Julia Serano has been Targeted for attacks by the RadFem SCUM

July 7, 2012 — Suzan

First of all embracing SCUM and Valerie Solanis kind of marks people off as nut jobs.

Prior to going on to becoming famous for shooting one of the 20th century’s most important gay male artists (nearly murdering him) Solanis wrote a screed titled The Scum Manifesto.

The RadFem hagiography would have people believe Valerie Solanis was a misunderstood genius with impeccable feminist credentials and not a zoned out homicidal maniac from Alphabet City.

I know there was a movie that tried to paint her as someone cruelty abused by Andy Warhol and the people of the “Factory”.

Reality: She was an abusive stalker.

While SCUM Manifesto has a few viciously funny observations in it it is mostly the blathering of a mentally disturbed person.

After Valerie Solanis was released from prison she wound up dying of exposure while sleeping on a roof top because none of the feminists who lauded her wanted to actually be within pistol range of her.

Oddly enough Solanis wasn’t all that anti-transsexual/transgender or I should say the movie, I shot Andy Warhol, portrays her as being not all that anti TS/TG as it shows her being a friend of the late Candy Darling.

Well, fast forward and the radfem bigots have blogs that invoke Valerie Solanis’s screed.

Like Valerie they are both truth and sanity challenged.

But this blog and others among the radfem and their dubiously claimed intersex male ally Nicky (Komododragon) have embraced Valerie as some sort of icon; they are using this blog and others to attack Julia Serano.

Well not just Julia Serano, but JOS  at Feministing too, as well as a whole range of  highly reputable TS/TG bloggers who have had the audacity to say that the misogyny faced by TS/TG women and transkids is the same misogyny faced by assigned female at birth women and girls.

Unless one is incredibly privileged access to abortion and birth control are not the only issues faced by women today.

This is obvious enough to women who aren’t partners in law offices that defend some of the scummiest corporations in America.

Otherwise the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act wouldn’t be such a big deal.

If women weren’t being fucked over by those Wall Street Banks and Firms defended by the law offices of the above mentioned radfem, then women wouldn’t be out there as part of Occupy.

One has to wonder why the radfems, who sound identical to the Christo-Fascists and radical right, cropped up now to disrupt feminism which is engaged in fighting against the right wing/Christo-Fascist War on Women.  Especially since many TS/TG women are also feminists.  Some, like this Blog regularly keep people abreast of the right wing attacks on reproductive rights.

Julia Serano wrote a serious book that showed the intersectionality of transphobia and misogyny.  A lot of us read it and said, “Fuck Yeah!”

Everyone knows that according to radfems TS/TG women are nothing but mindless fembots controlling the fashion and cosmetic industry forcing women into a subservient position all .001% of us, sort of the same way the Jews supposedly control the world and are responsible for all the evils of the world.

Somehow Julia found time from her busy schedule of perpetuating the patriarchy to write this book that caused a lot of TS/TG sisters to come to the conclusion that transphobia was misogyny directed at a tiny minority group of people who are women in spite of not being assigned female at birth.

Of course the radfems whipped out the disingenuous charge that TS/TG women were some how raping women by taking hormones and having operations that allowed us to feel at home within our very own skins.

Never mind how feminism has chided those who use rape as a metaphor for actions other than actual rape.

Or that TS/TG people can and are often the victims of rape, assault and murder.

Radfem transphobic bigotry is identical to right wing racism and antisemitism, a whipping up of hatred and bigotry using exaggerated claims and  collective guilt.  The same sort of bigotry one finds behind Jim Crow and Apartheid laws.  The same sort of hatred and bigotry one found behind the Nürnberger Gesetze:

The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating antisemitism as a form of scientific racism. There was a rapid growth in German legislation directed at Jews and other groups, such as the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which banned “non-Aryans” and political opponents of the Nazis, from the civil-service.

The lack of a clear legal method of defining who was Jewish had, however, allowed some Jews to escape some forms of discrimination aimed at them. The enactment of laws identifying who was Jewish made it easier for the Nazis to enforce legislation restricting the basic rights of German Jews.

The Nuremberg Laws classified people with four German grandparents as “German or kindred blood”, while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of “mixed blood”.[1] These laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and other Germans.[2]

The Nuremberg Laws also included a ban on sexual intercourse between people defined as “Jews” and non-Jewish Germans and prevented “Jews” from participating in German civic life. These laws were both an attempt to return the Jews of 20th-century Germany to the position that Jews had held before their emancipation in the 19th century; although in the 19th century Jews could have evaded restrictions by converting, this was no longer possible.

The laws were a legal embodiment of an already existing Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses.

Yes I am comparing the thinking of the radfems to Nazi antisemitism.

Not only are they attacking TS/TG women but any AFAB women who support us including those feminist bloggers.

Ironically I have reason to believe that several of the “radfems” are in fact self hating post-op transsexuals who also hold AFAB women in contempt.

Posted in Discrimination, Equal Treatment, Essentialism, Fascism, Feminist, Gay Liberation, Gender, Gender Feminism, Gendering, Hate Speech, Homophobia, Lesbian, Misogyny, RadFem, Radical Feminist, Right Wing Bug F*** Insanity, Sexism, Transgender, Transphobia, Transsexual, Violence. 9 Comments »

Is Big Pharma the biggest criminal fraudster in America?

May 26, 2012 — Suzan

Posted in Corporate Abuse, Discrimination, Health Care, Uncategorized. Comments Off on Is Big Pharma the biggest criminal fraudster in America?

These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For: Gender Diversity, Scapegoating and Erasure in Medicine and Media

April 23, 2012 — Suzan

From GID Reform Blog:   http://gidreform.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/these-arent-the-droids-youre-looking-for-gender-diversity-scapegoating-and-erasure-in-medicine-and-media/

Kelley Winters, Ph.D.
GID Reform Advocates
www.gidreform.org
April 21, 2012

On the April 18th broadcast of The Rachel Maddow Show, Dr. Maddow reported an “explosive revelation” that Psychiatrist Robert Spitzer had rescinded his controversial 2001 claim that sexual conversion, or sexual reparative, psychotherapies can change sexual orientation in gay and lesbian people. Quoting an interview of Dr. Spitzer in The American Prospect, Maddow celebrated the historical significance of Spitzer’s reversal for the gay rights movement, calling it,

step one in what we’re now going to see as a real change, a real reckoning, in antigay politics.

Sadly, Dr. Maddow only told half of the story. For four decades, Robert Spitzer has played pivotal roles in mental health policies, not only on sexual orientation, but on gender diversity as well. This week, Rachel Maddow and other journalists turned a blind eye to Dr. Spitzer’s failure to retract a lifetime of trans psychopathologization, stereotyping gender identities and expression that differ from assigned birth roles as mental disease. This omission speaks to the marginal status of trans people within the GLbt rights movement and progressive media, as much as Spitzer’s omission speaks to trans marginalization by mental health policymakers. Shifting stigma from one oppressed class to a more oppressed class is not real change.

At the 1973 annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, Robert Spitzer played a central role in arguing for declassification of same-sex orientation as mental illness:

In the past, homosexuals have been denied civil rights in many areas of life on the ground that because they suffer from a ‘mental illness’ the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate their competence, reliability, or mental stability.

This led to the gradual deletion of sexual orientation categories from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) between 1973 and 1987. The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association and remains the medical and cultural definition of mental disorder in North America. As Chairman of the DSM-III and DSM-III-R Task Forces and chief editor of the diagnostic manual, Spitzer oversaw removal of the last major vestige of gay diagnosis, “Ego-dystonic Homosexuality,” from version III-R.

