Never go full TERF. Here’s another Trumpian declaration:
(a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity
(b) *Women” or “woman” and *girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively
(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.
(d) ‘Female’ means a person belonging) at conception;to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception; to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.
I disagree, though. He’s not declaring all Americans female; he’s instead declaring that we’re all trans, because we changed from an undifferentiated state to whatever sex we’re assigned at birth. Unfortunately, his argument is built on a falsehood, because obviously sex is not immutable, it changes during fetal development, and we get another major shift at puberty (why do all the TERFs ignore puberty? It’s right there in our faces, everyone goes through it, and we definitely change at the cellular and gross morphological level). We can also trigger profound changes with hormones, and more subtly, brains can have properties of either, both, or no sex. You cannot reduce complex human identities to a single cell type produced by a single organ, although these regressive dimwits will try desperately.
Do I need to mention that you are not producing any reproductive cell, small or large, at conception?
“Fetal sex doesn’t start to differentiate until 7 weeks into gestation.”
This is the point were some asshole swoops in to give us the usual 7th grade biology spiel about XX and XY chromosomes.
I’ve said it before: Elect a turd, get a shitshow.
“You cannot reduce complex human identities”. Simple minds can. I understand that they’re wrong, but they don’t know that. Simple minds need simple explanations.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. – HL Mencken
Well, really this is all just for show.
Pandering to the haters that make up his base.
It costs him nothing except a few minutes and a press release.
The US president can’t arbitrarily decide everyone’s sex and gender by issuing a piece of paper.
He doesn’t have that power.
Saying something doesn’t make it true.
He could also declare that the earth is flat, it is 6,000 years old, and he has a functioning brain. None of which is true.
We are all free to just ignore him and go on with our lives.
Which is what will happen.
@ 5
He does have the power to make the lives of every trans person in America a living Hell.
raven @ 5
It erases 3 million+ people in the eyes of the government.
Probably not.
No doubt it will make Trans lives harder.
But not by a lot.
OK, people, think it through.
How many Trans people detransitioned since yesterday?
How many Trans people will detransition in the future because Trump said they don’t exist?
It is about zero here.
BTW, I’m not trying to minimize what Trans people are facing here, which is government malevolence.
A huge number of people are also on the GOP list of…Groups To Hate.
We are all hurting here.
That would include women, children, immigrants (legal, undocumented, and obtained citizenship), atheists, scientists, Progressives, nonwhites, nonxians, LBTQIA+, and I’m sure I’ve left some groups out.
I’m in several of those groups myself.
Women are already getting sick and dying in Red states from their abortion bans. And the GOP plans to make those bans nationwide.
“Make up your mind Mr.. err Mrs… err Mr Tiresias”
Why is that bad and who cares?
This isn’t my government any more except when I can’t ignore it.
The other issue here is not to comply unless you have to by threats of force.
They want you to be afraid and hide in your closet.
Don’t let them.
Don’t play their game.
I don’t think that the RF part of TERF applies.
raven, I feel like maybe you need to read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_…
When some says “men” I have long noted that if it’s something desirable, the word includes only male people, but if it’s a burden, it also includes women. Trump has now clarified that it never includes women. A few decades ago there was a flurry of changing statutes to be inclusive, but I’m sure there are still plenty of references that will now cover only males.
https://theappeal.org/trump-executive-order-trans-prisoners/
The genocide has already kicked up a notch. He needs to be stopped, and if the government and laws aren’t going to do anything about it, then it has to be done through direct action. I’m tired of reading through comments of people yelling at each other about how the election went and how if only the Democratic party wasn’t beholden to capitalism or millions of people all did things differently or other counterfactuals, you need to recognize that despite these authoritarian systems that give massive amounts of power to a handful of people, they are still human beings and there exist rather effective ways to stop them. That needs to be considered, I refuse to let me and my loved ones die in a fucking genocide because so many of you worship the law (which is seeped in the blood of slavery, genocide, patriarchy, and white supremacy) like the bible and think that allowing entire classes of people to be marginalized, tortured, and killed based on their gender or skin color or whatever bs is preferable to physical resistance against these fuckers
So, the magat’s words are: ““Male” means a person belonging, at conception; to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell”
However, at conception, we are an undifferentiated clump of cells, belonging to NEITHER SEX. And, as PZ clearly states, you are “not producing any reproductive cell, small or large, at conception?”
Therefore, I am not male, there is no reason I can’t go to the Dept of Motor Vehicles and demand, in the name of the magat’s mandate, that they remove any indicator of me being male (or) female!
raven @ 10
“The other issue here is not to comply unless you have to by threats of force.”
Fuck complying even with threats of force. What kind of fucking “allies” fold and give up trans lives to these fascists? I need you all to understand that if there’s no solidarity and resistance, we are dead.
Hex, No. 14, what exactly are you proposing? Assassination? Acts of terror? Blowing up churches? What?
You’re forgetting that part of the reason Trump won is that a lot of Americans never were on board with trans rights in the first place. There is hard polling data showing that Harris lost enough votes over her support for trans rights as to make a difference in at least three swing states. Trump and the GOP are the symptoms; the underlying disease is the attitudes of the American people themselves. Until that changes, the type of violent direct action you’re implying is more likely to create a backlash than it is to do any real good. Remember Audrey Hale, the trans activist who shot six people at a Christian school in Tennessee? The Tennessee Legislature explicitly cited her as an example of why people need to be protected from the trans community, and promptly passed more anti-trans legislation.
As I’ve said before, American politics works the way it actually works, and not the way we wish it worked. You’re going to have to work on changing hearts and minds first. And candidly, your rhetoric doesn’t help.
There is hard polling data showing that Harris lost enough votes over her support for trans rights as to make a difference in at least three swing states.
Show me this “hard polling data”. Her campaign barely did ANYTHING to combat the GOP’s relentless attacks.
And the idea that trans people are a losing cause, we have to be sacrificed because too many people hate us… fuck you, you piece of shit
“Candidly, your rhetoric doesn’t help”
My entire community is under the boot of genocide and we have been begging people to take notice. It’s beyond the point where anything can be changed without direct action
Would any of you have said anything like this to Jewish people during the rise of Nazi Germany with the hindsight of what happened? Why the fuck do you think it’s acceptable to say this to trans people now??? You either don’t take us seriously or are straight up transphobic.
“ Remember Audrey Hale, the trans activist who shot six people at a Christian school in Tennessee?”
AIDEN Hale was a trans man, who had no history of activism. You are a fucking vile piece of shit
“ The Tennessee Legislature explicitly cited her as an example of why people need to be protected from the trans community, and promptly passed more anti-trans legislation.”
THEY WERE ALREADY PASSING ANTITRANS LEGISLATION!!!! THEY DECIDED TO USE IT AS AN EXCUSE IN BILLS THEY WERE ALREADY PUSHING THROUGH. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU ARE DENSE.
