We wuv you so much, Governor McCrory!

The Minnesota GOP is just as backward and ignorant as the GOP in any southern state. They recently tried to pass one of those awful bathroom bill that are the hot new fad among regressives; it got killed, fortunately. But we still got to listen to some prudish whining about safety (because transgender people are dangerous) and privacy (because peering at crotches is standard behavior in the bathroom), and lots of accusations that transgender people are the real bullies here. Watch the parade of bigots here:

They got their dreams of slapping down transgender men and women crushed, so the 35 Republican Minnesotans wrote a letter to McCrory of North Carolina telling him how much they liked him and wanted to follow his ideas.

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It’s the stereotypes that are toxic

Digby finds some interesting quotes. Did you know that this presidential election is about masculine vs. feminine values?

Harry Enten: I think it has more to do with society overall. A ridiculously high 68 percent of Trump supporters say society is becoming too soft and feminine. Cruz and Kasich supporters come in with 57 percent and 52 percent, respectively. Now compare those numbers with the Democratic side, where Sanders supporters were slightly less likely than Clinton supporters to say that (28 percent vs. 31 percent).

I don’t even…my first objection has to be the equation of “feminine” and “soft”, which is simply taken for granted in the question. I don’t even know what “feminine” means, or should mean — the women I know have all sorts of personalities, as do the men, and it’s simply silly to assign one stereotypical set of traits, especially an implicitly negative set, to an entire group of people and the entirety of society.

In a country where only 19% of the members of the house of representatives are women, 20% of the senate are women (an all-time high!), a third of the Supreme Court are women, and no woman has ever been president, I fully support the increasing “femininization” of our government until representation is fair and equal.

And then Digby finds another quote from a 2003 article that elevates the stereotyping to a new level of ironic absurdity.

In the House, Dennis Hastert is the Republican speaker, Nancy Pelosi the leader of the Democratic minority. Mr Hastert, a hulking former wrestling coach, is a fairly straightforward conservative: he is against abortion, gay marriage, the Kyoto protocol; for the invasion of Iraq, the death penalty. Ms Pelosi, a tiny bird-like woman, is an unabashed, card-carrying liberal.

So is child molestation one of those masculine qualities we want to increase in society?

I’d also like to know how a high school wrestling coach became a multi-millionaire. Perhaps corruption is also manly?

What has become of the good Texans?

The latest in absurd prudishness to come out of the Republican party is Ted Cruz’s opposition to masturbation, which is exactly what you’d expect of an advocate of small government.

In perhaps the most noticeable line of the brief, Cruz’s office declared, There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship. That is, the pursuit of such happiness had no constitutional standing.

You have no right to touch yourself. I don’t know how he would intend to enforce such a prohibition. but all I could think of was the work of another Texan who, unfortunately, is no longer around to respond appropriately to this nonsense. Molly Ivins is the exception that probes the rule about Texans.

That woman was a treasure.

Feminists are doomed…to laugh

ferengi

Someone mentioned me on Reddit, which is never a good thing, I’ve learned, but at least this time their comment is ironically funny. This person is announcing the imminent demise of feminism and America because human beings are apparently going extinct, to be replaced by cats.

They will trumpet nothing. They will not exist. They don’t tend to breed, having cats instead of kids, and even if they did the West will collapse soon. Occasionally some of these freaks do breed, like PZ Myers or Jessica Valenti, but those are rare exceptions. Plus PZ bred in the era before feminism completely destroyed America so I’m not sure how applicable his example is anyway.

Hey, I’m not that old! They make it sound like I was born in the paleolithic or something. Humanity is also not undergoing a population crash, so that argument is always kind of silly.

But what amused me is where this argument was made: feminists don’t breed, except for a few freakish outliers, says the guy on the Trucels subreddit.

The Truecels subreddit is an online community where involuntarily celibate males can vent and express their feelings and frustrations without fear of getting banned. The moderators of other online communities for incels (e.g. ForeverAlone) are often not so welcoming to the very people they are supposed to cater to. Females may post here too, but they will not be given any special treatment, and you will not be banned for disagreeing with one. This is a free speech subreddit.

If Jessica Valenti and I are freaks who have children (as do a great many feminists), we’re going to need a new word for people who are bitterly envious. Maybe incels ought to adopt a cat?

Jessica Williams vs. Gordon Klingenschmitt

The man is totally outclassed.

The most telling exchange is when Klingenschmitt tries to justify oppressing transgender people because all of them are sexual predators.

That is perversion. it’s people who label themselves as transgender for the purpose of getting that access to violate the rights of others.

