Right Side News

Protecting 30 Bizarre "Sexual Orientations" And "Gender Identity"

May 21, 2009
TraditionalValues.org

Wait, let's get the full URL out here...

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200905214846/culture-wars/protecting-30-bizarre-sexual-orientations-and-gender-identity.html

They have a directory called 'culture-wars'. Ni-i-ice...

Here's some of what they're about;

- The main purpose of this "hate crime" legislation is to add the categories of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity," "either actual or perceived," as new classes of individuals receiving special protection by federal law. Sexual orientation includes heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality on an ever-expanding continuum. Will Congress also protect these sexual orientations-zoophiles, pedophiles or polygamists?

Gender identity includes such gender confused behaviors as cross-dressing, she-male, drag queen, transvestite, transsexual or transgender. Under the Act, neither "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" are really defined. How can a law be enforced if the new classes receiving special protection remain undefined?

But basically this place is just reposting Lew Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition. RightSideNews doesn't have any editorial depth.

Here's my reply. Moderation appears to be on.

"Inevitably this will negatively affect the performance of co-workers who are forced to work alongside of individuals with bizarre sex habits."

Who defines what a 'bizarre sex habit' is? Ladies, if you knew how 'the guys' talk about women when they're in all-male spaces. Some would describe very vile and degrading things they wanted to do to women. The scary part is that none of the other guys would step up and tell them that kind of treatment, or even talking about it, is wrong, demeaning and dehumanizing. They were enabling the ones who were describing the filthy, degrading acts they'd like to do to women.

This by far is the bigger, more pervasive problem.

Yet another take on the Omaha TG child

The Secular Parent
Gender Identity: Should we let kids be who they are ‘inside’?

in Morality and Values, news and society on May 20, 2009 at 6:00 am

The writer (and many of the commenters) insist on referring to the two trans girls they write about using male pronouns -- 'boy' 'he' 'him' 'his' -- while talking about how much 'compassion' they have for the children.

Then there are the commenters that call allowing these children to be who they truly are 'morally wrong', 'child abuse' and all the other comments we have come to know and love.

Here is my post. Moderation is enabled, so let's see if it get's published on their site:

The complexity of the human being allows for the possibility that on rare occasions perfectly healthy humans can be born with ambiguous genitalia. They are called 'intersex'. But for some reason, we humans have this need to perform surgery on infants who exhibit visible intersex traits to 'fix' them

First, if the plumbing is otherwise functional, there's nothing to 'fix'. And second, surgically correcting the genitalia to one or the other ideal is a coin toss. Sometimes they match the childs' inner sense of gender, sometimes they trap the child in the wrong body. Then you really did create a transsexual through what you believed to be well meaning action.

The other bit of intersex is that brains are dimorphic. There really are girl brains and boy brains. And the recipe for making either (in the womb) is fraught with opportunities for unexpected results. Unexpected, unlikely, but not impossible.

At LEAST 97% of us survive the process and are happy to have the bodies we have, and the societal-assigned gender roles that go along with those bits of external flesh. We can't imagine any other way, and so must believe that our reality is true for 100% of folks.

Back to that bit about boy and girl brains. At what age were you sure you were the gender you were? Could ANYBODY convince you you weren't what you were, that maybe just maybe, you really belonged to the other 'team'? Psychologists who study the nature of gender say that our sense of gender is consolidated and unshakable between the ages of 4 and 6 (with a minor bit of statistical 'tail' extending outside that range.) Basically, by age six, almost no child is 'confused' about his or her gender. Including the transgendered.

Transgendered children also know who they really are. And they are painfully aware that it's not what nearly everybody is telling them they 'must' be. They don't 'get over it' or grow out of it. They only suppress it as best they can. Most are driven slowly crazy over time by the pressure to hold it in and conform. Some deal with it by acting out, some through drugs, and a fair percentage though suicide (31% is quoted, though I don't have the link to the authoritative piece at hand.)

