#and anti-lgbt+ laws are being passed to 'save the children'

[iamanartichoke]

I made the mistake of scrolling the dash last night, hoping to re-engage my Loki fandom feels, only to be reminded of why I've more or less quit this fandom - which, for the record, is bc I don't know if it's purity culture or "woke" culture or just "for the love of god, I'm begging you to touch grass" culture, but I'd like to engage with my blorbo without running into posts spouting takes like "saying Loki has small, slender hands is a feminization kink (and therefore bad)." Like?? I think there's something inherently anti-genderfluidity(?) to assume that men can't have small, slender hands or that having small, slender hands is automatically a feminine trait, and also Loki does have small, slender hands, and also even if it is being written as some kind of a kink, so what? Why are we kink-shaming?

I mean, I don't know, it just seems like there are more and more and more things that are being shamed, or criticized, based on an arbitrary sense of morality that undermines fiction as a creative, explorative form of art and it's just beyond exhausting - and fucking obnoxious - at this point.

#anyway i just needed to get that off my chest #bc every time i try to hop back on tumblr and like. do things #here comes this fucking fandom being like 'hahaha no' #'bc can we address how this is problematic or that's a kink or how there is only one true loki and here's all the ways in which #your loki is not my loki and wow what an abuse/torture/fascist apologist you are' and just #it's not just that it's obnoxious as fuck (though it is) #it's that this mindset is no longer limited to just tumblr or fandom spaces #it and similar mindsets have spread into the real world and books are being banned #and anti-lgbt+ laws are being passed to 'save the children' #there's no fucking escape from this toxic thought-policing basically #it's all a slippery slope #so anyway see y'all again in six months or whatever #i'm sure i'll have 3/4s of the fandom blocked by the point that loki season 2 drops #but in case there's still 1/4 of people left who actually want to talk about #character analysis and valid criticism based on the material and not morals #i guess we'll see #mood gif #standom frank

[decolonize-the-left]

Project 25. The Heritage Foundation.

It's behind every single anti-lgbt law pushed the last year. They are why Roe v Wade was overturned. They are successful, well funded, and a massive threat.

What you can do is educate yourself and others about it. Get to know your enemy. Protest. Wear pride pins. Put out your flags. Show solidarity. We are ALL under attack by this white supremacist christo-fascist group.

Remember when 2020 had kpop stans organizing on twitter and gen z using tik tok to make Trump meets flop while white vets made themselves frontline walls at BLM protests that were organized to handle shit like kettling thanks to their amazing black organizers? Remember how people actually Showed up to those protests for awhile?

We need that cross-generational Fuck The System energy again. Not just for a summer this time. This needs to go passed the election.

They're playing a long game and so do we.

Get inspired.

Their goals include saving the children and traditional family, and "to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right."

This translates to destroying the EPA, disability rights, and criminalizing being LGBT. Also to overthrow the US government, as stated in their manifesto.

They want to replace our democracy with a theocracy. No Republican in office was elected without their approval.

They're the kind of right that makes being LGBT punishable by death. That makes it a crime just to exist where others can see you. They want librarians who work in libraries that make LGBT books accessible to be registered sex offenders. They want you prosecuted and even specify that no mercy should be shown to people the "left" likes (ex: immigrants, black people, etc)

That's the extreme right who's been manipulating our laws.

And they plan to make things a lot worse within the first 180 days a Republican is elected president.

Source

If you don't have plans coming up.... Start organizing them. We will be okay if we work together.

We will be okay if we work together.

If we have each other, we'll be okay. We have to rely on each other. You have to be reliable. You, person reading this, have to show up. That's how this works.

I have your back if you have mine. Do not leave me to the wolves and I won't leave you.

#current events #tumblr #news #important #supernatural

[justsomeantifas]

Why is it that whenever i see someone post #SaveTheChildren or anything similar, they usually turn out to be a total fash?

Because it's a classic way to go after their actual goals (eradicating LGBT from online/society, eradicating anything NSFW/sexual from culture/society/online, passing draconian surveillance laws (see the "anti-porn/anti-abuse" acts being pushed in the UK, Germany, Australia, and even the US under the guise of "protecting children/stopping CSEM" but really they actually will bring about mass surveillance and requiring one to upload their govt ID to an online database just to access a website, see the "anti-grooming" talking points these fascists use to gut ""CRT"" [*cough anything about black people cough*] and LGBT content from libraries and public schools).

TLDR; No one is going to argue with someone who is wants to "save children" because they will just throw the accusation that you're a pedophile at you, and then the focus shifts to that. And the mass media is not going to use any nuance whatsoever, just like they haven't in the past. No one wants that stigma on them, which is why no one fights back. It's cowardly, definitely, and these people should be sued, but it's a tried and true tactic. Once someone even suggests you are anything of that type of degenerate, you lose all public respect and fall into defense mode and at that point you've already lost.

#surveillance #lgbt #asks #anonymous

[tfyouthinkiam505]

too many citizens in this country are dumber than a box of rocks

all that goes on in their puny minds is "gun good. gun go pew pew. hehe big gun"

"guns are the only things protecting us, you cant take that away" maybe if you shit for brains stopped voting for laws that promote harm towards you and others, you wouldnt "need" guns to "protect" yourselves. youre just too lazy to learn basic self defense

shooting someone dead is just the easy way out since they always wanna aim to kill rather than aim to disarm, demobilize, or de-escalate

im convinced that a majority of people who own guns just fantasize about the day where someone shows even the TINIEST bit of aggression towards them just so they can shoot them down n claim it was self defense

they just look for any excuse to spill blood

when someone brings up even just putting up tighter gun restrictions, they cry out "theyre taking away our guns!"