I am begging cis people to just shut the fuck up about how trans people should handle our own oppression, especially if you’re not even going to bother to gender people correctly
Hex, that’s an example of the kind of unhelpful rhetoric I’m talking about. Genocide is what’s happening in Gaza. Genocide is what happened in Rwanda. Genocide is what was done to the Indians.
Declaring that there are only two genders, while idiotic and deplorable, is not genocide.
And driving away people who are on your side won’t help either. I want the Democrats in power for lots of reasons, one of them is that I support trans rights. Pointing out that your proposed strategy, and over the top rhetoric, is detrimental to that goal isn’t being transphobic; it’s being realistic.
But fine, just keep talking, and keep losing elections, if it makes you feel better. Kinda like the people who feel righteous because they didn’t vote for Harris since she wasn’t progressive enough, with the result that we now have Trump. It’s the same dynamic exactly.
And the fact that I may have been mistaken as to someone’s gender doesn’t make me a piece of shit; it means I may have made a mistake. But like I said, just keep talking, and just keep losing elections if it makes you feel better.
Shinzo Abe
Brian Thompson
The idea that there will always be a huge backlash is garbage. For one, THEY ARE ALREADY KILLING US AND ONLY RAMPING THINGS UP. Trump is one of the most hated men on the planet. In order for there to be a backlash there has to be enough people willing to go along with it. A lot of people would be afraid to—why risk their lives for their asshole bosses? A lot of people simply won’t, a lot would be really freaking happy
If you don’t think that what is happening to trans people right now is genocide, fuck you from the absolute bottom of my heart, you absolute piece of shit.
“ Declaring that there are only two genders, while idiotic and deplorable, is not genocide.”
THEY ARE DOING MORE THAN JUST THAT YOU IGNORANT ASSHOLE. DID YOU EVEN GLANCE AT THE LINK I POSTED IN THE FIRST POST??? I CAN BE JAILED IN SEVERAL STATES ALREADY BECAUSE OF MY ID AND IF I USE THE RESTROOM. OVER A DOZEN PEOPLE IN MY COMMUNITY HAVE KILLED THEMSELVES OVER THE LAST SEVERAL DUE TO ANTITRANS POLICIES. YOU AREN’T FUCKING PAYING ATTENTION, YOU AREN’T FUCKING LISTENING, AND YOU HAVE THE FUCKING GALL TO ACT LIKE YOU KNOW BETTER THAN US. THAT IS WHY YOU ARE A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT
Genocide fits with what society does to trans people. I still see genocide as a process and just because it isn’t finished…
Transphobes think trans people need to be medicated or therapied into non-existance at best. They want them gone from society. Their existence is a threat to how they see things. They want the knowledge about them gone, they want them gone. I see little problem in seeing that as on the genocide scale. Minimizing the bigotry and where it goes by hand-wringing about the use of the word makes no sense to me.
raven @8: Trans people who get their treatment via federal government programs (medicaid, VA, medicare) just lost access to treatment.
Not about chromosomes, but it is reassuring if Trump’s flunkies are this stupid. Maybe not everything is lost.
“Trump’s New Press Secretary Gets To Work Lying About First Day In Office”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=dtf9acLXdhw
Brony, No.28:
I don’t dispute that what we are seeing now may be a step in the direction of genocide. But the problem with using an emotionally-charged word like genocide where it doesn’t really apply — at least not yet — is that it then offers the other side a distraction. Rather than have a conversation about the genuine injustices being done to trans people, we’re now going to have a conversation about “oh, those crazy trans people think that it’s genocide to have to put their birth sex on their driver’s license, and why should anyone pay attention to people that silly”. The attention now focuses, in other words, on the meaning of genocide rather than the injustice of misgendering people. And no matter how much screaming Hex does, they’re not going to convince anyone not already convinced that that’s genocide; they might, with better arguments, convince people that driver’s licenses shouldn’t be misgendered.
And at the end of the day this is about tactics, not substance. On the substance, I suspect Hex and I would probably agree on most trans policy issues. I just don’t think we’re going to get there by pissing off the people whose support we are going to need. We just lost a pretty important battle. There will be others in the future. I would hope Hex and others like them wouldn’t poison future opportunities by encouraging violence and engaging in over the top rhetoric.
If direct action worked, then the US would have changed its policies in the Middle East after 9/11. 9/11 is just about the biggest example of forcible resistance ever seen. And all it succeeded in doing was unifying the country behind George Bush and the wars that followed.
Biology as defined by executive order is quite an overreach. Where are all the libertarian dude-bros screaming about the government infringing civil liberties, their precious free speech, and gun rights. Civil rights are still enshrined in the constitution regardless. It sucks that we have to repeat the chaos of thrumpelstiltskin 2.0, and that the magats have declared Trans people their official sacrificial lambs.
@Hex
I am deeply sorry for your losses. Please take care of yourself in this difficult situation. Not everyone is a raging transphobic bigot, and though it’s cold comfort, this too shall pass. Sometimes the best strategy in the court of public opinion is to passive-aggressively give the fascists just enough rope to hang themselves up.
@freeline
The word applies. You didn’t even try to show I was wrong. You just wrung your metaphorical hands about tactics.
This is about transphobia. I’m not going on a tangent about another in progress genocide. You’re just going to have to be happy with me calling things what they are.
I reject your concerns. And the stuff about direct action too. You can plop that right into the subject at hand. Nothing concrete from you on tactics. Just don’t do what I’m going to do without a shred of work from you. Do work or fuck off. Your response will show you political value as an individual.
Also with the tourette’s syndrome I’m all about strong words and thinking about them. I like them. Why should I avoid them? I’ve got a piece of this conflict too.
Not to mention being gender null. Transphobia is genocidal.
Brony, you’re wrong because genocide has a specific meaning. Doing all you can to pretend that someone doesn’t exist isn’t the same as actually killing them. It’s the functional equivalent of calling someone a nazi because they oppose affirmative action. And it just doesn’t win converts.
As to rejecting my concerns, like I said to Hex, you just keep talking and you just keep losing elections. When your strategy keeps getting the GOP returned to power year after year, it won’t be my fault.
PS — You don’t know what work I’m doing. And I’ve already said what I think needs to be done in terms of tactics: Work on winning hearts and minds. That’s the only way you’re ever going to succeed.
I can guess what work you’re doing here: urging everyone to compromise the civil rights of individual human beings so we can elect more people who are willing to similarly compromise.
I think we have to draw a hard, fast line and demand that people do better than they have in the past (and present, for that matter.)
@freeline
Look at that, no work again.
Fortunately this as about me using the words I think are appropriate.
You can keep making shit up about elections without a shred of concrete work. I’ll keep calling transphobia genocidal. I won’t wait for the past tense object to be necessary.
A perfectly natural part of what we are, gone. They’ll keep popping up in future generations too. That doesn’t make the effort to make it go away any less genocidal. I can keep finding new ways to refer to to the intentions and actions of transphobes as an in progress genocide.
@freeline
Why would I care what work you are doing when I’m mentioning the work you aren’t? You make no sense and would be useless as a political ally to me. Your work implications are rejected too.
