Reminder: Sweet Cakes by Melissa wasn’t merely sued for discrimination

They also doxxed the lesbian couple lodging the complaint:

But that was not all the couple suffered.

Laurel Bowman-Cryer filed a complaint in January 2013, but because she filed it online on her smartphone she was not shown the disclaimer informing her that the complaint, including her name and address, would be sent to the individual against whom it was being made. When Aaron Klein received the complaint, he immediately published it on his Facebook page in full, with Laurel’s name and address included.

That’s right, the Kleins doxxed the Bowman-Cryers.

In testimony Tuesday, Rachel Bowman-Cryer said she and her wife received death threats as media attention and criticism from strangers escalated in the months after the story went national in January 2013.

She said the threats were part of a stream of “hateful, hurtful things” that came after the couple’s contact information (home address, phone and email) was posted on Aaron Klein’s personal Facebook page. She said she feared for her life and her wife’s life.

And it’s worse even than that, because the couple had foster children.

Also on Tuesday, Rachel Bowman-Cryer disclosed that she and Laurel felt an even greater level of stress because they were foster parents for two young girls and feared they might lose the children.

She said they spoke to state adoption officials who told them it was the couple’s responsibility to protect the children and keep privileged information confidential, even as their own privacy was threatened by news coverage of the case.

…

The next time you see someone upset about that nice baker couple Oregon ordered to pay $135,000 to that spiteful thin-skinned lesbian couple, let them know that that nice baker couple doxxed the lesbian couple and very nearly cost them custody of their two children as a result. And then send them a copy of the court’s final ruling.

I signal boost this reminder from Libby over on Patheos because Sweet Cakes by Melissa returned to the news when they announced their closure, blaming the “gay mafia” for their loss of business–despite the fact that bigots raised an extra $300,000 over the damages they lost–all of which they pocketed. It seems that the coverage doesn’t adequately remind its readers that the plaintiffs were doxxed for having the audacity to challenge Christian entitlement.

Regardless, losing all your business sounds like a response from the Free Market. Here I thought Conservatives trusted the Invisible Hand. Or is that only when the Invisible Hand is directed by Invisible Backers?

Hmm.

-Shiv

White men have killed more cops than all other groups combined

Dear #BlueLivesMatter,

I question where your outrage is. You’re the type who thinks calling for police accountability is hate speech. You’re the type who’s taken the hook, line, and sinker of Faux News characterizing Black Lives Matter as a terrorist group–despite the fact that the only police casualties at a BLM rally were from someone unaffiliated with the movement. You’re keen to latch on to the more hazy or questionable cases of justified violence from police, whilst conveniently ignoring the slough of black women and men who died complying to police orders. You can see black children being assaulted by police and for some reason, this doesn’t galvanize you. Cops have been caught on camera inventing crimes to charge protesters with. And an entire police department has been indicted in keeping a teenaged girl as a sex slave for two years, but you’re still convinced bad apples are in the minority, or at the very least aren’t influential.

You’re willing to consider the absolute number of police brutality deaths as evidence that whites have it worse, but you ignore that the absolute number of people who murder police are overwhelmingly white:

Something’s afoot, though, on why we’re not hearing much about this shocking increase in the number of officers who’ve been shot and killed so far in 2016. Sadly, I think I have the answer.

Seventy-one percent of police who’ve been shot and killed this year weren’t murdered by black men with cornrows or hoodies. They weren’t gunned down by Latino gang members in low-rider drive-bys. Those stereotypes would be too convenient. Instead, 71% of police who’ve been shot and killed so far in 2016 have been killed by good old-fashioned white men.

You haven’t seen these stories on Fox News or Breitbart because they don’t fit their narrative of blaming police violence on the Black Lives Matter movement or President Obama. Because “scary” black faces can’t be flashed across their screens, they don’t even tell the stories at all — which suggests they don’t care so much about police, but about using police deaths like a political football.