However, while depathologizing same-sex orientation, Dr. Spitzer simultaneously directed a massive expansion of trans-pathology diagnoses in the DSM. In 1980, a new category of Gender Identity Disorders (GID), including a Transsexualism (TS) diagnosis, was added to the class of Psychosexual Disorders in the DSM-III. The TS coding was paradoxical and controversial for many trans people. Many community advocates and medical providers agreed (and do today) that some kind of diagnostic coding was necessary to facilitate access to medical and/or surgical transition care for those trans and transsexual people who needed it.  On the other hand, defining a medical transition coding as a mental illness, rather than a treatable medical condition, contradicted access to hormonal and/or surgical transition care and encouraged gender conversion, or gender-reparative, psychotherapies– unsubstantiated treatments attempting to change gender identity and shame trans and TS people into the closets of their assigned birth roles.  Vulnerable trans and gender nonconforming youth were targeted and institutionalized as a consequence of diagnostic criteria based on nonconformity to birth-assigned stereotypes.

Continue reading at:  http://gidreform.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/these-arent-the-droids-youre-looking-for-gender-diversity-scapegoating-and-erasure-in-medicine-and-media/

Posted in Activism, Discrimination, Equal Treatment. Comments Off on These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For: Gender Diversity, Scapegoating and Erasure in Medicine and Media

Class Consciousness Is Back

December 16, 2011 — Suzan

From In These Times: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12413/class_consciousness_is_back

Once you notice inequality, you can’t escape the realities of class in America.

BY Susan J. Douglas
December 14, 2011

Multiple times and on multiple days, my local NPR station actually used the “c” word on the air. No, not that “c” word–it was “class.” Yes, that most unmentionable of topics: socio-economic class and how it determines the fate of millions of Americans.

Our vernacular obscures the country’s very real class divisions, with crippling–even lethal–consequences. The term “middle class” is used capaciously in the United States to include almost everyone, while the term “working class” is eschewed (it sounds way too Marxist). Even the “99%” signs and chants of Occupy protesters occlude the multiple and often stark divisions within that 99%.

Class position, of course, affects everything: access to healthcare, education, where you live, what restaurants you eat in, nutrition, careers, income, tax breaks, how much credit costs you, who you marry (and when), who fights and dies for our country, and on and on. But with our media’s national obsessions about gender, race and ethnicity, class may be the most under-covered feature of structural inequality in the country. In November, NPR-affiliate Michigan Radio aired an 11-part series called “Culture of Class,” which rolled back the stone, showing what lurks in America’s cave of inequities.

Let’s start with the legal system. “There, perhaps, is no moment in life when the difference in class is more apparent than when you are accused of a crime,” reporter Lester Graham notes in his piece on class and the courts. If you’re upper-middle class, or even truly middle class, you hire a lawyer, and the richer you are, the more choices you have.

But if you’re a low-income person and are assigned a public defender, you are especially screwed in Michigan: The state ranks 44th in public defense funding. The report also noted that in Detroit, five part-time public defenders handle caseloads up to seven times the national average for full-time public defenders; they get to spend an average of 32 minutes on each case. Graham then put a public face on these statistics: David Tucker, whose public defender was totally unprepared for court. The result? Tucker lost four years of his life in jail before his conviction was finally overturned.

Continue reading at:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12413/class_consciousness_is_back

Posted in Austerity, Class War, Classism, Corporate Abuse, Depression, Discrimination. Tags: . Comments Off on Class Consciousness Is Back

Woman files lawsuit because she can’t harass transgender customers

December 15, 2011 — Suzan

It is a shame that the first thing one thinks when someone proclaims themselves to be a “Christian” is, “There stands a delusional person who is a bigot and a compulsive liar.”

Particularly when they describe themselves as born again, or “religious”.  Get ready for the bigoted lies and bullshit to start flowing.

I’m tired of Christo-Fascist bullying of business that try to be fair and respect the rights and dignity of minorities.

See first the original story:  Woman files lawsuit because she can’t harass transgender customers

From Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters:  http://holybulliesandheadlessmonsters.blogspot.com/2011/12/mat-staver-liberty-counsel-doubles-down.html

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel doubles down on implausible story against Macy’s

By Alvin McEwen
Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Reposted with permission

As Mat Staver and the Liberty Counsel continue milk the case of the former Macy’s employee who was fired for harassing a transgender customer, one has to wonder are they reading their own press.

Yesterday, I pointed out how Staver and the employee, Natalie Johnson, conducted several interviews in which they tried to whitewash the fact that Johnson’s actions violated Macy’s policy and that concerns about “religious liberty” and “men in women’s changing rooms” were a pitiful dodges.

I even hinted that the Liberty Counsel was “conjuring up” a story of an “anonymous” Macy’s employee troubled by the policy.

But in an interview with the phony news service One News Now today, Staver seems to be sticking to that story and making up new ones:

Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, now tells OneNewsNow that an employee of another store has told him she has persistent problems keeping men out of the women’s fitting room.

However, that’s not exactly what the Liberty Counsel said yesterday on its blog:

The employee said she constantly has to ask men to leave the women’s fitting rooms.

It may seem like an insignificant jump from “asking men to leave women’s fitting rooms” to “having persistent problems keeping men out of women’s fitting rooms,” but this jump only elucidates the questions I asked yesterday.

Those questions were:

Were these transgender women, rather than men accompanying their loved ones? These are two totally different situations.

And if these were transgender women, what are the odds of this employee having the ability to violate company policy without losing her job? If this woman had been truly asking transgender women to leave the fitting rooms, we would be hearing about this before now.

If this anonymous employee has had  “persistent problems” with transgender customers, then that would mean there was in fact conflict between her and those customers. And if this is the case, I refuse to believe that several transgender women in different cases would allow themselves to be disrespected and not complain, especially when the store policy is in their favor.

How is this woman continuing to keep her job in light of this possibility? Or does this woman even exist?

Then Staver tries to make it seem that there is a groundswell of negative reactions to Macy’s policy:

According to Liberty Counsel, the public is reacting.

“Consistently the people of America are saying that they will not shop at Macy’s,” explains Staver. “They’re tearing up their Macy’s credit cards, they’re sending back their Macy’s gift cards, they say that they will not shop at Macy’s — and this is a consistent response that we’re seeing from the public around the country.”

The Liberty Counsel founder says customers are “literally outraged and shocked” at Macy’s policy.

Staver conveniently doesn’t provide proof of this claim, just like neither he nor the Liberty Counsel has provided proof of the existence of the anonymous Macy’s employee.

To reiterate, I smell a rat.

Email Macy’s and send the company your support for standing up for our rights and dignity. And most of all, tell Macy’s to not back down. 

Posted in Christo-Fascism, Civil Rights, Discrimination, Equal Treatment, Human Rights, Legal Issues, Religion, Right Wing Bigotry, Right Wing Bug F*** Insanity, Right Wing Extermist, Sexism, Social Justice, Transphobia, Transsexual, Unequal Treatment. 2 Comments »

Minnesota school board labels conversations about LGBT students ‘controversial’

December 14, 2011 — Suzan

From LGBTQ Nation:    http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2011/12/minnesota-school-board-labels-conversations-about-lgbt-students-controversial/


Tuesday, December 13, 2011

COON RAPIDS, Minn. — During its meeting before a packed room with a standing room only crowd Monday, the Anoka-Hennepin Minnesota School District’s board proposed a new “Controversial Topics Curriculum Policy” to replace the current “neutral policy” that prohibits the district’s teachers from talking about homosexuality in the classroom.