@freeline
“Doing all you can to pretend that someone doesn’t exist isn’t the same as actually killing them.”
Telling lies about what’s going on too. As if pretending is all they’re doing. They are out there actively suppressing trans people, very often violently. They want the medicine gone, the health care, the books and education, the research, they want them out of public. Stop being a lazy hand wringer.
PZ: I fully support trans rights. I do not, however, believe that any one group — including the ones I belong to — is entitled to adopt tactics that jeopardize the rights of everyone else. Electing Republicans means that not only will there be no trans rights, but there will also be no racial justice, no women’s rights, no gay rights, no rights in fact for anyone not a white Christian cis heterosexual male. And that’s even before we get to all the damage they are doing in terms of climate change and trashing the Bill of Rights. If the only people being affected by this were trans, I would probably feel differently, but this impacts everyone. And that’s the bottom line. Better to get some of what we want than none of what we want. It’s the way politics works; if you’re going to demand all or nothing you usually get nothing.
Brony, it’s a free country, so you’re free to use whatever words you like. You can define “cigar” as “a pig with wings” if you want. Just don’t expect to be taken seriously if you do.
Brony, did I say that doing all you can to pretend trans people don’t exist is all they are doing? No, I did not.
So why should I take you seriously when you can’t even honestly represent what I actually said and insist on putting words in my mouth?
a reminder of some history might clarify how fascist government oppression of transgender people has escalated into genocide in the past.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft
It would be easier if transphobes were just pretending trans people weren’t there. That’s totally passive. A bunch of them are claiming teaching about trans people and allowing transitioning is grooming. Others straight up call trans people and their supporters pedophiles because they have nothing else.
That’s meant to trigger violent rage in addition to other things. Absolutely transphobia is genocidal. They’re working themselves into all kinds of awful emotional states over this. But to freeline it’s only worth emphasizing pretending. Gross and pathetic.
You don’t have to take me seriously freeline. I’l just do what I do if you do or don’t. Like draw more connections justifying referring to transphobia as genocidal.
“And that’s the bottom line. Better to get some of what we want than none of what we want. It’s the way politics works; if you’re going to demand all or nothing you usually get nothing.”
Ambit claims are a thing, even in politics.
So glad freeline and people like him will be there to the equivalent of land acknowledgements 30 years from now about yrans lives after we are all dead. The important thing is that we don’t make people like freeline uncomfortable or anxious as we are systematically eliminated. I say systematically eliminated because if you look up genocide in the Webster dictionary it has specific meanings that must be met for a mass elimination of a class of people to count. After all civility and process are important and outcomes are largely irrelevant because we can always just day sorry after the fact. You liberal lefties just need to understand reality and get as big a smart brain as me and freeline that way you can understand these nuanced and complex issues that I totally understand with my big meat brain. I am very smart like freeline.
Dudes literally saying that some people need to be fed into the wood chipper for the greater good. “If the only people being affected by this were trans, I would probably feel differently, but this impacts everyone. And that’s the bottom line. Better to get some of what we want than none of what we want. It’s the way politics works; if you’re going to demand all or nothing you usually get nothing.”
Just drop the pretense and put on the maga hat dude. You are not “smart” or “proctical” you are a liberal dipshit who doesn’t understand how politics works at all. Politics works by building a community of trust and bringing people togeather. What you ate proposing literally shatters that and WEAKENS you politically. Also the childish take that you “take what crumbs you get” more liberal defeatist claptrap. You grab for everything because victory leads to victory. Do you think ANYTHING the republicans want is popular?? I don’t even know how to deal with liberals anymore.
Also parading around what I am sure is cooked data that the transes lost you your precious election; despite the fact that all the data heretofore has shown that transphobia is a LOSING strategy. No the democrats definitely lost because the transes and not because they were complicit in a genocide and had previously failed to do basically ANY of the structural progressive things they promised. It definitely wasn’t Harris running a wildly rightwing campaign where she fetted the fucking Cheneys. No it was definitely the gross transes. Sure pal it was our ffaul6 yall lost 9 million votes and the least electable republican gained 3 million. And it will definitely be the lefts fault that you lose future elections because we weren’t polite enough as we were exterminated. Just go be a republican my guy, it sounds like you will be a lot happier just lobotomizing yourself of your cocience and doing all the horrible shit you wana do without feeling bad.
The issue is not what makes me comfortable. The issue is what wins elections. Distilled to its essence, my political philosophy is as follows: The GOP is so evil that defeating them is all that counts.
And are you guys even listening to yourselves? All I’ve said is tone down the rhetoric. I haven’t advocated that the Democrats abandon trans people; just that trans people should turn down the volume because grandiose claims about genocide and it’s time for violence are counter productive. And that somehow makes me a vile transphobe.
At the moment, a majority of American voters are not on board with trans rights. That’s not an argument to abandon trans rights; it’s an argument to be a lot more judicious in how the issue is approached. Because there are an awful lot of Democrats who don’t care about trans rights, and who happily will abandon trans issues, if they become convinced that trans rights is a millstone around their necks that is keeping them out of power.
OK, I’ve said all I have to say on the subject. You want to keep up with irresponsible public statements, knock yourselves out. Don’t be surprised if 2026 looks an awful lot like 2024, though.
Crimsonsage, No 48, look at the actual exit polls. In addition to the trans issue, Harris also lost because a lot of people thought she wasn’t sufficiently pro-Israel. Or pro-police. Or anti-immigrant. Consistently, and across the board, all the exit polls showed that this year, progressive issues were losing issues.
I don’t like it either, but that’s where the country is right now. And you don’t need to take my word for it, look at the polls yourself.
freeline, I’ve been around here long enough to have heard from a lot of trans people, some of them activists. And I too mean well, but I don’t really want to weigh in when they are speaking about their lives.
“And are you guys even listening to yourselves? All I’ve said is tone down the rhetoric. I haven’t advocated that the Democrats abandon trans people; just that trans people should turn down the volume because grandiose claims about genocide and it’s time for violence are counter productive. And that somehow makes me a vile transphobe.”
The vibe I’m getting is that you are not listening to them when forming your opinion.
Given they are the actual subjects of this incoming anti-trans legislation and politics, it might be worthwhile to at least acknowledge their exasperation with your “tone it down” patronisation.
Also, consider that this is one of the very few general blogs actively friendly to trans people.
Sometimes, even the sanest of people need to vent somewhere, and to be heard.
[justified existential dread cannot be nice]
I think the loss was mostly economic. These polls only show voters saying something to justify their vote knowing that Trump was the objectively worse person. It’s hard to believe that enough voters who are pro-cop genuinely believed that a felon was better than a prosecutor and attorney with experience in law enforcement for example. Those people are making up their excuses. They only cared about their wallets and nothing more. Plus progressive policies are more popular than conservative ones (all the measures that overwhelmingly passed for abortion and worker rights even in red states). Voters didn’t like Trump per the same polls but they want money so voted. It’s a stupid thing that they voted that way even if I understand the reason why. Low information voters (global inflation, Biden stepping aside too late, low Dem turnout, etc) are really the reason why this happened. Throwing people under the bus isn’t productive. It was a swing year. Politics are like this. Just wished that Trump wasn’t the one to benefit from such a cycle.