prob cause they know tighter gun restrictions means a mental health evaluations to see if they're sane enough to own one and theres no way those trigger happy bastards would be able to pass one

and when people talk about wanting to ban guns, its "BANNING GUNS WONT STOP SHOOTINGS"

and anti lgbt laws wont stop lgbt people from existing yet yall are pushin REAL hard for those???

and anyone with half a brain cell can look at gun violence reports in other countries with stricter laws and bans and see that those numbers are DISGUSTINGLY less than that of the US.

like yall would rather there be 51 fucking school shootings in a year (2022s stats) than MAYBE 1 or 2 like other countries???

its like that train test to see if youd let the train run over one person to save multiple people or run over multiple people to save one person. only instead of the one track just having one person strapped to it, theres a gun strapped to it n you have to choose between letting the train kill hundreds of people or crush one measly gun.

but they always choose to save the gun

stg, the only people who are against stricter gun laws or even bans have either NEVER been a victim of gun violence or known anyone personally who has OR theyre just selfishly brain dead n care about no ones lives or well being but their own

"guns are here to protect us" my ass. the only blood on those weapons is that of innocent people. men, women, fuckin children

tryina find a gun that only has the blood of self defense on it is like finding a needle in a haystack of guns stained with the blood of innocence

disgusting

if i could, id move out of this cesspool of a country in a heart beat

[thefightfortranshealthcare]

Proper health care is vital to everyone’s long term quality of life. Illness and injury are the most obvious threats to life, however, access to gender affirming care can be critical to the lives and wellbeing of transgender people. Trans people are people who do not identify with the gender they are assigned at birth. While this in itself is not an issue, an inability to be perceived and accepted as their true gender often causes trans individuals large amounts of stress and distress. This manifests in a wide variety of ways, one of the most common being a discomfort or disdain for one’s secondary sex characteristics. This is commonly known as gender dysphoria, and it is often incredibly painful. The best and only cure for gender dysphoria is transition, the process of beginning to present as one’s true gender. The process of transition can include voice training, the process of learning to speak with a cadence and tone more often attributed to one’s true gender, changing how one dresses, learning to use different body language, and medical transition. Medical transition is the process of changing a person’s body directly to more closely match their true gender. Medical transition can include hormone replacement therapy, in which one sex hormone’s production is blocked, and another sex hormone is added to the body, and gender affirming surgery, the altering of a person’s body in order to give them characteristics attributed to their true gender, or to remove characteristics of their assigned gender.

Transition is important for trans people, not only because it decreases feelings of gender dysphoria, but because it allows trans people to be seen and accepted for who they really are. This is incredibly important because trans people are overall in greater danger of developing mental health issues, especially depression, due to a combination of gender dysphoria and widespread discrimination and oppression. For example, according to Mental Health National, LGBT youth as a whole experience depressive symptoms at a rate six times greater than straight youth.

This increased prevalence of depression can be deadly in trans communities. Mental Health National reported that forty eight percent of trans adults in the United States considered committing suicide in 2017, despite only four percent of all adults in the United States feeling the same. The Centre for Suicide Prevention reported that in 2015, between twenty two and forty three percent of trans people had attempted suicide at least once throughout their lives, and that even within the LGBT community, trans people are two times more likely than cis LGBT people to attempt suicide. Mental health issues are particularly concerning for trans youth. According to the Centre for Suicide Prevention, sixty six percent of trans youth practiced self harm in 2015, and Mental Health America has said that trans youth are twice as likely as cis youth to experience suicidal thoughts, and are four times as likely to act on those thoughts.

Given the dangerous and deadly nature of trans mental health concerns, it seems clear that the best course of action is to help to diminish the factors that contribute to high rates of mental illness in trans people. For the community at large, this would involve taking steps to prevent and protect trans people from discrimination and oppression, and at an individual level, this would involve providing greater access to transition related medical care to trans individuals, especially trans youth. Many lawmakers are however, doing the exact opposite of this right now. On April eighth of this year, Arkansas passed a law banning transition related healthcare for trans youth, and the governments of fifteen other states proposed similar laws. These laws are designed to prevent the parents, guardians, and doctors of trans children from being legally allowed to aid in their children’s transition. These laws are framed as intending to protect children, but in reality, these laws are designed to legally erase the existence of trans children. Medical transition has been shown time and time again to save lives. For instance, the Center for Suicide Prevention reports that a 2014 study in the United Kingdom found that in a survey of transitioning trans people, sixty seven percent of people were more suicidal before or near the beginning of their transition and less suicidal after their transition, as to only three percent who were more suicidal after their transition. Because medical transition improves the quality of life and mental health of trans people, and decreases their chances of attempting suicide, blocking access to that care will inevitably end lives.

Saving and improving the lives of children, and all trans people is a cause worth fighting for, and as such opposition to this legislation is encouraged. This blog is focused specifically on the fight to prevent bills HB 1 and SB 10 from being passed in Alabama. These bills make providing transition related healthcare to children in Alabama a crime and force schools to out trans students to their families, regardless of the issues that may arise from doing so. These bills, if passed, would therefore condemn trans youth in Alabama to childhoods of dysphoria and neglect, as well as most definitely drive some children to suicide.

Thankfully, there are many organizations actively working to protect and uplift transgender youth throughout the nation, all of which oppose this type of legislation. There are several organizations around Portland that focus on transgender individuals and families around Portland. Two highlighted organizations that provide a variety of services for transgender youth, adults, and families are the TransActive Gender Project and Outside In (Namior.org, 2021).

TransActive Gender Project

The TransActive Gender Project (TGP) is a Portland-based organization that provides “a holistic range of services and expertise to empower trans and gender nonconforming children, youth, and families” (Namior.org, 2021). The organization is based at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, and focuses on advocating for transgender rights in a variety of avenues (TransActive Gender Project, 2021).

