Wednesday, October 31, 2018

The Hate Is Taking A Toll

When you are worried about your survival everyday it takes a toll on your health, in today’s climate there are a lot of trans people are in fear of losing their jobs, housing, and being able to go out in public without being harassed and discriminated against.
Suicide hotline calls quadrupled after Trump’s latest attack on transgender people
LGBTQ Nation
By Alex Bollinger
October 29, 2018

Trans Lifeline, an organization that runs a crisis hotline for transgender people and staffed by transgender people, said that calls to their suicide hotline have quadrupled since the story broke that the Trump administration is trying to legally erase transgender identity.

In an Instagram post, Trans Lifeline reported that calls increased by four times last week, and first-time callers doubled.
[…]
“At Trans Lifeline we are able see in real time that policy debates don’t take place in a vacuum — they have direct and immediate impacts on real lives,” Trans Lifeline Executive Director Sam Ames told Teen Vogue.

“Since the HHS memo was leaked, the number of calls to our crisis hotline has more than quadrupled, doubling the number of new callers who have never needed to access our services before. This is bad news, but it isn’t new news.”

Ames said that the organization also noticed an increase in calls from Massachusetts, where a referendum on transgender rights will appear on ballots next week.
When Trump was elected there was also an increase in fears in the trans community.

This is exactly what Trump and the Republicans want, they want to instill fear in us, they want to force us back into the closet.

Face it; the Republicans don’t care about us. The only thing they care about is money and power.

End the fear! VOTE!

Beat The Gay Out

Sadly with all the laws we cannot stop all Conversion Therapy because of the First Amendment and “religious freedom.”
The Terrifying True Story of 'Boy Erased' and Gay Conversion Therapy
Men’s Health 
By Melissa Matthews
October 30, 2018

Garrard Conley knew he was gay when he developed a crush on his third grade teacher, Mr. Smith. The son of a preacher, Conley was raised in a devout Baptist community in Arkansas where evolution is considered fake, and homosexuality is more than a sin-it's evil. Pressure to adhere to his family's expectations forced Conley to lead a double life, where he dated girls and ignored his true feelings.

Conley kept his sexuality a secret, even after going away to a liberal arts college. Although he prefers to leave out details for legal reasons, Conley was raped by a friend and fellow student his freshman year of college. His rapist then called Conley's mom and told her Conley was openly gay.

Immediately, Conley's parents sought treatment to cure his homosexuality. After undergoing several months of therapy, Conley spent two weeks at Love in Action (LIA), a Memphis-based ex-gay ministry run by Program Director John Smid. LIA's "Refuge" program claimed to help people with a variety of sex-based "addictions," including homosexuality.
As far as I know none of the states’ laws ban this kind of conversion therapy because Conley is an adult and legally no one can force him to go to conversion therapy. Even though his parents send him to take “the cure” he could have said no.

Under Connecticut law churches can do conversion therapy on minors as long as the person doing the therapy is not a licensed therapist. Also the parents can send their children out of state and not be covered by Connecticut law.

When Conley wanted to leave the program he called his mother to take him home when she arrived at LIA…
My mom said to them, "I don’t know why I haven’t asked you this before, but what are your qualifications?"

Smid said, "This one guy over there is a marriage counselor."

My mom was like, "What in the world are you people doing? You don’t have any degrees in psychology. You don’t know what you’re doing." And she took me out of there.

By then, she'd heard stories of people killing themselves from those camps, and said to me, "Did you want to kill yourself?"

And I said yes.

She said, "Well, I would rather have a living gay son than a dead gay son because the gay part is not going to change." She was just fed up with everything by that point.
Many of these so called “cure” facilities play on the guilt of the clients and do not have any staff that are trained therapists.

We did the best we can in passing the law banning conversion therapy given the restrains of the Constitution. The law just bans licensed therapists from practicing conversion therapy on minors.

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Keep Our History Alive!

As Trump’s administration tries to erase us it is more important than ever that we keep our history alive.
LGBTQ History Month: Transgender and gender-nonconforming pioneersFrom Sylvia Rivera to Miss Major, meet some of the the [sic] country's pioneering trans and gender-nonconforming activists.NBC News
By Tim Fitzsimons
October 28, 2018

October is LGBTQ History Month, and to celebrate, NBC News will feature an NBC Out review of key moments and people in LGBTQ history. Each week’s feature will include images from the New York Public Library’s LGBTQ archives. For our final week, we explore the digital image archives as well as the Trans Oral History Project. Before the term “transgender” came into wide use in the early 1990s, these people often used the term “transvestite” or “queen” to describe themselves.

SYLVIA RIVERA | 1951-2002
Sylvia Rivera was a transgender and homeless advocate who lived in downtown New York City. She started to wear makeup to school in fourth grade, was kicked out of her home at a young age, and was walking Times Square as a sex worker not long after. Rivera often lived near the Christopher Street piers in Greenwich Village, which for decades was a refuge and place to sleep for homeless LGBTQ youth. She organized trans people in a group called Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, another trans icon, ran a shelter for homeless trans and gender-nonconforming people. Rivera was reportedly at Stonewall on June 28, 1969, when patrons rioted against a police raid, and she reportedly said, “I'm not missing a minute of this — it's the revolution!” Her ashes were scattered from the pier into the Hudson River.
[…]
MARSHA P. JOHNSON | 1945-1992
Marsha P. Johnson was one of the best known transgender activists from the early days of the “gay liberation” movement in New York City. She and Sylvia Rivera were friends and often advocated for trans and queer rights together. She moved to New York after graduating from high school, and at age 23 was part of the vanguard at Stonewall that led patrons to resist a police raid, helping to spark the modern LGBTQ rights struggle.

Johnson’s body was found in the Hudson River in 1992 and ruled a suicide, but some friends and activists claim she was murdered. Controversy surrounding her death points to a glaring reality: Trans women, and particularly trans women of color, are targeted and murdered at high rates across the country.
[…]
LEE BREWSTER | 1943 - 2000
Lee Brewster was a pioneering drag queen and gender-nonconforming pioneer who founded the Queens Liberation Army. On Halloween 1969, Brewster, who used he/him pronouns, made an announcement: He was going into the clothing business.

Brewster operated a store in lower Manhattan called “Lee’s Mardi Gras Boutique,” perhaps the largest shop for drag queen apparel in the world. The shop sold “size 30 dresses and size 15 studded platform shoes to men who sometimes wish they were something else,” the New York Times wrote in Brewster's obituary. He ran drag balls and grated against the mainstream gay rights movement in the 1970s, which sought respectability, not rights for drag queens. Before his life as a guru of glam, Brewster was fired for being gay from a job at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I have heard about Ms. Rivera, Ms. Johnson and Ms. Major but I haven’t heard about Mr. Brewster.
MISS MAJOR | 1940 -
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, better known as “Miss Major”, is noted for her work advocating for the rights and wellbeing of incarcerated transgender people. She was present at the original Stonewall uprisings, and she is executive director emeritus of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project. Today, she lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she is working to open House of GG’s, “the first primary retreat and innovative educational center specifically for Transgender people in the USA.” Miss Major was profiled in the documentary film “MAJOR!
And I have heard and read his books…
DEAN SPADE | 1977 -
Dean Spade is founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), which “works to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination or violence.”
It is important to keep our history alive and not subverted.

Just take a look at the latest Stonewall movie, it has been whitewashed and trans people and lesbians have been grouped under the “Gay” banner.