Hex, crimsonsage, et al – Do you think the (alleged) direct action of Luigi Mangione ultimately aided the “Medicare for All” or related movements in the US?
Did the guy who shot Steve Scalise help the Democratic Party win any elections?
How about that bozo who wounded the security guard at Family Research Council – did he advance LGBTQ+ rights?
Think about consequences, not just emotional catharsis.
@Pierce R. Butler 54
What’s that got to do with the damage being done by transphobia? You’re cherry picking to me. Giving attitude in the moment can be direct action.
That big paranoid focus on trans people would shift back to gay people if they weren’t there. It’s a group level moral panic and direct action should be at every social level because the general bigoted behavior needs opposed. People will keep doing what they are doing without pushback/direct action.
Freeline, #49:
Freeline, with respect, no. That is not “all that counts”. And “tone down the rhetoric” is not all that you’ve said. To wit:
You have literally argued here that people don’t have the right to choose their own tactics if — in someone’s view, hard to tell whose if it’s not yours — those tactics “jeopardize the rights” of others. In context, I believe that the “jeopardy” you’re discussing is the risk of electing Republicans (whom you’ve said in the first quote are so “evil” that nothing matters but defeating them at the ballot box).
With all due respect — which isn’t much — the sum of your argument is that trans people have lost the right to use the word “genocide” because, in your opinion, it isn’t effective plus, also, too, even nominal support of trans people lost the election for Harris.
This is, of course, problematic for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is that Harris didn’t argue that the GOP has initiated a genocide and she still lost. If people “don’t have the right” to employ tactics that cost elections, the word genocide should be irrelevant. It clearly wasn’t the word genocide that cost Harris.
Moreover, while you haven’t done anything to prove that Harris’ support for trans lives cost the election, assuming for the moment, for the purposes of this argument only, that you’re correct when you say that all progressive issues cost Harris the election, then your argument that people “don’t have the right” to argue in ways or for positions that “risk” the election of Republicans would logically entail that there can be no progressive argument at all. Even your own admission that you support trans people in substance can be used by the GOP.
After all, Harris’ support for prisoners’ trans health care went no further than courts had determined the constitution required and the GOP made negative ads about that. You go further. You articulate here that you support more than just what the constitution has already been said by courts to require. Why doesn’t your, “Shut up because I said so,” argument apply to you, risking elections in the same thread?
The GOP has already said that it is their intent and their mission to erase all trace of transness from public life. There is no way to accomplish that without constituting a genocide. Some people here are going to call that out as genocide because it is. Some people won’t like the word. But fortunately, despite your best efforts, we are still allowed to disagree on tactics.
Moreover, as I have written elsewhere, frequently and at length, the insiders trying to reasonably compromise depend on the outsider agitators for their leverage. The outsiders depend on the insiders to write concrete changes into policy and law.
If you had half the brains you think you do, you wouldn’t try to shut down the outsiders. You’d tape record us/them and take them into your happyhappy compromise meeting and play it for the folks across the table. “Do you want to deal with reasonable me? Or should I throw you to the wolves? You hear what these people are like!” should be your opening gambit. You should revel in the passion and energy and rhetoric of the outsiders, because that’s what makes you powerful behind closed doors. Being reasonable isn’t the same as being logical. Becoming reasonable is something you achieve by comparison to something else. Eating a whole bowl of popcorn yourself isn’t unreasonable until someone compares the size of the bowl with something else. If outsiders weren’t being unreasonable, then you, with your milquetoast, “I support trans folks in substance but I would never argue for trans rights if it has the power to change an election result,” would be the extreme end of the trans rights argument. You’d be kicked out of power and entirely ineffectual.
Extreme fringes, despite your protests, win power for the less extreme.
And you know how I know that? Because the people you say you oppose did exactly that. They stoked an energetic extreme right and used it for money, for volunteer labor, for opportunities to shift the Overton window. And look where we are?
Freeline, you’re not only wrong. You’re not only bizarrely autocratic in your insistence that other people must lose the right to choose their own tactics if you think they won’t win. You’re also just not fucking paying attention to what the hell has happened over the past 30 years and how much you need others.
For the love the Flying Spaghetti Monster, stop selling death sticks and go home to rethink your life.
Backlash is going to happen when any oppressed group works to change the status quo.
Arguing about degrees of oppression isn’t particularly useful. Engaging in some hyperbolic venting when you are in fact being attacked by your government is not unreasonable.
The fascists have not escalated to cleansing the populace of undesirables, so while angst is justified, I don’t think screaming at allies about genocide is going to change the actual problem of fascists in the WH.
@54 I have no idea what that even means? If you mean advancing the public opinion of nationalized healthcare? Probably a net neutra effect in the long term because the fact is that public opinion is already wildly in favor of it. The question that needs to be asked is why does a “democracy” not represent the will of the demos?Direct action doesnt mean assassination, it means any act that directly strikes at the functioning of society to drive change. A strike is direct action, s protest is direct action. Also you should probably drop the condescension because you aren’t some superior adult in the room.
See freeline is like most Democrats, he can’t accept that he lost so he needs to blame the powerless for his failure. He has no real data to back that up aside from what I am sure tnyt or some other right wing source gave him, so he just blames the transes you know that superpowerful group that can control all the leavers of government with their posting skills. So if he can just get us to stop posting bad on a blog then all the big brained smart liberals can get on with the adult business of winning elections. That way they can not do all the good things they promised and then eat shit again when a clown nazi in a big bird outfit runs against them.
Also keep in mind it is now effectively illegal to be trans in huge swathes of the country. Before you respond with tit tuts close you eyes and really imagine that. You can’t work, you can’t safely use public spaces, you can’t even fucking pee. Imagine if every time you were pulled over you had to show a liscence that outed you as an acceptable target of state violence for any cop with too much Facebook brain poising. I really have no patience for people saying this isn’t that bad its shows they have never had to sit quaking in fear that this might be the moment when some pig with a god complex is gonna end one trannyfreak. Like we use the term genocide because WE ARE BEING KILLED. You just choose not to notice so that again 30 years from now you can pretend to have cared.
Agreeing with Crip Dyke — MLK Jr. could not have accomplished what he did without being able to point to Malcolm X and say “Either you deal with me, or you’ll have to deal with him“.
Addressing a few more points: the Tennessee shooting and 9/11 do not prove that “direct action doesn’t work”, it proves that terror attacks on innocent civilians don’t work (not for the left, anyway). If the 9/11 attackers had hit only the Pentagon and left the towers alone things might be enormously different now, same if the Tennessee shooter had gone after the Tennessee Republican state legislators rather than a bunch of innocent schoolkids. If they’d held giant, traffic-gridlocking marches waving placards and refused to work for a whole it might have been even better.