“Is it fair to say that because you’re a priest that you’re a pedophile?”

Well, of course not.

“Why, ‘Of course not’? Why?”

Because some people are criminals and some people are not criminals.

“Could you take that logic and apply that to the transgender community?”

They’re apples and oranges.

“By apples and oranges do you mean apples and apples?”

Projection! Projection everywhere!

projection

Isn’t it weird? There are all these clueless people telling people like me what we’re thinking, and getting it so wrong. Just this morning, Ken Ham announced…


Secularists are fearful of @ArkEncounter cause they don’t want people hearing the Christian worldview they’re vehemntly intolerant of

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The Orcs never go away

Orc_Kim

I was a gamer 40 years ago (I wouldn’t call myself one now, unless “plays games occasionally” is definitive of an identity other than “human being”). Back then, games were all played on a table top, with dice or cardboard markers or even miniature painted soldiers. Sure, there was Pong, and a few other electronic games that involved moving dots and squares on a screen, but we thought of those as games in the same sense that War was a card game.

Even then, although I wasn’t really conscious of it, gaming was almost an entirely male hobby. Why, I didn’t know: I’d drop into the gaming shop in North Seattle or the one near the university in Eugene, and all the familiar stereotypes would be there: the blustering neckbeard, the socially awkward obsessive nerd, the middle-class collector, the history buff. They were all guys. People who walked in who didn’t fit into the categories were sneered at and made to feel inferior, which was part of the elite mystique of being a grown man playing with toys.

That started to change with Dungeons & Dragons, which brought in a more diverse clientele. There were girls who liked to play that. I can’t even imagine the tremors that shook the manly enclaves of the local gaming store when Pokemon and Magic, the card games, became popular — my kids were into that and I saw lots of girls joining in.

I moved on from the gaming world after college, so I missed most of the difficulties in the transition from a boys club to a slightly more open environment (which is obviously still going on, and still causing tremendous anxiety among many delicate male flowers). But here’s a woman describing her experiences in this community. It’s ugly.

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One of these states is not like the others

North Carolina:

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) late Wednesday night signed rushed legislation that, as is widely known, eliminates local governments’ ability to pass anti-discrimination measures to protect gay and transgender individuals. But what received less immediate attention was that the new law guts workplace discrimination protections for virtually everyone.

The bill also pre-empts local employment ordinances governing wages, benefits, employee protections and leave policies. It would prevent schools from allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.

The law also prohibits local ordinances regarding child labor.

Basically, assholes like businessman Art Pope used anti-LGBT bigotry to pass anti-worker legislation without a lot of people noticing (or caring–some people value their bigotry more than their welfare).

Indiana:

Gov. Mike Pence made Indiana the second state in the nation to ban abortions sought because the fetus has a disability, signing into law Thursday an expansion of the state’s already restrictive abortion laws.

Georgia:

HRC and Georgia Equality, the statewide LGBT advocacy organization, called on House Leadership and Gov. Nathan Deal to put a stop to the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act of Georgia,” H.B. 757. The bill, which just passed the Georgia Senate by a vote of 38 – 14 goes far beyond protecting the right to practice one’s religion and would instead put LGBT people couples, single parents, and unmarried couples at risk for discrimination.

The dangerous legislation goes far beyond protecting the right of free exercise of one’s religion. While falsely framed as prohibiting the state government from making funding or tax status decisions based on an organization’s views on marriage that are driven by religious belief, in reality it threatens to create a breakdown of state government services, opening the door to discrimination against same-sex couples, their families, and those who love them. Taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies could refuse to place children who are in desperate need of loving and caring homes with LGBT couples. State-funded homeless shelters could turn away unwed couples and their families. Government employees could refuse to file tax forms for same-sex couples or provide state benefits to single mothers.

Minnesota:

The battle over transgender rights has flared at the State Capitol as a group of Republican legislators unveiled a proposal Wednesday that would require people to use bathrooms and changing rooms that match their “biological sex.”

…

Gov. Mark Dayton on Wednesday decried the legislation, saying that he was “appalled” and that he would veto it if it were to reach his desk. “This is about pandering to their extreme issue,” Dayton said.

He added: “They just keep bashing people for their own political advantage. … They’re wrong on the issue, and they’re wrong on the morality.”

It’s kind of weird. Dayton is an extremely wealthy businessman, and once upon a time he would have been stereotyped right into the Republican party. But he’s a Democrat, and he’s also got all these liberal, progressive views and doesn’t think his position of power should be used stomp on the poor and give more advantages to his wealthy cronies.