Drag Story time

[Ting Tang]

One reason I hate the idea of mixed gender bathrooms is that I don’t want to be adjusting my clothing and fixing my makeup in front of men. I prefer they see the finished/touched up version of me—not me in progress.  Maybe that’s superficial. I’m assuming cost could be prohibitive to please everyone, but there are at least easy solutions for this. I don’t know what to say about the medical care. Our hospital system collapsed here. Hospitals, urgent cares, labs, offices—-all gone. Many people will die until another system takes it over. They’re asking people not to call ambulances unless it’s an extreme emergency due to tie-ups with time, but people don’t know what to do. This is America. If everyone can’t get basic emergency care without going an hour away… well… we have a long way to go before everyone is best-served. 

[Ting Tang]

4 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

It’s not just lost income. It’s lost community and support. To circle back to the OP, events like pride festivals and story time and other things can help people feel like they aren’t alone and can help families feel supported. The divisiveness of the current environment is causing some people to keep their heads down and to keep quiet. 
 

I drove past our family friendly pride festival this month on the way to somewhere else and they had police cars blocking the entrances to try to prevent someone driving through the event (rather than the usual flimsy road barricade with balloons attached). That is just super sad….and also completely understandable.

Unfortunately, parades are dangerous in America for this reason and for the gun crazies. 

[Sneezyone]

3 minutes ago, Ting Tang said:

One reason I hate the idea of mixed gender bathrooms is that I don’t want to be adjusting my clothing and fixing my makeup in front of men. I prefer they see the finished/touched up version of me—not me in progress.  Maybe that’s superficial. I’m assuming cost could be prohibitive to please everyone, but there are at least easy solutions for this. I don’t know what to say about the medical care. Our hospital system collapsed here. Hospitals, urgent cares, labs, offices—-all gone. Many people will die until another system takes it over. They’re asking people not to call ambulances unless it’s an extreme emergency due to tie-ups with time, but people don’t know what to do. This is America. If everyone can’t get basic emergency care without going an hour away… well… we have a long way to go before everyone is best-served. 

This is NOT America. This is conservative America.

I’m fighting for a different future in my corner of southern America.

[prairiewindmomma]

14 minutes ago, Ting Tang said:

Unfortunately, parades are dangerous in America for this reason and for the gun crazies. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. We had a Before Time when parades and festivals were safe community events. We are permitting the sickness to continue by standing by quietly while people spread fear and hate.

Edited June 22, 2023 by prairiewindmomma

[Melissa Louise]

1 hour ago, Joker2 said:

FTR, my trans ds has had zero issues using men’s rooms since he was sixteen. I do completely reject that the US would make bathroom laws targeting those who are transgender and only target trans women. The people making these laws don’t actually care about women’s spaces. 

I also find it wild that some insist that trans women are males and they care so much about females but don’t give a hoot about trans men and their safety. You would think they would be considered female by those same people but I guess they’re not the right kind. So, trans men shouldn’t use women’s spaces and you all don’t care what happens to them in men’s spaces. Got it!

They reject femaleness! Talk about having your cake and eating it. You're a man? Fine. Go be a man. 

Gender neutral provision.

And transmen can campaign for it. Why should women? We female people have enough on our plates already. 

 

 

[Ting Tang]

2 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

This is NOT America. This is conservative America.

I’m fighting for a different future in my corner of southern America.

We’ve had a lot of leadership from both major political parties, though.  My governor is a democrat. Maybe greed and charging $300 for a box of Kleenex caused the collapse. The nurses and doctors have been victims of the system, too. Anyway, I’m rambling.

[Sneezyone]

1 hour ago, freesia said:

Which doesn’t at all mean that protecting the vulnerable is not the right thing to do. 

It means it’s pert near impossible without subjecting the even more vulnerable to more  persecution. That happened…HERE.