Some of the pressure is provided by the use of improper pronouns, such as in the main article of this blog entry. The writer was scrupulous in referring to the subject child (as well as the child pictured in the illustration) by the biological sex of their bodies. I know from personal experience it is wearing and toxic to be subject to that sort of treatment.

The one treatment that is 98% effective in providing transgendered people a normal quality of life is for them to live as their true gender. And true gender resides in the brain, and has been found by the medical community to be non-negotiable. And God knows they've tried in earnest for the past 60 years. Talk therapy: FAIL, Electro-convulsive therapy: FAIL, Pharmacology (including extremely powerful (and addicting) anti-psychotics)): FAIL, Aversion therapy (nauseating drugs, electrodes delivering painful shocks to the genitals, etc.): FAIL, Neurosurgery (up to and including lobotomy): EPIC FAIL.

You want these children to live their lives to the fullest potential, to thrive rather than wither and waste? You can start by treating with respect their innate sense of gender rather than forcing your concepts upon them.

And you can start that by the respectful use of female pronouns with the two subject children in this article.

Over at Huffington Post

Your request is being processed...

Vicki Iovine

Posted: May 22, 2009 08:37 AM

Like A Virgin, Again

The part that got me:

A little paunch won't trouble me, much, but man breasts or that white stuff that builds in the corners of older guys' mouths are deal breakers. The only young people who have those conditions are transgender candidates or on antipsychotics.

Why do they do that -- assume that it's okay to assign whatever they consider to be bad traits to transgenders? Is it because we won't mind? Is it our job and duty (or something) to be the 'duty scumbag' for those 'fellow' human beings who need to cast others into the role of subhuman other for their life-movie? And why must she make a special category for us with the word 'only' and then pair us with those who have a need for chemical straitjackets? Why, why, why?!?

Here's my response (the extended dance mix, as HuffPo only allows 250 words):

Hi, Vicki;

It was a good article. I rather enjoyed it.

All except for one part. The part where you ascribe undesirable qualities in your potential mates to, as you put it, 'transgender candidates'.

I'm transgender -- to be precise, a post-op male-to-female transsexual.

A comedian once said that the words 'banana' and 'car keys' were inherently funny, and should be worked into the punchline of jokes, to make them funnier. So, has the word 'transgender' also earned that dubious distinction as a 'secret ingredient' designed to elicit a chuckle?

I'm not laughing. I'm living the other side of your 'funny' coin -- the hate, the bigotry, the being automatically assigned traits such as 'crazy', 'psychotic', 'sexual predator (keep your kids away!)'. Bills that would grand me and others like me the protection to live a life as normal as yours are routinely shot down by the simple expedient of labeling them "The Bathroom Bill" (and do you know how many "The Bathroom Bill"s have been shot down to 'keep the crazy transgenders away from my daughter' in the last year?)

Granted, the traits you assign in this article -- the sins of "man breasts or that white stuff that builds in the corners of older guys' mouths" -- are minor, and thus 'silly'. But you call them deal breakers, and then add injury to your assault/insult of transgenders by saying that these traits are "only" found among young transgender candidates and paring them with those who must take crazy-meds.

I would have sent this to your private e-mail, but couldn't google one. So I'll call out your casual denigration of the transgender community here.

"Hazumu"

Over at the Boston Globe

Are hate crimes any worse than others?

A little taste of the article

LEGISLATION pending before Congress would dramatically expand the federal hate-crimes law, and a number of critics are concerned that the bill goes too far. Perhaps the real problem is that it doesn't go far enough.

Under current law, crimes motivated by bias against a victim's race, color, religion, or national origin can be prosecuted by the federal government, so long as the victim had been engaged in a "federally-protected activity" - attending a public school, for example, or being in a place of public accommodation or entertainment. The proposed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which passed the House last month and is pending in the Senate, would significantly broaden the federal government's reach.

The comments have the usual gang of liberal-haters spewing the meme that 'every crime is a hate crime', and proclaiming we only need to wnforce the lasw we already have.