“The services provided include:

“support groups for adults, families, allies, and youth ranging 4-18 years old;

“professional development and community-centered training and education;

“advocacy related to gender-diverse social justice;

“policy development and implementation consultation and guidance,

“and screened referrals to mental health and medical providers”

(TransActive Gender Project, 2021).

Regarding the recent surge in anti-trans legislation, the TGP has come out with a statement saying, “we must continue to prepare for the ripple effects of the previous administration’s policies and attitudes towards the gender diverse community” (TransActive.org, 2021). The organization will continue to resist hate and discrimination and continue with “education, support and advocate for transgender youth and families, and continue to work against the disinformation and misinformation around anti-trans policies and practices” (TransActive.org, 2021).

Outside In

Founded in 1968, Outside In is “a coalition of medical and naturopathic doctors and interns, acupuncturists and Chinese herbalists who provide multidisciplinary care to homeless youth and low income individuals lacking health insurance in Portland” (Namoir.org, 2021). Among their work, Outside In offer services to transgender individuals (Namior.org, 2021). The Federally-Qualified Health Center offers a wide range of services including but not limited to case management, housing, meals, education, job training, and primary healthcare (Outside In, 2021).

References

American Civil Liberties Organization of Alabama. (n.d.). HB 1 / SB 10 (2021) - ANTI-TRANS YOUTH. ACLU Alabama. https://www.aclualabama.org/en/legislation/hb1-sb10-2021-anti-trans-youth

Centre for Suicide Prevention. (n.d.). Transgender people and suicide. Centre for Suicide Prevention. https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/transgender-people-suicide/

Cox, C. (2021, April 8). As Arkansas bans treatments for transgender youth, 15 other states consider similar bills. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/08/states-consider-bills-medical-treatments-transgender-youth/7129101002/

Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. (n.d.). TransActive Gender Project. Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://graduate.lclark.edu/programs/continuing_education/transactive/

Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. (2021). TransActive Update: Moving Ahead in 2021. Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. https://graduate.lclark.edu/live/news/45482-transactive-update-moving-ahead-in-2021

Mental Health America. (n.d.). LGBTQ+ Communities And Mental Health. Mental Health America. https://www.mhanational.org/issues/lgbtq-communities-and-mental-health

National Alliance on Mental Illness . (n.d.). LGBTQ Specific - NAMI Oregon. Namior.org. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://namior.org/resources/community-resource-lists/culturally-specific-services/

Outside In. (n.d.). Outside In. Outside In. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://outsidein.org

[itsremmybahati]

THE ANTI HOMOSEXUALITY BILL

In 2010 the Ugandan Parliament approved a bill that will punish "aggravated homosexuality" with life imprisonment or death. The measure came after years of debate over the measure that was introduced to "protect" Ugandan children from what they think is recruitment by Western LGBT individuals. Homosexuality is already illegal in the deeply Christian country; I spoke to the author of the Kill the gays David Bahati, gay activists to assess the infringement of people’s rights.

The bill, widely known as the Ugandan "kill the gays" bill, originally included a provision that would make repeated instances of homosexual acts punishable by death.  Even though the bill was passed, signed into law by the Uganda President Yoweri  Museveni  and later scrapped by the constitutional court, Ugandan LGBTQ’s still find a hard time identifying as gay people due to fear of being rejected by the community.

Legislators are planning to re introduce the bill before parliament even when it was squashed by the constitutional court. This, obviously, is terrible news for gay people in Uganda and human rights in general. I spoke to  Clare Byarugaba, co-coordinator of the Civil Society Coalition for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CSHRCL),  and is mentally exhausted with checking parliament's order papers every day, and pessimistic. "Hope for gay rights in Uganda is like expecting corruption in Uganda to end. It will never end. The population is behind the bill and MPs go with the majority."

Speaking with gay people in Uganda who have hide if they were gay, They're terrified about the consequences of the bill passing. They have already been chased out of the one-room house they all shared in the Bwaise slum because the police believe that they're "recruiting" young people into homosexuality. The issue of "recruitment" is one of the Ugandan government's principal concerns, with David Bahati the author of the bill telling me that he believes homosexuality is an addiction and that people, particularly children, are lured into it. 

It took David two weeks to get back to me, but the day before I left Uganda, he granted me an interview. Uganda is a country where the climate for LGBTI people was already hostile and discriminatory, LGBTI people have faced a notable increase in arbitrary arrests, police abuse and extortion, loss of employment, evictions and homelessness, and scores have fled the country. At least one transgender person has been killed since the bill was signed, in an apparent hate crime.

Health providers have cut back on essential services for LGBTI people, who also fear harassment or arrest if they seek health care. The passing of this discriminatory law has not only opened the floodgates for a range of human rights violations against LGBTI people in Uganda, but has also ensured that victims of these violations are denied access to effective remedies. Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a Kampala-based organization, stated in a recent report  that “the full force of the State, particularly the legislative and executive branches of government, is being used to hunt down, expose, demean and suppress Uganda’s LGBTI people.”

“The Anti-Homosexuality Act has  created homelessness and joblessness, restricting life-saving HIV work, and bloating the pockets of corrupt police officers who extort money from victims of arrest.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International conducted research in Kampala and other Ugandan towns in April 2014, interviewing 38 individuals directly affected by the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, four lawyers and paralegals, and four organizations that provide health services to LGBTI people.

The law has empowered [homophobic people]. My neighbor was shouting “These people are animals. Even Museveni knows that these people are inhuman. How can he be in the house? How can you even give him one whole month? We have this law, the police should throw him out.

