As I keep repeating these bathroom bills hurt cis women because it is based solely on how someone looks to some other people. If as in this case a cis woman did not look feminine enough for the server and so this woman was forced to show her breasts. How is that feminism work going TERF people. These bathroom bills and the hype of fake false stories of danger to women only make all women less safe. See now people that look like men legally might have to use a female’s bathroom, so all a cis man has to say is he is trans and they can legally be in the woman’s bathroom. Same for any female that wants to go into the men’s room only needs to claim to be a trams women. All due to hate and bigotry making a problem where none existed. Think of it, the only assaults I have heard about in female restrooms is from cis people attacking cis females because they think they are trans. Hugs
The 18-year-old high school student said she unzipped her hoodie to show she had breasts after a Buffalo Wild Wings server didn’t believe she is a woman.
A Minnesota teenager filed a charge of discrimination against a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant Tuesday, alleging a server followed her into the women’s restroom and demanded she “prove” she was a girl.
Gerika Mudra, 18, went to dinner in April with a friend in Owatonna, about an hour south of Minneapolis. When she went to the restroom, a server followed her inside and banged on the stall door while saying: “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here,” according to Gender Justice, a Minnesota gender-equality organization that filed the charge on Mudra’s behalf.
Gerika Mudra, 18, says she was harassed by a server who accused her of being a boy in the girls’ bathroom.Gender Justice
Mudra, a biracial lesbian who isn’t transgender, said that she has been in similar situations before, when people have suggested she’s in the wrong restroom, but that when she tells them she’s a woman they leave her alone. However, when she came out of the stall at Buffalo Wild Wings and told the server, “I am a lady,” she said, the server responded, “You have to get out now,” Gender Justice said in a statement.
Mudra said she felt she had to prove to the server that she is a woman, so she unzipped her hoodie to show she has breasts. The server didn’t say anything in response but left the restroom, Mudra said.
“She made me feel very uncomfortable,” Mudra said. “After that, I just don’t like going in public bathrooms. I just hold it in. … I want to be able to use the bathroom in peace.”
Inspire Brands, which represents Buffalo Wild Wings, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Buffalo Wild Wings in Owatonna, Minn.Google Maps
Gender Justice filed the charge of discrimination with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, arguing that what happened to Mudra violates the state’s Human Rights Act, which protects people from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, among other protected statuses.
Sara Jane Baldwin, senior staff attorney at Gender Justice, said at a news conference Tuesday that even though Mudra isn’t trans, the server’s actions “were based on assumptions that she made about” Mudra, and that Minnesota’s law protects against discrimination based on stereotypes or assumptions about protected characteristics like gender identity.
“Businesses have a legal obligation not to just have antidiscrimination policies on paper, but to train staff and ensure that those policies are followed in real time,” Baldwin said. “When that doesn’t happen, the business is liable for the harm caused.”
Gender Justice said Mudra’s experience “reflects a broader climate of fear and suspicion aimed at anyone who doesn’t conform to narrow expectations of what girls and women ‘should’ look like.” That suspicion has been driven largely by the wave of state legislation targeting trans people, particularly their access to school sports and bathrooms that align with their gender identities, though Minnesota hasn’t enacted any such legislation.
Nineteen states have laws that prohibit trans people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identities in K-12 schools, and in many of those states the restrictions apply to other government-owned buildings, as well, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Twenty-seven states prohibit trans people from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities.
“This kind of gender policing is, unfortunately, nothing new,” Megan Peterson, executive director at Gender Justice, said in a statement. “And yet, in our current climate we have to ask: What if Gerika had been a trans person? Would this story have ended differently? That’s the terrifying reality too many trans people live with every day.”