Edited June 22, 2023 by Sneezyone

[Ting Tang]

6 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

It doesn’t have to be this way. We had a Before Time when parades and festivals were safe community events. We are permitting the sickness to continue by standing by quietly while people spread fear and hate.

We had the Waukesha and Highland Park tragedies just months apart. 😞 My husband and I just don’t take the kids to them anymore. At one point, they were in a parade. Highland Park I believe was inspired by the nazis along with his horrible family— it’s a very Jewish area. 

[Melissa Louise]

59 minutes ago, Ting Tang said:

They’re probably having way more fun just doing their thing. LOL 

It wouldn't be hard to be having more fun than whatever this thread is....

[Ting Tang]

Just now, Melissa Louise said:

It wouldn't be hard to be having more fun than whatever this thread is....

I’m watching late night road trip videos on YouTube while reading, so yes. LOL 

[lewelma]

Just now, Melissa Louise said:

It wouldn't be hard to be having more fun than whatever this thread is....

I know this thread has been very very difficult for many of you, but it has been very helpful to me to see the complexity of the issue and the seriousness of the American situation. So I just want to thank you and all the others for finding the time and the emotional resilience to debate this. 

[Melissa Louise]

1 minute ago, Ting Tang said:

I’m watching late night road trip videos on YouTube while reading, so yes. LOL 

I'm supervising lunch time paper craft club, lol...send more fun! Send in the...drag queens? 

[prairiewindmomma]

Tonight I’ve been sitting by a backyard bonfire watching the kids make s’mores. ❤️

[TravelingChris]

3 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

Love that for you. I’m not the one barring service workers from using my toilets, lol.

Who the f is doing that?  

 

[Melissa Louise]

20 minutes ago, TravelingChris said:

Who the f is doing that?  

 

No-one. No-one is doing that. 

[Melissa Louise]

3 hours ago, freesia said:

I see the masc women issue as different. Sure it might look the same in practice in one bathroom. However when we are talking about certain women feeling safe using bathrooms in general knowing that biological male genital bearers are allowed in the space (including locker rooms and female spas  and swim times here) make a difference in how those women move in space and chose movement. Encountering a person who does not present as feminine in one bathroom is not the same to me. And that’s horrific about the toddler. But the fact that nasty people do that, does not change my opinion on how we listen to women who want private spaces. 

I've been around butch women for decades. They are women. I don't even know what kind of crazy homophobia makes someone consider them a female edge case. 

[TravelingChris]

1 hour ago, Sneezyone said:

This is NOT America. This is conservative America.

I’m fighting for a different future in my corner of southern America.

Actuallly, the OK woman was not politically motivated who drove into a parade on purpose.  Neither was the WI parade killer.  Both of them killed and injured much more people than the one person killed in the VA march- and I think that guy was a Nazi.  Nazi's were socialists.

[TravelingChris]

1 hour ago, Ting Tang said:

We had the Waukesha and Highland Park tragedies just months apart. 😞 My husband and I just don’t take the kids to them anymore. At one point, they were in a parade. Highland Park I believe was inspired by the nazis along with his horrible family— it’s a very Jewish area. 

Yep forgot about that one.  Also Nazi.  

[LMD]

44 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

They reject femaleness! Talk about having your cake and eating it. You're a man? Fine. Go be a man. 

Gender neutral provision.

And transmen can campaign for it. Why should women? We female people have enough on our plates already. 

 

 

Thank you

It's only difficult if you don't believe women have the right to their hard won boundaries. If you opt out of those boundaries, okay then, I wish you well, I'll still be here saying that women are allowed to have their boundaries.

[Matryoshka]

32 minutes ago, TravelingChris said:

Actuallly, the OK woman was not politically motivated who drove into a parade on purpose.  Neither was the WI parade killer.  Both of them killed and injured much more people than the one person killed in the VA march- and I think that guy was a Nazi.  Nazi's were socialists.

