The liberal media never was

Welp, I wasn't expecting to do a follow up to The media has failed us so soon, but...

In one of the promised responses to reader feedback, the columnist remarked on being suprised to find that the second most common topic, after the border—on which Trump has, as always, objectively been an incompetent fuckup outside of finding ways to use the issue to stir up hate and appeal to widespread racist sentiments—was the right wing's latest manufactroversy, transgender people having human rights.

Even as the column correctly points out that the anti-trans propaganda has been at best disingenuous and dishonest—Trump's own administration agreed that inmates are entitled to medical care including gender affirming surgery, schools barely even let students have EpiPens so claiming they're handing out sex changes is absurd, the idea of anyone transitioning for a competitive advantage is preposterous, and there are only maybe ten trans athletes in the entire NCAA out of more than half a million athletes anyway—it also includes some frankly disturbing bits like this one:

On one extreme, some people don't believe trans people should even exist. On the other, some believe trans people deserve every right that the rest of us do.

Holy Overton Window, Batman! I'll heartily agree that believing an entire demographic shouldn't exist is extreme, whether attempting to violently enforce it or not, but thinking everyone should have rights? What's extreme about that?

I don't claim to know how we will resolve opposing views on this issue

But we're not talking about views, here. We're talking about people.

My point is, even when trying to correct the record and present the bare facts, even as they acknowledge that all those facts point in the same direction, they still can't resist the urge to cast doubt on the only reasonable conclusion and legitimize complete garbage. Mainstream media is, once again, striving to claim a middle ground, all while taking solidly right-wing views as the default and painting milquetoast centrism as no less extreme than the far right.

So I wrote in again, and was a bit less restrained this time:

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See, this demonstrating exactly my point about false equivalences and bothsiderism.

Right there in the middle of the column, even as you point out that the entire anti-trans argument is based on absurd exaggerations, if not outright lies, you present "trans people deserv[ing] every right that the rest of us do" as being "the other [extreme]" as an implicitly equal and opposite counterpart to "trans people should [not] even exist." And that, quite blunty, is bullshit.

Everyone deserving the same rights is far from an extreme. In an ostensibly free society, this ought to be as uncontroversial a position as anyone can take. Not believing a group of people should even exist, in contrast, is a functionally genocidal position when translated into action, as is increasingly happening across alarmingly large swaths of both the country and the world at large.

These are not the same, and should not be mentioned in the same breath as though there can be any equivalence. We're not talking about "opposing views" on an issue, but whether certain people have the right to live. And the side of the argument that we shouldn't be entertaining in the first place is all built on lies and hate.

But do go on about unremarkable centrist positions being a corresponding extreme to literal Nazi policies. Or have you forgotten which books they burned first?

On Backlash Against Taking Title IX Seriously

In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Education released a finalized version of the regulations to be followed (archived) in ensuring Title IX non-discrimination protections in education, to go into effect at the beginning of August. Major provisions include clarifying that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity. And from the reactions in some quarters, you'd think the world was ending.

North Carolina Republicans learn no lessons

You might have thought the fallout from the infamous bathroom bill would have taught them something. If so, it seems you'd have thought wrong.

Although it fortunately stands little chance of becoming law as long as the state has a governor with any sense and the GOP lacks the numbers in the legislature that would be needed to override a veto, North Carolina's SB 514, introduced on April 5 by a group of three Republican state senators, has some truly disturbing provisions that eclipse even Arkansas's recently-passed HB 1570, currently the most brutal anti-trans law in the nation, though similar bills are pending in other states, including at minimum Alabama and Tennessee.

Demographics Done Wrong

The wave of pointlessly cruel discriminatory transphobic hate bills sweeping the nation wherever the party of Trump holds power (not to mention their similarly repugnant voter suppression efforts) is more than I feel up to addressing right now without descending into incoherent expletives, so I won't. Look to people like Chase Strangio or Katelyn Burns or Esther Wang, or organizations like the ACLU or the Trevor Project, or heck, even this satire by Lily Osler for more on those and why they're garbage.

Forgive if it does you good, but forget at your own peril

The Election is Settled

The 2020 elections are over here in the USA, and though it took longer than usual to project a winner in the presidential race, with all the major news outlets seemingly afraid of being the first to call Pennsylvania, there can no longer be any plausible doubt about the election's outcome. With a final electoral count expected to match Donald Trump's official victory margin in 2016 (not to mention the most votes in history for a candidate, resulting in a popular vote victory margin of over five million), Joe Biden is rightfully president elect. This was largely settled well over a week ago and has only become more certain since.

But still the fighting continues

TDoV 2020

(The following was written for presentation as part of a local Unitarian Universalist service celebrating the 2020 Transgender Day of Visibility. The opening directly quotes from a previous blog entry, so should look familiar to anyone who's read that.)

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It's been about two years, now, since one branch of a major Christian church justified its anti-transgender stance with an official statement bearing a name that referenced Genesis 1:27, as though this were not only an obvious and natural conclusion from the text of the verse, but the only conclusion possible.