Suggested Reading;

• Ekins, R., & King, D. (2005, October). Virginia Prince: Transgender Pioneer. International Journal of Transgenderism, 8(4), 5-15. Retrieved July 1, 2009, from LGBT Life with Full Text database
• Fienberg, L. (1993). Stone Butch Blues. Los Angeles, CA. Alyson Books
• Fienberg, L. (1994). Transgender Warrior. Boston, MA. Beacon Press
• Fienberg, L. (1998). 'I'm glad I was in the Stonewall riot'. Worker’s World. Retrieved August 1, 2009. From http://www.workers.org/ww/1998/sylvia0702.php
• Gan, J. (2007, Spring). Still at the back of the bus: Sylvia Rivera's struggle. Centro Journal, 19(1), 124-139. Retrieved July 1, 2009, from LGBT Life with Full Text database.
• Green J. (2004, January). Becoming a Visible Man. Nashville, Ky. Vanderbilt University Press
• King, D., Ekins, R., (2000), Pioneers of Transgendering: The Life and Work of Virginia Prince, GENDYS 2k, The Sixth International Gender Dysphoria Conference, Manchester England.
• MacKenzie, G. (1994). Transgender Nation. Bowling Green OH. Popular Press
• Meyerowitz, J. (2002). How Sex Changed. Boston, MA. Harvard Press
• Roberts, M., (2007, October 18). The 1965 Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit-In. TransGriot, Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2007/10/1965-deweys-lunch-counter-sit- it.html
• Roberts, M., (2012, March). A Look at African-American Trans Trailblazers, Ebony. Retrieved March 10, 2012, from http://www.ebony.com/news- views/trans-trailblazers
• Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender History. Berkley CA. Seal Press.

Universities We Will Have Your Back

More and more colleges and universities declare their support for us.

In Massachusetts…
Transgender rights rally draws hundreds at Boston City Hall
BU News Service
By Yidan Sun
October 29, 2018

BOSTON- At Boston City Hall Plaza, where hundreds of demonstrators rallied in support of transgender rights ahead of the midterm election’s ballot Question 3, Jackie Rae, a Berklee music student and transgender woman, sang the lyrics of the song written by herself “Who am I?”

