Our bodies are not ours

The premise of pro-discrimination laws is that not only can another person unilaterally dictate where you can be with your body and what you can do with it, but that they should do so. North Carolina’s House Bill 2 is one such example:

Although House Bill 2 (HB2), or “The Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act,” is known as “The Bathroom Bill,” it is about so much more than bathrooms. In February 2016, thanks to the efforts of local queer and trans community organizers, the city council of Charlotte, North Carolina passed a nondiscrimination ordinance extending legal protections to LGBTQ people. By law, Charlotte businesses could no longer deny someone service or a job because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. The ordinance also granted transgender people the right to use public bathrooms marked for the gender of their choice. While the new law itself did not include any protections against many of the systemic barriers trans women of color face – like discriminatory access to housing and medical care – conservative rich white state officials clapped back.

Almost overnight, North Carolina then-governor Pat McCrory and his cronies in his legislature began drafting a state bill to shut down the nondiscrimination ordinance in Charlotte, and prevent future anti-discrimination bills from arising on the local level across the state. HB2 had five points:

(1) Transgender people must use the bathroom that matches their gender assigned at birth, regardless of their gender identity.
(2) City governments cannot pass laws protecting LGBTQ people from job discrimination or from being denied service because they are queer or trans.
(3) City governments cannot pass laws protecting working people under 18.
(4) All pre-existing laws passed by city governments protecting LGBTQ people, as well as local laws about worker wages and benefits no longer exist.
(5) People can no longer sue for any type of discrimination on the state level.

Through these five points, HB2 attacked LGBTQ people and annihilated all workers’ and marginalized people’s rights. With one law, North Carolina’s state government granted businesses and employees the right to discriminate against people. Most people in our cities had no idea. To most, it was simply “The Bathroom Bill” because Governor McCrory, as well as local, state, and national news sources built traction for HB2 by marketing it on their hatred of (and fascination with) trans people, in particular trans women of color.

Read more here.

-Shiv

 

Public asshole discovers public assholery has consequences

Poor Persecuted Patrick Fucking McCrory is back in the news again, whinging about how no one wants to work with him after engineering one of the most scientifically illiterate, unenforceable pieces of hot garbage that has ever hit a law book:

Former Gov. Pat McCrory says the backlash against House Bill 2 is making some employers reluctant to hire him but he’s currently doing consulting and advisory board work.

Yes, well, if I babysit for a neighbour and burn their house down, I don’t bloody well expect a glowing fucking review from them, do I.

McCrory has been appearing frequently in interviews with national media outlets to defend the controversial LGBT law, but he hasn’t announced what’s next for his career. In a podcast interview recently with WORLD, an Asheville-based evangelical Christian news website, McCrory talked about his challenges on the job market.

The former Republican governor says HB2 “has impacted me to this day, even after I left office. People are reluctant to hire me, because, ‘oh my gosh, he’s a bigot’ – which is the last thing I am.”

People are reluctant to hire you? I wonder what that feels like.

McCrory explained more about his current situation in an interview Monday evening with The News & Observer.

“I’ve currently accepted several opportunities in business to do work that I’d done prior to becoming governor in consulting and advisory board positions, and I’ve also been exploring other opportunities in academia, nonprofits and government,” he said. “And I’ll hopefully be making some of those decisions in the near future.”

McCrory declined to name the companies he’s working for. But the former governor said that he’s been considered for part-time university teaching positions – he wouldn’t say where – but that academic leaders “have shown reluctance because of student protests.”

“That’s not the way our American system should operate – having people purged due to political thought,” he told The N&O.

Ah–I see. When it happens to trans people, it’s “business freedom” and “common sense.” But when it happens to you, you’re being “purged.”

McCrory said he’s also “had ongoing discussions with the Trump administration, but at this point in time nothing has come to fruition.”

In the earlier podcast interview with WORLD, McCrory said the liberal groups opposing HB2 have harmed his reputation. “If you disagree with the politically correct thought police on this new definition of gender, you’re a bigot, you’re the worst of evil,” he said. “It’s almost as if I broke a law.”

You probably did, judging by the prevailing legal opinions on Title XI. But I digress.

McCrory made the case that the core of the HB2 debate is an attempt to redefine gender. “You ask the doctor if it’s a boy or a girl; you don’t ask the baby,” he said.

HB2 struck down local nondiscrimination ordinances and requires transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate while they are in schools and other government facilities.

You ask the right doctor if it’s a boy or a girl, because the wrong doctor is going to point out you’re full of shit.

Feel free to continue presenting your foot for shooting. I’d be happy to oblige.

-Shiv

 

North Carolinian Republicans: Haha, jk, we weren’t repealing HB2

Covering this presents a challenge, dear readers, because I cannot possibly scrape deep enough into the lexicon of my loathing to adequately capture my response. If you could connect to my brain directly, it would simply be white hot pain manifesting behind your eyeballs with a backdrop of millions of fingernails dragged across millions of blackboards amplified through a megaphone.

