that I have literally run out of words, Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park hosts a camp to become “a soldier in Custer’s 7th Cavalry.” Don’t recognise the reference? Here you go:

On November 27th, 1868, Custer led an early morning attack on a peaceful band of Cheyenne living with Chief Black Kettle near the Washita River. Custer, who had previously been convicted of desertion and mistreatment of soldiers, had recently been reinstated by Gen Sheridan to lead a campaign against the Cheyenne. Sheridan was frustrated by the inability of previous officers’ efforts to engage successfully against tribes and felt Custer would help lead successful campaigns.

Prior to the attack, Custer refused to confirm the band of Cheyenne over looking that this band under Chief Black Kettle were a peaceful band and flew a white flag of truce in the middle of the camp. Just four years earlier, Black Kettle had survived another surprise attack at the Sand Creek massacre.

Custer’s surprise attack happened at dawn. He ordered his men to destroy “everything of value to the Indians,” and in a few hours over 100 Cheyenne’s had been killed including Black Kettle, his wife, and over 800 horses. Custer also took over 50 women and children into captivity.

While originally labelled as a “Battle” the slaughter at Washita River was later called a “massacre of innocent Indians” by the Indian Bureau.

Custer would later lead a gold finding expedition into the Black Hills in direct violation of the 1868 Ft. Laramie treaty. Later, Custer who once declared “There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the 7th Calvary” would meet his fate at the Battle of the Greasy Grass (the Battle of the Little Big Horn) by an alliance of Lakota, Dakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors. The battle would go down as the worst military defeat in US military history.

In 1890, a blood thirsty and revenge driven 7th Calvary rounded up a peaceful band of Lakota, primarily Ghost Dancers, under Chief Big Foot and slaughtered over 300 women, men, and children known as the Wounded Knee massacre.

I’m sure at least some of the parents enrolling their kids in this camp have no idea what Custer or the 7th Cavalry means, but that just makes matters worse.

You’re sending your kids to celebrate a mass murderer. That doesn’t suddenly become okay because the victims were indigenous, for fuck sake.

Caine’s piece is longer and more thorough. I just see this and go, “I can’t even.” Why are white people so fucking dumb? (Yeah yeah, I know. Privilege. But why?)

-Shiv

Happy Canuckistan Day

It’s Canada’s birthday, I guess.

Proud to be… humble…?

Canadian nationalism is weird.

-Shiv

 

I also posted this video before, but it’s too Canadian not to repeat:

#HeterosexualPrideDay, #MissingThePoint

The straights are at it again, with #HeterosexualPrideDay trending on Facebook and Twatter:

The social media universe is buzzing with the recent pronouncement, and as you’d expect, it’s inspired a sea of vehemently passionate responses.

Unlike LGBT Pride Month, which President Barack Obama publicly proclaimed official earlier this year, this one appears to have originated as a case of irony from Twitter user @_JackNForTweets a couple of weeks ago.

I, too, would like to celebrate the victories for straights, and the rights they have recently attained. I found this map, detailing in which countries heterosexuality is criminalized (red), in which countries it’s still legal to put straights in aversion torture (orange), in which countries straights can’t marry (blue), in which countries straights are executed for being straight (dark red). Countries in white have full heterosexual equality under the law:

 

Devastating. Truly, devastating.

-Shiv

She’s still a rich Republican

Caitlyn Jenner has said and done no shortage of odious things in defence of the Republican party, but now is an excellent time to remind everyone that her transition is not one of them. In this latest spat, Jenner asserts that Trump would be “good for women and the LGBT community:”

“I’m on the conservative Republican side. I’m not excited with what Obama has done to the economy, to our Constitution, all that kind of stuff. But as far as the transgender community, they’ve actually been very good,” Caitlyn told Stat. “Everybody looks at the Democrats as being better with these issues. But Trump seems to be very much for women. He seems very much behind the LGBT community because of what happened in North Carolina with the bathroom issue. He backed the LGBT community. But in Trump’s case, there’s a lot more unknowns. With Hillary, you pretty much know what you’re gonna get with the LGBT community.”

I’ll make my point short and simple:

I’m not excited with what Obama has done to the economy, to our Constitution, all that kind of stuff.

You’re not excited that Title IX was extended to trans folk? Okay then…

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What trans people mean when we say “misgendering is violence”

Content Notice: Dissecting hate speech, TERFs and transphobia

I’d like to introduce you to a concept, of which there seem to be multiple sources or authors. It’s often called The Violence Pyramid, or another derivative thereof. As would be suggested by the notion of a pyramid, each level facilitates movement to the one above it, the same way one builds a pyramid. In this case, reaching the top is not desirable.

Source: cindywatt

Also from cindywatt:

Psychotherapist Howard Halpern, in a brilliant New York Times piece in 1995, gave a spot on summation of gradual escalation of hate and violence.  He said, “ Social psychologists and demagogues have long known that if ordinary citizens are to be provoked to violent actions against individuals or groups of fellow citizens, it is necessary to sever the empathic bond with those to be attacked by painting them as different and despicable.   We are unlikely to harm a friendly neighbor because she has strong views about equal rights for women, but if we call her a “femi-Nazi,” she becomes “the other” — evil, dangerous, hated.  We are unlikely to harm the couple down the block who are active on behalf of protecting endangered species, but if we call them “environmental whackos,” they become “the other” — weirdos who must be vilified and suppressed as enemies to “normal” Americans. When our shared humanity with those with whom we disagree is stripped away, it becomes acceptable to blow them up. The answer is certainly not to censor such speech, but those who recognize this danger must challenge it wherever it exists, even in those with whom we politically agree.” 

Not to pull a Godwin, but the above proposed pyramid is practically a timeline for Hitler’s rise to power. He unified a particular demographic of Germans and whipped them into a froth over how unfairly they were treated, then he tapped into a pre-existing prejudice (antisemitism) and over the course of his election, and after it, gradually escalated his chosen boogeyman until at least some Germans–enough Germans–felt justified in state-sponsored violence against Jews.

When I react strongly to misgendering, this pyramid is what comes to mind. The bottom stripe mentions “insensitive remarks and non-inclusive language.” I have to wonder: This person is already denying me a critically important aspect of my identity–is there anything else they will take hostage?

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No space for trans folk in trans spaces

Content Notice: Angry use of t-word slur.

I get that Reddit is something of a pseudo-anarchist website in the sense that various subreddits are subject to little outside policing, but that doesn’t mean it is unique in this particular issue: One of the types of people attending trans spaces are “allies” who are desperately scrambling for answers and justification for leaving relationships of partners who have decided to transition.

There’s a reason I place so much value in good-and-proper “NO CIS PEOPLE” spaces. Few and far between, these “allies” are a giant pain in the ass when they enter the “all are welcome” trans spaces. Pro tip: If all are welcome, it ain’t a trans space.

Cis dude posts a story about his wife coming out as a trans man. The “coming out” process was almost two years prior to writing the post–referring to his now-husband as a wife is pretty fucking insulting after that amount of time. A couple months and he’d receive some gentle correction from me. A couple years? Get with the program buddy. But cis dude wants assurances that he’s not transphobic for losing attraction to his spouse.

Well, if all cis dude did was say, “my wife is now my husband and I’m straight, am I transphobic to break off the marriage?” the answer would be no. But he got called out for referring to his spouse as his wife after two frackin’ years into his transition. It just did not register to him that he was belittling his husband’s identity–cis dude’s straightness took priority. Wife this, wife that. Female this, female that. I’m straight. No really, I’m straight straight straight.

Cis dude is promptly called out for it.

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