“Am I the boy you thought I’d be? Who am I? Am I the girl you just can’t see? Who am I? Is it wrong that I don’t know who am I? Is it dumb for me to hope that things will change in this world and no more asking boy or girl?”
~~~
3Q: Alyce Johnson on upholding the rights of MIT’s transgender community
At MIT, “we are committed to looking after each other,” says interim Institute community and equity officer.
MIT News
By Kathy Wren
October 29, 2018

When Massachusetts voters head to the polls on Nov. 6 for the 2018 midterm election, one of the items they’ll find on the ballot is Question 3, about whether to uphold a 2016 state law barring discrimination against transgender people in public spaces such as stores and restaurants.

With the election drawing near, MIT News spoke with interim Institute Community and Equity Officer Alyce Johnson, who leads the ICEO in its mission to advance a respectful and caring community that embraces diversity and empowers everyone to learn and do their best at MIT.

Johnson spoke about the Institute’s commitment to protecting the rights of transgender members of the MIT community, regardless of the ballot initiative’s outcome, and why respectful, open dialogue is an essential component of MIT’s campus life.

Q: What would be the effect on MIT policies if Question 3 does not pass, and the law protecting transgender people from discrimination in public places is overturned?

A: MIT’s senior administration and I want our community to know that our support for MIT’s transgender community is steadfast, and that the Institute’s nondiscrimination policy, which expressly prohibits discrimination based on gender identity, will remain in place if the state law is repealed following the Nov. 6 election. The same will be true if the federal government more narrowly defines gender under federal law, a change that is reportedly under consideration. I want to reassure our community that MIT is permitted to offer antidiscrimination protections that are broader than what is protected by state and federal law. The Institute’s policies will continue to prohibit discrimination or harassment at MIT based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

In addition to the policies we have in place, our unwavering commitment to the rights of transgender students, staff, and faculty will also continue regardless of the outcome of the election or of any potential federal policy changes. As just one example, the pilot project to designate certain all-gender restrooms on campus will keep moving forward.
Then up in Vermont…
UVM Students Walk Out in Support of Transgender People
Hundreds of students at the University of Vermont walked out of class to show solidarity and support for transgender people.
U.S. News and World Report
October 30, 2018

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — Hundreds of students at the University of Vermont walked out of class to show solidarity and support for transgender people.

UVM's Queer Student Union says it organized the Monday walkout in response to reports that the Trump administration is seeking to narrowly define gender in a way that would deny civil rights protections to transgender Americans. WCAX-TV reports the demonstrators say they were confident the walkout would make a difference in both the college community and for transgender and nonbinary people nationwide.
Then at Middlebury College also in Vermont…
Middlebury Statement on Transgender
October 29, 2018
 
President Laurie Patton and Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández emailed the following statement to the Middlebury community on Friday, October 26.

You may have heard this week that, according to the New York Times, the Department of Health and Human Services is proposing to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance. The proposal calls for narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth. Many see this as a way of the government eradicating federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who identify as a gender other than the one they were born into.

We write to assure you that any change to the national policy will have no effect on Middlebury’s policies or procedures. Middlebury prohibits discrimination in employment (or in admission or access to its educational or extracurricular programs, activities, or facilities) based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, among many other forms of identity. Furthermore, it is unlawful in Vermont for an employer to discriminate because of a person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, place of birth, disability or age.
In Pennsylvania…
Penn State community stands for transgender equality
The Underground
By Shia Miller
October 30, 2018

On Monday afternoon, Penn State staff, students and State College residents stood at the Allen Street Gates to stand up for transgender equality. The peaceful gathering aimed to make an impact and bring awareness to the uncertain future that the transgender community faces.

Last week, The New York Times reported that the Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration has aimed to narrow the legal definition of gender. Under the new definition, sex would be limited to the binary terms of male and female, as determined by a medical professional at birth. Changing this law undermines the protection of rights of the transgender community — nearly 1.4 million Americans. This policy hits home here in State College, where about 20 students and residents protested for peace, each for various reasons.

For many who were protesting, the idea of allyship and support were at the forefront of their motivation. “I came to show support for friends and neighbors. Trans rights are human rights,” said Cristy Schmidt of State College who is a Penn State employee.
In Hartford… The University of Hartford held a rally last Friday

Okay there is a lot of support out there for us, colleges and universities  but in the long run Trump is going to have his way unless the courts block him. His Executive Order will be applied to any school or agencies that receive federal funding which includes universities, colleges, homeless shelters, hospitals, long term care facilities, senior centers, and just about every business that have federal contracts.

Monday, October 29, 2018

A Cis Ally

The more hate that Trump stirs up the more allies step up to defend us.

People are beginning to see the hate that Trump is stirring up and not liking it and I think that the turning point was the horrible shooting at the synagogue people are being to see the hate that this administration and the Republicans are creating.

(Please forgive his use of transgendered, he is trying to understand)
Transgender people in danger of being Trumped (JEFF EDELSTEIN COLUMN)
Trentonian
By Jeff Edelstein
October 29, 2018

I’m not a transgendered person. I’m a regular ol’ dude. I have a dude brain and it matches my dude plumbing. But it doesn’t take a giant leap to imagine what it might be like to not match. There are people in this world who feel as if they are in the wrong body.

Honestly, I’m glad I’m not one of them. Seems like a ton of trouble, frankly. Seems like a fight I wouldn’t be up for.

But just because I’m not transgendered doesn’t mean I can’t empathize with the plight of a transgendered person. I can take a step back from my cisWhateverness and be able to put myself in a transgendered person’s shoes, which, I’m guessing, are more fabulous than mine.

I’m quite confident people who are transgendered, who are biologically male or female but identify as the opposite, aren’t choosing who they are. They just are. And the least we could do is let them live their life without judgement based on whether or not they think of themselves as a boy or a girl.

After all, why should we care?
[…]
I don’t know who to believe on this issue. Doctors, who in some cases spend their careers dealing with this, or Donald Trump. Boy, it’s close.

Furthermore, Trump and Co. want to roll back the civil rights protections granted to transgender people during the Obama years.

Honestly, I’m fine with rolling back the civil rights protections. Transgender people should have no more rights than blue-is-my-favorite-color people [He used as an example discriminating against people who like the color blue].

Only problem? Transgendered people are discriminated against all the time, in nearly every facet of their life. Last I checked, us “Blue rulez!” folks are not. So yeah: I hate the idea of “protected groups,” but only because I can’t believe that 21st century America still is dealing with the issue of having to have protected groups.

To be clear: If you discriminate against someone because their sex organs don’t jibe with their innate who’ness, the problem is with you, not them. Grow up.
We need more allies like him

We have to cut some slack as allies try to understand, we cannot push them away because they use words at first that some find offensive… we need to educate.

We can make potential allies into detractor.

A number of years ago a woman was trying to understand us, I was making headway in her understanding, she actually proofread one of my term papers on gender dysphoria for a class that I was taking for my MSW. Then in one comment on my blog she used the word “transvestite” and a number of trans people jumped all over her case for using a word that she didn’t know was offensive to us. She never posted another comment or emailed me again.

This is a troubling time we are going through we will need all the allies that we can get. In Massachusetts it will not be trans people that vote for keeping the public accommodation law it will be our allies who vote for keeping the law.

Let’s build allies!

What You Didn’t See At The World Series

Something was hidden from view of the television but what everyone at the stadium saw…
Pro-transgenrder rights flag and banner in stands at Dodger Stadium
during World Series Game 5 on October 28, 2018
CBS Los Angeles
Pro-transgender rights flag unfurled at World Series Game 5
CBS News
October 29, 2018

LOS ANGELES -- During do-or-die World Series Game 5 at Dodger Stadium, fans unfurled a large banner reading "Trans People Deserve To Live," reports CBS Los Angeles. The statement was emblazoned on the Transgender Pride Flag, colored blue, pink and white.
[…]
The flag was eventually removed. It was unclear whether it was taken down by the activists who brought it or by stadium security, and FOX's television broadcast didn't show either the flag or its removal.
The website Intro reported,
For many baseball fans, Sunday will be remembered as a Red Sox victory against the Dodgers. However the final World Series was also a win for the trans community after activists unfurled a banner reading “Trans People Deserve To Live” from a left field balcony.

The banner was brought by members of the TransLatin@ Coalition, a nationwide organization that fights for the rights of transgender Latinx people and is based in Los Angeles. While it was only displayed for a short time and didn’t make it on the Fox broadcast, its presence is already spreading quickly across social media as the LGBTQ community continues to reel from recent anti-trans attacks by the Trump administration.

