Josseli Barnica was murdered while she begged for her life. The Republican Party is going to keep killing women until we stop them.

They also killed a teenage girl. The stories of teenage girls laying dead in the sepsis wards of hospitals was the most gruesome of the tales our mothers used to tell us about the horrible days before Roe. Now it’s our reality again.

A teenage girl died because three hospitals refused to help her, while her mother screamed at them to save her life, they refused.

We have the power to stop this.

X

Things are getting extremely scary in the US for trans people right now.

Uh, these shitheads better give me a fucking refund then!!!

Also legally fascinating, because if they do reverse it, I think I'll still be breaking the law because it won't match my out of state birth certificate.

a lot of people don't understand what you mean when you say that crime is a social construct, but i think the fact that the state of florida is talking about charging people with criminal fraud for engaging in a fully legal process is a pretty good illustration of the concept.

There have been so many “jd vance says something incredibly creepy about women” clips surfacing I’ve genuinely lost count

these are all from today

... I... I think I've figured it out.

JD Vance is a super, SUPER annoying parent.

Like, you know how some people are fairly normal parents, right? They need a little accommodation because kids are made of chaos, but they do their best to roll with it and keep the chaos relatively contained. You have to be patient with them and their kids, but not, like, an egregious amount of patience. Sometimes their kids irritate you. Sometimes their need for parental accommodations means you're left holding the bag. But it's not too often, and they do their best to make it up to you, so you extend them the grace every human being is capable of offering every other human being.

But then there are the other parents. The ones who are really fucking aggravating. The ones who impose on everyone all the time and seem to think it's their god-given right because they reproduced. (I'm a parent, so please don't take this as some kind of anti-breeder rant.) The ones who drive everyone around them fucking nuts. And because they drive them fucking nuts, they receive hostility from the people around them. Probably more hostility from non-parents, because non-parents haven't had their capacity for patience forcibly expanded by the introduction of a 15lb bundle of personal chaos into their lives.

In short

JD Vance thinks childless people are sociopaths because every non-parent he knows fucking hates him. They don't want to do him any favors. They don't accommodate him "in the name of the kids". But it has nothing to do with being parents, and everything to do with him being a complete and utter jackass. He just thinks it's because they're childless, because every time he says, "I need this because I've got kids", they tell him to go fuck himself.

Honestly, I wish that were the case.

J.D. Vance truly believes that most of what constitutes American life as we all know it should be "ripped out like a tumor." He's a disciple of a man named Curtis Yarvin, also known by his pen name, "Mencius Moldbug," who has advocated for - among other things - retiring/firing every current government employee, dismantling every single NGO and all state universities and colleges, selling off the land of every public college campus to developers, putting "capable people" with the "right mindset" in a "much more limited number of roles with greater authority" to run the government, and, oh yeah, has said that the president should be a CEO, by which he means a dictator.

And that's not me interpreting his words, btw. He has said, and this is a direct quote, "Americans have to get over their dictator phobia."

A few choice quotes from Yarvin's Wikipedia, bc I just refuse to go touch the poop of his writing directly:

Vance isn't just some fucking weirdo who gets told no and doesn't like that. He's some fucking weirdo who genuinely thinks that if you aren't producing children for capitalism, you are less of a human being, and he's an acolyte of a dude who genuinely believes that women shouldn't have any political power, that the US should be broken into a bunch of anarcho-capitalist city states which are also somehow monarchies, and a bunch of other truly fucked up shit.

It is actively dangerous to just think of these people as spoiled white boys who can't stand being told no.

They are spoiled white boys with deep rationalizations about why no one should ever tell them no and who REALLY DEEPLY BELIEVE that they should be able to create a world in which they CAN'T be told no.

Here's a good bit from Rachel Maddow tonight on Vance and Yarvin:

I did not just see an ad on Sunday afternoon football saying “Kamala works for they/them, not for you” while flashing images of incarcerated black trans women. I fucking hate it here.

It’s not surprising, it’s not novel, it just fills me with such dull rage and sadness.

I’m reading The Longest Summer by Alexandrine Ogundimu, a Nigerian-American trans woman, right now and it’s a relentlessly bleak and miserable read. All of the blaqueer characters are mired in hopeless poverty and making awful decisions in a rotting city in Indiana, and I was getting ready to be like, yeah it’s well written but it’s such a depressing novel and I don’t like it.

And then national television pulls this flagrant bullshit right to my goddamn face.

And it’s like, I get it now. It’s not about being nihilistic, it’s accurately capturing moments like this in their frequency and banality.

