May 4, 2023

Watching the legislative proceedings in North Carolina

Watching parents of trans teens in NC get emotional as the state takes away their ability to provide health care for their kids, I feel like part of the GOP's plan is to use stochastic terrorism to keep pushing highly stressed & scared people until the least stable ones do bad things. Including trans people and their allies. At that point, after it becomes a pattern, they can justify anything they do to us as a group simply by twisting how it's perceived. Stochastic terrorism is a blunt tool that is used against both sides of an issue, but affects them in very different ways. Both are beneficial for the people weilding it as a tool.

There IS a counter to this, and it is to have as many people as possible call them out on it now, loudly and repeatedly, before their tactic is effective.

May 3, 2023

Transgender lifeguard candidate rejected by City of Jacksonville after removing top at the pool

Something scandalous happened, from the way the headline reads, right?

"It happened at the city pool at Cecil Aquatic Center during a group try-out for the job. There were children present during the exercise. The city has received complaints about the incident, though a city spokesperson said they did not have the total number of complaints. Two sources within city hall told Action New Jax that the city has chosen not to hire that applicant."

Here's the reality:

Cielo Sunsarae is a trans man. He had top surgery last year. A quick check of TikTok shows he has had facial hair for a long time. During group try-outs for public pool lifeguard jobs, Cielo TOOK OFF HIS SHIRT WITH ALL THE OTHER MEN TO GET INTO THE POOL.

But here's the statement the city released:

"This incident happened Thursday of last week at Cecil Pool. A transgender person, a female who identifies as male, removed their shirt exposing their bare breasts, and completed a portion of the training with 20 other trainees. While we cannot confirm the age of the individuals participating in the training, JaxParks recruits lifeguards starting at age 15. This occurred within view of several dozen children and their parents sharing the same pool at the same time.”

Again, Cielo has had top surgery. And he has facial hair. The only bare breasts visible in that line up of applicants who all took their shirts off to get in the pool were men's bare breasts, both by identity and appearance. But the city knew Cielo was trans, either by his scars or by doing a background check on applicants prior to the swim test.

Of course, he didn't get the job. Because he is trans. Florida doesn't care if the SCOTUS rulled a couple years ago that such discrimination is unconstitutional. If anything, like other red states they want to put a fresh case before the new, more conservative court so the law can be changed.

(I'm linking to Yahoo! only because it's incrementally less-bad than linking to Fox)
https://news.yahoo.com/transgender-lifeguard-candidate-rejected-city-205131129.html

This is what trans genocide looks like. And they won't stop with us.

May 3, 2023

So, in a coordinated attack, attempts were made to swat Zooey Zephyr & her girlfriend

Both she and Erin Reed were attempted-swatted yesterday. Swatting is where someone calls in a legitimate seeming emergency that will bring out cops to an address, with their adrenaline pumping and guns blazing.

Fortunately, Erin called their local law enforcement agencies earlier in the week out of fear this might happen and familiarized them with both addresses, names, the history, etc.. and the attempt was foiled.

Make no mistake, the point was for Erin, Zooey or both to get shot by cops and possibly killed.

This is what genocide looks like.

May 3, 2023

Texas Legislature moves to grant a Governor appointee power to overturn Harris County elections

That's right, only Harris county.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/texas-republicans-seek-overturn-elections-mishaps-18073334.php

Harris is the largest county, population-wise.

Oh, also?

It covers much of Houston's metro area, a Democratic stronghold in the state. If the appointee feels like it, they can void the election and call a new one, pretty much guaranteeing a shift in the results.

This is on top of eliminating the county's election chief position that RandySF posted:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217878316

May 2, 2023

Republicans are trying to occupy all the benches in the Montana state house

...on a daily basis, in order to block Rep Zooey Zephyr from working there since she's not allowed inside the chambers. Because that's just how petty they really are.

Fortunately, a small spontaneous army of Montana citizens have taken it upon themselves to get there earlier to ensure she has somewhere to get her work done and interact with the other Reps, by holding seats for her.

Tweets:

"Today we deployed the #BlueBenchBrigade to make sure that @ZoAndBehold would be surrounded by kind people who support her and her work in the #mtleg"

(alt text:
Three awesome people stepping in to sit down and hold space for Zooey Zephyr as she finishes the legislative session.
A couple of awesome benchers speak with Rep Sj Howell (they/them) and hold space for Zooey Zephyr so she can finish the session from hell.)