Advocates and allies of LGBTQ students objected saying that the policy does not specify what those “controversial topics” are.

Tammy Aaberg, whose son Justin was one of nearly a dozen Anoka-Hennepin students who committed suicide after anti-gay bullying since the 2009 school year, wasn’t happy about calling the policy “controversial.”

In a statement she read before the board, Aaberg told officials, “I read the policy and my heart started breaking all over again. Because now we’re going from neutral on sexual orientation to labeling LBGT kids as controversial.”

Others seemed confused about what can or cannot be discussed in the classroom, which is why they urged the board to clarify the proposed policy before voting on it next month.

Opponents of any changes to the current policy also voiced their concerns, one woman telling the board, “We were a model for the nation at protecting kids from homosexual propaganda. The sexual orientation curriculum policy is an excellent policy.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2011/12/minnesota-school-board-labels-conversations-about-lgbt-students-controversial/

Posted in Christo-Fascism, Civil Rights, Discrimination, Kids, LGBT/T. Tags: . Comments Off on Minnesota school board labels conversations about LGBT students ‘controversial’

Transgender patients outed by the health-care system

December 14, 2011 — Suzan

From The Montreal Gazette:   http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Transgender+patients+outed+health+care+system/5854368/story.html

‘I will die of pneumonia before being called Mr. once more in the emergency room’

By Max Harrold, THE GAZETTE
December 13, 2011

MONTREAL – For most sick people in a doctor’s waiting room, a walk-in clinic or the hospital emergency, the etiquette of the receptionist, nurse and doctor is not likely the top priority. Getting better is.

But for people in the years-long process of transitioning genders, the name called out and the pronouns used can be the difference between medical treatment and psychological torture.

Many Quebec health-care workers routinely out transsexuals by arguing in public about their name and sex as indicated on the medicare card, advocates for trans people say.

Transphobia – prejudice and hostility toward people who don’t fit standard gender images – is widespread, they add.

Gabrielle Bouchard, a coordinator at the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy in Montreal, said it’s exhausting to repeatedly argue about gender and one’s name regarding a mortgage or when applying for a job – but it can be especially hurtful while trying to obtain publicly funded medical services.

A trans person may not look much like the photo on their ID.

“I hear this story over and over – people saying, ‘I will die of pneumonia before being called Mr. once more in the emergency room’ or ‘I will not go to get this blood test because I’m not sure I will be treated respectfully’ or ‘I’m not going to get medication at the pharmacy because the pharmacist will say out loud: Well your name is Mr.; why are you coming to pick these pills up?’

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Transgender+patients+outed+health+care+system/5854368/story.html

Posted in Abuse, Bullying, Discrimination, Transgender, Transphobia, Transsexual. Tags: , . Comments Off on Transgender patients outed by the health-care system

Bank Of America Makes Millions Charging Fees To Withdraw Unemployment Benefits

November 15, 2011 — Suzan

From Think Progress:  http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/14/367467/bank-of-america-unemployment-benefit-fees/

By Marie Diamond
Nov 14, 2011

Late last month, a national backlash forced Bank of America to abandon its plan to charge customers $5 a month to use their debit cards. But Huffington Post reportsthat the corporation has quietly been mining other sources of fees, preying on its most vulnerable customers to rake in millions in revenue:

Shawana Busby does not seem like the sort of customer who would be at the center of a major bank’s business plan. Out of work for much of the last three years, she depends upon a $264-a-week unemployment check from the state of South Carolina. But the state has contracted with Bank of America to administer its unemployment benefits, and Busby has frequently found herself incurring bank fees to get her money.

To withdraw her benefits, Busby, 33, uses a Bank of America prepaid debit card on which the state deposits her funds…Busby visits the ATMs in her area and begrudgingly accepts the fees, which reach as high as five dollars per transaction. She estimates that she has paid at least $350 in fees to tap her unemployment benefits. […]

In short, the same banks whose speculation delivered a financial crisis that has destroyed millions of jobs have figured out how to turn widespread unemployment into a profit center: The larger the number of people who are out of work and dependent upon the state for sustenance, the greater the potential gains through administering their benefits.

Continue reading at:  http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/14/367467/bank-of-america-unemployment-benefit-fees/

Posted in Class War, Discrimination, Economic Issues, Hard Times. Comments Off on Bank Of America Makes Millions Charging Fees To Withdraw Unemployment Benefits

Senator warns of layaway’s cost

November 15, 2011 — Suzan

I am never surprised by how low the rich and their corporations will go in exploiting the poor.

First credit cards with usurious interest rates, pay day loans, rent to own stores that sucker people in by offering a low price and then doubling the actual price with the fine print, interest and carrying charges.

Here’s a revolutionary proposition for this years annual orgy of ritualized gift giving.  Boycott the chain stores, the big box stores. Regift.  Give the gift of time or actual money.  Buy something made in the USA from an independent merchant.  Buy something used or hand made. Shop at flea markets and antique stores.

Or ask family and friends to contribute to a cause in your name.

Fuck the chain stores and the corporate masters.

Just say no to Xmas shopping.

From Yahoo News:  http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-senator-warns-layaways-cost-131026072.html

By MICHAEL GORMLEY – Associated Press
November 14, 2011

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The return of layaway plans this holiday shopping season is raising concern that the break from credit cards might actually cost consumers far more.

For example, a rock ‘n’ roll Elmo doll that requires a $5 layaway fee and a 10 percent down payment for a month can equal a credit card that charged more than 100 percent interest, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday.

Schumer is asking major retail associations to direct their members to more clearly present their layaway fees to customers. The Democrat says the ultimate cost of a layaway with a $5 fee can equal 40 percent interest over a month or two for many common purchases compared to the annual rates of most credit cards.

He said if stores don’t better present the cost of layaway purchases, he will ask the Federal Trade Commission to determine whether the increasing use of layaway is a deceptive or misleading business practice. Historically, stores started dropping layaway plans in the 1990s in part because of these costs and inconveniences.

But it’s wrong to compare layaway fees to credit cards and the fees are already clear, a major retail association says.

“It is a leap to suggest that $5 on a $100 purchase is twice the going rate on credit cards, which today averages 14.99 percent nationwide,” said Brian A. Dodge of the Retail Industry Leaders Association.

Continue reading at:  http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-senator-warns-layaways-cost-131026072.html

Posted in Class War, Discrimination, Economic Issues, Hard Times. Comments Off on Senator warns of layaway’s cost

Bullies and the Bullied

October 8, 2010 — Suzan

Bullies are bullies because they reflect the patriarchal paradigm.

Bullies are considered tough.  Because being tough means being able to dish out pain, hurt and humiliation without feeling guilt.

Being able to take pain, hurt and humiliation without being destroyed by it is called celebrating one’s victimization. Even though surviving such abuse without committing suicide or killing one’s tormentor takes great strength.

Destroying the lives of others is rewarded while having one’s life destroyed by bullying is punished further by people who treat the victims of bullying as weak and cowardly, unworthy of decent opportunities in life.

Damages are rarely awarded to people whose childhoods were destroyed by bullies.  Or to children who were deprived of their right to an education and the right to experience school as a safe place in which to grow and learn.

Bullies bully because bullying is the path to success.  It is the path to alpha status whether in a wolf pack or in the corporate structure.

Refusal to join the bullies places one with the victims.  Joining the bullies gains multiple rewards.  That is the mentality of Tea Baggers and lynch mobs alike.

