TopShelf TG Fiction in the BigCloset!
I am struggling to hold in my anger about what's going on in Oklahoma.
(If you haven't heard, they want to band trans affirming care to anyone under 25).
How can people hate trans people like me this much?
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Comments
They Don't Hate You
Politicians are just barely people. They will say and do almost anything to amass power. Not just in Oklahoma. These laws are being proposed wherever the Republican party thinks it will work to their advantage.
The worldview of their misguided base is a patriarchal society with rigid gender roles. Politicians know that if people can "change" genders this undermines that hierarchy. They don't think deeply enough to understand that trans people aren't changing genders.
The demogoguery extends when those politicians stoke the fears that trans people are out recruiting innocent children to become trans.
It has nothing to do with reality.
It is in the same pew as guns don't kill people and the run of bad weather we're having is just a natural cycle. Or, the presidential election was stolen from Trump.
Lie, lie, lie. . .repeat. It doesn't have to make sense. Did taking three days to elect a Speaker make sense?
They don't hate you specifically. They just hate.
DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY!
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Don’t take it personally . . .
But do take it seriously. For our own so very vulnerable community, of course. “Othering” any group creates a permission structure for violence.
But also for our wider community. An organized, advanced nation driven by fear, or whipped into a frenzy of fear and rage, is one of the most dangerous things this world has experienced. We know it. We have seen it.
It can happen here.
Emma
On Tyranny
I just finished reading On Tyranny by T. Snyder. Excellent discussion of what can happen based on what is happening.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
It is personal
But it is personal.
They want us dead; they may not say it, but that's the direction they're pointing in. How are we to take being condemned to death "impersonally"? How are the people who were killed in the Pulse shooting or the Club Q attack, and the people who only just escaped being killed, to not take it personally? Your own death is always personal.
Or are you saying that it isn't "personal" because they don't believe we are persons? Because they have declared us "unpersons"? But dehumanization is one of the first steps toward mass murder, as the blogger Siobhan points out. We no longer exist except as someone's intellectual construct, so it's not murder any more, murdering us is just an intellectual exercise.
(Here is the "pyramid of hate" she mentions; originally, Siobhan's blog article had a link to an image on someone's blog, but the blog the image was on is no longer there.)
"But I've Been To Oklahoma"
"They tell me I was born there"
I've lived in Oklahoma most of my life, nothing surprises me anymore. But what about where you live? Think it can't happen there? You can't stop or change what happens here, you'd be better off looking to your own state. Complacency just might end up smacking you in the head.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Sorry. Just about everyone does ...
It's what we do with it; it's how we handle Anger that matters...
The Buddha identified Anger as one of the Three Fires, one of the Three Poisons. Here's a very brief introduction:
https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/three-poisons/
---
First, the usual: Deep breaths, have some tea.
It's said that Anger is like grabbing a hot coal to throw at one's Enemy ... some people keep that hot coal burning inside of themselves for decades or a lifetime ...
>Fear< very often underlies Anger ... We see/feel a threat, and Anger can fuel striking back ... which is less and less the best response as we started living in ever-larger societies ...
It's really hard, even with just little smidgeon of Anger (over a little Fear), to decide on a reasonably OK way of dealing with it. Most of the stuff we come up causes more Harm than Good.
>Controlled< anger can be a driver behind a sensible, effective response ... but all too often, we can be just one more angry drunk in a bar where the bartender has spiked our beer with 'speed' ...
-
For you - and for far too many on this board - the Fear is Absolutely Justified.
And for far too many people, the repug-ni-kons are a real, and sometimes Deadly Threat. The only people who matter are themselves, their families, their voters.
Unless we are:
= Cis-het, and Rich, and Male, and White, and voting repugnikon, and born in the USA, and >maybe< the families of same - then we matter.
===
Everyone else, it seems, they are not quite a person, they are not quite human to the 'r's ....
