Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Says the journalist: “While she appreciates the sudden concern for women and children’s safety, she says there are a million ways to ensure that without restricting bathrooms.” (itals mine)
The favorite line of mine they didn’t use: “I think the line for the ladies’ room is long enough without adding paperwork.”
Comments my wife after seeing the segment: “Kramer vs Kremer”.
4/26: Mara has been released and is safe.
Bail is set at $1k. Donate if you can.
Thanks to everyone who has expressed support for Mara Keisling, who was arrested earlier this evening while protesting ?#?HB2?. We’ve been told that she has been treated respectfully, and that she even conducted an impromptu training for the detention center staff around how to treat trans people who have been arrested.
Mara’s bail has been set at $1,000, and we would appreciate any donations to NCTE to help us continue to ?#?FlushDiscrimination? in North Carolina and across the whole nation: http://www.flushdiscrimination.org/
Mara Keisling has been one of our very favorite people for a long, long time now, and today even more so.
Today she used the ladies’ room in the NC state house and was interviewed by Buzzfeed about it. She was there delivering petitions to get HB2 revoked:
Keisling was with a group from the NAACP delivering proposed legislation that would repeal the state’s anti-LGBT law, which also prevents cities from raising the minimum wage or from passing new nondiscrimination ordinances.
The state has been sued in federal court over the law, dozens of businesses have asked state officials to repeal it, and numerous businesses have canceled ventures in the state.
Protests, attended by thousands, were held on Monday to urge lawmakers to repeal the law — the first day the legislature convenes for its spring session. LGBT groups said they delivered petitions signed by more than 150,000 people asking for the law to be reversed.
She has since gotten arrested with a few others who proceeded to conduct a sit-in after her use of the ladies’ room.
More news as I get it, but let me say: Mara has been a stalwart activist who energizes her dedication with humor and love. The trans community could not ask for a cooler person.
I’m teaching a fun tutorial on pre Stonewall LGBTQ identities, and this old favorite showed up in an article about the queer identities in the ‘pansy craze’ of the 1920s. (There’s a great little track called “B.D. Woman’s Blues” by Louise Bogan – the “B.D.” stands for bull-dagger, if you’re wondering.)
A friend who is a Wisconsin attorney recently posted this on Facebook, and I thought both the idea and the template deserved a bigger audience. This letter encourages one of our state senators, Ron Johnson, to do his job and call for a hearing on Obama’s selection of Justice Garland for SCOTUS. This letter does not expect or even request Johnson approve of the nominee; it only asks that he do his job and call for a hearing.
You can contact your state senator here. Please feel free to use this letter as a template.
Senator Johnson,
I am writing to you today to ask you to split from your obstructionist colleagues in the Senate and meet with (and push for a vote on the appointment of) Judge Merrick Garland.
I understand there is a mistaken notion that waiting until the new president is elected is “letting the people decide” but the logic there is extremely faulty. The people decided when they elected President Obama.
While you may disagree with President Obama’s selection, your “advice and consent” comes in the form of your vote to approve or not approve Judge Garland’s nomination. Advice to not nominate someone at all is not advice, it is obstruction of the President’s duty.
I do not know if the Senate will approve Judge Garland, but the people who elected President Obama, Senator McConnell, Tammy Baldwin, Elizabeth Warren, and every other elected official in Washington deserve to have their voices heard by way of a vote on Judge Garland’s appointment.
I cannot pretend this will effect my vote for your seat in November, I am a firmly based lefty, I voted for Senator Feingold in 2010 and I will vote for him again in November, but I am a resident of Wisconsin and have been for most of my voting life and you are my Senator. Mine is one of the voices you represent. I am asking you to do the job you were elected to do and to uphold the oath of office you took when you went to Washington on January 3, 2011.
Mine is one of the voices you will continue to represent until at least January of 2017. With that, you have a responsibility to me and to the residents of this great, progressive State of Wisconsin to avoid the typical gridlock caused by the extreme and damaging partisanship in our Nation’s Capital.