You best believe that if a 59% rise in the number of police officers shot and killed in the line of duty could be blamed on immigrants, Mexicans, or black folk, it would be a regular conservative talking point.

Instead, Donald Trump has never mentioned these fallen officers on the campaign trail because it may have very well been his supporters who did the shooting for all he knows.

It appears that blue lives only matter to popular conservatives when they are taken by somebody they can easily demonize. In the meantime, police groups continue to protest a black woman when a black woman hasn’t killed an officer in years.

Welcome to America. 2016.

So you mean one of the most vivid violent actions you can take against the State–the murder of its officials–is primarily carried out by white people??

Where be all the white terrorist posters and media pundits?

-Shiv

Johns Hopkins faculty disavow Paul McHugh’s homophobic and transphobic report

Paul McHugh is at least partially responsible for this odious missive titled “Executive Summary on Sexuality and Gender.” The summary in question was picked up by a number of reactionary lobby groups in short order, adding to McHugh’s long history of being one of the selective citations used when attempting to justify homophobia/transphobia as scientific.

What will no doubt be denied by those same reactionary groups is that the faculty at John Hopkins are aware of the report, and in fact they have published what might be missed as a withering condemnation of it:

Science, and particularly the fields of psychiatry and psychology, has made major advances in our understanding of the complex issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. For instance, accumulating data support the concept that gender identity is not strictly a binary phenomenon. And scientific evidence clearly documents that sexual and romantic attractions to people of the same and/or different sexes are normal variations of the diversity of human sexuality.

…

That is why the recent report, released by one current and one former member of our faculty on the topic of LGBTQ health, is so troubling. The report, “Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological and Psychological and Social Sciences,” was not published in the scientific literature, where it would have been subject to rigorous peer review prior to publication. It purports to detail the science of this area, but it falls short of being a comprehensive review.

…

We wish to make clear that there are many people at Hopkins who hold a profound and long-standing commitment to the health, wellness, well-being, and fair and non-stigmatizing treatment of LGBTQ people and communities. We do not believe that the “Sexuality and Gender” report cited above is a comprehensive portrayal of the current science, and we respectfully disassociate ourselves from its findings.

“We respectfully disassociate ourselves from its findings” is academic-speak, a sort of scathing disagreement, the equivalent of coming upon one’s car and finding the tires have been slashed by your nemesis.

Because reactionary lobbies are well known for their creative work (/extreme sarcasm), we ought to be surprised to see this exact scenario has already played out. Parents for Choice in Education, a reactionary lobby group advocating for the continued special snowflake status of Catholic schooling in Alberta, propped up two doctors from the University of Alberta to grant some kind of scientific credence for their prejudice. The U of A, having caught wind of this, immediately disavowed the two doctors in question. Yet, much like the reactionary groups propping up McHugh, PCE is suspiciously silent on how it continues to justify supporting doctors who have been told by their employer that their opinions are “inadequate,” which–again–is academic-speak for “fucking ridiculous.”

Perhaps that might suggest that scientific accuracy is not, in fact, their main priority?

-Shiv

Facebook: Calls for genocide = ok, Calls for autonomy = terrorism

In a shocking double standard that will leave you reeling, Facebook has apparently agreed to let the Israeli Minister–who explicitly calls for the genocide of Palestine on Facebook–to dictate to Facebook which Palestinian pages were “controversial” and had to be removed.

In a controversial move, the Israeli government and Facebook reportedly agreed to work together to determine how to tackle incitement on social media, aimed primarily at Palestinians.

Not long after Facebook’s agreement, several Palestinian pages with millions of readers found themselves closed and administrators locked out, in a move believed to be directly connected to the agreement between Facebook and the Israeli government.

By last Friday, however, Palestinian journalists and activists said they had had enough and announced a temporary boycott of Facebook, protesting what they call the company’s complicity in Israeli censorship and putting up an upside down Facebook sign as their profile photo.

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is the main figure behind the controversy. Earlier this month, she boasted that the social network had been overwhelmingly happy to comply with Israeli demands. 