What makes this different is that it isn’t merely the standard legislative process being used to beat queer and trans people into oblivion. This is a special kind of psychopathy, the kind that could only be treated with the judicious application of an aluminum baseball bat.

To recap, Governor Roy Cooper campaigned on a promise to repeal HB2, citing the law’s punitive nature against trans folk simply for existing as well as the implications for discrimination against cisgender gay folks. Despite the fact that North Carolina seems to have voted for Cooper at least in part on his promise to do this (despite the dirty dealing and breathless histrionics we could only expect of a party so unprincipled they couldn’t find the backbone to do anything about Cheetolini), North Carolinian Republicans have decided that they know better than their own electorate.

In an apparent deal to see HB2 repealed, Cooper coordinated with the city Charlotte to see its nondiscrimination ordinances, which included protections for trans folk, repealed. Shortly after Charlotte foolishly expected honour from the same party that just foisted a god damn serial rapist into the White House, a special session was called to repeal HB2.

Except that HB2 wasn’t fucking repealed. 

The bill they’ve filed (SB4) does repeal HB2, including its restrictions mandating what bathrooms transgender people may use. However, it also creates a “Six-Month Cooling-Off Period,” in which no municipality in the state may pass any laws related to employment or public accommodations, specifically noting “access to restrooms, showers, or changing facilities.”

Meaning even if HB2 is finally put to death like the savage fucking mistake that it is, its consequences would persist for another six months. Then, North Carolinian Democrats, having said “wait a second, that’s not part of the deal,” torpedoed SB4. Meaning HB2 is still alive, if in spastic death throes.

Then these same fucking twits tried to set up Cooper for not adhering to his campaign promises!

So twice before the election Roy Cooper kills a repeal/Repeal Deal. Now after being against a repeal deal, after the election he was for it. Now he is against it again because the repeal simply has teeth, to make sure our “long national Nightmare is over.”

It is clear Coopers only motivation here is political, first last and always. And the people of North Carolina who support repeal should know Cooper sold them down the river with a wink and a nod, to radical leftists who were waiting for the repeal and start this destructive fight all over.

YOU CHRONICALLY DISHONEST SACK OF SHIT. COOPER SUPPORTED A FULL REPEAL, NOT THE BULLSHIT YOU’RE TRYING TO PULL NOW.

It gets better.

The Senate–holy fuck, don’t you love the Senate?–proposed an amendment to the bill that would EXTEND the motherfucking moratorium until the end of 2017.

I’m a writer, and I don’t have words. I would not permit these Republicans to lick the mud off my boots. Duplicitous, cowardly sacks of shit who have no qualms turning queer and trans people into political football for your asinine political fucking theatre. Fuck. Every. Single. One of you.

It’s time the football kicked back.

-Shiv

This post also appears on Modern Liberals.

Dear McCrory: You have a gender identity too

Perhaps one of the more common manifestations of cissexism is the belief that cisgender people don’t have a gender identity–as in, gender identity is a strictly trans concept. If the person pushing this opinion is a man, I can often get the point across when I suggest they next enter their work place or class room wearing a frilly pink dress, gel nails, and twelve-inch stilettos, at which point the response is often some variety of repulsion. (This tactic doesn’t work so well with women, since our patriarchal cultural system can and does, albeit inconsistently, reward women for adopting masculine norms).

Clearly our identities as they relate to gender matter to many of us. Clearly they matter enough to Governor McCrory that he felt compelled to Legislate on the issue despite admitting he had no prior knowledge of the concept. The thing about your identity is that you don’t have to question it or conscientiously test it to understand, at least intuitively, what hierarchies exist within that identity. That’s why you might not be repulsed by the idea of being “mistaken” for a woman if you don’t identify particularly strongly with masculinity or manhood to begin with, or conversely that you are repulsed by the idea because those things do matter to you.

Cue my utter shock when McCrory says gender identity is a “radical concept.”

[Read more…]

I really don’t think Republicans can lecture on privacy and safety in bathrooms

Content Notice: Victim blaming and trans antagonism.

It wasn’t even half a year ago when we were watching reactionaries come out of the woodwork to defend McCrory’s odious HB2. People who often admitted they had no knowledge or experience with gender variance suddenly felt justified in passing legislation that they deemed was for the “protection of women and girls.” The sentiment has been repeated many times by Republicans since, with no shortage of spewage coming out characterizing trans women as men, as rapists, as privacy violations, as monsters, so on and so forth.