What very definitely doesn’t work is respectability politics, which is exactly what “freeline” seems to be advocating (or perhaps even trying somehow to mandate, despite a lack of authority to do so).
And then there’s this:
Hitler getting up on a podium and declaring that Jews were vermin also was not, in and of itself, genocide. If you’re unsure about what happened after he did that, there are numerous books on history that I could refer you to. It’s less certain what would have happened had someone responded to that speech by drawing a weapon and shooting Hitler in the head, but it’s hardly likely to have been worse than what happened when no-one did …
Fact is, I’m with Hex on at least this much:
The window of opportunity for this to be nipped in the bud by methods that stayed within the law has closed. Probably had closed even before 2016, to judge by how Trump was treated as effectively above the law even before the SCOTUS immunity bullshit. Thanks to Reagan’s gutting of antitrust, banking regulation, and media concentration regulation, key institutions had been captured by oligarchs already by then. Arguably, there was no longer any legal avenue to stopping this shit as soon as the ink was dry on Citizens United, or perhaps even Reagan’s taking of the oath of office in 1981. The window was certainly closed as of Nov. 6, 2024. The previous day was the real “Flight 93 election”, and the passengers miserably failed to divert its course. Now our options are much grimmer.
Germany in 1933 faced a choice: civil war or let Hitler be in charge. In hindsight, they clearly chose wrong. I fear the same juncture has now been reached for America: what it will take to oust Trump, destroy the Republican Party root and branch, and restore some semblance of small-r republican rule will probably be, or cause, a civil war.
Best start getting prepared to fight it, future Union soldiers. The Confederacy is already heavily armed and spoiling for a fight, and though a lot of them are undisciplined cowboys they will still be able to win unless you are not. You’ll also have to hope that when forced to decide most of the actual, formal military will side with you over them, and that neither side will use any of the nukes under their control. A lot of big “if”s but then there are no certainties in war, other than that of defeat if you just sit there and let the enemy roll over you. The more you prepare, the better your chances. Learn tactics, learn strategy, learn how not to be a bunch of cowboys, and get and learn a weapon. Then start throwing sand in the gears. General strikes are remarkably effective at forcing the other side to either give up or try to win through violence. And if (or rather when, remember these are Nazis) they choose the latter, use the aforementioned tactics, strategy, and weapons to make them fucking regret it.
Your other option is to watch a live reenactment of Niemoller’s lament, starring you and your friends and loved ones in such heroically memorable roles as Concentration Camp Inmate #3, Starving Prisoner with Pleading Expression, and Choking Girl in Gas Chamber, while leaving the job of actually fighting them to the Canadian armed forces, or Mexico’s, or maybe China’s. And once there are foreign militaries involved it gets exponentially more likely that someone lets off a nuke (two were used the last time this happened, back when they’d only thus far built three), so the coda will very likely involve a slow death from starvation or radiation sickness in some godforsaken cell that’s been abandoned by the guards while you’re still locked inside it.
@raven #8,
Respectfully, I don’t think you’d say that if you were familiar with the trans community. Trans people, especially youth, detransition every day because they fear social persecution, or ostracism by their families, or legal consequences, or they despair of finding medical support for their transition. Trump’s executive order will absolutely push more folks back into the closet, even before it gets implemented into policy.
It won’t push me back into the closet, but I’m not a terrified, isolated 16-year-old in Texas.
@freeline #33,
You mischaracterized one of the vanishingly few transgender school shooters in history as an “activist” who was engaging in “direct action” for trans rights. And then you likened Hex’s call for direct action to 9/11, for god’s sake.
If you’re opposed to “over the top rhetoric,” maybe start by curbing your own tendency to equate trans activists with terrorists and child murderers?
I tire of saying this every time it comes up, but I’m going to say it again because it’s really important: DO NOT TALK ABOUT “DIRECT ACTION” HERE. Or on other social media, or in emails, etc. The FEDS ARE WATCHING, and they are eagerly working for an administration that has already directed them to find any excuse to fall on trans people and allies with both jackbooted feet.
Who do you think you’re going to help if you get snatched up and disappeared for shooting your mouth off in the comments of some obscure blog? Who do you think it will help if allies get caught up in a sweep because you couldn’t exercise some basic discretion?
I get it. I’m non-binary, and I’m furious, and I’m terrified. But for fuck’s sake, have a little care in what you say and where. Yes, they’re going to come for us all eventually, but maybe don’t make it so easy for them. Discretion- please exercise it.
That being said, freeline is full of shit.
MAGA is absolutely engaged in genocide against LGBTQ+ people. They’re starting with trans people because trans people are a tiny minority with negligible political power, but they’re coming for all LGBTQ+ people. This warrants an appropriate response.
Genocides don’t start with active extermination of targeted groups. It starts with demonizing the group in question, which MAGA has been doing. It moves on to stripping of that group of their rights, which is what we’re seeing now.
Rounding up of these groups comes next, which MAGA will get do once they’ve got the mechanisms in place. They’ll likely use the same camps they’re building for immigrants. All that remains after that is mass extermination.
Oh, and sometimes they skip the camps, and just jump straight to extermination. So, not only is genocide against trans and other LGBTQ+ people in progress, it’s actually pretty far along. At the rate the Trump administration and its enablers are moving, we could be seeing death squads within weeks.
But please, don’t let that stop you from lecturing us on how unimportant we are in the grand scheme of things!
@17. freeline & # 21.Hex : “AIDEN Hale was a trans man, who had no history of activism.”
For the record, Hex is correct :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting#Perpetrator
The majority of school shooters are, ofc, cis males. Funnily enough not a fact that seems to end in singling cis-males out for unjust treatment or universal blame or is ever used to impose restrictions on them.
@5, 10
“Pieces of paper” are exactly what your identity documents, like birth certificates, passports, driver’s licenses, marriage licenses, etc. are. They are legal expressions of your identity. Really important pieces of identity if you ever want to get married, get a job, have a career, buy a home, get a car or student loan, etc., to say nothing of having your exterior identity match your interior identity.
Not everybody has that option.
For everyone on this thread arguing about whether or not the rapid legal(?) expansion of transphobia is in fact genocide, fine.
Let’s talk about erasure and exclusion instead.
https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/2279/print/
What the current regime is doing is erasure–declaring that there are only two genders, refusing to protect or admit the existence of trans people, etc. Strictly speaking, it isn’t genocide because trans people are and always have been part of the human population. Genocide is a permanent extinction. The only reason it’s not genocide is because trans people are born every day. On a side note, why is erasure not a horrifying enough reason to merit protest and resistance to the point that the term genocide is (incorrectly) used ? If systematic erasure of Native American or Yazidi identity/culture is wrong, how is erasure of trans people not also wrong, for the same reasons?
@31
Justice delayed is justice denied.