Here's my comment:

I lo-o-ove that 'thought crime' meme -- makes it seem so '1984', doesn't it? Guvva'mint gonna run around cracking down on whoever the crybabies say is, y'know, messin' with them, right? And, *heck*, they probably deserved getting cracked in the first place -- they shouldn't have left the straight-and-narrow. They'll throw preachers in jail for quoting the, y'know, -truth- of Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10, and Jude 1:7 (the major 'clobber passages.) There are other variations on the meme, but you get my point.

So, why does the hate crime legislation clearly state in Section 8: Rule of Construction "Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by, the Constitution." --Does not prohibit expressive conduct protected by the constitution, i.e., First Amendment Freedom of Expression.

So, you preachers can continue to say that all homosexuals (including the Texting Trolly Driver) are going to hell, and y'all'd help if it were not 1) un-christian and 2) a garden-variety punishable violent crime.

But what then does the Hate Crime bill do? Say you're a small-town with a small town budget. A couple of the locals get a little, say, too 'frisky' with another local who's been called (First Amendment) a 'freak', or worse. The victim ends up in ICU, then the morgue.

Worse yet, the damned liberal media gets ahold of the story, and now all eyes are on your town to do this case right. And now investigation and prosecution is going to be a fiscal budget-buster. This happened in a small town. They had to furlough four police officers to pay for the investigation and trial -- all of it under the watchful eyes of the media, so they had to do it right, well, and spend the money regardless. The deputies got furloughed for the duration.

The Hate Crimes bill provides fed funds to cover the expenses of investigation and prosecution (and I'm sure a clever accountant can maximise the costs billable to the feds...)

Then imagine you're a normal person, except you (and 3 percent of the population) have left your birth religion to become a member of another religion. After that, while a majority of folks either don't mind your conversion or dislike you for it but see it as none of their business, there is a minority that starts to taunt you. Occasionally, it goes beyond taunts. The attacks come suddenly. You're getting off a subway, and you get hit behind and knocked to the platform by 6 guys yelling religious epithets, and end up getting stitches for the gash one boot to your head opened up.

At the hospital, you try to file a police report, but the cop as much as says forget it, you shouldn't have been there, and anyway, you changed religions and thus probably deserved it.

Amongst the other converts in your religion, stories are told of similar attacks. You know of murders where, although there are credible witness who testify the assailant(s) shouted religious epithets while beating the victim to death, the assailant was acquitted of the charges -- because they 'panicked' when they found out the victim had changed religions.

Y'all are really scared. People in your sect are being harassed, and injured, and killed -- and while the authorities in your town or city seem to be efficient at capturing, trying and convicting the perps in other cases that don't involve 'your kind', they always seem to drop the ball when the case involves one of the members of your sect.

Yeah, there are laws on the books for those crimes. But they don't mean *squat* because they're not being enforced. Or, rather, they're being selectively inforced, and your group/kind always seem to be selected against.

You wish that those laws would be equally enforced when it involves one of the members of your sect.

So. What's your solution? How do you provide that the law is enfoced equally, so as not to appear to disfavour the members of your religion who converted from their birth religion. People are dying here, it needs to stop.

What are you gonna do?

I await your solutions.

That was quick. A yahoo took the bait. Here's the Tit-fer-tat.

"Hazumu-- So, we have laws that are NOT enforced and therefore we need MORE laws that, for some reason, WILL be enforced now? OOOKAY."

Didn't say 'not enforced'. I said Selecively Enforced. I said that there are places where 'the law' ignores violence done to marginalized groups. A f@g is beat up and, despite credible witnesses, the 'law' declares "lack of evidence" and ignores the crime. It ends there? That's what you're saying. Sorry, there's laws against what happened to you, but you (and 'your kind') are not getting any, so go away.

Look up Brandon Teena. The sheriff didn't investigate his claim of being beaten and raped, citing 'lack of evidence.' The evidence included a rape kit that was taken and then subsequently 'disappeared.' You say, end of game, sorry? There's a law against assault and rape -- it wasn't enforced. And when the rapists found out Brandon had gone to the cops, they came back and killed him. Why not? The cops didn't do anything to them, citing 'lack of evidence'. Why not kill him?