Even if Mudra had been trans, she would be able to file a discrimination complaint under state law in Minnesota, which is one of 21 states and Washington, D.C., that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Two states explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation only, and six additional states interpret existing measures against discrimination based on sex to also include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Twenty-one states don’t have explicit protections from discrimination based on gender identity in public accommodations.
there are people who find it in order to share it with people who need it. There is a fine video in this post, and a link to another blog that is oh-so-nice; I saw great news about bottle-nose porpoises, and even a headline for a story in the US. Please care for your health, and let yourself see there are good things happening. Some of them, readers can support. 💖
August 13, 1961 The city of Berlin was divided as East Germany sealed off the border between the city’s eastern (Soviet Union-controlled) and western (American-, British- and French-controlled) sectors in order to halt the flight of economic and political refugees to the West. Two days later, work began on the Berlin Wall. The Wall, 155 km (96 miles) of barbed wire and concrete, completely surrounded West Berlin and had to be rebuilt three times. The wall stood until November 9, 1989. The Berlin Wall Online
August 13, 1971 slain Kent State student U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell announced there would be no federal grand jury investigation into the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University. Ohio National Guard troops had fired on unarmed anti-Vietnam-War demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine. Atty General John Mitchell Defenders of the National Guard said they were responding to a shot from the crowd though that was never verified. But in 2007 a tape was released through a freedom-of-information request to the FBI revealing a Guard officer issuing the command,“Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!” Kent State’s protest was part of massive spontaneous national outrage over Pres. Richard Nixon’s expansion of the war through his invading non-combatant Cambodia. Vice President Spiro Agnew had referred to the campus protesters as Nazi “brownshirts.” Ohio National Guard troops firing on anti-war demonstrators at Kent State University The day before, Ohio Govenor James Rhodes had referred to the student demonstrators as “the strongest, well-trained militant revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America. They’re worse than the brownshirts and the Communist element and the night riders and the vigilantes. They are the worst type of people that we harbor in America.”
August 13, 1992 President George H.W. Bush announced strong United States support for the draft Chemical Weapons Convention completed at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. The president stated that the U.S. was committed to the treaty, and called on all other nations to support the treaty and to pledge adherence to it. Chemical weapons treaty update (2001)
August 10, 1883 Adrian “Cap” Anson refused to field his visiting Chicago White Stockings team in an exhibition baseball game if the Toledo Mud Hens included star catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker in their lineup. Chicago’s Captain Anson, who grew up in slaveholding Iowa, said he wouldn’t share the diamond with a non-white player. After more than an hour’s delay, Charlie Morton, the Toledo manager, insisted that if Chicago forfeited the game, it would also lose its share of the gate receipts; Anson relented. Moses Fleetwood Walker Morton had not planned to have Walker catch due to injury, but insisted on putting him in at centerfield, despite Cap Anson’s objections.
August 10, 1948 Gay rights activist Harry Hay organized what later became the Mattachine Society (originally ~ Foundation), a groundbreaking 1950s gay rights organization. The group was named after the Mattachines, a medieval troupe of men who went village-to-village advocating social justice. Mattachine: Radical Roots of Gay Liberation
August 10, 1984 Two Plowshares activists, Barb Katt and John LaForge, damaged a guidance system for a Trident submarine with hammers at a Sperry plant in Minnesota. In sentencing them to six months’ probation, U.S. District Judge Miles W. Lord commented, “Why do we condemn and hang individual killers, while extolling the virtues of warmongers?” Barb Katt More on the Sperry Software Pair More plowshares actions
August 10, 1988 President George H.W. Bush signed legislation apologizing and compensating for the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. President Franklin Roosevelt had authorized the round-up of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry, some of whom were American citizens, as security risks. Most lost all their property and were moved to relocation camps for the duration of the war (though not in Hawaii, then not yet a state, where public opposition would not allow it).
August 10, 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second woman and 107th Justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
August 10, 2005 Mehmet Tarhan was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on two charges of “insubordination before command” and “insubordination before command for trying to escape from military service” because he refused to serve in the Turkish Army. He would not sign any paper, put on a uniform, nor allow his hair and beard to be cut. He went on two extended hunger strikes to protest his arrest and abuse while in Sivas Military Prison. War Resisters International has supported his efforts throughout his ordeal. He was released unexpectedly from prison after one year. Read more
Today’s Zoom talk is with Ed Wexler, who draws for Cagle Cartoons. Join us as we talk about cartoons, art supplies, caricatures, SoCal weather, and Duck Tales.
(The Zoom chat is on the page, linked at “Read On Substack” above. It’s an hour & 15 min.–A.)
On Tuesday, it was announced that the Trump Regime, which is a petri dish of conspiracy theories, is canceling almost $500 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines to protect the nation against future viral threats.
The federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA, which is also the noise Pete Hegseth makes when throwing up in a back alley dumpster), which oversees the nation’s defenses against biological attacks, is terminating 22 contracts with university researchers and private companies to develop new uses for the mRNA technology, because the Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is not a doctor or medical expert, but a conspiracy-theorist whack job.
Lunatics who believe vaccines cause autism and come with tracking chips so the Deep State Illuminati baby-eating reptillians can keep track of you are ecstatic. Actual scientists, doctors, and public health experts, not so much.
Showing evidence that the brain worm may have eaten more than we first believed, RFK Jr. said, “Let me be absolutely clear: HHS supports safe, effective vaccines for every American who wants them. That’s why we’re moving beyond the limitations of mRNA vaccines for respiratory viruses and investing in better solutions.”
This is like when Trump tried to get rid of Obamacare with “something better.”
The first COVID vaccine was developed during the first Trump regime, but that administration never had a plan to roll it out to the public. They were planning to hide it all behind a toilet at MAGA-Lardo. Thankfully, Joe Biden won the 2020 election and made the vaccines effective. Now, the same regime that took credit for the vaccine is trying to destroy it.
Michael Osterholm, who runs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said, “This may be the most dangerous public health judgment that I’ve seen in my 50 years in this business. It is baseless, and we will pay a tremendous price in terms of illnesses and deaths. I’m extremely worried about it.” He’s worried.
Every single MAGAt who yelled “Go get another booster, soy boy” during a losing argument responded with, “Yee-hay, yee-haw, yee-haw.”
Mary Holland, the president and CEO of The Children’s Health Defense, said, “While we believe the mRNA vaccines should be taken off the market, the announcement is a positive move towards protecting public health.” By the way, the Children’s Health Defense was founded by RFK Jr, but I’m sure the people running that organization are totally credible (insert rolling eyes here).
I had a feeling it was bad to make the nation’s top health official a guy who believes in chemtrials and likes to tool around town in a car with a whale’s head strapped to it. (snip-MORE, and it’s good/not good. Clay’s commentary is what’s good; the news is not.)
Do You Know Who Created The Super Soaker? by Lique Read on Substack
It was him!
Lonnie Johnson. A NASA Scientist and Inventor.
Also, an African American. Though that should not make any difference. The part of his history that angered me, though I should not be surprised, was that Hasbro had tried to jilt this man out of $73 million dollars! I could not believe it. But him being the super star brain that he is won at his day in court.
This is hugely pertinent to our interests. And the history callback of Dobbs/Roe is spot on!! This needs we the people’s work sooner rather than later. The story linked within is important background for working on this. Seriously: pick one or two (or more!) rights organizations and do what you can with them, now, while it’s not still too late, and stick with it until the other side is defeated. Please don’t wait until this is in court. Then:
A very sound scheme is to check in with your states on their legislative websites, see what the laws are right now, and what’s in the chute. Overturning Obergefell can’t/won’t change state laws regarding marriage, just as overturning Roe didn’t change state laws regarding repro rights. But knowing what could be coming, especially in red states, is imperative for getting ourselves protected, and protecting others. If your state is safe, well, pick another state that isn’t, and help them out. If your state has no law at all, lobby hard to get one, ASAP. And thanks!-A.
Some of Trump’s judicial nominees have refused in confirmation hearings to acknowledge that the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, striking down state bans on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, was correctly decided. According to an analysis by JP Collins at the legal website Balls and Strikes, Eric Tung, who Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, said only, “the Supreme Court granted such a right.” William Mercer, a nominee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, said Obergefell is “binding precedent,” but declined to “grade the Supreme Court.”
As Collins points out, these verbal gymnastics to avoid saying the case was correctly decided mirror those of Trump’s first term Supreme Court nominees who said Roe v. Wade was precedent but would not say it was correctly decided — and then voted to overturn it.
One might say marriage equality is different from abortion. Obergefell is just 10 years old, and Roe was decades old. But the most important feature that both decisions share is the enmity of the Christian right, and its determination to overturn them, no matter how many years or decades it takes.
Even before the court decided Obergefell in 2015, the Christian right was already planning to treat it just like Roe. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision, they argued, was not the end of the abortion issue but rather the beginning. They used money, media, political might, religion, and relentless organizing to use abortion to drive politics and shape the judiciary. Their plans for Obergefell and LGBTQ rights are no different.
Photo by Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Scottie's Playtime 