No, Nazis were (are) fascists.  Yes, Hitler put 'socialist' in the party's name, that was a propaganda/marketing tactic to make the National(istic) 'socialists' more palatable and less extreme-seeming to get themselves in power and trick people who were for worker's rights to vote for the party that actually wasn't for that at all.   Fascists love pretending they're for the little guy, but, well, they're not.  The people who think Nazis were socialists have not studied history.

Two seconds of googling, here's a summary about how they decided on that name and why from Wikipedia:

Nazism is a form of fascism,^[4][5][6][7] with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. It incorporates a dictatorship,^[3] fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, white supremacy, social Darwinism and the use of eugenics into its creed.  ... 

The term "National Socialism" arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, as an alternative to both Marxist international socialism and free-market capitalism. Nazism rejected the Marxist concepts of class conflict and universal equality, opposed cosmopolitan internationalism, and sought to convince all parts of the new German society to subordinate their personal interests to the "common good", accepting political interests as the main priority of economic organisation,^[11] which tended to match the general outlook of collectivism or communitarianism rather than economic socialism. The Nazi Party's precursor, the pan-German nationalist and antisemitic German Workers' Party (DAP), was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party in order to appeal to left-wing workers,^[12] 

And from Encyclopedia Brittanica: 

To say that Hitler understood the value of language would be an enormous understatement. Propaganda played a significant role in his rise to power. To that end, he paid lip service to the tenets suggested by a name like National Socialist German Workers’ Party, but his primary—indeed, sole—focus was on achieving power whatever the cost and advancing his racist, anti-Semitic agenda.  -...

Over the following years the brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser did much to grow the party by tying Hitler’s racist nationalism to socialist rhetoric that appealed to the suffering lower middle classes. In doing so, the Strassers also succeeded in expanding the Nazi reach beyond its traditional Bavarian base. By the late 1920s, however, with the German economy in free fall, Hitler had enlisted support from wealthy industrialists who sought to pursue avowedly anti-socialist policies. Otto Strasser soon recognized that the Nazis were neither a party of socialists nor a party of workers, and in 1930 he broke away to form the anti-capitalist Schwarze Front (Black Front). 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Matryoshka

[Melissa Louise]

I ask my property manager to.let me know when tradesmen are booked.

This lets me organise to have another person at home with me during that time. The tradesman is welcome to use the bathroom. I am not in it with him, not am I alone in the house. This is called managing risk. 

She doesn't laugh about hysterics, because she's not a misogynist. 

 

 

[KSera]

 

4 hours ago, Joker2 said:

A part of me hopes ds doesn’t care at all about making the women who vote that way comfortable if it comes down to it. They voted for it, they can deal with the consequences. He’s a better person than me though. Hopefully those laws never actually happen and none of us have to find out what will happen with trans men in women’s restrooms.

How does he handle it when he’s wearing makeup and looking more feminine as you describe? My ds always uses men’s facilities now, as he thinks it would be unfair to women for him not to (I don’t think anyone would blink and worry for him to be honest). 

4 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

My B/W stance is not to allow legislators to infringe on personal medical decisions.

I feel like progress has been made here just in the agreement that we can’t leave these medical decisions up to politics. 

2 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

It wouldn't be hard to be having more fun than whatever this thread is....

The thread tone really turned today. Parts of it completely lost me. 

[Melissa Louise]

15 minutes ago, KSera said:

 

 

The thread tone really turned today. Parts of it completely lost me. 

I'm sorry for my part in that, but it's simply unacceptable to have a poster spewing misogynistic language about and towards other women, and not get riled up. I thought calling women 'hysterical' was a relic of a long ago past.

I made the comment elsewhere in another conversation that trans activists have my vote, simply because I don't vote right wing, and all centre or left parties, other than the Communist party, are reflexively pro-trans rights. But if there's no solidarity - if women's concerns are 'hysterical and bigoted' - my vote is all anyone is getting. 

I'm really tired of being the caring woman, who thinks about everyone else and gets walked all over in the process. 