When I was 13, I played goalie on a junior hockey team (my father required me to play sports).  They gave me the position because I wasn’t a good skater or an aggressive player.  But I turned out to be a really good goalie, years of learning blocking of punches and flinching had paid off.

Because I was good at playing goalie the bullies gave me the opportunity to join them.  All I had to do was beat up a kid who was a sissy like me.  Physically it would have been easy, I was strong and toughened by the summers spent working on the farm.  But I couldn’t do it.  I hit this kid once and stopped.

The next day I went to the school’s office and told the Principal what had happened.  I was put on a different bus because I would have been severely beaten by the bullies.

I made what I saw as a moral choice.  My family raised me well.  You do not join the thugs and beat up the oppressed just as you do not cross union picket lines.

I think a lot of people like Eddie Long and all the queer haters who look and sound so queer themselves also faced that ethical dilemma at some point or other in their lives and decided that it was more rewarding to be part of the bullies than the bullied.

I was already branded a teen age drag queen by my parents when I made my choice as to which side I was on.  I went on to grow into a left wing radical who believes in human rights.  Even when I tried to join the mob and the bullies about 10 years ago it never felt right.

As adults bullies have many glorified titles.  CEO, CFO, General, Admiral…  They are the ones who feel no guilt about the inflicting of pain upon others.  Psychiatrists call that sociopathic  behavior.  Those who take pleasure in the inflicting of pain upon others are psychopaths.

But the reality is society rewards bullies.  Society celebrates the conquering hero no matter how egregious and monstrous the actions.

Just as society blames the rape victim, the beaten wife, the murdered transsexual or transgender woman.

The victim is always seen as making the bully act in a monstrous manner.  Society always offers up mitigating circumstances that the bully may have never thought of on his own.

The victim of bullying is told to suck it up, get over it.

I was a tough little transkid.  I retaliated.  Because bullies rarely act on their own and usually act as part of a mob, I would wait till one was alone and unaware and I would attack him without warning using what ever means were necessary to hurt him.

Oddly all those authority figures who never found a reason to punish the bullies always found a reason to punish me.  But if I had to suck it up and take being punished it was better to take it for fighting back than for being abused.  In the process bullies decided it was better to pick someone else to bully.

I never made the connection as a child but as I became a teenager, who listened to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, I realized that if the bullied and intimidated got together, why there were more of us than there were of the bullies.

I also realized bullies do not stop being bullies when they grow up.  They just become sadistic sociopathic adults.  The sort who rape as an exercise of power.  The sort who join the military not to defend the country but so they can murder people who do not have the same military might.

Bullies grow up to abuse their wives and children.  Bullies don the robes of the KKK and the Republican Party.  Bullies seek out positions that reward their sick desires to abuse.  They join the police departments so that when the victimized, the raped and abused go to the police they are going to people more likely to side with the abuser than with the victim.

Suck it up.  It is your own fault.  If you would just not exist then the bullies wouldn’t be forced to treat you like the scum you are.

Look at what those who are bullied are called.

Sissy, nerd, freak, faggot, dyke, queer, whore, trannie, geek.  Words that hurt. Words that scar.

Words that say we should just kill ourselves because we are such misfits.

A year and a half ago when I started this blog I laid down the law to the “HBS/Classic Transsexual” that their name calling wouldn’t be permitted on this blog.  I had come to the conclusion that they were people who desperately wanted to join the non-trans bullies who abuse transsexual and transgender people, something I wanted no part of and that I would not permit in a space I controlled.  Now this set of people seem to devote an inordinate amount of energy to denouncing me.

I don’t care.

I know which side I am on and that is the side of the oppressed.

While bullies have whole armies of friends, lynch mobs who laugh and cheer them on as they bully and abuse too often the bullied and abused are forced to suffer alone.

I remember what it was like to feel I was the only one in the world.  I remember what it was like to feel that I was despised not only by the bullies but by institutions that either refused to intercede or who blamed me for provoking the abuse simply by being.

I knew I was different.  The nugget of truth that kept me going was thinking, “Yeah, I’m different. So What!”

But I was near suicide on more than one occasion as a child.  I thought how easy it would be to kill myself.  I dwelt upon the ways I could kill myself.  Sometimes the only thing that kept me alive was the will to deny the bullies the pleasure they would feel if I did kill myself.

I deliberately failed out of college after winning a New York State Regents Scholarship.  The reasons were complex and included desire to just not be there when the 1960s were happening and there were others like myself out there making a life.  But there was also a darker truth…  The 12 years of being bullied had so damaged my education and my ability to focus that I needed time to regain my sense of self worth.

In the last couple of years of high school I actually had a few friends.  We were hipper than the rest of the kids in school, listened to folk music and studied together.  I was no longer a complete misfit.

In college I became a radical and part of the SDS/ hippie crowd.

When I left school I was sustained by the radical left and hippie movements.

When I met other transsexual and transgender people I realized we had all been abused.  Drug and alcohol abuse was endemic to our crowd.  So was sex work.  Our lives had been shredded by that abuse.

It is okay for Dan Savage to say, “It gets better.”

It does but we need to tell the truth.  Admit that we were bullied and abused.  Admit that it destroyed our childhoods.  Demand redress from the educational system that failed us while it rewarded the bullies who often captained sports teams and won awards.

We need to create space for bullied kids to get together and expand that space to the kids who avoid supporting bullied kids out of fear that the bullies will turn on them.

We Need To Make It Better For Bullied People who are Adults

The pain of having been bullied does not stop once one becomes an adult.

As a feminist I listened to women tell of the pain of having been sexually abused and I was silent about my own pain.  I went home and poured a glass of wine and then another.  Other friends took pills or shot heroin.

We trivialized our scars because having been the victim of bullying was even more shameful than having been victimized by incest or childhood sexual abuse.

We have a hard time talking about it.  We go to AA or NA and keep silent about why we substance abuse.  We wind up in abusive relationships and wonder why.

We are haunted by depression and take Prozac or other drugs and still do not name the reason.

It took me all week to write this, a dozen attempts.  I asked myself if I should admit to having been one of the bullied.

The Day of Remembrance will soon be upon us.  We will remember, as well we should those transsexual and transgender people who were murdered but we should also remember those who died of over doses and organ failure from years of substance abuse for they too are victims of a violent crime.  Bullies with their torture and abuse are the ones who started so many on the path that finally takes their lives.

This year I celebrate my tenth year of sobriety.  I have someone I love who loves me and I have learned to speak out.  I tell her right away if I think her yelling at me is starting to be abusive.  I’m touchy and trigger easily but I am in recovery not only from drinking but from my childhood of being abused.

To make life better we have to have the space to name the secret scars that cause the pain we drink or drug to numb away.

I know I have focused this mainly on TS/TG folks but I include gays and lesbians as well as straight folks.  It just seems as though institutionalized misogyny means that assigned male at birth TS/TG kids get the worst along with feminine gay kids.

The freedom from bullies should be a basic human right and a matter of social justice.

Bullying is a part of misogyny, racism and classism.  It says that one group of people are superior to another group and that one group should be permitted to abuse another group.  That makes all bullying a form of hate crime.

Posted in Abuse, Civil Rights, Discrimination, Equal Treatment. 13 Comments »

Bitter Tales from the Massive White Underclass in Joe Bageant’s “Redneck” Memoir

September 21, 2010 — Suzan

I write more about class than most LGBT/T folks do.  That’s because I grew up poor and working class.  Awareness of my working class roots is why I am a leftist.