Incredibly bleak especially given that she worked to deny healthcare to black trans women as attorney general. There are very few in the government who are on our side.

Okay, with Harris, that was a far more complicated situation than that.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/kamala-harris-vp-campaign-progressive-lgbtq-transgender-rights.html

Everything I've seen so far has suggested that Harris did try to make improvements to the system while working within it, and not just for this issue. There are problems with this approach, I'm not going to argue that, but the facts of her tenure as attorney general suggest she's, at worst, a trans ally limited by her belief in the law, not a bigot.

I know there’s quibbles to be made about this, but this is too good of an addition to leave in the notes @arosebyan0thername

For anyone who might have been confused about why what Trump said is so incendiary, let me explain: his debate performance was full of racist canards, specifically antiblack, anti-Central Asian, Islamophobic, and to a certain extent historically anti-Romani.

Standard disclaimer that I'm not Black and have no intention of speaking over Black people on this issue. This is an explanation only. However, I'm a "minority" in a way or two myself, including ethnoreligiously, and I absolutely know from canards.

That's about all I can remember regarding the racist canards he used. Feel free to correct or add any.

i was reading about that influencer who groomed and trafficked several young women (not andrew tate) and most articles mainly focus on the "exciting" parts of kat torres' fancy lifestyle and the novelty of a beautiful lady pimp, but what stood out to me is that those women very explicitly said that the prostitution laws in texas were a major part of keeping them trafficked. the threat of their own criminalisation and the fact no one could be in any contact with them without risking a felony (letting an 'established prostitute' into your car can be enough) is what prevented them from escaping even after the abuse was so severe the grooming wasn't keeping them at heel anymore. it's been said many times but the way a sex trafficking victim can openly say the state's laws were aiding her trafficker and keeping her in that situation indefinitely if her family's efforts hadn't resulted in being rescued from the outside and it'll still be fully glossed over in all the discourse about the case is nuts. i can't think of a more dire indictment

only partially related but about 8 years ago i was part of a documentary on specifically child sex trafficking. the director and creator was one of the main reasons i've learned as much as i have about human trafficking, but this is exactly the issue. many of the problems that surround any actual help for victims are the laws in place criminalizing children as well. since children are the only group anyone seems to ride for

criminalizing sex work is not the moral win it gets painted as. decriminalizing sex work is imperative to helping victims of human trafficking.

it sure would be a shame if everyone emailed [email protected] with the exact subject line "Sex Change Court Order" and made their inbox completely unsearchable with spam, especially if they try to do subject-line searches, and therefore cause a real inconvenience to the people attempting to start a registry of of all texans who file for a name + gender marker change as per the content of yesterday's (August 20, 2024) DPS ruling

text transcription of email under the cut, most relevant info bolded:

I don't know if that will actually work - it may have a filter on it that bounces any external emails - but it ain't not worth trying.

Also... holy fuck?

This is not Texas' first attempt to make a list of trans people via internal, untraceable memorandums.

This article published in Them states they received word of the same email.

This is what we all meant by "change your name and your marker while you can."

Check your voter registration (might be a good idea to check regularly) and make a voting plan. Reminder they made it harder to mail in or vote absentee. I'm sure they've done other things too since then. Check your local requirements

time to

uk people, make a noise at your MP about Wes Streeting's attempt to kill trans children.

key points, use the links included and feel free to add your own personal take:

+ the cass review has been found to be extremely methodologically flawed: https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/integrity-project_cass-response.pdf

+ there has been a significant increase in deaths from children on the waiting list for gender affirming care since the Bell v Tavistock case: https://x.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1803729360731406489

+ Wes Streetings own comments on his social media show that he is not impartial on the subject of gender affirming care and this makes him an inappropriate person to be making decisions on it.

further help! a friend has a) found how to contact Wes Streeting directly: [email protected]

and b) made the following point in her own, longer email to him:

"The Labour Party was elected on a platform of change; the reduction of chaos and the turning of a new page. Continuing the Tories' tired and desperate transphobia as a means of pandering to a section of society bent on discrimination does not reflect this philosophy."

Definitely include something along those lines!

bf has also written to our local mp including hits such as:

"why has a Labour health secretary not just taken a regressive and discriminatory Tory 'culture war' policy as a good idea, but is seeking to reinforce it? Even the Cass Report, itself a globally criticised paper, did not go so far as to recommend a ban on puberty blockers."

and

"it bears the hallmarks of the previous Tory administration, which sought to demonise trans people and degrade their social care as a means to shift attention away from the rest of their terrible policies."