What if you were the victim of an assault, and the cops declined to do anything about it? Great law, that. But you were assaulted, and they f#<%ed you up real bad. And now they're going to get away with it. USARMY1, I hope you have demo training, because that's the only way you're going to balance the books. But if you go seeking revenge, your small-town cops might find out it was you getting even, and then they'll throw the book at YOU. Why not let the feds come in and make sure the scales of justice work as advertized, rather than having the thumb of ingrained bigotry and prejudice weighing against you?

Nashua Telegraph won't let me post

Published: Sunday, May 10, 2009

Guest Commentary

Individual rights a hot issue for the state's lawmakers this session

By JOHN KNOWLES

The comment system is squirrley -- at least, that's the official story. But it's disconcerting to have the system say:

Sorry, you have been blocked from commenting on this site.

Anyway, here's my comment to Zoe Brain's comment:

Zoe, you are as the lone voice crying out in the wilderness.

I doubt that those who believe HB415 to be 'the bathroom bill' (and federal S.909 and H.R.1913 the 'pedophile protection act') will pay attention to your facts and figures -- no matter how accurate and scientific they may be, and how rigorous you are in presenting only tested, supportable information.

These are people who would outlaw the teaching of Evolution in favour of creationism, who would ban educating teenagers on all but abstinence as a method of birth/STD control, who would implement christian 'sharia' law, who would 're-educate' LGBT under penalty of law if they but could.

Something from my youth -- I remember being denied the opportunity to compete fairly with other 'classmates' in intellectual activities. I was capable of making significant contributions to a group that was, say, working on a project for science class, or researching a topic for history. I could make a significant contribution, but I was marginalized. The Alpha members of the group would either ignore my contributions or take them and claim them as their own work (don't worry, I learned how to fight back and sabotage their efforts after a few such experiences.)

The point of this is that it is as if a portion of society wants to 'win' against transgenders disqualification, leaving them the scraps of a menial minimum-wage job.

Zoe, do you have information on the median IQ of the transgender community? We've produced some pretty outstanding people, in spite of the artificial hobbling we as a community have received from society.

Lynn Conway contributed the way to millions of transistors per 'chip' which is embodied in the laptop I use to write this. And the successes she posts on her site are from highly professional career fields.

It must be that there are those who need a bogey-man. They are the ones who are labeling us things that we are not, and treat us as untouchable castes in other societies past and present, doing the unpleasant things and leaving the 'betters' feeling good about themselves.

Well, if we provide them such a service, what would a fair, respectable and equitable compensation be?

Another Awaiting Moderation board.

The Curvature-
A feminist perspective on Politics & Culture

Equality and Justice for Whom?

It appears there is a desperate need for a scapegoat in society. Normal-appearing gays and lesbians have managed to begin moving into the mainstream, but the need still remains.

‘Trannies’ still have that “ikk” cachet, so we (as a society) still have someone to choose against. It’s like the line in “Blazing Saddles” where the townspeople need help, and get an offer from a diverse group of non-white-non-protestant ‘undesirables’, the catch being that the white-protestant townspeople have to let them live amongst them after the aid is rendered. Finally, the spokesman says, “All right… we’ll give some land to the n*****s and the c****s. But we don’t want the Irish!”.

Same story. Some group has to be made into the losers. As the straight-normal-appearing gays and lesbians walk into the light, there is a concerted campaign to paint the transgenders as uber-icky. We trans seem to be receiving the revulsiveness that gays and lesbians are finally managing to shed.

As there seems to be a need for someone to be untouchable caste and to carry away an imagined stench from the rest of society, might we quietly invest in some sort of social programs to provide humane support and a modicum of dignity to trans persons while we serve the societal purpose of being the ones it’s okay to reject and deny membership in society to?

Just a thought…

Hazumu the SmartA**