Hex, crimson sage Please listen to what Pierce R. Butler said. Violent radical actions are not the answer. This “you are either with us or against us” all-or-nothing attitude is not helpful. Rightly or wrongly, you need to meet people where they are if you want to move the Overton window to the point where trans rights and protections are a part of everyday society. You can argue that the original Queer Eye For The Straight Guy was gay minstrelsy but it also presented gay men as friendly, nonthreatening, kind and helpful, a concept that helped the US to get over its gay panic, get rid of DOMA and move into a quarter century of full rights for gay marriage, family and adoptions. It’s not nothing. There are people in the middle who can be persuaded to make left/progressive issues a priority but you will never reach or persuade them with all or nothing demands. If it’s possible to get dyed in the wool Republicans to vote against Trump, then you can reach them regarding other issues.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/05/trump-supreme-court-ballot-norma-anderson/
@ 56
I am old enough to remember when DOMA and DADT were the compromise and also how some members of the LGTB community were more than a little okay with throwing the T portion of the community under the bus if it would get the LGB what they wanted, because “trans wasn’t really about sexual preference but about gender identity so that should really be a separate issue”. Sometimes the call is coming from inside the house.
@ 58
It’s worth noting that when the Nazis started their genocide against the Jews, they started out with demanding that Jewish families give up their daughters, who were the first to die. When there was no pushback or outcry, they moved on to the rest of the Jews, then gypsies, the developmentally delayed and finally to anyone who didn’t meet the Nazi purity tests. Allowing the loss of trans rights is the equivalent of letting the Jewish daughters go without protest.
@57, 62 Respectfully, I disagree. Malcom X may have been the sharp end of the stick but MLK was the relatable black guy with a dream of equality that was socially acceptable to the majority of white people. If there had been two Malcom Xs, that would have been all the excuse the Southern Dixiecrats would have needed to put down “the black uprising”. With federal troops, not the KKK asshats and their scattershot terrorism. You can get to the civil rights finish line without Malcom X but not without MLK. Malcom X undoubtedly helped but MLK was the necessary ingredient.
Please everyone, listen to vucodlak. Pegasus and Palantir are A Thing.
And then there’s this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/22/justice-civil-rights-freeze-shutdown/
Anyone else think we might have voted in the last election this country will ever have?
PS. Note that :
(WARNING : Wikipedia article linked above & below quotes racist and homophobic language.
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting#Investigation_and_perpetrator's_writings
(There’s also more in the ‘Controversy over Hale’s writings‘ section including leaks by the reichwing wife-beater and professional douche Stephen Crowder.)
.+++
Seconding what # 64. vucodlak write above too. Plus #63 Prax and #57. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden as well..
Note that the Trump cult regressives control the Courts, the presidency and the Congress with the Federalist Society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society ) having rigged the system appointing regressive reichwing “justices” on many courts
Source : https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/federalist-societys-influence-on-courts-is-bad-for-democracy
So, whilst not advocating anything, if there’s no legal or political possibility of stopping Trump or the horrors and harms he is unleashing then, well, what options remain and given the lack of alternatives and life and death nature of the problems, well, we can draw conclusions ourselves. So glad I’m an Aussie but of course the USA’s influence is global..
@67. silvrhalide : “Anyone else think we might have voted in the last election this country will ever have?”
Yes – or at least this Aussie who follows US politics pretty closely is pretty sure that’s the case for those in the USA. At least for genuine free and fair and legitimate elections. It may well also be the case that the United (Lolsob.) States of America ceases to exist as a country under Trump in the next few years as well. Yes, seriously.
What I’m currently wondering is whether any US Generals or military forces will reject illegal orders that are likely already being given when it comes to dealing with American civilians. Whether they will follow their consciences and laws about how to treat illegal orders or just obey, in many cases probly enthusiastically when it comes to rounding up and forcibly deporting or placing in concentration camps American citizens and residents?
In my opinion, at this stage a military coup against Trump followed by a hard reboot of your “Democracy” – such as it was – with major reforms to prevent anyone like Trump ever taking over again is your best chance of survival tho’ I fear that’s unlikely.
Ok, can someone explain what does this actually do? Can blue states override it?
That is true but misses the point.
.1. Almost all those important pieces of paper which are also known as your identity documents are issued by the states, not the Federal government.
The states aren’t obligated to follow whatever nonsense Trump comes up with on any given day.
The only Federal document is a passport.
What is an often meaningless piece of paper is a lot of Trump’s Executive orders. He doesn’t have the arbitrary powers he claims he has.
What the GOP is doing is tossing a lot of crap against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Call them on it and don’t just nod and say OK.
This is irrelevant.
Whether your documents say male, female, X, nonbinary etc.. legally isn’t supposed to affect your ability to do anything like go to college, get a job etc..
Discrimination based on sex was outlawed decades ago and still is illegal.
Being Trans isn’t somehow now illegal just because Trump made yet again another false claim. He makes false claims on a daily basis.
No, this isn’t good. But panicking and making exaggerated claims doesn’t help anything either.
You are playing their game, They are terrorists and you are being terrorized.
@ ^ raven : “They are the terrorists”
So that makes it okay to take them out with drone strikes now right? Right?
(Also Litany of Fear from Dune seems apt recalling.)
.. Or stick them in Guantanamo Bay jail forever to rot. After all that’s still open even today albiet almost totally forgotten by most now..
Seee : https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/1/19/one-more-broken-promise-to-close-guantanamo
It’s a cookbook!! According to them, your chromosomes are the recipe and you are the result. Only when following the recipe goes ‘wrong’ could you become something else, and that’s always bad.
I am probably wrong, but this could be the result of poor word usage due to the text being prepared in a rush. Replace ‘at conception’ with ‘at copulation’, and the sentence is now at least intelligible (it makes not logical nor biological sense before).
Mind you, it doesn’t make it any better or less stupid, just a bit clearer what it means.
freeline blithered thusly:
As to rejecting my concerns, like I said to Hex, you just keep talking and you just keep losing elections.
Who’s this “you” that you’re accusing of “losing elections,” freeline? And what elections have YOU won that “we” lost? Can you show even ONE instance where the “tactics” you advocate have won an election for decent people?
Distilled to its essence, my political philosophy is as follows: The GOP is so evil that defeating them is all that counts.
I totally agree with this premise. But it does NOT logically follow from there that ignoring or throwing certain less-popular groups under the bus is a good way to achieve the agreed-upon objective. In fact, I’d venture to say that’s already proven an almost sure-fire way to ensure defeat, not victory. If we refuse to even speak up for a group who are facing serious persecution and violence, then a) those particular people have no reason to vote for us, and b) other groups will start to question whether they might be next under the bus if the next Republican ad campaign makes us feel defensive or intimidated enough.
Remember: Trump got a few more votes last year then he did in 2020; but Harris got A LOT fewer votes than Biden got in 2020. That’s not because that many people disagreed with Harris, otherwise they would have voted for Trump. It’s because Harris showed that she, and too much of her party, just weren’t willing to even speak up, let alone take action, for people in need, because they’d already been browbeaten into thinking their supporters were an embarrassing liability, and weren’t nimble enough or brave enough to respond as they should have.