Again, probably don't c&p this but please feel free to use them as talking points to shape your own letters. A polite "what the fuck do you think you're doing" and "you said no more culture war, what the hell do you call this" would be wonderful. & if you're a parent to a trans child yourself absolutely let rip.

(also worth pointing to the effect that banning trans affirming care for youth in the US has had, including people leaving places where it's been banned, per Jo Maugham's suggestion in my original post: Does Labour want to lose had-working, tax-paying families to other countries? Now? When we're in an economic blah blah blah?)

Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s out-of-state abortion

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/05/03/texas-abortion-investigations/

As soon as Collin Davis found out his ex-partner was planning to travel to Colorado to have an abortion in late February, the Texas man retained a high-powered antiabortion attorney — who court records show immediately issued a legal threat.

If the woman proceeded with the abortion, even in a state where the procedure remains legal, Davis would seek a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the abortion and “pursue wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child,” the lawyer wrote in a letter, according to records.

Now, Davis has disclosed his former partner’s abortion to a state district court in Texas, asking for the power to investigate what his lawyer characterizes as potentially illegal activity in a state where almost all abortions are banned.

The forgotten Nazi genocide

When people think of Nazi genocide obviously Jewish people come to mind first since the Nazis killer over six million Jewish people in the Holocaust. Some will know (but all should) about the Roma and Sinti genocide or how LGBT people were targeted. Many people don't know the Nazis forcibly sterilized and murdered hundreds of thousands of disabled people.

Nazis were inspired by the United States eugenics movement when they decided to forcibly sterize disabled people. A 1934 law allowed for the forced sterilization of anyone who had (or was presumed to have) a long list of conditions. Typically for those with a uterus, the fallopian tubes were removed but fully hysterectomies were often performed as well to remove the uterus. Vasectomy was used for those with a penis but castration was also used. Procedures were done without any anesthesia. Nazis also experimented on concentration camp victims to try to find "more efficient" ways of sterilization. Those who survived forced sterilization (and many didn't) reported chronic pain and health issues for the rest of their lives due to the procedure. Forced sterilizations slowed around 1940 as other programs picked up.

In 1939, Hitler signed a euthanasia note to begin killing "life unworthy of life" in Nazi Germany aka physically and mentally ill or disabled people. The Aktion T4 euthanasia program was born. The first person in the program was brought by their parents to be killed. Doctors and nurses were to make the determination who would die and do the killing themselves. The original preferred methods were starvation or lethal injection. But that wasn't killing disabled people fast enough for the Nazis. They then experimented with gassing people. That's right, Nazis learned the technique to gas masses of people from experimenting on disabled people. It was found running a truck and killing people with carbon monoxide was most effective (the same method used death camps like Chelmno and on the Eastern front).

Soon, many German families were suspicious of where their disabled loved ones were. They were getting false death certificates citing odd reasons for death. One family got a death certificate which said their loved one died of a burst appendix....when he already had his appendix removed years before. Once the word was out, many Germans removed their family members from hospitals and asylums in an attempt to protect them. In 1941, protests were led by a German bishop Clemens von Galen. It was the largest protest to Nazi Germany by Germans. Pretending to agree and to pacify the protesters, T4 euthanasia program "officially" ended in 1941.

The protests didn't stop Nazis from killing disabled people though. They just learned to be more subtle about it. They also expanded killing to include people in old age homes and even those with "shell shock" from the bombing of Germany. The last disabled person killed by doctors under the T4 program was two weeks AFTER the war had ended.

By the end of the war, 300,000 disabled people were murdered and another 400,000 forcibly sterilized by Nazi Germany. It is undoubtedly a genocide of disabled people but one often forgotten to history. It's important to recognize the genocide, understand the context and history, and continue to fight against ableism and eugenics.

21 of 22 anti-LGBTQ+ bills dead in the Florida Legislature!!!

!!!! And here's a source!

Thanks so much for posting about this, OP

More from the article:

"At 2:27 p.m. on Friday, March 8, the Florida Legislature adjourned sine die. With this adjournment, 21 of 22 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were effectively killed, leaving an anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education bill as the lone piece of legislation to pass this session. This session featured some of the most severe bills ever proposed against transgender individuals, all of these bills are now officially dead. LGBTQ+ activists in the state now have the rest of 2024 to regroup, with hopes that the November general election will yield results against a legislature that has spent two years targeting transgender individuals in every aspect of life.

