Why Calling Out Every Single Instance of Transphobia – and Never Letting Anyone Forget Any of Them – is Still Necessary

A comment I made and a response thereto at an item currently up on the website of what used to be The Advocate:

So, according to ‘Bill Carr,’ I’m making trans things up – seeing things where there are none.

I must be a real whack job, eh?

Well…

Here are the last two paragraphs of the item in question, two paragraphs which constitute approximately half of the text in the item:

Savage highlighted the hypocrisy demonstrated by the Duggar family, who have peddled their anti-LGBT agenda and activism as a means of protecting families – including campaigning against an LGBT rights ordinance in Fayetteville, Ark., which cast transgender people as child predators.

“Particularly when religious conservatives want to talk about it, they want to point a finger at non-family. They want to point a finger at people that they define as the enemies of families or not from or having families of their own – LGBT people, particularly trans people increasingly with these anti-trans bathroom bills,” Savage told Hayes. “And that is what the Duggars have dug in on is attacking trans people and opposing this LGBT civil rights bill in Fayetteville where they were out there arguing that the threat to little girls in Fayetteville were transwomen when they knew, when they were covering for someone who had demonstrated, at least at that age, was a threat to little girls himself.”

The fact that two people actually ‘liked’ the comment by ‘Bill Carr’ demonstrates that the LGBT community is about a ‘post-transphobia’ as the nation as a whole is ‘post-racial.’

Questions that Should be Asked Until Substantively Answered

Questions posed to Mike Huckabee:

A Photo that America Should not be Allowed to Forget

Duggar – Rhymes With…

“It’s not easy for me, because I’m thoughtful.”

With David Letterman preparing to put on his Velcro suit and be catapulted into the television sunset, here is a collection of snippets that are worth viewing:

 11 times David Letterman humiliated the right

My two disappointments with Dave: (1) he didn’t figure a way to assemble Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Dhani Harrison and Julian and Sean Lennon on stage together at the Ed Sullivan Theater for as much of a Beatles reunion as he could have ever had on either incarnation of his late night show (George and even John would have both been available for his morning show, but why should anyone believe that an NBC viewership that had given the network an excuse to kill off Hollywood Squares classic which made room for the Letterman morning show in the first place – and still didn’t watch it – would have bothered tuning in for even a true Beatles reunion?); and (2) he didn’t eviscerate trans-exterminationist TERFs the same way he took apart O’Reilly, Dubya and Darth.

Does He Mean the Sort of Strange New Name that Marion Morrison Adopted?

From Salon:

Duke professor exposed for posting shockingly racist Internet comment: “Virtually every black has a strange new name”

Perhaps the professor in question…

…should himself adopt a new name.

James Watt, perhaps?

Some of us Were Fighting Transphobia Across America Fifteen Years Ago – And the Advocate Was One of the Things We Had to Fight Against

And we sacrificed our well-being to do so.

Come June, I wonder if its current crop of well-heeled sideline-sitters will pretend that this never happened and/or doesn’t matter?

Actually, I don’t wonder.

Those of Us Living in Reality (Defined as ‘Knowing that Enforceable Anti-Discrimination Laws are, and Will Remain, More Important Than Gay Marriage) Have Never Had “Victory Blindness”

Linda Greenhouse in the New York Times, writing about the day after the anticipated gay marriage ruling:

[T]he gay rights movement is wise to temper jubilation with caution. In a sober new book entitled “It’s Not Over,” Michelangelo Signorile, a well known gay radio host and blogger, warns against what he calls “victory blindness,” which he defines as falling prey to “a kind of bedtime story that tells us we’ve reached the promised land.” Getting beyond “mere tolerance” and winning “full equality” is likely to remain an elusive goal, he writes.

In October 1972, as Justice Harry A. Blackmun was completing work on his majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, he took a legal pad and recorded his thoughts in anticipation of a decision that would declare unconstitutional the abortion laws in nearly every state. “It will be an unsettled period for a while,” he wrote. Is there a justice jotting similar notes right now?

It will only be “unsettled” for (1) trans people whose identities matter to them and (2) all LGBTs who are not halves of couples and/or who have always lived in a reality in which the need to find and maintain employment is and will always be a practicality that outranks marriage recognition.

It will, of course, be ‘settled’ for everyone who can take their Gay, Inc. bonuses, retirement packages and other golden parachutes and go home.

Expect it to be Passed Before the Ink is Dry on the Upcoming Supreme Court Gay Marriage Decision

From Think Progress:

During a meeting of the Michigan House Committee on Commerce and Trade, Republican lawmakers sneakily introduced a substitute bill replacing HB 4052. The new legislation, sponsored by Rep. Earl Poleski (R), overrides all local ordinances governing employers’ relationships with their employees. Because of the way it would impose state control, opponents have dubbed it the “Death Star” bill. Not only does it have implications for any local ordinance that controls minimum wage, benefits, sick leave, union organizing and strikes, wage disputes, apprenticeship programs, and “ban the box” policies (blocking employers from asking about felony convictions), but it would also override the LGBT protections that exist in 38 Michigan municipalities.

“A local governmental body,” the new HB 4052 reads, “shall not adopt, enforce, or administer an ordinance, local policy, or local resolution regulating the relationship between an employer and its employees or potential employees if the regulation contains requirements exceeding those imposed by state or federal law.”

Yes, this proves yet again that Republicans only like ‘small government’ and ‘local control’ as campaign slogans.

But that should be obvious.

What it also proves is me being right when I warned over fifteen years ago that pre-emption would be the tool that the religionist right would use to wipe out – at the very least – trans civil rights but, as is coming to pass, all LGBT rights.

All Michigan LGBT people – uncoupled or otherwise – who are not so financially independent as to not need anti-discrimination laws should remember who all to thank as soon as the inevitable happens.

Ask a Trans Woman Lawyer Who Came Out in 1998…

How impressed should we be with celebrities like Miley Cyrus who risk nothing by coming out?

…and she’ll give you a copy of her latest book: Fifty Shades of ‘Not at All’