On March 13, police arrested Maria W., a transgender asylum seeker, after neighbors reported her to police as a “homosexual.” Police searched Maria’s home without a warrant and beat her, demanding that she enter the password on her laptop to allow them to search it:

They kept beating me. They were beating me with pieces of wood, fists, and kicks...They took me to the police post and interrogated me. They said I left my country to come destroy Ugandan culture.

Police asked for large bribes in exchange for Maria’s release. According to Maria, “They said, ‘He’s part of a gay organization; they have lots of money and sleep with whites.’” Maria was released after a friend bribed the police with 500,000 Ugandan shillings (about $200).

[ecotone99]

[SP] The First Rebirth

It started with stories of a girl born in Mumbai. Soon after she was born, the doctors noticed her cries were different from the usual “baby noises.” They thought she might be trying to form words and sentences. Eventually, one doctor recognized the speech as Mandarin, and called in a translator. The baby claimed to be an 87-year-old Chinese man, who had just suffered a massive heart attack in his home. The chinese authorities checked the address the baby had given, and found the corpse of an 87-year-old man, who had died at the same time as the baby’s birth.

More stories like this popped up all over the world, of babies born speaking random languages, claiming to be people who had died just before their birth. Eventually, people started connecting the dots. Every single person who had died after the First Rebirth had also been reborn. The Buddhists and Hindus rejoiced, because their religious afterlife had been proven correct. All other religions began to crumble at their foundations, as people began to accept that they, too, would be reborn when they died. Of course, no one knew when or if the Rebirths would ever end, so they were cautious at first. It would be a long time until everyone trusted in their own immortality.

New government organizations were formed in the wake of the Rebirths. One to validate rebirths and one to help those who had died reclaim their property, and arrange travel back to their place of residence. Before your death, you could set a 10-digit alphanumeric password and a set of security questions with the organization, with the idea that only you would remember them, and take them into your next life. The Last Will and Testament became a thing of the past; everyone’s will would have just left everything to themselves. No one would ever inherit their parents’ fortune, as no one could ever die or even retire. This meant everyone just got richer and richer, saving up money for a retirement that would never come. Heavy inflation would follow; when everyone is rich, no one is.

One year after the First Rebirth, the rate of pregnancy had hit a record low. No one wanted to give birth to a fully-formed adult in a child’s body. This caused a problem for those who did get pregnant, intentionally or not, as death rates were increasing as birth rates decreased. This meant that each person would give birth to twins, triplets or more. Eventually, government organizations would pay those born as women 5-figure salaries to get pregnant, raising the birth rate so each person would only have to deliver one or two babies.

People started to take advantage of the Rebirths. The rich paid fortunes to synchronize their death with a birth from a surrogate mother and sperm donor of their choice. Those in the trans community that could afford to use these services did so, in order to be reborn in the body they felt most comfortable in. Those who couldn’t afford it either stayed on hormones or decided to re-roll the dice.

In the years after the First Rebirth, the education system ceased to exist, year by year. As the youngest “real children” graduated each year of schooling, that year was no longer necessary, so it was abandoned. After another decade or so, people were experiencing what it was like to grow up as other genders. Men began to understand menstruation when they experienced it firsthand. Gradually, genetic attributes like race and gender lost all meaning. Occasionally, people’s sexualities would change after a Rebirth, proving that one’s sexual preference is not a choice. One month after the First Rebirth, anti-LGBT right wing Senator James Wright was reborn as a gay man. As soon as he hit puberty and realized his “taste” had changed, Wright resigned from his position and refused to speak to the press. No one knew why he had suddenly decided to cut himself off from all contact with the outside world, but they had suspicions. Soon after this, more and more people started to hit puberty, realizing that their sexual preferences had changed. Once this phenomenon became common knowledge, people started to suspect that Wright was hiding something. Something that would contradict everything he had spent his career defending. The LGBT community was already stronger than ever, but when Wright finally came out, it was like a revolution never before seen in history. Wright’s fellow right-wing senators, almost unanimously, finally understood. Marriage equality was just the beginning. New laws were passed worldwide to prevent discrimination of any kind based on any genetic qualities.

While this was all great for equality, it wasn’t great for couples. When someone is reborn as the opposite gender, their partner may not be attracted to them anymore. When they come back with different sexual preferences, they may not be attracted to their partner. Not to mention age differences, having to wait for their next puberty, and not looking at all similar to their previous body. “‘Til death do us part” took on a new meaning.

Being a child again was great for the elderly, as well as the disabled and otherwise genetically disadvantaged. It did have its downsides, though. Being a reborn baby was treated as a new, temporary form of disability. New wheelchairs and other mobility devices were invented to help the babies rejoin society, but extensive use of these would cause the muscles to not develop properly, so they were rarely used. Having to relearn to walk, eating only liquids, teething, re-losing your baby teeth, puberty and growing pains all over again was highly uncomfortable.

A big question for the Reborn was what to do with their old bodies. Most sold their organs for a tidy profit and cremated the rest. Some held fake funerals and buried themselves out of nostalgia, but this wasn’t enough for the funeral home, coffin and tombstone industries to stay afloat. Some eccentric billionaires preserved their old selves in resin, building macabre museums of their previous lives and deaths.

After many decades, war, poverty and discrimination having been solved, we turned our attention to the stars. The number of people with degrees in the sciences was 10 times what it was before the First Rebirth, so it didn’t take long to develop interplanetary travel. We built a Dyson Sphere around our sun and used it to power near-lightspeed engines, and take us to other habitable systems in the galaxy. We colonized and terraformed other planets, bringing teams of pregnant people along. If the deaths of colonists on earth were synchronized with births on other planets, we could essentially “teleport” our minds and travel faster than light. We began to expand the human race’s empire in the cosmos, knowing that we could accomplish anything in our lifetimes. Our race would grow to possess infinite wisdom, maturity and experience.