Perhaps Trump can issue an executive order declaring Pluto a planet? A little less stupid, and a lot less harmful.
trans rights is how clinton lost, too. (big /s)
@silvrhalide:
This is a laughable misinterpretation of what the Overton Window actually is, and how the idea is used to theorize social and attitudinal change.
Go read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window#:~:text=The%20Overton%20window%20is%20the,population%20at%20a%20given%20time.
When you’re done you’ll realize that if more people articulate the radical, that has the capacity to make the radical into the popular, both literally and as described in the social model we call the Overton Window. If the radicals “meet the opponents where they are at” then the left-wing radicals are engaging in mild right-wing discourse, ultimately collapsing the consensus view of what opinions are acceptable to express.
Now maybe you’ll move someone from “popular” to “policy” in the language of the model. That shifts one right winger from slightly right wing to the actual centre. But to do that, according to you, we need the left radicals to speak as if they are slightly right wing. Which is a much larger jump to the right.
There are legitimate critiques of the Overton metaphor, but if you’re going to embrace it enough to use in your writing, you should at least understand what it says.
I am the 57 you mention, so I will take a moment to point out that either you didn’t read me or you didn’t come close to understanding what you read. I specifically articulated that the insiders need the outsiders AND the outsiders need the insiders.
This wasn’t a plea for MLK to be Malcom X. This was an argument against shutting down other people on your own side b/c you think there’s only one right way to achieve social change.
There are millions of people in the US, and humans are — this may shock you silvrhalide — psychologically different from each other and also psychologically complex at the individual level. Different tactics will change different minds. Substantive, lasting change demands a pluralist approach to argumentation and activism. The people who are arguing that we would have been better off with 2x MLK are wrong. With no one to the left of MLK, those MLKs could be dismissed as the most radical left-wing voice possible, and therefore assumed to be inherently unreasonable. With 2x Malcom X, those Xs could be dismissed for the exact same reason. And while they are farther left, with no one to their right also speaking up for civil rights, it leaves the pro-civil rights argument just as voiceless as in the 2x MLK scenario.
But you can’t. And you don’t. There has never been a movement for social change that had an analog to Dr. King with no analog to Malcom X.
It is neither possible nor desirable to pick one viewpoint, one tactical vision, and then unify half a population. Such conformity would have to be enforced, turning your hypothetical Dr. King analog into a perfect analog for Mao.
Did you even read or understand that argument to which I was responding? Freeline actually said that you don’t have the right to use tactics which, in Freeline’s view, risked political failure if such failure endangered “rights”.
By clumsily and ignorantly opposing my statement at #57, you have placed yourself on the side of someone who believes that you don’t get to choose your own tactics when fighting Trump. I hope you’re prepared to submit your future Pharyngula comments to Freeline for pre-approval.
In the meantime, I don’t give a fuck about Palantir. I haven’t ever advocated violence. Not once. Not as a teenager. Not as a child that I can remember. I am perfectly happy with the morality of my politics. And while yes, I’m quite certain that ignorant, authoritarian fuckwads could still lock me up for the impolitic nature of my anti-Trump expressions, I either continue on with my morally justified and morally conducted opposition OR I censor myself in advance and then Trump doesn’t even need Palantir.
Obeying in advance is the worst possible strategy, and I will not participate in such stupid, unproductive pessimism.
Also, too, Dr. King didn’t prevent attack dogs and firehoses and blaming those tactics on Malcom X would be some seriously fucked up shit. Honestly I don’t see how your argument doesn’t entirely reduce to victim blaming.
I am not all or nothing. I don’t expect everyone to be 100% on board with everything trans people want. But I do expect you to 100% treat us a fully human deserving rights like any other.
All you people acting like the person I was responding to was a good faith ally should reread the quote of them literally saying teans people need to be sacrificed to “protect other rights” as if the same person in question wont keep abandoning different rights in a vain attempt to “stace off” the enemy. Also all you bad faith people accusing those if us calling for direct action as calling for violence or terrorism are just as bad. Direct action is not vigilante violence, it is any sort of direct protest to stop the smooth functioning of society. You are the same Janus faced moderates who idolize MLK but bemoan the very civil disobience he advocated. Hypocrites.
@crimsonsage #82: Excellent points.
@71
Wow. When was the last time you applied for a mortgage or a college loan or renewed a passport?
Banks and colleges (and the FAF) all want to see your past tax returns as proof of income. All of that goes through the Dept. of the Treasury. A lot of housing/rental companies will not rent to you without proof of income and a decent credit score–all of that information goes through federal agencies. Good luck getting financial aid for college or a mortgage or car loan with no financial history. Now that the new regime is busy misgendering trans people, their financial histories will no longer match their previously legal trans identities. Same for Social Security–if you legally (as compared to socially) transitioned, you got a new birth certificate, new Social Security card, new driver’s license, passport, etc. What happens when you try to renew a passport or driver’s license and the federal government no longer recognizes your legal trans identity and insists that you renew as your AAB gender? For that matter, what about professional licenses, some of which need periodic renewal? Want to change jobs or get a new/better one? Oh wait, now your legal identity and possibly your professional one no longer match, you are not considered for the position because your work history/CV and legal identity documents don’t match.
What happens if you try to leave the country, either permanently or temporarily and your passport no longer matches? Are you actually going to claim that you can “just ignore it” and swan through customs?
No, I’m assessing and planning. It’s a thing that survivors do.
I was born in the US because some of my relatives took a long hard look at post WWI Germany/Europe and GTFO prior to WWII. Things were decidedly less good for the ones who stayed.
dragon hunter @ 75
Nope, conception commonly happens from an hour to five days after copulation.
OK, I get it.
You have obvious cognitive problems.
This is a wall of word salad gibberish.
To take one example:
They also want to see proof of current employment and your pay rate.
All of which is again totally irrelevant.
Trans people work, get paid, and pay their taxes.
And have the paperwork to show for it.
The feds aren’t going to care whether you are Trans or not when you pay your taxes in the least. They aren’t going to refuse your tax owed.
In fact, they are going to go after you if you don’t pay your taxes.
You will pay your taxes and you will have that documentation.
BTW, you completely ignored my point that virtually all identity type documents are issued by the states and are not under Federal control.
Making stuff up.
This hasn’t happened yet and probably won’t ever happen.
Trump just made a cuckoo statement about what sex is and when it occurs as an Executive Order with no enabled laws proposed or passed.
I’m done with you.
My time is valuable and limited and you have wasted several minutes of it with absolutely incoherent trash.
@ 80
Spoken like someone who has never had to worry about actual Stasi.
And yet Gandhi seems to have enjoyed remarkable success.
I don’t recall Nehru calling for change by the bullet.
From your link;
You wrote
wtf? I never said or implied anything of the sort. And I don’t appreciate your mischaracterization or your putting words in my mouth that I never stated or implied. But enjoy whacking at the straw man arguments you are apparently fabricating out of thin air and your imagination.
So I guess you are the arbiter of exactly how everyone should think and speak?
Your condescension and purity politics are duly noted.