The list of 'others' is really long, I'm sure you can add:
LGBTQI?+
female
any color other than White,
Black
Native American (overlooking the fact that they were in what we call the Americas for at least 10,000 years before some pharaoh was able scratch his name onto a pyramid ...)
poor
disabled in >any< way
thinking
thinking differently
immigrant - of any status. Overlooking that >every< white person in Canada & USA (or brown, Mexico and Southwards) is an immigrant ... I've said that only African Americans came in with proper documents: It's called a Bill of Sale ...
Not believing their One True Way.
=== === ===
And, sigh, underneath it all, both/all sides want pretty much the same things ....
Safety, jobs, a good life for our children, not have other people telling what to to do, food, a nice home, ...
>How< to get these varies insanely ...
How about a 'simple' one:
"I want guns to protect myself from them, from nutjobs that maybe have guns ..., So I don't have to be afraid."
-
"I don't want nutjobs having guns. So I don't have to be afraid."
===
Maybe, just maybe ... "Can we figure out how to have a society with far fewer nutjobs....? So WE don't have to be afraid."
Democracy is always under assault
by the forces of ignorance. I would feel better if it was just LGBT people were being attacked not because I think that is right, but because that would mean only one battle to fight. Blacks, people of Asian origin, native Americans, Latinos, basically anyone who isn't white and their own depraved type of Christian is vulnerable. On MLK day we remember the struggles of the past. We must continue to meet the challenges of hate in the future.
MLK's heritage
Is being preempted by groups of blacks as solely a black thing these days. Case in point, there was a march across the local university campus to where the speakers were set up to address the crowd. There were white students and faculty participating in the march, because, ya know Dr. King is widely recognized as a great man and a great American.
It seems a small group of blacks (student age) felt whites shouldn't be participating in this "blacks-only" event, and starting verbally harassing a small group of whites; claiming they were trying to "white-wash" MLK and appropiate black culture. Last I heard they escaped the university police by running off campus before the officers arrived on the scene. I did hear one of the white participants left, fearing a possible escalation into physical attacks. Be curious what shows up in the media tomorrow. I'm betting nothing local.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Hypocrisy
25? They want to outlaw something that an ADULT wants to do with there own body?
The Pubs are about freedom for me but not for thee.
Again, why are there trans conservatives again?
I don't agree that we should not take it personally when it is an assault on ones' person.
Their electorate are the ones who sent those clowns to the legislature so, yes, it makes it very personal.
An Adult Wants to Do with Their Own Body
Where have I heard that one before?
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Before
Yep, did I not say they were hypocritical?
It is similar to the time at the height of the epidemic when the Billionaires (tm) who had a lot to lose if workers believed their lives at risk do not go to work.
So they organized and paid people to participate in these anti-vax campaigns where people carried signs with 'My Body, My Choice' on it with regard to vaccination, stealing it from the abortion movement. Vaccination is not required to go back to work is what they wanted us to believe since Covid was so 'mild'.
The puppet masters of the Pubs have no shame and no morals if there is anything that may threaten their fortunes.
Painfully obvious hypocrisy
Funny how the vehement anti-vaxxers never lined up at their kid's elementary school to protest this:
How many shots does a 5-year-old get?
"At 4-6 years of age, your child should receive vaccines to protect them from the following diseases: Diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough (pertussis) (DTaP) (5th dose) Polio (IPV) (4th dose) Measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) (2nd dose)"
My extended family has lost two members to Covid and my nurse daughter-in-law lost two colleagues to Covid as well! And at least five of my in-laws were out of commission from Covid., with one brother-in-law STILL needing to walk around after a year with a portable oxygen supply. So much for 'mild.'
Love, Andrea Lena
sorry
sorry
Love, Andrea Lena
People, who are mainly ignorant, need to learn
that the politics of hate and fear by singling out minorities, so effectively divide and conquer, will eventually mean that they will eventually be part of a minority and will be the next for the treatment, The Republicans like the Tories in the UK are mindless morons who crave money and power, but they are driven by even more dangerous types who never show their faces.
Angharad