I’m sure you’ll be devastated to learn that the reactionaries have a very odd idea of what constitutes “protection.” Zack Ford compares a number of prominent Conservative responses to Trump’s self-confessed behaviour in serially harassing and sexually assaulting women to their stance on transgender protections. (all emphasis added)

Gov. Mike Pence

On transgender protections: “Policies regarding the security and privacy of students in our schools should be in the hands of Hoosier parents and local schools, not bureaucrats in Washington, DC. The federal government has no business getting involved in issues of this nature. I am confident that parents, teachers and administrators will continue to resolve these matters without federal mandates and in a manner that reflects the common sense and compassion of our state.”

On Trump’s 2005 remarks: “It’s absolutely false to suggest that at any point in time we considered dropping off this ticket… He said last night very clearly that that was talk, not actions. And I believe him and I think the contrast between that and what the Clintons were involved in 20 years ago — the four women that were present last night — was pretty dramatic.”

…

James Dobson

On transgender protections: “If you are a married man with any gumption, surely you will defend your wife’s privacy and security in restroom facilities. Would you remain passive after knowing that a strange-looking man, dressed like a woman, has been peering over toilet cubicles to watch your wife in a private moment? What should be done to the pervert who was using mirrors to watch women and girls in their stalls?”

On Trump’s 2005 remarks: “The comments Mr. Trump made 11 years ago were deplorable and I condemn them entirely. I also find Hillary Clinton’s support of partial birth abortion criminal and her opinion of evangelicals to be bigoted. There really is only one difference between the two. Mr. Trump promises to support religious liberty and the dignity of the unborn. Mrs. Clinton promises she will not.”

…

Gary Bauer, American Values

On transgender protections: “This is yet another example of the Obama administration’s bizarre obsession to force women to be unwilling participants in a radical social experiment… Now Obama’s HUD bureaucrats are putting those women at risk for abuse and worse by men claiming to be women.”

On Trump’s 2005 remarks: “ The comments are obviously disgusting and unfortunate. But Donald Trump did not run as a evangelical or as somebody who ran the kind of campaign that a Pat Robertson would run. We’ll still support him, still work hard for him. His policies are 100% better than Hillary clinton’s for the country. I don’t see how any values voter that is sensible would take a tape from 11 years ago with totally inappropriate language and says somehow that leads me as a voter to stay home or vote for Hillary Clinton or throw your vote away on a third party candidate.”

In other words, Republicans are just fine with endangering women, as long as it’s Republicans who get to do the endangering.

We could check the criminology stats to see how often trans women commit crimes and what kinds of crimes they are… but that would be the rational thing to do, and Republicans are a little too busy moralizing to do any kind of introspection. They don’t see the contradiction between “all women lie about rape” and “all men talk like that.” Obviously, we can trust their judgement.

-Shiv

Look at all the tears I shed for you, McCrory

National Class Act Governor McCrory tells us some personal details concerning the way people reacted to his passing of HB2:

“It’s almost like the George Orwell book ‘1984’,” he said. “If you disagree with Big Brother or you go against the thought police, you will be purged. And you will disappear.”

No, McCrory, being fired by your boss–the electorate–is not the same thing as being disappeared by secret police.

“My wife, for example, in Charlotte – she primarily stays in Charlotte,” he said. “She’s been disinvited to charity events. Basically, they call her up and say, ‘You better not come. You better not come.…

Ohhhh, mon petit chou-fleur. Want me to kiss it better?

“My wife and I … we’re being shunned for a political disagreement, a values disagreement.”

Wow, McCrory, that sounds so difficult! I mean it’s not like your law strips trans people of human rights or anything.

“I listen to the other side … And I say, ‘I respectfully disagree with you’,” he said. “They do not say that to me, I wave to them with five fingers. They wave back with one.

I can’t ever imagine why.

And it’s personal. It’s death threats. Last week, I was verbally assaulted by a 21-year-old drunk student. She was arrested.”

[serious mode] Death threats are not okay. I will grant you that. Anger, yes, spite, absolutely, but I draw the line at advocating for violence.

As with respects to the student, that is actually quite chilling. What happened to freeze peach? My Google-fu could not confirm this incident occurred but if anyone can find word of whether this actually happened and who it happened to, please let me know. I want to contribute to their defence fund. [/serious mode]

“It was the liberals that became the bathroom police, not conservatives,” he said. “They passed an ordinance on private sector employers that said, if you don’t recognize gender identity and gender expression – two issues which I had never heard of – we will fine you.”

I’d ask what kind of fucking duncecap thinks they should legislate on issues they’ve never heard of, but we already have the answer.

McCrory said he’s been called a bigot. “I’m the farthest thing from a bigot,” he said. “I love everyone and I’m going to treat everyone equally. I want to treat people who are transgender – I want to hug ’em and say I love ’em. But I don’t agree with the concept of redefining gender. That is a major societal change.”

I have a rape whistle for those kinds of hugs. No thanks.

Please see below for my extensive tears:

-Shiv