Meanwhile, the Senior Child Psychiatrist in the state next to mine has been driven out of her job for advocating watchful waiting for gender dysphoric children, so that's an awesome win, and things are going just swimmingly here. 

 

 

[Meriwether]

4 hours ago, Joker2 said:

I also find it wild that some insist that trans women are males and they care so much about females but don’t give a hoot about trans men and their safety. You would think they would be considered female by those same people but I guess they’re not the right kind. So, trans men shouldn’t use women’s spaces and you all don’t care what happens to them in men’s spaces. Got it!

I do care about them and their safety. The topic doesn't come up as much (hardly ever) because when a female goes into male spaces the person actively choosing the situation is the one most at risk in the situation. When a male goes into female spaces, the person actively choosing the situation is not the one most at risk. So we talk about one more than the other. 

[Terabith]

I have real concerns about medical transition of minors, but because being trans and not passing (especially for people with XY chromosomes) is so incredibly dangerous, puberty blockers become super tempting and risks about whether or not they can have an orgasm simply pale in comparison to the dangers of existence.   

[SKL]

5 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

I made the comment elsewhere in another conversation that trans activists have my vote, simply because I don't vote right wing, and all centre or left parties, other than the Communist party, are reflexively pro-trans rights. But if there's no solidarity - if women's concerns are 'hysterical and bigoted' - my vote is all anyone is getting.

The two party system does limit nuance a lot as far as what political power does ... and apparently, as far as developing an understanding of our complex world.

Near me in another swing state, in a very liberal-voting county, is a city where about half of the population, and most if not all of the council, are Muslim.  The council recently banned flying Pride flags (among others) on public property.  It's been in the news, because a lot of people can't comprehend the fact that people can agree on some things and vehemently disagree on others.  There doesn't seem to be a mechanism for analyzing differences within voting blocs.  Not to mention the swing voters, who realistically decide elections.

Our three recent/current Presidents have each out and said (essentially) "well I won the election, so suck it."  The fact is, a lot of minority groups distrust if not hate each other, and a lot of them have competing interests.  (Aside from the real diversity of thought within minority groups.)  Politicians' lack of respect for differences within impedes intelligent conversation at all levels.

Edited June 22, 2023 by SKL

[Heartstrings]

25 minutes ago, SKL said:

The council recently banned flying Pride flags (among others) on public property. 

I really appreciated their approach. They banned all but 5 specific flags.   The US, state, city, POW and other national flags.   I can fully understand just being DONE with the bickering and deciding just no flags on public property.  It’s not discriminatory that way.   

Edited June 22, 2023 by Heartstrings

[SKL]

10 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:

I really appreciated their approach. They banned all but 5 specific flags.   The US, state, city, POW and other national flags.   I can fully understand just being DONE with the bickering and deciding just no flags on public property.  It’s not discriminatory that way.   

Theoretically, but the more relevant question to most  debaters (and in discrimination law) is whether it has a discriminatory effect.  Because if you just go by whether it says "LGBT+ [or pick your minority] can't do xyz" then you're cool with a lot of bad laws out there.

Also, it is very clear that their motives were not pro-LGBT+.

And for people with conservative views about pride displays, this is a good example of agreeing on the result without agreeing with the underlying beliefs.  Some of these council members come from countries that literally have the death penalty for LGBT+ behavior.

Edited June 22, 2023 by SKL

[Heartstrings]

16 minutes ago, SKL said:

Theoretically, but the more relevant question to most  debaters (and in discrimination law) is whether it has a discriminatory effect.  Because if you just go by whether it says "LGBT+ [or pick your minority] can't do xyz" then you're cool with a lot of bad laws out there.

Also, it is very clear that their motives were not pro-LGBT+.

And for people with conservative views about pride displays, this is a good example of agreeing on the result without agreeing with the underlying beliefs.  Some of these council members come from countries that literally have the death penalty for LGBT+ behavior.