The bills that have failed include H599, a bill that would have expanded "Don't Say Gay" policies to the workplace. It proposed banning government employees and any business with government contracts from sharing pronouns. Furthermore, it aimed to prohibit all nonprofits in the state from requiring education and training on LGBTQ+ issues—a significant issue for LGBTQ+ nonprofits, which would have been unable to operate within the state. That bill is now dead.

Another bill that died is H1639, a measure that would have mandated transgender individuals to have driver's license sex markers matching their sex assigned at birth. It also aimed to penalize insurance providers offering gender-affirming care coverage and would have required health insurance plans to cover conversion therapy for transgender individuals. Although this bill did not pass, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has reinterpreted certain provisions that already exist, effectively banning changes to driver's license gender markers in the state and threatening individuals with accurate markers with charges of criminal fraud. However, challenging an administrative action is simpler than challenging a law enacted by the legislature, and such actions can also be reversed by future administrations.

Further bills that made headlines which died include:

...This is the first time in three years where the bills targeting LGBTQ+ people, and trans people in particular, seem to be losing steam, according to local organizers.

“The momentum is undeniably shifting against extremism,” Nadine Smith of Equality Florida said in a press release, “Extremist groups are collapsing amidst multiple scandals. Parents are mobilizing on behalf of their kids and to stop the dismantling of public education. We will build on this momentum and redouble our commitment to the fight. Together, we can put power back in the hands of the people.”"

-via Erin in the Morning, March 8, 2024

I know people won't care because you all assume every country that isn't in the west is automatically homophobic and/or transphobic, but enshrining this bigotry into law, enabling more institutional and state violence is making my heart weep.

for those who do care, Silent Majority is actively fighting against this bill and I do hope people can support them.

Nah, we're gonna do this in public.

@cynsationalwlw Child, I had been an active part of the queer movement for over a decade by the time you hit kindergarten. So let's start there. You do not get to talk to me like I'm not two decades older than you and like I haven't been dealing with this shit since you were still gumming crackers in your fucking high chair.

Anyway.

THE PRIDE FLAG WAS DESIGNED AS A POLITICAL STATEMENT.

It is, by its very nature, political.

Saying it isn't political disrespects its creator, Gilbert Baker (z''l), and Harvey Milk (z''l), who brought the idea up to replace the pink triangle. It was designed for a political event. It was deliberately raised for the first time at the United Nations Plaza in San Francisco.

You know how we know this was a deliberate political statement?

GILBERT BAKER TOLD US SO SEVERAL TIMES.

"Politics" is simply how people living in groups together make decisions about how they live together. Drawing a line between "political" and "activist" because "oh ho, this doesn't represent a particular political party" is a distinction without a difference, and it's a facile, ridiculous, and above all, disrespectful and incorrect statement.

Maybe someday our identity won't be a political statement, but denying that the Pride flag is a political item with a political meaning ("our society should be arranged in such a way that queer people aren't treated like shit") won't get us there.

Yes, Pride flags are political. SO FUCKING WHAT? Students do not lose their right to express political opinions in school - this is a HEAVILY TESTED legal fact with cases going back 60 years.

Denying the politics inherent in the way that we relate to one another doesn't win us anything.

It just makes us look like juvenile little prats who don't know what the fuck we're talking about.

Thanks for volunteering as the object lesson. Enjoy your block, fuck off.

[image description: screenshotted post notes

cynsationalwlw 19m ago

@\vaspider Really? And what party is that? Please research the difference between a political movement and an activist movement.

vaspider 5d ago

@\lapsuslapsiis Claiming that Pride flags aren't in any way political is false. We don't need to lie.]

Thank you. I was mad and forgot the alt text.

So... there's actually multiple layers to this...

In America, we tend to think of politics as "The thing politicians do". But politics isn't just what's happening in the Capitol building or the White House.

Politics is EVERYWHERE.

A book of history is FULL of politics. Artwork is political. Videogames. Movies. Fantasy novels. Everything.

Everything has the author or creator's politics in it. Their beliefs of what should and shouldn't be allowed or standard practice.

And it's always been that way.

Flags? Flags are political. And even if the Republican Party did another flip like in the 70s and suddenly swung around hard on their policies so that they embraced the LGBTQIA+ community rather than trying to attack us at every turn, and had all the flags at their rallies and the Dems did the same thing to fully embrace the community...

The flag would still be political. Even if something is the status quo, even if it's the accepted norm, its -still- political.

And the idea that Activism is somehow magically -not- political? Wishful thinking from someone who doesn't want to be seen as 'Political'.

All Activism is Political because it seeks to change how things are or keep them the exact same. It seeks to maintain or shift society.

And that's what politics is.