“Over the past four months, Israel submitted 158 requests to Facebook” and Facebook had accepted 95 percent of those cases, said Shaked, who is best known outside Israel for herinfamous comments against a Palestinian state. It is believed that over the years, Facebook and Twitter have deleted thousands of posts, pages and accounts in response to demands from the Israeli ministry of justice.

Facebook claims the pages were removed in error and has restored them, however the agreement with the Israeli government remains, leaving the possibility that even peaceful calls for autonomy could be censored* as they are characterized as destabilizing.

I am baffled as to how anyone can continue to support Israeli occupation. They’re worse than American cops. They’ve been caught on film framing victims. I’ve heard the word “apartheid” used and the more evidence comes out of Israel the increasingly apparent that is the case. It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the actions of a government, and certainly not anti-Semitic to even post photographs or videos catching Israeli troops acting in bad faith.

I mean, “Facebook sells out” is hardly newsworthy at this point, seriously. Genocidal minister = free speech. Calls for autonomy = terrorists? We should all recognise the potential for our governments to strike such similar agreements with Facebook–if they don’t have them already.

Don’t let the calls for Palestinian peace and independence be conflated with terrorism.

-Shiv

 

*Because the “recommendations” for removal are from the Israeli government, it is in fact censorship.

Signal boosting: All Trump supporters are White Supremacists

Ijeoma Oluo nails it when it comes to the problems of Trump’s presidency campaign. People have been giving Trump supporters wiggle room for them to say, “well, I’m not the bad guy, so I can continue supporting Trump!”

Oluo points out that no, supporting a White Supremacist means that you are, at best, indifferent to White Supremacy, which means you fail at ethics: (emphasis mine)

Now some of you may be asking, as you have on Facebook and Twitter: “Ijeoma, are you really willing to call half of the U.S. population White Supremacists?” And to that my answer is hell yes. This may seem like a bold statement to some, but honestly, I can’t see why.

Human beings can quite easily fall in line with violent hatred and oppression; any quick glance through world history will show that to be true. Do you think that the Nazis came to power against the will of the German electorate, or with the support of the German people? Do you think that slavery was upheld purely by the few rich enough to own slaves, or by an entire society that even erected armies to defend it? And no, none of this can be excused away as “a product of the times”—humans are not like wine grapes; we do not have a few “bad years” that we can blame on the soil. If you recognize that these horrific systems of abuse, oppression, and even genocide were upheld by everyday people, then you have to acknowledge that everyday people are capable of some pretty heinous shit. You can be in the PTA and you can pay your taxes and you can volunteer at your local homeless shelter and at the same time you can be actively upholding the oppression of others. It has been done before and it is being done now.

I’d like to draw your attention to the last bit I quoted there. You can look at someone like Hitler and point out that he kissed his wife on the cheek and painted nice things and drank his tea with his pinky finger sticking out and probably cuddled with his dog. We need to dispel this notion of “Bad Guys” altogether, because it allows us to put distance between accountability and our ideas. If we support Trump, we support White Supremacy. That isn’t cancelled out by running a cat rescue or housing an estranged member of the family. You can be concerned with the welfare of certain people whilst being a White Supremacist.

History has shown us that those principled enough to accept the consequences of defiance in the face of a violent authoritarian regime are in the minority. Most of us will kowtow to violence. Most of us can be convinced to uphold a war machine. After all, every great crime against humanity was carried out and supported by the average Joe. If we understand there is a tremendous capacity for violence in all of us, we are better equipped to see the world not as Good vs. Evil–which is exactly the simplistic narrative authoritarians want you to believe–but instead to see the world as a collection of largely mutually exclusive ideas, with different goals and different degrees of effectiveness.

That’s why I’m not interested in the biography of any given White Supremacist. I don’t care about the individual. I care about the idea, and what it represents.