As the verse reads in the New International Version: "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

"And" should be such a simple word.

Particularly for something written in a time when women were often considered little, if at all, better than property, that verse from Genesis makes a fascinating assertion. The image of God is not the sole domain of the male, nor, for that matter, of the female. Neither masculine nor feminine is better or more Godly. The man cannot say to the woman that he is more favored of God, nor the woman say to the man that nothing of God is in him. All are part of God's creation and exhibit facets of God's nature.

Concern troll no friend to gay community

One of the editorialists who often leads me to wonder about standards in the editorial industry is at it again, layering a new bit of supposed concern over a rehash of many of the same tired and flawed arguments he was pushing three years ago, all while still claiming his bigotry isn't. This time, Chris Freind has taken it upon himself to offer branding advice to the gay community, advice that just so happens to play into the hands of transphobic (and homophobic!) groups. Who'd have guessed?

A Lament for the Once-United Methodist Church

Background

It's been brewing for decades. In 1972, the United Methodist Church added a declaration that it "does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching" to its rulebook, the Book of Discipline [1]. Such sentiments were unfortunately typical of the time, though by no means universal. Homosexuality, some argued, arose from demonic influences, or was a communist plot, or was at best a step removed from rape and pedophilia, or if nothing else was unnatural and disgusting.

This language, and related language barring LGBTQ+ people from holding leadership positions, have lingered in the rules ever since. Enforcement, on the other hand, has been inconsistent. This upsets those who have an attachment to these rules, and such people often insist that the rules must have teeth.

In the meantime, though, the position enshrined in the Book of Discipline has become increasingly controversial, as heterosexist attitudes have over and over proven to be unjustified. And so some within the United Methodist Church have participated in or outright performed gay weddings, in defiance of the Book of Discipline, even before the United States Supreme Court affirmed marriage as a civil right for all consenting adults, regardless of sex or gender, in 2015. There are openly LGBTQ+ clergy, too, including a lesbian bishop in the Pacific Northwest Conference of the Western Jurisdiction. In everyday life, more and more people within the church, even if not gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or whatever else themselves, have found that they have friends, neighbors, and family members who are. Many feel, too, that the attitude of exclusion embodied in this policy runs contrary to the very nature of Christianity.

As vulnerable by any other name

I like to do a lot of reading about issues and topics that I find interesting or relevant... articles, blog posts, editorials, whatever. Sometimes even vitriolic pieces, if only so that I have some idea of what truth and decency are up against. Usually, though, I prefer more informative pieces, or those that try to explore various questions or psychological aspects of things.

When the comments on a piece aren't too noxious to bother with, they're sometimes more interesting than the piece itself. Which brings us to one of the commenters on an older post about Internalized Trans-Phobia, who remarked that "while technically I'm a 'trans girl' according to my medical record I don't identify as trans, I don't even see it as part of me; it's just something on my medical record." She objected to the way that people sometimes tell her that she has internalized transphobia and shouldn't be so ashamed of who she is.

Status Quo Does Not Make Right

Although the plaintiffs are expected to keep fighting, for now, it's official. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that there's nothing wrong with the Boyertown Area School District policy that treats transgender boys (those boys designated female at birth) as boys and transgender girls (those girls designated male at birth) as girls. There is nothing "hostile", "threatening", or "humiliating" about it, much less illegal or unconstitutional, and the judges seemed unimpressed by all attempts to argue otherwise. Judge Theodore McKee rejected repeated appeals to the status quo in particular, referring to Brown v. Board of Education and retorting, "These types of cases wouldn't happen if the answer was always, 'Go back to the status quo.'"

Created "and"

So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.
- Genesis 1:27 (New International Version)

"And". It should be such a simple word.

Particularly for something written in a time when women were often considered little, if at all, better than property, that verse from Genesis makes a fascinating assertion. The image of God is not the sole domain of the male, nor, for that matter, of the female. Neither masculine nor feminine is better or more Godly. The man cannot say to the woman that he is more favored of God, nor the woman say to the man that nothing of God is in him. All are part of God's creation and exhibit facets of God's nature.

Created "in the image of God... male and female". Not only does this make neither inferior, it leads to the inescapable conclusion that the image of God is itself neither purely male nor purely female. This God is both and neither. We might even say that God... transcends gender.

Junk science that needs to desist

Sometimes it seems like we, as a people, are incapable of discussing anything rationally, and it always seems to get worse when the discussion involves those who are in some way different from the majority. Heated accusations are frequently thrown around whether or not they have any basis in fact, or even make sense at all. And even when claims come across as calmer and more reasonable, they often end up being widely shared with little thought given to their accuracy or relevance.

Here we go again...

It's bad enough coming from assorted strangers online or newspaper editorialists who have made no secrets of their biases. Somehow, though, it's just worse when it comes from people you know and want to respect. It stings, it feels like a betrayal, and... it's just disappointing. Especially since this is someone I've tried to get through to before and hoped I'd met with at least a little success. Especially since this is one of those people who ought to be spreading God's love, choosing instead to parrot ignorance and propagate hatred.