“I felt my heart was dropping along with it,” said Bamby Salcedo,  the president of the advocacy organization who led the action in an interview with INTO. “I was kind of exploding because of the adrenaline. You don’t know what’s going to happen with the police and security and all of that.”
One big thumbs-ups for TransLatin@ Coalition

Job well done!



Sunday, October 28, 2018

I Do Not Understand

Why someone would want to be with a political party that wants to erase them out of existence, it just doesn’t make sense to me.
As Trump administration eyes writing transgender people ‘out of existence,’ a reckoning for a transgender Republican
The Washington Post
By Isaac Stanley-Becker
October 22, 2018

Jordan Evans, 27, is a town constable and an elected library trustee in Charlton, Mass.

She’s a Republican, as are most of the people in her hometown, a rural community where about 54 percent of voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2016. Evans is also transgender, as are about 1 million other adult Americans, according to rough estimates. Few combine the two identities. Evans is believed to be the lone openly transgender elected Republican — “my cross to bear,” as she puts it.

The tension involved in her unusual profile became acute over the weekend, when the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is weighing a move to define gender as strictly biological, denying the very basis of transgender identity. According to the Wall Street Journal, the scope of the new rules is unclear.
[…]
“I am afraid,” the Republican politician said in an interview. “I’m absolutely distraught.”

“Not so much afraid for me," clarified Evans, who has been embraced by those closest to her since she first came out as transgender in 2013 and began to medically transition in 2015. "I’m afraid for people who are younger than me — people who don’t have the kind of experiences in the world that I’ve had. They see this, and they’re rightfully terrified.”
[…]
Evans acknowledged being envious of the outpouring of support on the other side of the partisan divide. “Every so often,” she said, she is tempted to abandon the Republicans. “It would be easier, wouldn’t it?”

Where she stands now, she is held at arm’s length by both of the communities that are most important to her.

“I’m met with disdain from Republicans because of my identity and suspicion from the transgender community because of my affiliation,” she said.
Well I’ll tell you I don’t understand how you can say you can stay with a party that is doing everything to erase your existence and to make you feel not welcome?
Running in Republican circles as a transgender person can be a lonely, and sometimes frightful, experience, she said. At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual summit for conservative officials and activists, Evans was confronted by someone from what she described as a “far-right nationalist group.”

“He called me the downfall of the West to my face,” she recalled. This encounter was jarring, however, precisely because it wasn’t representative of her overall experience. She has been attending CPAC for years, she said, and has found support from some of the people she has met there, especially younger conservatives.
Isn’t that supposed to be the definition of insanity… doing something over and over again expecting a different outcome?

One person that has seen the light is…
Caitlyn Jenner regrets backing Donald Trump
Channel 24
October 27, 2018

Los Angeles - Former Olympic US athlete and transgender activist Caitlyn Jenner has penned an op-ed voicing regret for backing President Donald Trump, and saying "I was wrong" about Trump's commitment to LGBTQ rights.

"Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to claim to support this valuable, vulnerable community, and I was encouraged by the applause he received when he said at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 that he would stand up for the LGBTQ community," Jenner said in a column published in The Washington Post Thursday.

"Sadly, I was wrong," added the lifelong Republican. "The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president."

She said Trump since his election had failed to live up to his words and accused him of using trans people as political pawns "as he whips up animus against us in an attempt to energise the most right-wing segment of his party, claiming his anti-transgender politics are meant to 'protect the country'.

"This is politics at its worst. It is unacceptable, it is upsetting, and it has deeply, personally hurt me," Jenner said.
It is better to seen the light later then never to seen it all.

The Republicans say they want to get government off our backs but they are doing everything they can to stick government in to our most personal parts of our lives.

The Republicans they want a balanced budget but they just passed a budget that created the largest deficit in history… almost two trillion dollars!

Junk Science

How many times have you seen comments saying gender is just chromosomes?
The Idea of a 'DNA Test' for Transgender People Is Part of a Long, Dark History
Time
By Jeffrey Kluger
October 25, 2018

Science is too busy holding the universe together to care about politics. Greenhouse gases will continue contributing to climate change and vaccines will continue not causing autism, whether you believe it or not.

None of that means that politicians and ideologues won’t keep trying to drag science into their fights. The latest example of this unlovely truth occurred just this week, when the New York Times reported the existence of a memo drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services that would, if the changes it details were implemented, effectively roll back civil protections for transgender people by defining gender as a fixed biological trait, determined by genitalia at birth. The only exception, the memo reportedly states, would be if the male or female label could be “rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

But, as decades of scientific research have shown, that kind of test does not remotely exist. It likely never will.
[…]
The proposed HHS rule thus sets up a neatly circular trap—establishing a standard that can never be met and ending the conversation before it can begin. Don’t blame the policy, it’s the science talking.
And we are the ones caught in this trap.

If it wasn’t so lethal to us it should be interesting to see how plays out in court with state rights to determine the gender of their citizens as the Trump policy will put the federal government in direct conflict with state’s rights.

My birth certificate says I’m female; my DNA says… well I don’t know what it says because I never had it checked. My federal documents all say I’m female… will the feds force us to have DNA tests. And wouldn’t mean that they have to test everyone because of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Trump I think once again is going to face a long court battle just like the rules for trans people in the military and will end up in the Supreme Court with justice Kavanaugh on the bench now.

Saturday, October 27, 2018

You Don’t Understand…

I wrote the essay below yesterday morning but since then a terrible hate has happened... again, again, and again. Three times this week there have attacks of hate.

I say to you Mr. Trump stop your hate but I know you will not; I think you take perverse pleasure in seeing the hate you have stirred up. I think that this is what you want, a divided nation filled with hate.

I do not hate you, I am mad at you for everything you have done to this country.

You have made people fear when they go to worship; you have made religion a weapon to hide bigotry behind. You have made me fear.

I am mad at everyone who calls themselves a Republican and has put the Party before their country. I say to Congress we do not need any more prays

To me it seems more and more that you Mr. Trump are in league with Putin and I call you out for what you are a Traitor.



…If you are not trans, you might be close to understanding but unless you fear is to the point of crying yourself to sleep you don’t really understand.

You don’t know the depth of the fear.

I’m worried, not just for me but also for all the other trans people.

When Trump was elected I was answering calls from trans people, you could hear their voice shaking with fear. Now it is starting again.

I thank you for being there for us; we thank you for standing beside us, we appreciate you being there for us, you lighten our burden.

I am blogging more political posts because that is the only way I know to effectively fight this hate.

The Republicans don’t care about petitions, the don’t care about protests, they don’t care polls, the only thing they care about is their agenda of hate.

The only thing that they fear is the ballot box, they are doing everything they can to disenfranchise the minority voters.
  • Gerrymandering,
  • Closing voting places,
  • Harsh voter ID laws,
  • Strict rules for voter registration,
  • Stringent rules absentee ballots.
  • Blocking felons who committed minor offenses from voting
Voters are what they fear.

Thank you for being there for us. We can use a hug.

And help to get out the vote!

The only thing that I want to see on everyone's Facebook page or on their blogs n election day is...


The lyric of the Tom Petty song come to mind…
You don't know how it feels
You don't know how it feels
No, you don't know how it feels to be me





Updated 4:40 PM

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) Criticizes Trump's Treatment of the Press on Senate Floor

Saturday 9: "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"

Crazy Sam’s Saturday 9: "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" Theme

On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun…



This week's song was chosen because this is the last Saturday 9 before Halloween. Are you unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, was born in England. Name another pop culture contribution England has made.
Keeping with the Halloween theme…
The Rocky Horror Picture Show

2) This week's song is recognized as the theme to Hitchcock's long-running TV show, but "Funeral March for a Marionnette" is a classic piece written for piano in the late 1870s by Charles Gounod. Do you often listen to classical music?
Funny you should ask; I was listening to the Grand Canyon Suite the other day.


3) Janet Leigh's shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho is considered one of the scariest sequences ever filmed. What's the most frightening movie you've ever seen?
I don’t know because I don’t watch horror movies. Probably the last horror movie I watch I was I was a teenager.

4) Hitchcock admitted that he "never trusted birds," and he took that fear and turned it into the movie, The Birds. Is there a member of the animal kingdom that just gives you "the creeps?"
None, spiders don’t bother me, neither do mice.
What did scare me were squirrels in the attic.