The refusal to so much as hold a vote on Judge Garland (you must be truly afraid he’d actually be approved by the majority [or as I like to call it “the voice of the electorate”]) is not just an abdication of your Constitutional privilege/responsibility (and those of Senators McConnell and the rest of the Republican Judiciary Committee), it is an act of extreme cowardice. It is also an act of great presumption. It presumes you’ll be happier with the elected President in January 2017. It might be someone more liberal than President Obama. It might be Donald Trump. Don’t both of those options cause you to shudder?
I’ll be honest, there is a part of me that would love to see you and yours continue with the stonewalling tactics and then watch as Secretary Clinton or Senator Sanders sweeps into office and immediately nominates President Obama to the highest Court in the land. Thinking about it gives me the giggles. I am sure that will not happen, but that is something you open yourself to with the continued refusal to come to the table.
I’m not asking you to vote for Judge Garland’s appointment, but I am demanding as a voter in the great State of Wisconsin that you call for a hearing on his appointment. That is your Constitutional duty and one you promised to uphold and defend. I may not agree with your stance on many issues, Senator, but I do expect you to follow through on the stances you take. When you asked my fellow Wisconsinites to send you to Washington D.C. you did so with a promise to uphold and defend the US Constitution. Now would be a really good time to show you meant it.
Lance Weinhardt is a professor at the Zilber School of Public Health at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Syracuse University.
Mat Staver, otherwise known as Kim Davis’ attorney and the founder of Liberty Counsel, is allegedly behind the mean-spirited, illogical, and fear-mongering ‘bathroom bills’ across many states, and is the same man who was behind the legal threats issued to the Mt. Horeb (Wisconsin) School District last year when they were planning a reading of I am Jazz to support a young transgender student.
As we know, the Mt Horeb community did not take kindly to these threats to their teachers, school board, or the derision aimed at the students. They responded with love by organizing public readings of the book that attracted far more attention and support for the student than would have happened in the first place.
It seems to me that when you start targeting vulnerable children in your efforts to continue to marginalize LGBT people, and try to pass clearly unconstitutional and discriminatory laws across the country based on your supposedly Christian beliefs, you have hit rock bottom and appear truly confused about what it means to be Christian and an American. Having lost your battle against marriage equality is no excuse for this kind of behavior. Perhaps that is part of the reason the group is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. It is good to know who is behind these efforts, and what their motives are. Spread the word.
I’ve been suffering with a lot of pain lately – I’m scheduled for back surgery next week – and I’ve come to relate very personally with a theory I learned via disability studies. It’s called the Spoon Theory, and the basic premise is this: for everything you do in a day, you expend a certain amount of energy and effort. For most people who are able-bodied, there’s an endless number of spoons, but for those with lupus and other conditions that leave them differently abled, there is a set number that they have to guard carefully in order to get through a day.
Here’s the original post about Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino.
It takes me twice as long to walk to work, for instance. Putting on socks is a kind of torture. I use up a lot of spoons doing ordinary, easy things, and because I’m on pain meds, I lose a few more spoons – not physical ones, but mental ones – loss of focus, inability to concentrate, etc.
I’ve been very lucky: having no chronic physical ailments, and mental health issues that have been helped by decent access to health care. But this recent injury has made me so much more aware of how much the world is designed for people who don’t need breaks to rest, who can sit or stand or walk or sleep when they need to, who don’t have to figure out how to manage limited energy and focus to get through an ordinary day.
I hope I don’t forget once I’ve recovered from my surgery, so that I keep working to make the world a little easier for those who carefully count, and guard, their spoons every single day.
A really nice short interview with crossdresser Miqqi Gilbert about Casa Susanna. There’s so few out CDs who are willing to be publicly know, and Miqqi has been for forever.
This is a nice 4 minute introduction to the topic.
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