When I come across a book that relates to the class structure and class oppression, well that’s a book I’m going to want to read.  Joe Bageant’s book isn’t out yet here in the US and the link on Alternet takes you to Amazon UK.

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/books/148237/bitter_tales_from_the_massive_white_underclass_in_joe_bageant%27s_%22redneck%22_memoir/

“Economic, political, and social culture in America is staggering under the sheer weight of its white underclass, which now numbers some sixty million.”
September 20, 2010 |

The following is an excerpt from the introduction of Joe Bageant’s new book Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir (Portobello Press, 2010).

The United States has always maintained a white underclass — citizens whose role in the greater scheme of things has been to cushion national economic shocks through the disposability of their labor, with occasional time off to serve as bullet magnets in defense of the Empire. Until the post-World War II era, the existence of such an underclass was widely acknowledged. During the U.S. Civil War, for instance, many northern abolitionists also called for the liberation of ‘four million miserable white southerners held in bondage by the wealthy planter class’. Planter elites, who often held several large plantations which, together, constituted much or most of a county’s economy, saw to it that poor whites got no schools, money, or political power. Poll taxes and literacy requirements kept white subsistence farmers and poor laborers from entering voting booths. Often accounting for up to 70 per cent of many deep-southern counties, they could not vote, and thus could never challenge the status quo.

Today, almost nobody in the social sciences seems willing to touch the subject of America’s large white underclass; or, being firmly placed in the true middle class themselves, can even agree that such a thing exists. Apparently, you can’t smell the rabble from the putting green.

Public discussion of this class remains off limits, deemed hyperbole and the stuff of dangerous radical leftists. And besides, as everyone agrees, white people cannot be an underclass. We’re the majority, dammit. You must be at least one shade darker than a paper bag to officially qualify as a member of any underclass. The middle and upper classes generally agree, openly or tacitly, that white Americans have always had an advantage (which has certainly been the middle- and upper-class experience). Thus, in politically correct circles, either liberal or conservative, the term ‘white underclass’ is an oxymoron. Sure, there are working-poor whites, but not that many, and definitely not enough to be called a white underclass, much less an American peasantry.

Economic, political, and social culture in America is staggering under the sheer weight of its white underclass, which now numbers some sixty million. Generally unable to read at a functional level, they are easily manipulated by corporate-political interests to vote against advances in health and education, and even more easily mustered in support of any proposed military conflict, aggressive or otherwise. One-third of their children are born out of wedlock, and are unemployable by any contemporary industrialized-world standard. Even if we were to bring back their jobs from China and elsewhere — a damned unlikely scenario — they would be competing at a wage scale that would not meet even their basic needs. Low skilled, and with little understanding of the world beyond either what is presented to them by kitschy and simplistic television, movie, and other media entertainments, or their experience as armed grunts in foreign combat, the future of the white underclass not only looks grim, but permanent.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/books/148237/bitter_tales_from_the_massive_white_underclass_in_joe_bageant%27s_%22redneck%22_memoir/

Posted in Class War, Discrimination, Economic Issues, Employment, Poverty. Comments Off on Bitter Tales from the Massive White Underclass in Joe Bageant’s “Redneck” Memoir

For the Unemployed Over 50, Fears of Never Working Again

September 20, 2010 — Suzan

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/business/economy/20older.html?_r=1&hp

By MOTOKO RICH

VASHON ISLAND, Wash. — Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57.

But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.

But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force — forever.

Since the economic collapse, there are not enough jobs being created for the population as a whole, much less for those in the twilight of their careers.

Continue reading at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/business/economy/20older.html?_r=1&hp

Posted in Class War, Discrimination, Economic Issues, Employment. 3 Comments »

A Matter of Semantics: The Difference Between “Identifying as” and “Identifying with”

September 9, 2010 — Suzan

This post grew out of something I read in Sherry Wolf’s book, Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation .

This book had been on my must read list for a while. I was familiar with Ms. Wolf’s writing from her columns at Socialistworker.org.

Yesterday, on Face Book, Ethan St Pierre asked if people identified as male, female or transgender.

I’m an old fashioned lefty.  I’m not something because I identify as that thing.  Claiming to identify as without being seems to me to be an odd construct that doesn’t fall much in line with my existentialist line of thinking.

I am not a woman because I identify as a woman. I am a woman even though I was assigned male at birth because of having been born with something that the best term for still seems to be “transsexualism”.  I had sex reassignment surgery that made me female.

Now there are all sorts of debates about why one is transsexual.  Is it nature, is it nurture or is it both. What ever it is the origin doesn’t matter all that much to me. The only thing I can say for sure is: Don’t tell me that I have to embrace transsexual as a permanent identity.  Perhaps as a transitory one…

What I find most problematic of the dictum implied in the semiotic “identify as” is that it is both exclusive and exclusionary in that it carries with it an implication, a subtext if you will, that implies that if you too do not “identify as” then you must be in opposition.  Further if the “I” who is policing the borders of this “identification as” decides you bear the one particular trait for inclusion in that “identity” then that one trait over rules all other aspects of ones being.  This is an extension of some very reactionary politics based on the rather anachronistic application of “the one drop of black blood makes you black (or Jewish etc) rule”.

Usage of this semiotic carries several other subtexts, including:  If you share that one trait but do not embrace that identity (in this case transgender) then you must be self -loathing.  You are in denial and an antagonistic separatist, particularly if you defend not embracing that “identify as” semiotic.  Refusal to identify as is therefore grounds for assumption of hostility towards the group one refuses to identify as.

The seeds for identity politics possibly date to the 1960s and the rise of “black nationalism” instead of a united front in support of the African American Civil Rights Movement.

There  was a rush to place primacy of oppressions in what seemed like a queue.  This lead to the term, “Oppression Olympics”.  And the dismissal of claims of empathy.

The alternative that would help unite the various groups fighting what is generally speaking a common source of oppression would be to switch from a requirement to “identify as” to people learning to “identify with” the struggles of others, and through the exercise of empathy find commonalities with others.

I do not have to “identify as” to identify with the struggles of say African Americans, or farm workers, in their struggle for civil rights. As I can extrapolate through my own experiences what it feels like to suffer abuse, discrimination and oppression.

Lately there has been this requirement for people with transsexualism firmly claim “having always identified as a member of the sex to which they are reassigned”.  Perhaps in the best of all possible worlds, where one’s “identity” is never challenged.  That would seem in total contradiction with the reports of almost universal childhood abuse for “gender inappropriate behavior”.

Those who give priority to identity over the physical sneeringly call my response  citing my present body as reason for being assured of my identity, essentialist.  Perhaps it is as I considered SRS as “making it real” in flesh as well as in performed sex role behavior.

Damn here I am in bed with Judy Butler… I promise not to hate myself in the morning…

Identity has an amorphous character that is constantly open to challenge and negotiation.  But so too are bodies.  We should know that all to well.  T to F people have memories about being labeled as sissies and being told they aren’t really boys.  Hence my response to Anna about thinking I was half boy/half girl as a child, given I had boy parts yet was physically feminine in appearance and was feminine in behavior. Identity open to challenge due to physical traits that were written on the body.

Simone de Beauvoir wrote, “One is not born a woman, one becomes a woman.”  The existentialist analysis is about becoming through influences and actions.  Beat poet Diane di Prima’s first sentence in her book, “Recollections of my Life as a Woman” reads:  “My earliest sense of what it means to be a woman was learned from my grandmother, Antoinette Mallozzi, and at her knee.”