-Shiv

Ashley Mardell makes accurate observations on Youtube Anti-Feminists

Stop me if you’ve never heard this before: an obscure feminist youtuber catches the attention of an sooper logikkkal atheist douchebro with millions of subscribers, makes a video “disagreeing” with her, and then they have a meaningful conversation that leaves the audience with a number of important follow up questions to research.

Or–wait, no. Video after video of vapid reasoning and screaming at the camera.

Or–WAIT. Ashley’s questioning their gender. Rape and death threats to the nth degree, because the only thing worse than a woman is an enby.

Ashley Mardell and Riley Dennis recount their experiences of being LGBTQ feminists on a medium known for its vicious and incoherent cishet atheist douchebros. In particular, they observe how their process of questioning their genders and how neither of them has come to the conclusion they sit on the binary seems to induce a particularly unique rage. The trolls mention the banners of freeze peach and sooper logikkkal as their rallying cries… despite their best efforts to censor free speech by shouting down anyone who disagrees with them, and also using arguments that have been refuted time and time again. Although it’s worth noting that they’re trying to “argue” about questioning one’s gender, which is not a debate anyone but the questioner should be engaging in.

Ashley & Riley also point out that the pattern of “angry video -> mentioning YouTuber by name -> said YouTuber’s channel flooded with hate” has repeated hundreds of times, and there’s no way the douchebros making these videos aren’t aware of what, exactly, will happen when they paint a target on someone. Their fans are entitled and angry, and never at any point do their tell their fanbase to back the fuck off.

Ashley–in the unlikely event you ever read this–I’m sorry this happens to you, and to anyone. For what it’s worth, I think the aforementioned douchebro’s ideas are in the same league as, say, dysentery outbreaks. I also think they’ve been complicit in so many harassment campaigns that at this point they ought to be charged with something, but police trend towards useless.

-Shiv

Out Magazine glorifies fountain of shit-spewing, Milo Yiannopoulos

ThinkProgress has an open letter addressed to Out Magazine over its soft-ball profile of the alt right’s deep-fried-awful-battered-in-bullshit posterboy, Milo Yiannopoulos.

We are all painfully aware that gay, white, cisgender male narratives have too-long dominated queer media, including those of us who are ourselves gay, white, cisgender men. Just this week, we saw our sisters at AfterEllen.com have to cease editorial operations because a company decided that lesbians were not profitable enough — oblivious to how many bi and lesbian women found important community there. The excess of this narrow branding of the queer community results in erasure of all those who are not highlighted, an erasure that allows stereotypes, discrimination, and abuse to continue unabated against those invisible intersections.

The Out profile of Yiannopoulos represents the peak of this harm. Here is awhite supremacist whose entire career has been built on the attention he can get for himself through provocation. His attacks against women, people of color, Muslims,transgender people, and basically anybody who doesn’t like him are as malicious as they come, and he catalyzes his many “alt-right” followers to turn on any target he deems worthy of abuse. This puff piece — complete with a cutesy clown photoshoot — makes light of Yiannopoulos’s trolling while simultaneously providing him a pedestal to further extend his brand of hatred. Indeed, he does so in the profile itself, openly slurring the transgender community, which Out published without any apparent concern.

As members of the LGBT media, we believe we all must hold ourselves and each other to a higher standard. Many of us are members of the LGBT community ourselves, and we all develop content that serves the LGBT community either directly as an audience, or on its behalf by educating broader audiences about our politics and our cultures. We thus have an obligation, at a minimum, to ensure that what we publish — no matter how crass or sensationalized it may be — avoids fostering harm to queer people. Out failed in this regard.

Add my name to the list of signatories. Fucker couldn’t lose access to his internet fast enough. May every microphone he bloviate into break before he gets the chance to speak.

-Shiv

It’s Bisexual+ Awareness Week!

It’s bisexual+ awareness week! Woooo. If you like technical terms, GLAAD started this idea as a celebration as well as awareness-raising for the polysexuality umbrella, which includes pansexuality, bisexuality, fluid sexual identities and also queer identities.