I never stated or implied that people didn’t get to choose their own tactics. I made a plea to be more strategic about tactics. And yes, that includes talking to people who might not agree with everything you believe or who might not be 100% on your side but can be persuaded to vote with you or work with you at least part of the time. Trust you to miss the difference.
It’s also interesting that you appear to think that talking to people who disagree with you somehow means that you are just like them, that other people can never be persuaded to agree and support a political position that is to the left of where they started. Or that by the mere act of communicating with people who have different opinions than yours that you are somehow irreversibly contaminated and moved to the right, as opposed to convincing other people to move to the left.
Behold the new McCarthyism. You don’t out people like that. Ever.
Unifying half the population with a singular tactical vision is how we got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into law and how we got equal protection under the 14th Amendment and protected voting rights under the 15th Amendment.
You know what social movement had a plethora of opinions, ardently and proudly boasted that they had no leadership and no one singular goal? Occupy Wall Street. All that political power, pissed away because the people in it were more concerned with purity politics than making actual change. Sure, OWS was in the news daily, but what substantive change did it achieve?
So all the people who quietly hid Jews during WWII, the people who smuggled in antiviral drugs to fight AIDS before it was legal, the people who are quietly sending mifepristone to the people who desperately need it, the Germans who formed a human transport chain to move Syrian refugees out of Syria, they were doing it all wrong because it wasn’t direct or radical or extreme enough? Good to know.
@86 You clearly have NO idea what you are talking about. You are either naive or stupid.
Banks and the FAF no longer accept tax returns as proof of identity. They will only accept a transcript of your tax returns when it is directly supplied by the IRS. In case you missed it, the IRS is a federal agency.
Apartment rentals are moving more towards requiring IRS-supplied tax return transcripts as proof of income. If you need state or federal housing assistance, the IRS-supplied tax return transcripts are usually required–your personal copy is frequently not considered acceptable proof.
Your birth certificate is state issued.
Your Social Security card comes from the Social Security Administration, also a federal agency.
Your passport is issued from a federal agency, the Dept. of State.
Driver’s licenses are issued by the states but usually require a Social Security card as proof of identity.
Part of my job involves fighting/resolving identity theft. I am acutely aware, as you are not, of exactly how easy it is to completely screw up someone’s entire life if there is a mismatch between identity documents or even a delay in verification. Trans people are uniquely vulnerable in this regard.
But you are free to wallow in your deliberate ignorance.
Silvrhalide, I’m finding your comments here difficult to take seriously.
This, for instance:
Yeah, I’m trans and have been subject to multiple rapes and multiple truly vicious assaults and, by the by, multiple years of passionate, persistent death threats from people who didn’t want me to speak up publicly about trans and queer rights. No, I’ve never lived in East Germany and I don’t know the details of how they threatened people there. Where I have lived are France, the USA, and Canada, and I am very well aware of how violence is perpetrated in the US and how the government defends, excuses, or ignores it when it serves the interests of the powerful to permit such violence to continue.
Oh, and this:
LOLOLOLOLOL. Imagine being so fucking stupid you’d believe that 300 million Indian people would all just agree to be reasonable in the face of British violence and terrorism. The name you’re looking for — hell, just one of quite a number of names you could be looking for — is Rash Behari Bose. Or maybe Subhas Chandra Bose (no relation of which I’m aware).
Try these links to educate yourself:
https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-violence-that-helped-india-break-free-from-colonial-rule-57904
https://www.newsgram.com/general/2015/07/05/rash-behari-bose-the-man-who-handed-over-control-of-ina-to-subhas-chandra-bose
After defending Freeline — Freeline, not I, is the person who said that no one has the right to use risky political tactics — You said:
Except, no. I said the exact opposite of that. Your criticism should be directed at Freeline. What I said, repeatedly and at length, was:
I’m defending the right and even the effectiveness of letting each person in your ally group determine for themselves what tactics they will use. We need and depend on different people with different skill sets using different tactics for success. Myriad ideas about best tactics are crucial. This is what I’ve defended, and yet you read me so poorly that you think I’m setting myself up as the arbiter of rightthink?
Pfft. Read the fucking thread. Again, it was Freeline who said:
See that passage I highlighted with asterisks? That’s the view of the person you stepped in to defend. I am defending tactical pluralism. Freeline is advocating that there is no freedom to choose your own tactics. In stepping in to the middle of this conversation and taking Freeline’s side, you did exactly what I said you did, to wit:
Then you decided that that made me someone who wants control over someone else’s tactics.
I honestly don’t know how you are so clearly capable of reading, and so clearly did read quite a number of pieces of this thread, and yet you have such garbage comprehension that you think I’m setting myself up as arbiter of legit tactics.
THAT IS NOT ME. THAT IS FREELINE.
But then you managed somehow to believe that all of India united around Gandhi and that there was therefore no analog to Malcom X in the entire country of hundreds of millions.
Look, you’re pig ignorant of India from 1900-1950, and that’s fine. I might be marginally more informed than you, but I’m still pig ignorant. What’s inexcusable is you thinking that because you don’t personally remember anyone who might be a Malcom X analog that there must not have been one.
Your ignorance is not an argument for non-existence.
I could further trash this bullshit:
But it would likely be a waste of my time. There were any number of tactical disagreements with respect to the Civil Rights Movement. From the Nation of Islam to SNCC to any number of other groups I could name. Medgar Evers wasn’t a tactical clone of Dr. King and he certainly wasn’t a clone of X. Women repeatedly clashed with men involved in the movement over best tactics. Good gravy there were SO MANY fucking faultlines.
Then on top of that, there weren’t 50% of people who actually supported the Civil Rights Movement. Some of the people who supported the CRA 1964 did so because they wanted the CRM to end, not because they actually supported its goals, much less its tactics.
Just … just go read some fucking history and stop making positive statements on topics where you’re clueless. Your opinions are welcome to me as your opinions, but making up facts out of your ignorance is just going to get you slammed harder, so unless you have a fetish for being embarrassed on the internet, I’d advise against continuing in that same vein.
badland @ 85
Yes, I know that. My point is slightly different:
The subject of the sentence is not the result of copulation/conception, but those engaging in copulation/conception.
In other words, when someone engages in copulation, they are male if they produce the smaller reproductive cell, and female if they produce the large reproductive cell. Of course, this would exclude anyone who does not produce any reproductive cells for whatever reason, or do not engage in copulation, but if you read it like this, it makes it more intelligible.
@dragon hunter:
Your #75 is certainly not what I thought it was, given your clarification in #90. Unfortunately for you, it isn’t more logical or more biologically sensible after that clarification. I’m really unsure why you think performing this word substitution makes the ExO more sensible than it is without it.
While I stand by most of my points @ # 54, I do owe Hex & crimsonsage an apology. Re-reading their posts, I now see that, while expressing white-hot rage, they do not overtly advocate violence, which I mistakenly chided them for.
@92 apology accepted. I want to see someone with some authority doing fucking something, instead of rolling over and piddling on their perfectly smooth white bellies.