I thought they were mice so I went up in the attic with a mouse trap and I must have unintentionally cornered a squirrel. It jumped out at me to get to the opening they had in a vent and I stumbled backwards and narrowly missed falling down the stairs.

5) Halloween will soon be upon us. Will you carve a jack o'lantern this year?
No, I having done that since I was an adult.

6) What candy will trick or treaters get at your house?
Nope, I hibernate for Halloween and besides the neighborhood has matured most of us are now retired and getting there.

7)  When you went trick or treating, did you prefer fantasy costumes (like a storybook character) or scary ones (like a monster)?
Pirates, soldiers, etc..

8)  Which candy was your favorite? Which one were you disappointed to find in your trick or treat bag?
I’m glad you was a past tense since I very rarely eat candy now.
I used to like Hershey’s Krackel and shh.... I still eat some when I can.

9) Which do you find scarier -- cemeteries or haunted houses?
Neither, what’s scary about cemeteries? Haunted houses… no such thing.

Thanks so much for joining us again at Saturday: 9. As always, feel free to come back, see who has participated and comment on their posts. In fact sometimes, if you want to read & comment on everyone's responses, you might want to check back again tomorrow. But it is not a rule. We haven’t any rules here. Join us on next Saturday for another version of Saturday: 9, "Just A Silly Meme on a Saturday!" Enjoy your weekend!



I am driving up to the cottage in the middle of a Nor’easter to close up the cottage this weekend because this is the only time I’m free until mid-December.


Friday, October 26, 2018

A Blast From The Past… The Way, Way Past

One of the more famous trans person was from the Eighteenth Century, if you haven’t of her you should have.

(Note: Some of these article are old and from European sources and use words that are our of style now here in the U.S,) 
Meet a lost transgender icon: the Chevalier d’Éon
LGBTQ Nation
By Gwendolyn Smith
October 20, 2018

Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont — far better known as the Chevalier d’Éon — was a French diplomat, soldier, and spy active in the mid to late 1700s. They could also have been intersex or transgender.

In the 1750s, d’Éon was part of King Louis XV’s secret contingent of spies, and over the next 30 years ended up serving France in Russia and England, as well as leading soldiers in the Seven Years War.
Museum Hack had this to say about Chevalier d’Éon,
The Mystery Of Chevalier D’Eon
By Alex Johnson
March 8, 2018

Contradictions, eh?

Life is full of them, but it’s rare to find so many in one place, at one time, and in one person.

Le Chevalier d’Eon was both a diplomat and a soldier; born noble, yet later impoverished; an international celebrity, but also a clandestine spy.

And, throughout the course of her life, d’Eon lived as both a man and a woman—she was the first openly transgender person in European history. 1

By many accounts, d’Eon appears to have perpetuated much of the mystery herself, becoming the subject of great public fascination, particularly in London, where she spent much of her life.
[…]
On October 5, 1728, d’Eon was born Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont.
His life as a spy began when d’Eon was 28.
At some point early in his career—these things weren’t exactly done on the books, you see—d’Eon was recruited for King Louis XV’s secret network of spies. Le Secret du Roi—the King’s Secret—was relatively new, having been established in the 1740s. Unlike the Rhonda Byrne book, this Secret wasn’t about vision boards. It was about placing Louis XV’s cousin Prince de Conti on the Polish throne, effectively creating a French satellite state.
But the Seven Year War got in the way of his secret mission and was awarded the cross of St. Louis for his service as a dragoon captain; at the end of the war he resumed his secret missions. But he fell out of favor of the king and ending up blackmailing the King of France.
Amazingly, d’Eon’s gambit paid off: somehow, blackmailing France won him an annual pension from Louis XV, with purse strings attached, of course: d’Eon had to continue spying for Le Secret and hand over the remaining, unpublished French secrets that he had threatened to divulge—which, fine, that’s fair enough.

But King Louis, being very uncool about the whole thing, took the deal a step too far with a further demand: that d’Eon officially declare a gender before returning to France.

D’Eon made what was an unprecedented decision for the time, and declared herself a woman.
However, she faced the same bigotry as we face today.
France’s patriarchal society had little room for d’Eon in the capacity that she had previously enjoyed as a man. Forced into early retirement, she was repeatedly barred from re-entering military service (she had even requested to serve in the American War of Independence), and had lost her political clout.
She fled back to Britain where she died at the age of 81.

Art Market Monitor has an article about Chevalier d’Éon…
The 18th Century’s Transvestite Spy Rediscovered
By Marion Maneker
April 16, 2012

The earliest surviving formal portrait of a male transvestite has been discovered by Philip Mould in a New York saleroom.  On first glance the historic portrait featuring a rather masculine looking woman piqued the renowned art sleuth’s interest.   A gentle clean and further painstaking research uncovered a rich and colourful history.

“The 18th century portrait appeared to be of a somewhat manly middle-aged lady. Research before the sale suggested otherwise, and upon cleaning, the face revealed a distinctive 5 0’clock shadow. This fuelled further investigation that resulted in the astonishing discovery that the portrait is of the legendary spy, diplomat and transvestite, Chevalier D’Eon that has been lost since 1926.  The painting is now “under serious consideration” by the National Portrait Gallery, London.  Should it be purchased will represent the gallery’s first oil painting of a cross-dresser in guise.

“The story of D’Éon is one of the more remarkable biographies of the 18th century. The recent rediscovery of this lost and only oil portrait should dramatically reawaken his  historical significance,” adds Philip Mould.
Chevalier D’Eon gave rise to the early term for a trans person Eonism.
eonism
[ee-uh-niz-uh m]
noun Psychiatry.
the adoption of feminine mannerisms, clothing, etc., by a male.

Origin of eonism
1925–30; after the Chevalier d' Éon (died 1810), Frenchman who posed as a woman
Dictionary.com

Good News

Something that we have been lacking lately, this time the good news comes from South America (I couldn’t find any good news locally).
Uruguay passes a groundbreaking trans equality law as the US rolls back rights
LGBTQ Nation
By Gwendolyn Smith
October 24, 2018

Uruguay’s general assembly has passed a historic law protecting the rights of transgender people in the country.

The Uruguayan senate previously approved the law, known as “Ley Integral de Persona Trans.” The bill has now passed their senate.

Under the law, treatment options for transgender people are defined as a right. Transgender people in Uruguay will be able to have appropriate medical care, including hormone treatment and surgical options paid for by the government.

It also sets aside 1% of government jobs for the transgender community, ensuring transgender employment within the Uruguayan government for the next 15 years.
Meanwhile here the Trump is doing everything they can to erase us.
“Trans people don’t reach old age,” said Tania Ramirez, from the Ministry of Social Development in Uruguay, to Marketplace. “They are a vulnerable community and the police and the state detained and tortured trans people during the dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s and these tactics continued into the democratic era.”
A ray of hope, change does come.

Hopefully the change for us will come on November 6th  and then again in 2020.

Vote blue! We cannot afford to split our votes around on fringe candidates who have no hope of winning. Otherwise we will end up again with Trump again and elected legislators who are Trump-want-a-bes.

Thursday, October 25, 2018

A Three Way Race

Our voting system is not set up for a three way elections when we do have 3 way elections we end up with governors like Maine’s LePage. We end up with elected offices with less than 50% of the voters voting for them.

In countries like Austria, Brazil, Finland, Poland, and Portugal all have two round elections were there is a runoff of candidates with the two highest votes.

Here in Connecticut we have a three way race and that means that there is a possibility of a candidate with less than 50% of the votes winning. The third party candidate will syphon off votes from the other candidates and it will depend on how many are draw off from the Democrat or Republican candidates. From the polls so far it looks like Oz Griebel the Independent candidate is drawing more from the Democratic Party candidate Lamont.

An article in the Hartford Courant reports that,
Lamont holds a lead of 3.4 percentage points, but the margin of error in the Sacred Heart University/Hearst Connecticut Media poll is 4.3 percentage points.

The survey of likely voters showed 39.5 percent for Lamont, 36.1 percent for Stefanowski and 8.4 percent for independent Oz Griebel. Another 15 percent said they were undecided.
Where are the 8.4% that are voting for Griebel coming from Lamont or Stefanowski?

My guess is that the voters are coming from voters who would have normally voted form Lamont.

Both Griebel and Lamont are pretty much have the same agenda, while Stefanowski is a radical far right Republican who idolizes Trump.

Stefanowski wants to do away with the income tax but hasn’t said where he is going to cut ten billion dollars out of the budget which is half of Connecticut’s budget.

In the second debate a clue emerged, he said this about the Department of Motor Vehicles “…with the help of the private sector.” i.e. privatizing the DMV.

His “Plan” I believe to privatize the DMV, DSS, DCF, and other state agencies so his billionaire friends can make a killing and the workers get minimum wages (which by the way he wants to repeal). As Trump suggested in his State-of-the –Union Address to sell off our roads to the highest bidders like other Republicans governors like in Indiana have done to disastrous results.

Also Stefanowski has not answered any question during the debates about LGBT human rights, he answered vaguely about being in favor of all people rights… that sounded like code words for “religious freedom.”

As trans people, as gays and lesbians, Bi, and queer people we have to fight for our lives.

If you do not vote, if you do not Blue because you don’t like either candidate, or if you vote for a third party candidate you are allowing Red to win.

Remember LePage got in because of a three candidate election.

Trump got in because people voted for third party candidates or people didn’t bother to vote.