Co-founded by GLAAD, Bisexual Awareness Week seeks to accelerate acceptance of the bi+ community. #BiWeek draws attention to the public policy concerns, while also celebrating the resiliency of, the bisexual community.

Throughout #BiWeek, allies and bi+ people learn about the history, culture, community and current policy priorities of bi+ communities. You can view this information in Spanish, too.

On September 23, GLAAD, BiNet USA, and other LGBT and bisexual advocacy organizations invite you to participate in the 18th annual Celebrate Bisexuality Day, an event promoting bi+ visibility.

The Good!

GLAAD has this super detailed page for how to participate. Here’s the nice part! The objective is awareness, meaning the bare minimum is what you’re doing right now–reading. Hurray.

The Bad :(

Even most LGBT activists and sexual assault activists are unaware of the statistics that while straight women have a 17 percent chance of being raped and lesbians have a 13 percent chance, bisexual women have a 46 percent chance of being raped. In other words, bisexual women are approximately three times more likely to be raped. Bisexual women also have higher rates of sexual assault, intimate partner abuse, and stalking, compared to both straight and lesbian women. In addition to this, bisexual women survivors have the lowest rates of social support when disclosing trauma, the highest rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder after rape, and the most negative experiences when seeking help from formal support resources such as rape crisis centers, therapists, police, and medical professionals.

There are many complex reasons for this huge disparity in rates of violence, but the simplest reason is that bisexual women are hypersexualized, fetishized, and sexually objectified in our culture and media. Bisexual women are stereotyped as slutty, pretending to be bi for sexual attention, and always interested in sex (particularly threesomes). Basically, we are not viewed as people but as sexual objects, always eager to fulfill pornographic fantasies. Our consent doesn’t matter, because our bisexual identity is perceived as automatic consent to anyone and everyone who might be interested in us.

Additionally, bisexual women can be victims of “corrective” rape, a hate crime in which someone is raped because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, usually in an attempt to “fix” them. Bi women are also more likely to end up in abusive relationships, in part because abusers are good at targeting vulnerable people who have poor social support, and also because abusers can use biphobia to threaten their partner, lower their self-esteem, or pressure them into sex against their will.

Biphobia also presents a huge barrier to receiving help in the aftermath of an assault — the stereotype that bi women are slutty and untrustworthy, for example, may lead to friends and family doubting a bi woman survivor when she comes forward. Biphobia also leads to social isolation and causes resources intended to support survivors to be unsafe for bi women. Biphobia within the LGBT community itself is particularly harmful, leaving bi women survivors with very little support. Bi women survivors who are marginalized in other ways face even further barriers to help — trans bi women, bi women of color, and disabled bi women survivors are some of the most vulnerable in our community.

This is kind of what I’ve been alluding to at my dissatisfaction with a lot of contemporary models of abuse. While it’s great cis feminists have been empowering cishet women, and will continue to do so, there’s a tendency to be dismissive when it comes to other permutations of abuse–especially if it’s female perpetrated. Proponents of the Duluth model outright state that women cannot be perpetrators of abuse, and that if violence occurs where they aren’t the victim, it was self defence. Jaw-droppingly victim blamey. The model is starting to fall out of fashion, but still has its die-hards who go on erasing queer DV as well as male victims.
And yeah, like the Advocate says–bi+ and trans doesn’t make for a fun time in most women’s violence resources.

Signal boost and spread the word.

-Shiv

Signal boosting: Everybody’s against rape as long as we’re not proposing to do anything about it

Content Notice: Abuse and sexual assault.

Yes Means Yes is a delightful blog, in part because it discusses the sort of 300-level feminist analyses that I don’t often get outside of school. As a whole, it covers a wide range of topics. Unsurprisingly, I found their BDSM posts and immediately exploded with glee–feminist kinksters write amazing stuff. I certainly wasn’t disappointed in Thomas’ series on the intersection of kink and rape culture.

It is a long read, but my gosh it is detailed and sharp and to the point. Check out some of these select quotes:

[Read more…]