It may be that I’m seeing it with a bit of a different lens because I’m in the South where the 10 commandments displays, Christian flags, confederate flags, etc. are all displayed on public property regularly.     

[MercyA]

Wow, this thread! I am learning a lot. 🍿

Edited June 22, 2023 by MercyA

[KSera]

I was just seeing this morning there were Nazis protesting a drag story time at a cafe in Concord a couple days ago. Complete with nazi salutes and a big "Defend White Communities" banner 🤢. I know these people have never gone away, but the boldness they feel now to be loud and proud about their hate and bigotry is frightening. I expect they now feel like they have the support of a lot of people. I would hope that both "sides" could agree this is not a desirable direction the US has turned.

https://www.wmur.com/article/new-hampshire-white-supremacist-protest-drag-story-hour/44257286

[Kassia]

2 minutes ago, KSera said:

I know these people have never gone away, but the boldness they feel now to be loud and proud about their hate and bigotry is frightening.

I feel the same way.  It's horrifying.  I feel that way about social media too where people post under their real names instead of being anonymous (I'm thinking of facebook) - people have no problem posting such hateful and ugly things.  It really upsets me seeing that there are so many people like this locally.  Up until maybe ten years ago, I was totally naive and had no idea so many people were like this.  

[prairiewindmomma]

I think people are saying things they wouldn’t have 10-15 years ago because they have been radicalized by the news media they consume. I can’t find the actual study….just a news piece about it…but they did a study about Fox News watchers who they had watch CNN for a month. They measured how their opinions shifted that month, and then how they shifted back after that month. Partisan news shapes us: https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2022/apr/11/fox-news-viewers-watch-cnn-study

Fact checkers have long had issues with some news networks more than others, even with some networks being forced to admit they have told lies: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna80285 (on Dominion Voters suing Fox News). A news channel calling themself an entertainment channel rather than a news channel shouldn’t absolve themselves from how they are shaping society. There should be some accountability….just like there should be accountability in our legislative and Justice systems. 

[SKL]

As far as things people are willing to be heard saying ....

In my personal recollection,  people used to say a lot worse without serious repercussions, up until fairly recently.  I don't recall exactly when the public really began pressuring each other to choose more civil language, but it was not more than a couple decades ago.

The pendulum called "political correctness," like most pendulums, swung too far into snowflake territiry, and people got loud about pushing back.  It also doesn't help that we have different rules for different groups.

Finding that sweet spot between free speech and civil speech apparently isn't as simple as we'd like it to be.

[KSera]

3 minutes ago, SKL said:

In my personal recollection,  people used to say a lot worse without serious repercussions, up until fairly recently. 

Did you used to see more actual nazis out demonstrating than you do now? I knew of some neo-nazi groups in some other states, but I never saw so much of this as I do now. 

I also agree with people being less civil online than they would be in person though. People say terrible things under their verified name to their verified neighbors constantly on the Nextdoor website that I’m sure most would never say to each other in person. 

[Ting Tang]

12 hours ago, TravelingChris said:

Yep forgot about that one.  Also Nazi.  

How sad there are more and more to reference!  

[Ting Tang]

1 hour ago, Kassia said:

I feel the same way.  It's horrifying.  I feel that way about social media too where people post under their real names instead of being anonymous (I'm thinking of facebook) - people have no problem posting such hateful and ugly things.  It really upsets me seeing that there are so many people like this locally.  Up until maybe ten years ago, I was totally naive and had no idea so many people were like this.  

My husband always reminds me these are the people that have the time to post these things.  They are keyboard warriors.  But it really shapes how we all see the world around us in person, face to face.  

[maize]

I have never in person or online encountered anyone who claims to be a contemporary Nazi.

And while I acknowledge their existence, I think it worth reminding everyone that extremists are extremists and we need to avoid lumping non-extremists and extremists together in our rhetoric.

Most people concerned about issues like the explosion of trans-identifying teens or protecting women's spaces for women are not nazis.