We need everyone to vote and vote Blue, we need to make sure that the Republicans do not gain control of the Connecticut governorship and legislature. Our lives depend upon it.

I admit it... I am scared.

Stop The Hate

That question is something I always wonder why the conservatives are so angry at us.
Right-Wing Fantasies About Gender Are Killing Trans People
Truth Out
By Dean Spade
October 22, 2018

The Trump administration’s latest attack on trans people is the most terrifying yet: The Health and Human Services Department is now planning to establish a retrograde definition of gender aimed at making whatever gender is assigned at birth unchangeable, according to a memo leaked to The New York Times.

For the last 16 years, I have been involved with efforts to reduce the enforcement of gender categories on trans people and everyone. When I started doing this work in 2002, many state and local agencies and federal administrative regimes that keep gender marker data about people didn’t have clear policies, or didn’t have any policy at all, about whether someone could change their gender marker, or even what evidence or documentation the gender marker on someone’s records or ID is based on. As trans legal organizations began to emerge in the early 2000s, we worked to identify ways to reduce the harms trans people face because of gender norm enforcement.
[…]
The administration’s attack should be understood not only as an attack on trans people, which it is, but also as part of a broader, terrifying approach to race, gender and authority that characterizes the entire presidency. This memo shows how the administration aims to enhance the significance of legal gender and establish narrow definitions to enforce it, which is part of a broader agenda to roll back feminist reforms. One of the most fundamental assertions of feminism is that the meaning of gender categories is socially constructed and enforced through norms, and that gender assignments should not determine how and what people can be, and do.

The Health and Human Services memo leak is aligned with a broader patriarchal and authoritarian ideology about enforcing a gendered worldview that constrains everyone, especially those most touched by state systems that target and control the lives of poor people and people of color. This new move dovetails with the administration’s work to embolden and expand resources to the military, police and immigration enforcement. All of this strengthens the violent enforcement of race, gender and class hierarchies in our lives. All of them will directly result in increased sexual and gender violence in the lives of the poorest people.
If you are white and well off the effects of Trump policies will be minimal, however if you a black, Latino, or another minority you will feel the effects of his draconian proposed polices much, much more.

If you are sick or disabled you will also feel the results of his polices in your healthcare.

If you are student you will strongly feel the results of Trump’s polices.
We are in a very desperate time. Government agencies have always enforced laws and policies in ways that have endangered marginalized groups, but the Trump administration is ramping this up on all fronts. Many people have felt powerless, watching the Kavanaugh confirmation to the Supreme Court, the passing of the outrageous defense budget, the ongoing attacks on immigrants and imprisonment of migrant children, pipeline expansion and more. It is especially important in these moments to connect to what we can do, in our immediate surroundings, to support the people most harmed by these developments, and to strengthen community ties and fight isolation by figuring out problems and meeting needs together. Trump’s attacks are not slowing down, and we all have skin in the game. This is the moment to turn our fear and rage into immediate action to support the survival of everyone in our communities—including trans people—whose existence is threatened.
We cannot allow Trump to teardown each of us separately we must untied with other minorities.

We must work for candidates who support us.

Write letter-to-the-editors.

Work for candidates and parties.

We must speak up when we hear hate.

We must vote!

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

And You Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worst

Well guess again!

It can get much worse now that Kavanaugh on the bench.
Anti-LGBT lawsuits already headed Justice Kavanaugh’s way
Washington Blade
By Chris Johnson
October 17, 2018

Precisely on cue with the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, anti-LGBT groups have filed lawsuits challenging LGBT rights that may in the near future serve to test the new justice on his position on the issue.

The complaints — two filed in federal court, one filed in state court — were filed in Texas and seek to challenge the City of Austin’s LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. agency charged with federal employment civil rights law, over its interpretation of Title VII to prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination in the workforce.

But Austin’s LGBT-inclusive ordinance has been on the books for some time and the EEOC has taken charge of anti-LGBT discrimination for years under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (The EEOC determined in the 2012 decision of Macy v. Holder that federal law bars anti-trans discrimination in employment and in the 2015 decision of Baldwin c. Foxx federal law bars anti-gay discrimination.)

Conspicuously, the two federal lawsuits were filed on Oct. 6, the exact date Kavanaugh was confirmed as a U.S. associate justice to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh won’t have a chance to act on the newly filed lawsuits anytime soon, but they will likely percolate through the courts, giving anti-LGBT groups the opportunity to file petitions for review.
And here is the kicker…
The federal lawsuit against EEOC asserts the LGBT protections violate the religious freedom of churches under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by forcing them to hire employee who are LGBT despite religious objections of the employer. (Current law doesn’t require churches to hire pastors who are LGBT contrary to religious beliefs, but does prohibit religiously affiliated organizations from engaging in anti-LGBT discrimination for non-ministerial positions.)
[…]
The religious freedom claims in the lawsuits may be seeking to capitalize on Kavanaugh’s remarks during his confirmation hearing, when Kavanaugh said in response to questions from conservative senators like Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that religious freedom should be protected in the “public square.”

“The Framers understood the importance of protecting conscience,” Kavanaugh said. “It’s akin to the free speech protection in many ways. No matter what God you worship, or if you worship no God at all, you are equally American…If you have religious beliefs, religious people, religious speech, you have just as much right to be in the public square and to participate in public programs as others do. You can’t be denied just because of religious status.”
Okay, up until now the test if a law violated the First Amendment was if a law was religiously neutral; in other words if the law was not targeted at a specific religion. A law like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was religiously neutral it didn’t promote or hinder a religion.

Cornell Law School writes in part,
In interpreting and applying the Free Exercise Clause, the Court has consistently held religious beliefs to be absolutely immune from governmental interference. But it has used a number of standards to review government action restrictive of religiously motivated conduct, ranging from formal neutrality to clear and present danger to strict scrutiny. For cases of intentional governmental discrimination against religion, the Court still employs strict scrutiny. But for most other free exercise cases it has now reverted to a standard of formal neutrality. “[T]he right of free exercise,” it has stated, “does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a ‘valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).’ ”[My emphasis]
But now that is being twisted.

Now the judges appointed by the Republicans are saying that “neutral laws” like non-discrimination acts can be ignored if it “violates your religion.” So what this means is that anyone can disregard that they don’t like by claiming it is against their religion.

Right now the Republican are focusing on us, LGBT people but their argument I see being used to discriminate against blacks, Muslims, Jews, and other minorities. We are on track to become like Saudi Arabia, and Iraq that are theocracies overseen by oligarchies.



I am away this morning teaching two classes in Public Health down at Southern Connecticut State University.

Worst Year For Violence

This year is shaping up to be very deadly for us.

Hate crimes are increasing, discrimination is increasing, and it seems like all the riffraff are crawling out of the swamp.
Violence Against Transgender People is On The Rise
WNYC
October 16, 2018

Twenty years ago, two men brutally beat and tortured Matthew Shepard, a 21 year old gay college student in Laramie, Wyoming. Shepard died six days later — on October 12th, 1998.

But it took until 2009 for President Barack Obama to sign the Matthew Shepard Act, which updated the federal hate crimes law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

But a law on the books doesn’t mean people are actually protected. Some states still haven’t expanded their own hate crime language and people in the transgender community say they feel especially vulnerable.

As transgender people in the U.S. gain more visibility, they also face increasing discrimination, harassment and violence.

Over the last five years, violence against this community has been on the rise — and 2018 is shaping up to be among the deadliest on record. So far, at least 22 transgender women have been murdered, most of them women of color, according to the Human Rights Campaign.



Then out in Chicago last week…
Murders Of Two Chicago Transgender Women Mirror Anti-Trans Violence Across U.S.
WBEZ
By Char Daston
October 18, 2018

Advocates say murders of transgender women have been on the rise nationwide in the last five years. At least 22 trans women have been murdered so far in 2018, according to the Human Rights Campaign, and the majority have been trans women of color.

Tracking the exact number of deaths can be difficult. Police investigations often identify trans victims by names they no longer use.

Chicago has seen two trans women murdered in the last five weeks: Dejanay Stanton, 24, and 31-year-old Ciara Minaj Carter Frazier. A memorial service for Carter Frazier will be held Saturday.
Do you want change well go out and vote November 6th.

Almost half of the voters didn’t go out and vote last elections and the winner is going to the candidates who can get the most people to the polls.



I am away this morning teaching two classes in Public Health down at Southern Connecticut State University.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Fight Back, Fight Back