Then there is a paragraph that starts on page 5:

“As I went into the kitchen this morning to make some tea, I saw through the (intentionally?) open crack in her door, my beautiful young daughter in the arms of a beautiful young Black skateboarder, who had evidently spent the night (skateboard propped against the wall in front of her door like an insignia).  As I went tranquilly into the kitchen and called out to ask them if they wanted tea or coffee, I thought with deep gratitude of some of the women I met when I first left home at the age of eighteen: those beautiful, soft strong women of middle age with their young daughters who made me welcome in various homes, where I could observe on a given morning mom coming out of her bedroom with a lover, male or female, and joining daughter and her lover at the table for breakfast in naturalness and camaraderie.  These women, by now mostly dead I suppose were great pioneers.  They are nameless to me, nameless and brief friends I encountered along the way who showed me something else was possible besides what I had seen at home.”

I view who I am not as some sort of “identity” claimed without experience but as the sum total of my experiences and encounters.

The experiences and my awareness of self were uncertain and abused as a child. As I gained agency as a teenager, I sought out answers and those answers changed my sense of being.  Through choosing to learn certain things and not other things, to learn certain ways of being, skills, I became those things and those skills became my natural skills learned in muscle memory and unconscious  in nature.

Coming out was a matter of stating “I AM!” and then acting upon it.  My first steps were uncertain, like some one first learning to ice skate, yet the things I had been absorbing in secret rapidly asserted themselves.  People reacted differently to me and the different way I was treated became part of who I am.  Within weeks the ability to don the mask I had worn for 21 years became impossible.  Is this identity?

If it is… Does the fact I didn’t particularly think of the concepts of  “I am” or “I am becoming” in terms of identity, but rather in terms of “being” and “becoming”, both aspects of the philosophy of existentialism, invalidate those who speak in terms of identity?  Do the semantics of “identity” replete with semiotic meanings require a subjugation of existentialist thinking to a new god of post-modernist terminology?

Are these idiotic matters to be argued over while hiding in an attic we might not be in were it not for our immersion in “identity politics”?

I am my life experiences, my interpretations of those experiences, my analysis of those experiences are subject to change as I am immersed in new experiences.

If I say I am post-transsexual it doesn’t mean I am beyond all concern regarding the subject or all concern for those going through transition.  It means that for me those experiences were all so long ago and when dredged up are subject to new interpretations based on the many years of experience since.  The requirement that I “identify as” is alienating as it negates the passage of time and the experiences of life after SRS.

However, I am as capable of “identifying with” the struggles of TG and pre-op sisters and brothers as I am with any other oppressed group that I am not specifically a part of.  Identifying with the struggles of the oppressed does not require one to “identify as.”

To answer Ethan St. Pierre’s question.  I don’t identify as a woman.  I am a woman.

Posted in Activism, Civil Rights, Discrimination, Existentialism, Language, Politics, Social Justice. 7 Comments »

Fox News bullies organized labor in run-up to Labor Day

September 3, 2010 — Suzan

From Media Matters for America

http://mediamatters.org/research/201009030041

Fox News figures have attacked labor unions in the days leading up to Labor Day, a national holiday originally created to honor the victories of the labor movement and the achievements of American workers.

Fox News figures assail organized labor

Beck: “I think the unions are like Biff,” the bully from Back to the Future. During the September 2 edition of his Fox News show, Glenn Beck said, “You know what I think of some of the unions? I actually think of Back to the Future. I think the unions are like Biff.” Beck showed a clip featuring Biff Tannen, the bully in the film, and added, “But in the end, once you really realize who they are and you’re not afraid anymore, it always turns out exactly the same way for the bully every time.” Beck then showed a clip of Biff working for the man he originally bullied.

Malkin accused unions of embezzlement, violence, and corruption. During the September 2 edition of Fox News’ America Live, Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin accused labor leaders of “embezzlement,” “violence,” and “corruption.”

Varney: There will be “[t]wo more union outrage stories to bring to you in our next half-hour.” During the September 2 edition of Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co., guest Joseph Caruso criticized a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would allow more shareholders of public companies to use proxy votes to nominate board members. Caruso claimed that unions would use the rule to “wreak havoc” by nominating labor-friendly board members. In response, Fox Business’ Charles Payne suggested, “So, this will be used more as a tool of intimidation than anything else.” In a subsequent tease, Varney said, “Two more union outrage stories to bring to you in our next half-hour.”

Cavuto likened unions to Hurricane Earl on a “collision course on our towns.” During the September 2 edition of Fox News’ Your World, host Neil Cavuto compared unions to Hurricane Earl, saying, “The monster and the mess. Your World on top of Earl’s collision course with our coast and what could be unions’ collision course with our towns.” Cavuto added: “And get ready for Earl’s wallop and, to hear some state and local governments tell it, unions’ direct hit on their wallet.”

Carlson: How much of the cost of a Chevy Volt is “because you have to pay the unions so much money?” During a discussion of the Chevy Volt on the September 2 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson asked, “How much of that money … is because you have to pay the unions so much money?”

Beck: Labor hero is “indoctrinating children.” During the September 1 edition of his Fox News show, Beck accused Dolores Huerta, an 80-year-old labor activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers with César Chávez, of “indoctrinating our children” because she spoke at a high school. Beck also criticized the Labor Department for spending money on what he called a “catchy tune” that included Labor Secretary Hilda Solis saying, “You work hard, and you have the right to be paid fairly,” and, “[I]t is a serious problem when workers in this country are not being paid every cent they earn.”

Labor Day honors the progress of the labor movement

DOL: Labor Day is “a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.” According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s “History of Labor Day,” Labor Day “is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

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Posted in Class War, Discrimination, Economic Issues, Employment, Hard Times, Labor, Unions. Comments Off on Fox News bullies organized labor in run-up to Labor Day

Police State

August 19, 2010 — Suzan

I grew up left wing.  I may not have been a red diaper baby but my diapers definitely had a union label.

We were Democrats in part of New York State that had been down with the GOP since they sent volunteers to fight for the Union.

My parents were FDR New Deal Democrats who thought it stupid to vote against the interests of the working people.

I was raised to be careful about telling others things my parents talked about because it was the McCarty era and my father was first generation Polish American at a time when they were stripping people of their citizenship and deporting them for being Reds.

There was a fictional short story by Phillip Nolan called “A Man Without a Country”, about a man stripped of his citizenship and condemned to a life aboard ships.  I don’t remember the specifics of the short story, but John Adams instituted the Alien and Sedition Acts  that could have done something like that.  The moral of the story was supposed to be about how sad the man was to never be permitted back in America. I saw the moral as being, “Freedom of speech, means freedom to agree.”

I came away with a different take on it, perhaps because of my family.  My take on it was that there was a serious gap between what the Constitution says and how the Police State functions.  Freedom of speech should mean just that, after all the Constitution doesn’t have the disclaimer, “So long as one never speaks a disparaging word regarding corporate fascism, police abuse of power, racism, imperialism or the military industrial complex.”

In school I was taught that in the Soviet Union and life under Communism, the citizens had their lives spied upon and could lose their jobs and even be imprisoned for speaking their mind.  Which was way different from the US,  where people were being arrested, spied upon, interrogated, force to name names or face imprisonment as well as be denied employment all under the aegis of “protecting freedom.”

As a kid I couldn’t tell the difference.  But I knew that one of the things that could get one labeled Red was supporting equality for Black people.  At the same time people who murdered and horribly mutilated a Black child named Emmett Till were not prosecuted the way people who said that was wrong were persecuted.

There were things my family spoke about in whispers and that I was told to never speak about like their discussing loyalty oaths.