One century after the First Rebirth, the average “physical age” of the human population was 12 years. The average “mental age” was 130. The last human being alive to have never died was Anzu Takahashi, a Japanese woman, born just before the First Rebirth. Anzu was 101 years old. She could not bear the thought of eternal life without end, forever imprisoned on Earth with nothing after. Knowing that she had experienced all she could ever experience, she let her mind deteriorate with Dementia and Alzheimer’s, and by the time she died, Anzu Takahashi was a blank slate, ready to begin again.

submitted by /u/piefacepro [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/379xeU1

#Blogger #Story

[nancydhooper]

Lawmakers Playing Politics with Trans Kids’ Lives at the Start of the Decade

We’re just days into the first state legislative sessions of 2020 and across the country, lawmakers are once again targeting transgender young people with a slate of proposed laws that would bring devastating harms to the transgender community.

In 2016, lawmakers fixated on where transgender people go to the bathroom. This year, lawmakers have zeroed in on transgender people playing sports and receiving life-saving medical care. It is hard to imagine why state legislators have decided to prioritize barring transgender young people from sharing in the benefit of secondary school athletics or disrupting medical treatment consistent with prevailing standards of care. But here we are, the start of the session, a time to fight.

As has been the case since 2015, South Dakota is leading the way with legislation targeting transgender youth. On the first day of this legislative session, South Dakota lawmakers introduced HB 1057, a bill that would make it a felony for medical providers to affirm a transgender minor’s gender. This bill would not only compromise positive health outcomes for transgender youth, but it would lead to the arrest and imprisonment of doctors for simply treating their patients consistent with prevailing medical standards.

That’s right. Lawmakers want to throw doctors who follow basic medical standards for trans youth behind bars and leave trans youth with no recourse at all.

Denying best practice medical care and support to transgender youth can be life-threatening. It has been shown to contribute to depression, social isolation, self-hatred, risk of self-harm and suicidal behavior, and more. The “problem” this bill and other similar bills in Florida, South Carolina, and Missouri is supposed to be addressing? That medical providers are treating children in accordance with long-established standards of care and the Hippocratic oath they took to do no harm.

Lawmakers want to stop people from being transgender and they are willing to put doctors in jail and tell transgender youth that they shouldn’t receive health care in order to achieve their aims.

Imagine being a young person in South Dakota who struggled with depression and anxiety in early childhood, as many transgender people do, because they couldn’t quite identify why they felt so alienated from their peers, their family, and their own body. Over time, they come to recognize that they have a gender that does not align with what they were assigned at birth, tell their family, find support, and begin a course of medical treatment that is quite literally saving their life. With bills like those proposed in South Dakota and elsewhere, young people are at risk of having their lifeline stripped away in an instant. The care that gave them a chance to live is at risk of becoming a crime. Their lives are at risk of becoming criminalized before they even get a chance to live them.

And these legislative attacks go beyond health care. Elsewhere, lawmakers have taken aim at transgender people through proposed bans on transgender student athletes participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. These measures would exclude transgender people from enjoying the benefits of sport on equal terms with their non-transgender peers. Not only do these bills discriminate against transgender young people in ways that compromise their health, social and emotional development, they also raise a host of privacy concerns.

In New Hampshire, for example, the proposed law would require any student athlete whose gender is “disputed” to have medical verification of their sex via “(a) The student’s internal and external reproductive anatomy;(b) The student’s naturally occurring level of testosterone; and (c) An analysis of the student’s chromosomes.” This type of Orwellian intrusion into the bodily autonomy of youth will sweep much broader than transgender youth and potentially impact the ability of all young people — particularly young girls — to safely partake in school activities.

And, if some lawmakers have their way, this will be the national norm as similar bills are pending in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Washington state.

Though lawmakers claim that these measures are aimed at protecting vulnerable youth, they in fact do the opposite. And this, too, is a pattern.

The first anti-LGBTQ bill to pass this session is a Tennessee bill that allows foster and adoption agencies to turn away prospective foster families based on the agencies’ religious beliefs — thus limiting prospective parents for kids in out-of-home care. At the end of the day, with all these measures, it will be young people who suffer most.

For transgender young people across the country, this time of year means bracing for public debates over their bodies, athletic abilities, medical care, and restroom practices. In some fundamental ways, these are ultimately debates about whether transgender people should exist at all. The latest round of proposed legislation tells us is that some people don’t think we should.

We must all fight to remind lawmakers that we already do exist, that we aren’t going anywhere, and that we have communities of people fighting alongside us.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbt-rights/lawmakers-playing-politics-with-trans-kids-lives-at-the-start-of-the-decade via http://www.rssmix.com/

[asylum-ireland-blog]

Meeting the diverse groups coming together for abortion rights in Ireland

New Post has been published on http://asylumireland.ml/meeting-the-diverse-groups-coming-together-for-abortion-rights-in-ireland/

Meeting the diverse groups coming together for abortion rights in Ireland

In the campaign to repeal some of the strictest abortion laws in the world, we hear how trans, migrant, and disabled communities find their space

‘Ireland Unfree’ is a Dazed mini-series telling the stories of Ireland’s bold fight for abortion rights, in the run up to the monumental referendum on the eighth amendment. Stirring protest, creativity, personal politics, and vital conversation, these Irish people push for autonomy. Here, we share their journey on Dazed.

This May, after decades of campaigning, the Irish people will finally have the right to vote in a referendum to repeal the eighth amendment – the passage in our constitution which for 35 years has prevented abortion on our island.