“Won’t Be Erased,” that’s the rallying cry that is spreading on the internet.
At Rallies and Online, Transgender People Say They #WontBeErased
New York Times
By Sarah Mervosh and Christine Hauser
Oct. 22, 2018

L.G.B.T. activists mobilized a fast and fierce campaign that included a protest outside the White House on Monday to say transgender people cannot be expunged from society, in response to an unreleased Trump administration memo that proposes a strict definition of gender based on a person’s genitalia at birth.

The existence of the draft memo, the administration’s latest effort to roll back the recognition and protection of transgender people under federal civil rights law, was reported by The New York Times on Sunday morning.

Within hours, the hashtag #WontBeErased circulated on social media. By Sunday evening, a rally for transgender rights took place in New York; another took place on Monday in Washington.
[…]
“You saw such a massive response because this attack on the trans community is essentially trying to erase the trans community from the face of this country, and we’re not going to stand for that,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of Glaad, a media advocacy group for L.G.B.T. people.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said, “This is a really intrusive policy that doesn’t make any sense scientifically.”

Ms. Keisling said she and her staff woke up on Sunday to the news of the memo and quickly planned a response. The hashtag #WontBeErased felt appropriate to them. “What this feels like to transgender people is trying to make us invisible, trying to say that we don’t exist, trying to say that we are nothing,” she said.
There is a rally in New Haven on the 27th: New Haven Rally & Speakout: Trans People #WontBeErased! which is sponsored by Party for Socialism and Liberation

There is talk of other rallies around Connecticut, so stay tune for updates.

What I Said Yesterday

Yesterday I wrote
I hate to make comparisons but this is exactly what the Fascists did in Nazi Germany and Trump is doing now. Isolating, scapegoating, misdirection, encouraging violence, persecutions.

He is rallying his base and using hate to do it.
Hate of us.
Hate of Gays and Lesbians
Hate of minorities
Hate of other religions
Hate of the media
Hate of those are different
Hate of those people...
The British Guardian had an Opinion yesterday,
Authoritarians like Trump target trans people for a reason

Transgender rights are crucial in the struggle not only for human rights, but women’s liberation

Attacking transgender people – especially transgender women – has become a favorite strategy for authoritarians, and Trump is no exception. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is attempting to narrow gender identity to the one assigned at birth – thereby denying transgender people their place in society.

This is a deliberate attempt to deploy tried and tested transphobic messaging to rile up his voter base ahead of the midterm elections. Trump wants to rally conservatives while engaging in attacking a marginalized group that it is still socially acceptable to target. Unfortunately, support and inclusion of transgender individuals even among mainstream progressives is lacking, and even some self-proclaimed feminist movements advocate for trans exclusion in ways similar to the recent Trump directives.

The irony in this is that if we peel the onion it becomes clear that transgender people are not actually the real target of such authoritarian leaders. Though transgender people will be the ones annihilated on the frontlines, figuratively and literally, by this tactic, we form too small a minority to pose a serious threat to authoritarianism. Women’s liberation is what autocrats are attempting to quell with anti-trans measures. Strongmen have made their hostility and contempt for women clear, whether it is through promotion of rape as was done by the Filipino leader Rodrigo Duterte, or pushing a US supreme court nominee credibly accused of sexual assault while insulting his accusers, in the case of Donald Trump.
[…]
Misogyny and oppression of women must be fought globally and unwaveringly, including in western societies, which have falsely been perceived as post-feminist. Transgender rights are crucial in the struggle not only for human rights, but women’s liberation. Those who fiercely advocate for eradicating transgender people are fighting to retain a world under the regime of male hegemony. In such an environment, autocrats and their accompanying oligarchies are sustained. A world without misogyny and with women and queer liberation is a world without despotic rulers. We are in desperate need as a global community to arrive there.

Mischa Haider is a transgender researcher and activist at Harvard University



Then there is possibility…
Paul Krugman Warns Trump Is Poised To Disregard Democratic House Victory
The president’s complaints about “voter fraud” could be used to deny legitimacy of Democratic victory in the midterm election.
Huffington Post
By Mary Papenfuss
October 22, 2018

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman fears that President Donald Trump’s insistent complaints of “voter fraud” are a setup to deny the legitimacy of a Democratic majority in the House should the party win in the midterm elections.

Those who don’t believe such a scenario is possible “haven’t been paying attention,” the Nobel laureate warned.

Trump has complained, without evidence, that as many as 5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election.
[…]
Krugman retweeted Trump’s warning Saturday that “all levels of government” are watching out for “VOTER FRAUD” in the upcoming elections.

Krugman is convinced that if the Democrats win a majority in the House, Republicans will claim the election was stolen, deny the legitimacy of the victory, and create a “nightmarish political situation.”

Trump and the Republicans will “use claims of voter fraud to justify their disregard of the law and Constitution,” he said. “If you don’t think this is going to happen, you haven’t been paying attention.”
I also think this is a very real possibility and not only that but I also think that Trump supporters will stage an armed rebellion. That a coup attempt is a real risk with the way Trump is rallying his base with lies, hate, and his poisonous attacks on Democrats and most of his supporters are armed.



Then is you think that is too much then you don’t want to read this.
Lawyer who fought to ban trans people from bathrooms will lead DOJ civil rights division
LGBTQ Nation
By Alex Bollinger
October 22, 2018

An anti-gay lawyer was confirmed to lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

In a 52-45 vote, the Senate confirmed Donald Trump’s nominee, Eric Dreiband.

He will now head up the Department of Justice’s efforts to fight racism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination, even though he has spent his life defending discrimination.

Dreiband represented the University of North Carolina in a lawsuit against the school’s decision to enforce HB2, which restricted bathroom access for trans people and banned local governments from passing LGBTQ anti-discrimination ordinances.

He also defended R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Bloomberg in discrimination cases, and represented clients looking for religious exemptions to the law.

“Whoever leads the ‘crown jewel’ of the Justice Department must have deep relationships with stakeholders and marginalized communities, and have a deep, abiding faith in our nation’s civil rights laws,” said Vanita Gupta, who headed the Civil Rights Division under Barack Obama.

“They must respect the laws that touch everyone, rights that people have literally died for. They must respect the role of what has been called the conscience of the federal government. In all those regards, Eric Dreiband is woefully unqualified to lead the Civil Rights Division.”
This is horrible!

It is not even a “fox in a hen house” it is more like Godzilla. There is only one purpose in appointing him is to tear down all civil rights laws. They are starting with us because we are the low fruit but make no mistake this is also directed at blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Jews, and women rights.



There is a rally in New Haven on the 27th: New Haven Rally & Speakout: Trans People #WontBeErased! which is sponsored by Party for Socialism and Liberation

Monday, October 22, 2018

Another Ally On Our Side

And we need all that we can get. This time it is from a well know actress...
Harry Potter star Emma Watson shows support for trans rights
Pink News UK
By Nick Duffy
18th October 2018

Film star and women’s rights activist Emma Watson has showed her support for transgender equality in a social media post published on October 18.

Watson posted a photo on Twitter of herself in a t-shirt bearing the slogan: “Trans rights are human rights.”

She tagged several groups that campaign for transgender rights in the post, including LGBT+ charity Stonewall, transgender children’s charity Mermaids, and non-profits all About Trans and Gendered Intelligence.
In this day of age we need all the help that we can get with the attacks from the Republicans here in the U.S. and in Britain by the conservatives.



This was pre-written Sunday morning.

I am on the road home from Fantasia Fair and the cottage

Pocketbooks Ahead Of Human Rights

All of the trans people who put their pocketbooks ahead of their rights you are screwed.
Trump Administration Eyes Defining Transgender Out of Existence
New York Times
By Erica L. Green, Katie Benner and Robert Pear
Oct. 21, 2018

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of sex in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing sex largely as an individual’s choice — and prompting fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.

Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.
Of course they mean the science of the 1950s
The move would be the most significant of a series of maneuvers, large and small, to exclude the population from civil rights protections and roll back the Obama administration’s more fluid recognition of gender identity. The Trump administration has sought to bar transgender people from serving in the military and has legally challenged civil rights protections for the group embedded in the nation’s health care law.

Several agencies have withdrawn Obama-era policies that recognized gender identity in schools, prisons and homeless shelters. The administration even tried to remove questions about gender identity from the 2020 census and a national survey of elderly citizens.
For those trans people who voted for Trump…

Say goodbye to your healthcare
Say goodbye to your job
Say goodbye to your apartment
Say goodbye to going out in public
Say goodbye to your thoughts of military service or your veteran's benefits.

I hope you are happy with all your money you saved because when you are living off the street you will need your savings… that is if your bank will let you in.



I am reminded of the poem by Martin Niemöller ...