If we want less polarization and extremism,  we should be actively seeking to communicate respectfully and to build bridges. It's the only path that leads in that direction.

And finger-pointing claims that the other side (whichever side that is) needs to take the initiative do no good.

[Matryoshka]

23 minutes ago, maize said:

I have never in person or online encountered anyone who claims to be a contemporary Nazi.

And while I acknowledge their existence, I think it worth reminding everyone that extremists are extremists and we need to avoid lumping non-extremists and extremists together in our rhetoric.

Most people concerned about issues like the explosion of trans-identifying teens or protecting women's spaces for women are not nazis.

Actual contemporary Nazis are a thing. People in Charlottesville were carring swastika flags, doing the Nazi salute, and shouting translated from German Nazis slogans.  And that's not even close to a one-off.  They are getting more vocal and brazen, and is becoming more and more common.  This is not hyperbole.  Actual, Hitler-was-a-great-leader Nazis.

And also, fascism has a real definition (Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,^[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.) which is wider than Nazis but every bit as dangerous. 

Fascism, the real thing, not 'I think that's a bad word to call people whose opinion I disagree with', but actual fascisim is here. We have to be able to call a spade a spade. 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Matryoshka

[GoodnightMoogle]

I normally don’t post in the chat board, but I was reading this thread and something happened to me today so I thought I’d share my two cents on why I think having a bathroom for just women is important. 
 

Today I went to a restaurant with my family. I took my 6 month old daughter to the bathroom to change her diaper. They did not have a woman’s bathroom. They had a men only bathroom, and a door with a man/woman both on it. So first of all I was like wow, let’s get rid of women’s bathrooms but not men’s.

Truthfully I didn’t care though. I’ve never been one to care about the bathroom thing, and never felt all that unsafe or anything in a bathroom before. Well. I take my daughter into the mixed gender bathroom to change her diaper, and a few seconds after I enter, a man comes in. I knew in my gut that this guy had seen me go in and followed me intentionally. I had just put my daughter on the changing table, so I just turned and ignored the guy, changing her. He peed in the urinal right next to us. I was so, so uncomfortable. All I could think about was how this guy could do anything to me or my daughter. It was such a small bathroom and I felt too close to him. I did not feel safe at all.

I’ve never felt unsafe in a woman’s only bathroom. Just saying. Maybe you think I’m overreacting, and maybe I am, but I understand what people are talking about now. That dude was given the social *ok* to follow me in there, when he normally couldn’t have been emboldened to do so. 
 

Ugh. The whole situation gave me the heebie jeebies. 

[prairiewindmomma]

Yeah, that was a really badly designed bathroom. 

[ktgrok]

19 hours ago, LMD said:

And you know why this isn't happening? Because some trans activists (*not all trans people) don't want the compromise.

I can 100 percent assure you that the laws about gender and bathroom use in my state and the rest of the south are NOT being made by trans activists or with their input or blessing. 

16 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

Ppl identify  non binary because it's the current fashion. 

Transmen don't want to be considered female. If they pass, and lots do, or pass enough, they can use the men's. The risk is to themselves..

So...yeah, that's not legal here. The laws about bathrooms just say you have to use the one that matches biological sex. So transmen legally are required to use the women's room. Which, as you might imagine, isn't actually going to make women feel comfy. 

Again, we are talking about actual laws and things we are dealing with now, not hypotheticals. 

[EKS]

17 minutes ago, GoodnightMoogle said:

They did not have a woman’s bathroom. They had a men only bathroom, and a door with a man/woman both on it.

That is beyond weird.  I would be interested to know what they would say if someone asked where the women's room was.

[SKL]

So what I seem to be hearing from some is:

If I feel uncomfortable in a woman's room with a trans woman (because I can tell this is a biological male), then I"m the problem.

but,

If I feel uncomfortable in a women's room with a trans man who has some visible male characteristics, then I'm not the problem.