Abortion is more than just a singular women’s issue – in fact, the upcoming referendum in Ireland is perhaps one of the most intersectional issues the country faces. Abortion affects disabled people, trans people, and migrant people in uniquely challenging ways, specifically because of the way that Ireland’s unusual laws limit their medical freedoms.

I spoke to Emily Waszak, co-founder of MERJ (Migrants and Ethnic Minorities for Reproductive Justice), a group which campaigns against the eighth amendment.

“Migrants are disproportionately affected by the eighth amendment”, Emily tells Dazed. “While the 13th amendment gives abortion seekers in Ireland the right to travel to another jurisdiction to obtain a legal abortion, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants are not able to travel. These documents can take weeks or even months to be processed and abortion is time sensitive. We know that because of job discrimination, migrants and ethnic minorities often work low paid, precarious jobs, so they might not be able to take time off work or afford to travel.”

Ireland still operates a system called direct provision, whereby asylum seekers who arrive in the country are housed in cramped accommodation centres. While in DP, asylum seekers receive only 21.60 euro a week and are prohibited from seeking jobs. Amnesty International has expressed concerns about the “poor living conditions” in these centres.

“Imagine having a crisis pregnancy in Direct Provision”, Emily points out. “You have no privacy – you might be sharing a room with strangers or your children, sharing a toilet and you have to keep it a secret or risk deportation back to a country you have just fled.”

Restriction on travel means that being pregnant in Ireland is a unique challenge for migrants, who can’t access the one escape route offered to Irish women and people who can get pregnant. For trans people in Ireland, being pregnant also poses a unique challenge, albeit in a very different way. I spoke to Aoife Martin, the convenor of Trans4Repeal, who tells me; “The eighth amendment affects all people who were Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB) and might now have a different gender identity. If, for example, a trans man needs to travel for an abortion then he might also have to deal with issues surrounding name changes and documentation. For example, his passport might be in his deadname, or he may look completely different now to his passport photo.”

“We’ve been given a platform in Together for Yes that we didn’t have before” – Evie Nevin, Disabled People Together for Yes

Jamie Howell is a 21–year old–trans man who lives in Dublin and has marched against the eighth amendment. He tells me that being pregnant can be uniquely traumatic for a trans person. “Because of the dysphoria I experience with my body not quite lining up with my gender identity, becoming pregnant would increase that dysphoria and my mental health would plummet. Trans men who are on hormones would more than likely have to come off them if they were pregnant, because the eighth amendment prevents any treatment that can risk the life of the foetus”, he explains.

The additional trauma Jamie describes is something not many people take into account when considering abortion. Evie Nevin can understand hidden trauma. She has a disability called Ehlers Danlos syndrome – a rare disorder which means she is prone to dislocated joints and haemorrhaging. Because of her pelvis dislocating during her first two pregnancies, she is now a part-time wheelchair user. Her doctors say if she gave birth again, they might not be able to stop the bleeding.

Evie set up Disabled People Together for Yes to campaign against the eighth amendment and centre disabled voices in the debate. “We’re disproportionately affected by the eighth amendment because a lot of us cannot travel, we have mobility issues, and a lot of us live in poverty because our disabilities mean that we’re unable to work, so the cost of travel is an issue,” Evie says. “Ireland has the largest deprivation gap between able-bodied and disabled people. The Disability Allowance is only about 200 euro a week so the idea of having to save money to travel abroad and pay for abortion is next to impossible. It takes longer to save so we have to opt for later abortions, and as time goes on, costs grow because you’d need surgical abortion instead, so risks grow as well and it’s much more traumatic.”

Evie also explains how having rare medical concerns associated with your disability, like she does, means that having to leave your doctors at home poses its own risks. “If you have to travel, there’s a lack of continuity of care. Irish doctors are forbidden from communicating with foreign abortion providers, so they have no access to your medical history, even with surgery. They can’t find out about allergies to antibiotics or anaesthetic. For people with intellectual disabilities, they might not be able to pass on this information themselves.”

illustration Fiona McDonnell

Repealing the eighth amendment is clearly a deeply intersectional issue. When Ireland’s unusually harsh restrictions meet the specific oppressions of disability, displacement, or different gender identities, unique challenges arise. The abortion rights campaigners in Ireland are making concerted efforts to represent these unique challenges and to run an inclusive campaign. What Evie, Aoife, and Emily all have in common is that they are all organisers of campaigning groups which form part of Together for Yes, a huge umbrella group consisting of more than 70 organisations.

One of the main problems faced by all three groups is not feeling heard. Evie describes speaking at an event where a trans speaker stood up and said; “Nobody is talking about us”, to which Evie replied; “I know exactly how you feel”. Emily from MERJ echoes these sentiments, saying; “We do not see ourselves and our voices reflected”.

Together For Yes (T4Y) and other large campaigning groups in Ireland like the Abortion Rights Campaign (ARC) are doing their utmost to bring inclusivity to the conversation around the eighth. Evie describes how she has worked with the main T4Y campaign to bring the voices of disabled people to the fore in the discussion. She has spoken at their International Women’s Day march in Dublin, has travelled to speak to local groups around the country and spoken at a joint event run by Inclusion Ireland (a group campaigning for people with intellectual disabilities) and T4Y.

“Because of the dysphoria I experience with my body not quite lining up with my gender identity, becoming pregnant would increase that dysphoria and my mental health would plummet” – Jamie Howell

“We’ve been given a platform in Together for Yes that we didn’t have before. The whole conversation around disabilities and the eighth so far has been about eugenics, and people on the anti-choice side have been speaking for us”, Evie tells me. The anti-choice lobby in Ireland has repeatedly used Down syndrome in their campaigns to argue against abortion access. “But we can speak for ourselves. Together for Yes have let us speak for ourselves.”