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
It is now time for everyone to speak up.

Gays and Lesbians it is time to speak up!
Straight people it is time to speak up!
It is time for all people to speak up!

I hate to make comparisons but this is exactly what the Fascists did in Nazi Germany and Trump is doing now. Isolating, scapegoating, misdirection, encouraging violence, persecutions.

He is rallying his base and using hate to do it.
Hate of us.
Hate of Gays and Lesbians
Hate of minorities
Hate of other religions
Hate of the media
Hate of those are different
Hate of those people...

If you are thinking about voting a third party candidate, I respectfully ask to think about this... here in Connecticut one vote could be enough to let the Republicans win in Connecticut... the vote is that close.

The Republican candidates have not answered any questions about what their position is on LGBT rights. Here in Connecticut the Republicans are tied in the Senate and only a few votes short of a majority in the House.

If they win say good-bye to health insurance.
If they win say good-bye to public accommodation protects for us.
If they win say good-bye to impartial judiciary, remember it was the Republicans who blocked the nomination of a gay Chief Justice Connecticut Supreme Court nominee.
If they win say good-bye to human rights.

Vote on November 6th.
Vote "Yes on 3"



This was pre-written Sunday morning.

I am on the road home from Fantasia Fair and the cottage

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Fantasia Fair Day 7 – The Party’s Over

Well the fair is coming to an end, the weeklong conference end today.

I said my goodbyes at the Gala Awards Banquet last night, over the course of the week I met many new fair goers and longtime attendees. There were also many old friends who didn’t attend this year, many we lost track of over the years, and some who have passed away and will be sorely missed.

Well for me I didn’t do much yesterday.

A friend showed up at the cottage door step on her way back to Connecticut and we sat around talking for a while, when I looked at the clock I had missed lunch and the keynote was starting. So instead I drove around showing Wellfleet and the National Seashore s to a friend staying at my cottage and of course I had my camera with me.

Wellfleet Harbor


This could be the very view that Henry David Thoreau saw on that October 1849 afternoon…


American Heritage's Thoreau Walks The Cape
Shortly after noon the walkers passed through a stretch of low shrubs and then a belt of sand and suddenly stood upon the edge of a bluff, looking down at the ocean. They were just above the elbow of the Cape, where the eastward-stretching arm bends at a right angle and runs north to make a clenched fist at Provincetown. The ocean side of the forearm is what Thoreau called the Great Beach, stretching unbroken for thirty miles north from Nauset Harbor (plus another twelve miles south). Considering both its length and its quality, it may well be the finest beach in the United States and one of the best in the world.
From Henry David Thoreau "Cape Cod"
This Monday morning was beautifully mild and calm, both on land and water, promising us a smooth passage across the Bay, and the fishermen feared that it would not be so good a drying day as the cold and windy one which preceded it. There could hardly have been a greater contrast. This was the first of the Indian summer days, though at a late hour in the morning we found the wells in the sand behind the town still covered with ice, which had formed in the night. What with wind and sun my most prominent feature fairly cast its slough. But I assure you it will take more than two good drying days to cure me of rambling. After making an excursion among the hills in the neighborhood of the Shank-Painter Swamp, and getting a little work done in its line, we took our seat upon the highest sand-hill overlooking the town, in mid-air, on a long plank stretched across between two hillocks of sand, where some boys were endeavoring in vain to fly their kite; and there we remained the rest of that forenoon looking out over the placid harbor, and watching for the first appearance of the steamer from Wellfleet, that we might be in readiness to go on board when we heard the whistle off Long Point.
[...]
The Harbor of Provincetown—which, as well as the greater part of the Bay, and a wide expanse of ocean, we overlooked from our perch—is deservedly famous. It opens to the south, is free from rocks, and is never frozen over. It is said that the only ice seen in it drifts in sometimes from Barnstable or Plymouth. Dwight remarks that "The storms which prevail on the American coast generally come from the east; and there is no other harbor on a windward shore within two hundred miles." J. D. Graham, who has made a very minute and thorough survey of this harbor and the adjacent waters, states that "its capacity, depth of water, excellent anchorage, and the complete shelter it affords from all winds, combine to render it one of the most valuable ship harbors on our coast." It is the harbor of the Cape and of the fishermen of Massachusetts generally. It was known to navigators several years at least before the settlement of Plymouth. In Captain John Smith's map of New England, dated 1614. it bears the name of Milford Haven, and Massachusetts Bay that of Stuard's Bay. His Highness, Prince Charles, changed the name of Cape Cod to Cape James; but even princes have not always power to change a name for the worse, and as Cotton Mather said, Cape Cod is "a name which I suppose it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seen swimming on its highest hills."
Provincetown has a rich history of writers, artist, painters, and photographers; the Christian Science Monitor had an article about the colony...
When the bohemians of Greenwich Village began summering here to escape the heat of New York City in the early 20th century, they were drawn to the isolation and freedom they found here. Their presence, and that of those who followed, ensured a place for Provincetown in the history of American culture.

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) staged his first play, a one-act titled "Bound East for Cardiff," on the wharf here in 1916. Major 20th-century artists, such as Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline, joined legions of painters who summered here. Tennessee Williams (1911-83) wrote plays while staying with friends. Norman Mailer (1923-2007) produced 30 books during his 60 years visiting Provincetown. He moved here permanently in 1990, and his home is now the site of a writers' colony.

Across The Pond

We are not the only place where we are feeling the backlash from getting our right, trans peroplein Britain are also struggling to keep their rights.
Inside the Poisonous British Fight Over Transgender Acceptance
Transphobic commentary in the British media has reached fever pitch, as the public consultation process over the U.K.’s Gender Recognition Act nears its Oct. 19 end date.
The Daily Beast
By Samantha Allen
October 17, 2018

In 2014, the United Kingdom topped the Rainbow Index, an annual ranking of LGBT equality published by a European human rights group.

As of May, the UK has fallen to fourth place.

To understand why, one need only consult the many broadsides being issued against transgender people in the British press, as the government weighs reforms to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, a piece of legislation that allowed those who transitioned from one gender to another to apply for a certificate that formally certifies the change.

The months-long backlash to the idea of reforming the GRA was one of the only negative factors that the European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association cited in their evaluation of the UK for the Rainbow Index this May.
So where is the opposition coming from?
But fears about GRA reform aren’t confined to the press, either: As The Sunday Times reported this past weekend, Conservative MPs in Parliament would be overwhelmingly opposed to making changes to the GRA that would bring the UK’s policy in line with countries like Norway and Ireland, which both allow citizens to declare their gender with minimal gatekeeping.
Oh gee…it’s the conservatives! No surprise there. They are always targeting minorities.
LGBT rights groups in the UK have been wearied by the incessant attacks in the press since the consultation was announced. With headlines like "Children Sacrificed to Appease Trans Lobby" and "This Transgender Madness Is Now A Danger To Women," columnists have been laying into the transgender community as the GRA brings the topic into public view.

Laura Russell, Head of Policy for the organization Stonewall, told The Daily Beast: “There have been daily articles and social media threads that question trans people’s right to exist,” citing the recent slip in the UK’s ranking on Rainbow Index.
[…]
Perhaps nothing encapsulates the state of transgender equality in the UK better than that: A groundbreaking step forward followed by backlash. Whether the UK will be able to keep pace with other countries on LGBT equality, it seems, will depend in large part on whether it is able to move more steadily toward transgender acceptance.
It seems like around the world as the economies falter do income inequalities we are becoming the scapegoats for the economic worries.

Like a magician’s sleight of hand the conservatives are trying to distract people from the real problems by accusing us of being predators.



The Pink News reported…
Metro newspaper runs full-page ad attacking transgender rights reforms
By Nick Duffy
10th October 2018

The Advertising Standards Authority is to investigate whether a full-page ad in UK newspaper Metro opposing transgender rights reforms has broken advertising standards.

Wednesday’s London edition of the free-sheet newspaper carried a full-page ad from the group Fair Play for Women referencing the government’s consultation on gender recognition reforms.

The ad questions whether “someone with a penis is a woman” and refers to transgender women as “male-bodied people.”

The ad’s publication comes in the final days of a government consultation on proposed changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act that would streamline the process for trans people to gain legal recognition as their chosen gender. The public consultation ends on October 19.
[…]
A transgender Metro reader, Katie, told PinkNews of her shock at seeing the ad when picking up the newspaper on Wednesday.

She said: “When I opened my copy of Metro this morning on the way to work, I was shocked and dismayed to find they’d published a full-page ad by an extremist, transphobic political group, which was full of misinformation and scaremongering about trans women like me.”
Sound familiar?

It is just like the ads running in Massachusetts, full of hate, fear and lies.

If to want to stop these attacks in Massachusetts donate! Volunteer! Speak up, speak out!

Visit “Yes on 3 – Take Action” for way to help and get involved!

And vote “Yes on 3!”