This is why celebrities have handlers

I'd imagine that anyone who's at all interested has seen the tweets by now:

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow......

....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming.....

....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

Yeah. Those tweets. Where do I even begin?

How is Charlie Gard an excuse to criticize transgender issues?

An opinion piece by Christine Flowers in a recent edition of the local paper takes a perplexing detour. While the piece mainly deals with the Charlie Gard controversy, which I don't feel that I understand well enough to comment on, it suddenly swerves midway through into arguments about abortion, a matter not truly related to the initial one and a far more nuanced issue than she gives it credit for. That's not what we're here for, though. I'm focusing on when she ultimately shifts, quite abruptly, into bashing care for young transgender people, devoting around a quarter of the piece to this, despite how obviously little she understands the subject and despite it having no discernible connection to the original topic.

Confusion, Embarrassment, Humiliation, and Loss of Decency

Let's do semi-local semi-current events.

The Boyertown Area School District, located maybe an hour away from where I live, is being sued over transgender rights, but not by or on behalf of a transgender person, as has happened in numerous places where such rights have been denied. No, in this case, the suit is attempting to squash such rights, as a boy known only as "Joel Doe" claims to have felt "confusion, embarrassment, humiliation, and loss of dignity" at what he calls "sexual harassment" and an "invasion of privacy" after allegedly seeing a transgender boy—whom we'll refer to as "T" for convenience since neither an actual name nor an alias have been reported—in the locker room "wearing nothing but shorts and a bra".

So, in short, it sounds an awful lot like Joel was watching other people changing, saw something he wasn't expecting to, and had a freakout over it. I'd say I don't mean to trivialize it, but I don't think I can honestly make that claim. It's sounding pretty trivial from here. On the other hand, I've also seen the suggestion that he doesn't actually care all that much, and his parents just pressured him into this, but since I have no way of knowing either way, I'll make no further mention of that and just comment on the facts of the case as they have been reported.

Wrestling with Restrooms

It's been over a week since the Supreme Court declined to take the Gavin Grimm case, which involves a transgender boy fighting to be allowed to resume using the boys' restrooms at his high school in Virginia. Though disappointing to those who had hoped to see the question of transgender bathroom rights settled, the result should come as no surprise considering how the lower court ruled. Rather than directly address the question of whether the school district's newly-enacted prohibition violates the non-discrimination rules of Title IX, or the principle of equal protection under the law in general, the lower court's ruling was basically a cop-out, amounting to, "the DoJ and DoE say it violates Title IX, and we can't prove they're wrong, so we'll defer to their judgment." However, the DoJ and DoE under the new administration have since backed down from that position, so the original ruling doesn't hold up, and the Supreme Court basically sent it back for a do-over. Neither court, it would seem, wants to address the issue directly as long as they can come up with any justification for avoiding it.

Bathroom Hypotheticals (originally posted on uCoz)

I don't generally like to comment on politics, but this is more a social issue than a political one, so I consider it fair game. Anyone who's only here for the translations might still want to skip this one, though.

"I don't have anything against the transgenders, it's about the perverts and predators who could abuse this," or so I often hear. If that's true, it seems odd that all these proposed "bathroom bills" go by biological sex or birth certificates or male and female deoxyribonucleic acid, and don't so much as bring up predatory behavior. Similarly, the policies many of these people are objecting to apply specifically to transgender people and not to anyone else, much less to people trying to commit crimes.

Toilets Still a Battleground Somehow (originally posted on uCoz)

It all started when a friend on Facebook shared an image macro with some unsettling implications. Well, no, it all started long before that, but the image is what eventually led directly to this blog post. "I don't care what your son 'identifies as'," it said, "he doesn't belong in the bathroom with my daughter." On first glance, to the average person, it may seem innocuous enough. Wanting to keep your daughter safe? That much is understandable... even admirable. However... the post rubbed me the wrong way as soon as I saw it, though it took longer to articulate exactly why.

What's the Big Deal?

Let's consider what kinds of messages that statement sends.

On Lavatories (originally posted on uCoz)

There's a parody of the Christmas carol "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" called "The Restroom Door Said Gentlemen". In short, the singer enters the wrong bathroom after some prankster switches the signs, where he finds "two nuns, three old ladies, and a nurse" who turn on him before he's realized what's going on. It's played for laughs, but considering he meant no harm and didn't even begin to do anything threatening, it hardly seems fair that he's hit with a can of mace and a handbag before he even gets half a chance to explain himself. Ending up with "two black eyes and one high heel up [his] behind" feels like something he ought to be pressing charges for. I get that men are expected to stay out of the women's bathroom, and vice versa (though apparently to a lesser extent, given that most people seem to be generally fine with women using the men's room when the women's room is crowded), but that reaction seems a bit excessive. Yet he might have problems even trying to go to the authorities, since the laws in some places are such that he's committed a crime just by walking through that door. That honestly shocked me when I first heard about it. Social disapproval is one thing, but legal prohibition? What a waste of law enforcement.

Which brings me to what led to this posting, though I've been sitting on it for a few months.