"Kev Hamm
@kevhamm
Anyone able to identify these sad women? They are literally taking up a bench just to disrupt @ZoAndBehold, and it’s not working because Zooey has more resilience than these women could ever find."

https://bird.makeup/users/kevhamm/statuses/1653407025085444099

May 2, 2023

Following Kansas' footsteps, Tennessee sends bill to Gov Lee to legally erase trans people

On Friday end-of-day, the Tennessee legislature sent HB 239 / SB 1440 to Governor Lee's desk for signing. He has previously this year signed bills prohibiting everything from drag shows to trans teen health care.

As with the Kansas bill, it's deceptively simple and may also end up being called a "bathroom bill" by the news media. In reality these laws are much more.
They legally define "man" and "woman" as a strict, pure and unchanging binary based on reproductive anatomy at birth. As such they go far beyond just banning trans people from the bathrooms some of us have been using for years and often, decades. We are now excluded from anything and everything regulated by the State that includes male or female, sex or gender and redefined as whatever we were assigned at birth. Even people who medically transitioned decades ago and have left that part of their life far behind are now legally being forced back into it.

We have been erased in those two states.

This is what genocide looks like.

April 29, 2023

Remember that Ohio church a week ago that was firebombed over a drag show?

There is an angle of the story that most media outlets strangely ignored completely.

Headline: "Ohio Church Hosting Drag Event Firebombed, Resists Police Pressure"

Read those last three words again.

From this source: https://medium.com/prismnpen/ohio-church-hosting-drag-event-firebombed-resists-police-pressure-ed1dc3915fb9

In response to the initial threats of violence and protest from Proud Boys, et all,

"To write that local law enforcement reacted poorly is to badly understate what happened next. Instead of rallying to protect the restaurant and the church — to protect and serve their community— police officials complained that protection would be too costly, claimed they wanted no part in “controversy,” and advised the church (in what reads like an order) to shut the events down."

The cops were doing the terrorist's job for them.

April 29, 2023

Justice Alito says he has 'pretty good idea' who leaked abortion ruling

The Justice added that he did not have “the level of proof that is needed to name somebody.”

Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the majority opinion that overruled Roe v. Wade last June, told [right-wing news outlet] The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages today that he had “a pretty good idea who is responsible” for leaking a draft of his opinion to Politico.

Alito added that he did not have “the level of proof that is needed to name somebody.” That echoed language in the Supreme Court’s report on its investigation of the leak, which said that “investigators have been unable to determine at this time, using a preponderance of the evidence standard, the identity of the person(s) who disclosed the draft majority opinion.”

Alito rejected the theory that the Politico leak had come from the right side of the court in an effort to lock in what was then and turned out to be a five-justice majority for overruling every part of the 1973 Roe decision.

“Look,” Alito said in the new interview, “this made us targets of assassination. Would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves? It’s quite implausible.”

Why do they all come off seeming like lying children on a first grade play yard?

April 29, 2023

'Mom influencer' whose false accusations sparked QAnon panic is convicted, to be sentenced

Former Sonoma woman Katie Sorensen is scheduled to be sentenced June 14 after being convicted Wednesday of filing a false police report when she claimed a Petaluma couple tried to kidnap her children in December 2020.

Sorensen faces up to six months in jail after jurors found her guilty of one misdemeanor count of making a false report of a crime. She was acquitted of two similar charges.

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/katie-sorensen-to-be-sentenced-in-june-following-guilty-verdict-for-filing/

April 28, 2023

This is a purge. Republicans are purging any who oppose them.

Florida officials are threatening to revoke the teaching license of a school superintendent who criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis, accusing the educator of violating several statutes and DeSantis directives and allowing his "personal political views" to guide his leadership.

Such a revocation by the state Department of Education could allow DeSantis to remove Leon County Superintendent Rocky Hanna from his elected office. The Republican governor did that last year to an elected Democratic prosecutor in the Tampa Bay area who disagreed with the legality of his positions limiting abortion and medical care for transgender teens and indicated he might not enforce new laws in those areas.

https://www.edgemedianetwork.com/story.php?ch=news&sc=national&id=324936&school_superintendent_who_criticized_desantis_could_lose_job