I was a radical in the 1960s.  I was arrested for my opposition to the war and for standing up for things I knew to be right.

We were subjected to having warrantless raids performed on our places of residence as well as stop and search violations of our rights in the streets.  Even though these warrantless searches were a clear violation of our Constitutional rights.

They called it “The War on Drugs”, they used it as part of a war on anyone the police were bigoted towards.

In the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller:

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up

It was after all the war on drugs and the only people speaking out were either drug users or left wing scum like the ACLU.  Generally the position was, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.

Then a few years later as the government became much more rabidly right wing and the Constitutional rights of Americans were eroded further in various ways including “the War on Crime” and “The War on Drugs” private companies began to demand employees submit to drug testing.  It didn’t matter if you showed up for work stone sober, they wanted to know what you did on the weekends.  And thanks to things like Employment At Will and the Taft Hartley Act workers had lost the ability to protest against these violations of personal privacy.

After all, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”  Like the dark days of the 1950s when a version of that same mantra was the subtext behind the assumption of guilt when people refused to name names for Joe McCarthy and HUAC, refusal to submit to a violation of one’s Constitutional rights to freedom from warrantless search was taken as an admission of guilt.

And so it goes, one baby step at a time we surrendered our Forth Amendment rights.

Did you speak out regarding this violation of people’s rights?  If you did you were in a minority.  There are gulags across America filled with people whose only crime is the violation of the drug prohibition laws.

Some where along with all the get tough on crime propaganda there was a new mantra introduced, “What part of illegal do you just not get?”  All the while there were obviously two sets of laws one for the rich and one for the poor.

Yet who, other than those pesky Reds spoke up?  And yes it is a truism that if one speaks out against the right wing police state then one is automatically a “Red”.  Even if they have never read a word of Marx/Engels/Lenin.  Even if they are no further left than Obama.

Then came the “War on Terror” with the TSA and NSA, Echelon, and Total Information Awareness.  To speak out against this infringement was to once again be a Red and soft on terror.  We learned new words and phrases like “rendition” and “water-boarding”.

But we weren’t being thrown in concentration and torture camps. So we sat back and repeated the mantra we had long ago taken to heart. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

In the process we learned to internalize the police state, to watch what we said and wrote, to point fingers and condemn as “Reds” and “Agitators” those who spoke out and questioned what the fuck was going on.

Remember Cindy Sheehan and the Crawford Ranch Demonstration?  Cindy, who son was killed in Iraq, had the audacity to ask  W., “What noble cause?” Perhaps more of us should have asked, “What noble cause?” Because our civil rights were going down the tube and had been for many years.

One of the major problems of identity politics is the compartmentalization and focus on an issue that is supposed to unite in spite of the people who supposedly share that identity having all sorts of different politics.

I have met too many sisters who were classist, racist, anti-feminist and right wing to believe that just having an association at some point and time with a trans-prefixed word makes them my sister.

I have been called a “Red” too many times by people I am supposed to have common ground with according to the ideology of Transgender Inc.

But now the Police state has become real for them too.

We Do NOT Have All the Same Body Parts and Body Scanners Violates Your Privacy

http://blog.seattlepi.com/airlinereporter/archives/218649.asp

It is time to improve privacy!

I haven’t been able to talk about body scanners for a while and it is about time I bring them up again. When I blog about them or am doing research, I constantly see the same argument, “What’s the big deal, we all have the same parts, get over it.”

The thing is we are not all the same and even if we are, we still have a right to privacy. With my obvious dis-like (maybe that is too nice of a word) for the body scanners, I get people who write me in support and calling me  fool. Recently I had a woman write me who is  a pre-operative transsexual, meaning she self-defines as a woman, but still has male genitalia. It is absolutely her right to keep her situation private and no one should have the ability to invade her privacy. Talking about privacy, I will call her “Jane” to keep her anonymous for this blog.

I asked Jane what it is like being asked to go through a body scanner and she told me, “that having to go through a body scanner would be particularly difficult for me as the body scanners actually reveal a person’s gender. ” She also explained it becomes even more difficult because she has, “anxiety which makes the thought of using these even more difficult.”

Jane lives in the UK and unlike in the US, passengers cannot opt-out of body scanners. If you get “randomly selected” , you must be scanned or you don’t fly.

Another argument people often use is, “if you don’t like it, don’t fly then.” There are so many reasons why this argument is weak. If you don’t agree with something, you should stand up for what you think is right and try to change the system.

Jane told me she doesn’t fly as much now due to the fear and has missed out on some very important life experiences. “I have relatives in India who I would like to see again and would also like to travel to India to pay my respects to relatives who have died but feel unable to pass through an airport whilst passing through a body scanner is a condition to boarding my flight,” Jane explained.

We are a global society and need to allow people to fly around the world to continue to grow and prosper. We should not become  society that violates a person’s privacy, so passengers can get a false sense of security that the body scanners provide.

Trans-gender fliers, disabled passengers, folks with body issues and those that have gone through a traumatic experience involving their body should not have to endure evasive security to be able to function in our society. Is giving up your privacy worth the false sense of security you get going through body scanners? I say absolutely not.

And then they came for_______ and suddenly the mantra, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.” becomes very personal to some who were all too willing to accept the privileges they enjoyed in the past when the people whose rights were being violated were Reds and drug users.

The time to stand up against the Police State is when they start scapegoating and imprisoning the under-privileged, those Justice Marshall referred to as the “despised and dispossessed”.  Not when they finally come for you because by then the only people left will be those still saying, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

Posted in Activism, Civil Rights, Constitutional Rights, Discrimination, Equal Treatment, Free Speech, Human Rights, Nazism, Police Abuse, Police State, Social Justice. 3 Comments »

Fort Worth Christo-Fascists urge city to overturn gay-friendly policies

July 14, 2010 — Suzan
It is time that people start realizing that there is no difference between the Christo-Fascists extolling bigotry as a traditional value and the Taliban.  They are both misogynistic and homophobic ideologies that deny freedom and equality to women as well as LGBT/T people.
Along with banning the burqa we need to start taxing  churches including the salaries of those sky god peddlers and all their property and assets.
From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Fort Worth churchgoers urge city to overturn gay-friendly policies

By MIKE LEE

Posted Tuesday, Jul. 13, 2010

FORT WORTH — More than 100 people from local churches urged the City Council on Tuesday night to overturn some of the policies that the city adopted last year in the wake of protests after arrests at the Rainbow Lounge, a gay bar on the near south side.

One patron was seriously injured during the “bar check” on June 28, 2009.

After weeks of protests by gay activists and sympathizers, city officials adopted several proposals recommended by a task force.

Among them were more training for employees and the appointment of a Police Department liaison to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

Other proposals, such as extending health and retirement benefits to gay couples and covering sex reassignment surgery under the city’s health insurance, are still being studied.

On Tuesday, speakers said the city went too far and didn’t take their Christian beliefs into account.

Too often we give in to the bigotry of these religion waving bigots.  In doing so we only empower them and encourage them in their practice of un-American forms of hate.  No living in or visiting to this country should ever be denied their inalienable rights, especially based on the rantings of insane bigots who tend to not only be misogynist and homophobic but racist as well.
Posted in Christo-Fascism, Discrimination, Equal Treatment, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Human Rights, Misogyny, Nazism, Racism, Religion. Comments Off on Fort Worth Christo-Fascists urge city to overturn gay-friendly policies

Federal Court Strikes Down DOMA Section 3

July 8, 2010 — Suzan

From Glad (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders)

http://www.glad.org/current/news-detail/federal-court-strikes-down-doma-section-3/

July 08, 2010

Today, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro ruled that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional with respect to claims brought by seven married same-sex couples and three widowers from Massachusetts. Under the ruling, the plaintiffs are entitled to the same federal spousal benefits and protections as every other married couple.