Honestly?  Transitioning is a choice.  My being female was not a choice.  If a person is old enough to decide to transition, s/he is old enough to understand the bathroom implications that the choice to transition creates.

I love the fact that more and more places have unisex one-seaters and family bathrooms.  Push for more of those.  If you encounter a place without a sex-irrelevant choice, make the best of it, but at least be respectful of those who had no choice in the matter.

[GoodnightMoogle]

19 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Yeah, that was a really badly designed bathroom. 

I agree, but I would have felt better if he had at least used a stall instead of the urinal right next to me. Then again, he could have just used the men’s bathroom in the first place. I wish the changing table had been inside the stall like it is in some places. 

[prairiewindmomma]

The *only* place I support urinals being next to toilets in mixed gender bathrooms is in single room lockable family or individual bathrooms. Nobody needs to see anybody else’s bits when toileting unless it’s a private caregiving situation.

ETA: I don’t even like open urinals in all male bathrooms

Edited June 22, 2023 by prairiewindmomma

[LMD]

49 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

I can 100 percent assure you that the laws about gender and bathroom use in my state and the rest of the south are NOT being made by trans activists or with their input or blessing. 

I can 100% assure you that here & other places it turns out they are. Have you been watching the UK fallout with mermaids & tavistock? Activists. My best friend is a member of parliament, I know what's in that particular sausage. And so we have laws against talk therapy for 'trans' kids - affirmation only or you could face 10 years in prison. We have many many mostly women being fired and slandered (and worse) for bringing it up. We have a literal male rapist in our local female prison and that decision was made without the women's blessing - on the contrary, their pleas are being ignored and punished.

I'm sorry, but this has gone further than the poor confused kids.

[ktgrok]

10 minutes ago, LMD said:

I can 100% assure you that here & other places it turns out they are. Have you been watching the UK fallout with mermaids & tavistock? Activists. My best friend is a member of parliament, I know what's in that particular sausage. And so we have laws against talk therapy for 'trans' kids - affirmation only or you could face 10 years in prison. We have many many mostly women being fired and slandered (and worse) for bringing it up. We have a literal male rapist in our local female prison and that decision was made without the women's blessing - on the contrary, their pleas are being ignored and punished.

I'm sorry, but this has gone further than the poor confused kids.

I was referring specifically to bathroom laws. I had posted that in the south the laws do not create a viable bathroom option for trans folks. Which basically is saying that trans folks should not be in public spaces, and that if the actual goal was just to make women safe rather than try to keep trans folks out of public spaces they would have written the law differently, required single person bathrooms, etc. 

In reponse someone told me the reason they didn't require single person bathrooms when making it illegal to use the bathroom that doesn't conform to your sex at birth is that trans activists don't want that. 

I explained that trans activists were not the ones in power in the southern united states, and had zero input on writing these laws. 

That doesn't mean there are not trans activists lobbying for any number of things in other places. 

But the fact of the matter is, it is right wing fundamentalists who consider transgender person an abomination writing the laws here, and the result is that legally at this point a transman has to use a women's room and a transwoman has to use the mens room, and given the potential for harassment, violence,  or arrest that isn't feasible. Which is the goal - no feasible options. 

[pinball]

1 hour ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Yeah, that was a really badly designed bathroom. 

Blame the bathroom. LOL

 

[TravelingChris]

3 hours ago, Kassia said:

I feel the same way.  It's horrifying.  I feel that way about social media too where people post under their real names instead of being anonymous (I'm thinking of facebook) - people have no problem posting such hateful and ugly things.  It really upsets me seeing that there are so many people like this locally.  Up until maybe ten years ago, I was totally naive and had no idea so many people were like this.  

My parents were born in Poland.  I was born in USA.  When I was little, I lived in Arlington, VA.  The headquarters of the American Nazi Party were near the library I would go to.  The leader was assissinated when I was little.  But the movement went on- a few years later, Some Nazis marched in the 4th of July parade.