MERJ has also been working with the larger T4Y and ARC groups. “We have spoken at ARC’s March for Choice, the International Women’s Day march and various launches”, Emily says. “We have worked with ARC on our Talking About the 8th workshop and they have been very generous with us by giving us meeting space. We also delivered an inclusivity workshop at their EGM.” Trans4Yes have had similar involvement with the wider movement, speaking recently at an event about why the eighth is an LGBT issue.

The effort to ensure minority voices are heard in Ireland’s abortion debate needs to be a collaborative effort, and it seems champions like Evie, Emily, and Aoife are succeeding in making their voices heard with the help of their sisters. For the three co-directors of Together For Yes, Orla O’Connor, Ailbhe Smyth, and Grainne Griffin, inclusivity is one of their core aims. “In the campaign we highlight harm the 8th amendment causes to so many diverse groups of people, and the additional barriers that people face”, they conclude.

TextBrian O’Flynn

IllustrationFiona McDonnell

for www.dazedigital.com

, http://www.dazeddigital.com/politics/article/39991/1/meeting-trans-migrant-disabled-groups-together-for-yes-abortion-rights-ireland

#abortion rights #Asylum News Ireland

[carcrazedphotographer]

Gay Rights Through the Decades

Freedom and the principle that all men are created equal are the foundations of what the United States of America was founded upon. Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the founding fathers of our nation wanted a nation that everyone is free and equal. Almost 300 years later, slow progression has been made to reach towards these goals. A recent issue that has been put on the table pertaining to equality is rights and equality of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) citizens. The LGBT community has been striving for their rights and equality while others are striving to prevent the LGBT rights. Various events and milestones in LGBT history have shaped the landscape of the U.S. and continues to shape it.

           The issue of gay rights has been a talked about in the country for almost a century. History of the movement had a rocky start when the country had many issues going on at the end of the beginning of the 20th century. At the time, gay rights was not a discussed topic and many individuals that identified as gay kept their identity a secret and did not talk about it. Henry Gerber, and immigrant from Germany, thought that the way that sexual identity was treated in America was wrong compared to his homeland. Arriving to America, he was institutionalized for his orientation. After inspiration from a German doctor about anti-gay discrimination, Gerber established the first American gay rights organization in Chicago in 1924 called the Society for Human Rights. The group had a publication called Friendship and Freedom to distribute, but only had two issues distributed. Gerber had a hard time finding members and allies that would support his organization. Professionals in the medical and psychology field wanted to support the organization, but they believed that supporting the organization would damage their reputations in their fields. The group had a short life due to political pressure and a series of arrests in the summer of 1925, causing the group to eventually disband.

           In the 1950s, the United States was a conservative time when the ideals of McCarthyism was in the air and the there was a fear of the spread of communism throughout the world. The decade was a time when homosexuality was misunderstood to the extreme. In April of 1950, the American Psychological Association deemed homosexuality as a mental illness under sociopathic personality disturbance. Since deemed as a mental disorder, a Senate Report was issued stating that individuals that identified as gay were a security risk to the government, believing they are mentally unstable and engage acted that were perverted.  As a result of the report, around 500 people that worked for the government were fired and there around 4,400 military discharges believing that they were gay and became known as the ‘Lavender Scare’. Following the report, in 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which banned homosexuals from working in federal government position and with private contractors. Even though these laws were enacted pushing out gay rights out of the picture, there were still individuals that were pursuing for rights and equality among the gay community. In 1950, Harry Hay and other men founded the Mattachine Society, which is considered the first modern gay rights organization. Some of their priorities were to redefine what the term gay meant and to establish a comprehensive program for cultural and political liberation. In 1951, they started to hold discussion group to let individuals express their thoughts and feelings as a gay individual. The same year they added a mission statement to their organization to have the vision of gay liberation become a reality and stand out in history by two themes: first is to challenge anti-gay discrimination and two to build a community of support. The organization started to grow and had a membership of over 5,000 at its largest. Soon enough an article about the organization made the organization look like it was linked to communism. This caused a scare among the members. Conventions occurred to show that the group was not part of communism ideals or was not enacting it, but these attempts failed. Due to the failure, many feared that an investigation by the government and expose its member to the public. This resulted in the founders leaving and caused the attendance of the groups to fall and eventually end.

           The Mattachine Society was not the only group to start out during this time. The Daughters of Bilitis, founded in 1955, was the first support and advocate group for lesbian women. It was founded Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who wanted a safe space for lesbian women to be able to socialize with other lesbian women. The group’s statement of purpose was to educate how to adjust and adapt to gradually win acceptance through education. They invited individuals from the medical field to speak at their meetings, but backfired a lot because the professionals wanted to the members as clients of theirs. Despite this issue, the group started to spread rapidly due to their magazine ,The Ladder, which lasted from 1956 – 1972. Due to the changing cultural and political landscape in the 1960’s  and the rise of the feminist movement, the group started to decline. The demise of the magazine signaled the end of the group, with the last chapter closing in 1978.

           The 1960s brought a lot of changes to the country and many movements was on the rise. In 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Bronx, was raided by police to arrest bar patrons. The patrons had enough and people fought back and evolved into a three day riot. This event was called the Stonewall Riots and is considered to have started the gay rights movement. The one year anniversary of the riots was a march through New York City, called the Christopher St. Liberation Day March, is considered the first gay pride in the Unites States.

           Jeanne Manford was with her son, Morty, at the march and walked with her son and many people came up to her and asked her for help with coming out to their parents. She came up with the idea of starting a support group. She held the first meeting of her support group in 1973 with an attendance of 20 people. Groups similar to Manford’s started to form around the country. The group grew and became the nation’s largest organization to support gays and lesbians. The organization is known as Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, commonly known as PFLAG. The organization has had an impact with helping distribute information to local communities and schools and has helped with the government to have laws passed to protect LGBT individuals.