The ruling stems from GLAD’s lawsuit Gill et al v. Office of Personnel Management et al, filed in March 2009.

“Today the Court simply affirmed that our country won’t tolerate second-class marriages,” says Mary Bonauto, GLAD’s Civil Rights Project Director, who argued the case. “I’m pleased that Judge Tauro recognized that married same-sex couples and surviving spouses have been seriously harmed by DOMA and that the plaintiffs deserve the same opportunities to care and provide for each other and for their children that other families enjoy. This ruling will make a real difference for countless families in Massachusetts.”

Read the decision.

Read GLAD’s press release.

Posted in Discrimination, Economic Issues, Equal Treatment, LGBT/T, Questioning Authority, Same Sex Marriage, Social Justice, Uncategorized, Unequal Treatment. Comments Off on Federal Court Strikes Down DOMA Section 3

Worker Bees and Caffeine, the Legal Drug

May 15, 2010 — Suzan

Here I am at six thirty in the morning facing another 9-10 hour day filled with stress.  Before me is a huge cup of coffee, the legal stimulant drug that gets me through the day.  Along with “energy drinks”.

I go to work where conformity is demanded and individuality suppressed.  Out on the floor the disgruntled murmur and anger runs skin deep. The name of the game is selling, pushing product with smiling enthusiasm even if the product has so much fat in it or so much sodium that it should wear a skull and cross bones.

Workers are treated like children and act out in a passive aggressive manner.

The stress of part time work in retail is brutal with its fluctuating hours meaning one can never count on a certain amount of pay when ones check come out.

Workers can be forced to pee in cups or the more modern swab instant drug test that gets so many false positives particularly in older workers who are often on a shopping list of medications.

Coffee is the perfect drug.  It helps the focus and boosts both energy and fake enthusiasm. Work turns us into corporate liars and caffeine helps us with the guilt.  We learn to project a false sincerity in order to sell and keep our jobs secure.

Insecurity is the life blood of the retail slave.  We eat insults and customer condescension with a smile knowing that many doing the condescending are but one more economic down turn, one more round of out sourcing or right sizing by the corporate raiders and junk bond peddlers, from joining us.  Welcome to Thomas Friedman’s globalized flat earth.  Welcome the race to the bottom when it comes to paying workers.

So lift your cup of coffee high in a toast to the death of the middle class.  Welcome to the world of the bottom line.

Welcome to the world created by the “free market” and the class war that created the super rich.  Thank the neo-cons and neo-libs who brought us here.

And if you are a straight person of color or a white LGBT/T person welcome to the world where we waste our time on horizontal hostility while those with the money who created this world use us as scapegoats to distract us from who the real oppressors are.

Posted in Classism, Culture, Discrimination, Employment, Politics, Questioning Authority, Uncategorized, Workers. 1 Comment »

New Study Says Racist Beliefs and Tough on Crime Go Hand-in-Hand

May 13, 2010 — Suzan

by Colin Asher April 23, 2010 05:47 AM

The idea that there are no racists in America is a popular political trope. Say whatever you want, support discriminatory public policy. As long as you follow your statements with the caveat “I mean, I’m not racist…” you’ll be just fine. And so it’s been with criminal justice policy. Even as our prison and jail populations have exploded — disproportionately locking up blacks and Latinos — there are still plenty of people out there who are willing to claim there’s nothing racist about supporting mass incarceration.

Recently, a pair of criminologists took the time evaluate that claim. What did they find? Well, it turns out that people who support punitive criminal justice policy also…tend to be racists.

In a paper entitled “The Social Sources of Americans’ Punitiveness,” James Unnever and Francis Cullen test three theories that have been offered by criminologists to explain why the U.S. public supports punitive criminal justice policies. Those theories are: 1). the escalating crime distrust model, 2). the moral decline model and 3). the racial animus model.

According to the first theory, because Americans fear crime and distrust our government, we support punitive laws and policies. The second proposes that people support punitive policies because they think our country’s morals are in decline. And the last theory suggests that racist beliefs are what fuel public support for harsh criminal punishments.

All three theories, the study found, explain why American support for so-called “tough-on-crime” penalties is so high. But it turns out that racist beliefs offer the best explanation of all.

Continue reading at: http://criminaljustice.change.org/blog/view/new_study_says_racist_beliefs_and_tough_on_crime_go_hand-in-hand

Posted in Discrimination, Economic Issues, Equal Treatment, Human Rights, Police Abuse, Racism, Social Justice. Comments Off on New Study Says Racist Beliefs and Tough on Crime Go Hand-in-Hand

ENDA Should Not Be The Goal!

April 15, 2010 — Suzan

ENDA should not be the goal but rather the starting point for LGBT/T workers rights.

All too often when I read about ENDA the stories are about people who are already so far up the socio-economic chain as to make their struggles with employment sound like fables.

Focusing on the Susan Stantons of the world makes for good news.  I’m sure she is a decent person and all that and I am equally certain that her losing her job was a vile act of discrimination.

But is the struggle for employment non-discrimination really all about those in the middle and upper classes?

What about those of us who work in restaurants and big box stores?  Or those even more lumpen who have to do sex work because even restaurants and big boxes won’t hire them?

Lets focus for a moment on those workers in what has been labeled by the privileged elite as the “New Service Economy”. There is a reality that was laid out in Barbara Ehrenreich’s  book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America that life sucks for those workers making less than 15 to 20 thousand dollars a year.  One is often unable to keep a roof over one’s head, eat, afford transportation to and from work and the clothes required to work.

Never mind the thought of getting SRS or any of the other procedures commonly required by those in transition including but not exclusive to: Mandated professional psychiatric care.  Electrolysis and hormones.

The great bulk of the medically uninsured are in this category.  But even for those insured medical costs related to transsexualism and transgenderism are often specifically excluded.  Sometimes using the pre-existing condition clause if the policy lacks a specific exclusion.

There is another proposition slowly making its way through the process.  One I hear almost no mention of in the LGBT/T press or activist circles but hear plenty about in the left wing circles that are a major influence on me.

Something called the Employee Free Choice Act that would help end the corporate strangle hold of workers attempting to unionize and organize to promote the rights and interests of the workers.  Too often we have no redress, no one to represent us and argue that our working conditions are un-fair or even dangerous.  Not to mention humiliating, stressful and degrading.

Working conditions suck in the US.  American workers work longer hours with less job security or benefits that do the workers in almost every other industrialized nation.

Oh I forgot we live in a post-industrialized society where the rich become ever richer by moving their money around, creating nothing except an endless cycle of bubbles and recessions, while the rest of us have become the new servant class.  As a member of that servant class I am required to smile and lie to sell others cheap poorly made product, food that is often a nutritional nightmare.  All the while knowing the reality of what I am doing and smiling as well as shuffling in a properly subservient manner.

There is a dirty secret that misses the news for all its coverage of the Tea Bagger, neo-Nazi racist pigs.  There is an equally angry left wing under class of overly educated peons who have read Marx, Kropotkin and Bukharin.

ENDA isn’t the end of the struggle for LGBT/T workers rights.  It is the starting point

Posted in Activism, Anarchism, Classism, Discrimination, Economic Issues, Employment, ENDA, Uncategorized. 1 Comment »
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