           The gay rights movement started to gain momentum towards the end of the 20th century. In 1973, the American Psychological Association voted to remove homosexuality from being a mental illness. More support groups started to right and education started to rise, but there were still people who were against homosexuality. Celebrity Anita Bryant started an anti-gay campaign called ‘Save Our Children’ to repeal the gay rights ordinance in Dade county Florida. She was met with severe backlash, being publicly pied in the face and losing many supporters.

           During the 1990s and the 2000s the gay rights movement started to become a common topic as far as marriage and military service. In 1993, the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy was enacted that prevented open gays and lesbians from serving in the military. 1996 brought Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal benefits to married same sex couples. This did not stop the gay rights movement, it started to push harder. Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same sex marriage. The early 2010s brought many historical movements. The Don’t Ask Don’t tell policy was repealed and allowed openly gays and lesbians to serve in the military. Proposition 8, a law passed in 2008 that banned same sex marriage in California, was found unconstitutional in 2010 and ended in 2013. A historical victory in the gay rights movement was the U.S. Supreme Court legalizing same sex marriage nationwide.  

           The gay rights movement has been a major part of American history. It has brought to the light that everyone is equal and should be treated equal. Every advancement of the movement is one step closer to achieve equality and exercise these rights with obligations that America was founded upon.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Lawmakers Move to Dissolve Mississippi’s Arts Commission

Rev. H.D. Dennis’ art environment, “Margaret’s Grocery” (2001) in Vicksburg, a project supported by the Mississippi Arts Commission (photo by Larry Morrisey, all courtesy Mississippi Arts Commission)

Next year marks the Mississippi Arts Commission‘s 50th anniversary, but pending bills authored by Republican lawmakers may prevent the agency from reaching that milestone. Senate Bill 2611 and House Bill 1325, introduced last week, would dissolve the grant-making and service commission and hand over its duties to the Mississippi Development Authority (MDA), which focuses on economic and community development. The news, according to Mississippi Today, came as a complete shock to the commission’s executive director Malcolm White, as well as his board. The Senate and House Appropriations Committees will consider both bills tomorrow.

Mary Emma Dunbar, kin to bluesman Scott Dunbar in Woodville (1993) (photo by D.L. Bennett)

According to Representative Becky Currie and Senator Lydia Chassaniol — who served as an Arts Commission board member in the 1990s — the bills are intended to consolidate government agencies and save taxpayers money. Currie told The Clarion-Ledger that money would be saved by placing commission employees in MDA’s building, but both agencies already share the same building, as the daily noted. In an interview with Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB), White described the announcement as “a power grab” by the MDA that, to him, makes no sense, especially since the agencies already work closely together.

“I’ve worked at MDA for three years and here at the Arts Commission for eight,” White told MPB. “I can tell you there would be no efficiency gained, and that as proposed, this is not good government at all.”

The Arts Commission receives about $800,000 in federal funds, he added, and about $1.5 million in state funds. Federal grants are mandated through the National Endowment of Arts — itself facing elimination by President Trump; state grants require the approval of the Arts Commission’s advisory board. Currie told the Clarion Ledger that the board would have the same duties but less control over what types of projects receive funding; in his MPB interview, White said the present legislation dictates the board would be done away with on July 1.

If the bills pass, the power to dictate how the state’s arts community develops would essentially go to Governor Phil Bryant, who heads the MDA. An outspoken Trump supporter, Bryant served as his chief Mississippi fundraiser during the presidential campaign, single-handedly raising nearly $2 million. He is still defending a sweeping anti-LGBT “Religious Liberty” law he notoriously signed last April that was later reversed. Last November, Bryant also denounced a billboard that the artist-led super PAC For Freedoms had erected in the state to spark dialogue about civic responsibility.

Bogue Chitto Dancers at the Mississippi Craft Center (1998) (photo by Larry Morrisey)

Dragon Dancing group in east Biloxi performing as part of the community’s Tet celebrations (Vietnamese New Year) (2004) (photo by Larry Morrisey)

With both state and NEA support, MAC recently digitized its collection of photographs that illustrates the reach of the Commission since its beginnings and its impact on generations of artists and communities across the state. It uploaded 150 of them to its Facebook page as a reminder of what the agency has accomplished and to make the case for its continued existence.

“The arts are about as American as apple pie,” Jennifer Joy Jameson, MAC’s Folk and Traditional Arts Director, wrote in her description of the collection, “especially here in Mississippi.” White has also released a statement encouraging all Mississippians “to voice your opinions, get involved,  and exercise your rights as citizens of the great state of Mississippi and the United States of America.”

The state’s possible cuts to local arts funding coincide similar maneuvers in another small state: Iowa is facing similar budget cuts, as WQAD8 reported. State lawmakers have proposed taking $6 million from the Iowa Cultural Trust, which supports nonprofit art and culture organizations, to help make up for a nearly $110 million budget loss. With the Trump administration’s threats to nix the NEA, however, similar feelings of uncertainty toward the state of arts funding are being felt nationwide.

Sylvia Dodson and Leroy Campbell of the Mississippi Lively Ones in Sherman (2003) (photo by Wiley Prewitt)

Painter and quilter Patricia Wynn in Lawrence (2001) (photo by Larry Morrisey)

Jarvis Cole, apprentice under master bluesman Johnnie Billington performs with him at the Governor’s Arts Awards for Excellence in Jackson in 1999

Delta bluesman and visual artist James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas at the Oxford Folk Festival im 1986 (photo by Cheri Wolfe)

Children practicing weaving with a loom as part of a folk arts in education program

The post Lawmakers Move to Dissolve Mississippi’s Arts Commission appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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