I don’t care if you watch it, but I want to make a point about the resurgence of bathroom bills. You know those bills that say trans people must use the bathroom of their assigned sex at birth. Mostly because cis women have been told that trans women or women who do not look feminine enough will violate and hurt them. Yes we must judge everyone by their looks so we can tell who fits the girl enough or the boy enough categories. We already know that the idea that a person will go to the effort to claim to be trans to assault women in a bathroom is debunked and stupid. If a guy wants to assault women they are not going to change their entire life to do it in a woman’s bathroom, they will just charge into one and do it, or do it when the woman comes out or a dozen other ways. It simply is not reasonable. But let’s go back to comfort. A cis female person I respect said she would be uncomfortable in a bathroom with a “manly looking woman”. OK please look at this person in the video that says they are trans. That means if these “go to the toilet of your assigned birth” laws are enforced this person would be forced by law to use a female’s bathroom no matter how uncomfortable for them or the women. This is the stupidity of these laws and the people pushing the bigotry. Look at this guy, what bathroom does he belong in? These bathroom laws are based in bigotry and made up fears. What are you people doing in the bathroom, holding a social gathering? We have to understand what is driving these bathroom bill laws is an attempt to stop societal change and progression by the groups that are scared of the new ways. The die hard religious groups, the traditionalist who say it was not done this way when I was growing up, and the people that just simply feel the need to control society to make sure it stays the same so they feel comfortable. Hugs
A cisgender female cancer survivor who had her breasts removed said that public restroom users regularly challenge her gender, making her nervous about such confrontations.
Tiffany Liles-Taylor — a 43-year-old lesbian woman from the English town of Enderby, Leicestershire, about 96 miles north of London — was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy in 2020.
“I’ve had to carry around these really heavy things my whole life,” she told ITV. “I was in my forties and they were starting to get droopy anyway – so I thought ‘these can go’.”
After a long recovery, she returned to work as a ward clerk in a local hospital in spring 2021. However, the short-haired woman now finds that she’s regularly misgendered.
She said that she gets called “Timothy” more than “Tiffany” and has high social anxiety because she has short hair and is quite masculine, causing others to assume that she’s a guy when they see her together with her wife.
“Public toilets are very stressful because people will always challenge me whenever I go in,” she said. “They will ask me if I’m in the right toilet, or get members of staff to question why I’m there— to which I have to constantly explain that I had cancer, not a sex change.”
“It’s that confrontation that I hate. I want people to understand that I am a woman, and I am in the right place,” she added.
When she wears clothing or wigs that are commonly seen as more feminine, she says she still gets mistreated because the clothes make her feel inauthentic and uncomfortable.
England has laws allowing public accommodation access for LGBTQ+ people and forbidding discrimination against queers. But even such legal protections can’t stop misgendering and harassment from ignorant individuals.
Liles-Taylor isn’t the only cis female who has been harassed in a public restroom for her gender presentation.
In November, a young cis woman with short hair recorded another woman harassing her in the public restroom of the Rampart Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada because the woman assumed she was transgender.
In the U.S., right-wingers have created a panic about trans individuals using public bathrooms, claiming that trans people are sexual predators and that public accommodation laws allow them to sexually harm women and children. In reality, the vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by cisgender men and women.
For those who had any doubts that this was not really the people rising up but actually a well funded well organized by right wing billionaires’ effort to stop society from progressing further from the bible views of how to live. This article points out how these groups get started and funded. It points out the ones driving these issues are the religious ones founded by Christian fundamentalist billionaires with the goal of creating a repressive society that will conform to a hierarchical theocracy with them at the top being the rulers. It is not so much about god as it is power to rule over others as god’s messengers. The interview is not long but really informative. Hugs
Imara Jones accepting the NABJ-NAHJ Journalist of Distinction AwardPhoto: Screenshot
Imara Jones is an award-winning journalist, thought leader, and content creator whose work focuses on trans people and the intersection of religious fundamentalism, the LGBTQ+ community, and civil rights. The sequel to her award-winning podcast The Anti-Trans Hate Machinedrops in March.
Jones shared some time on a chilly afternoon in Brooklyn to describe the state of the far right’s campaign targeting trans kids, drag queens, and “groomers,” from a billionaire Christian cabal spreading nationalist gospel and unlimited cash to a new and made-to-order frontline hate group called Gays Against Groomers.
LGBTQ Nation:I imagine for your work it’s got to be a full-time job just keeping up with all the connections between attacks and protests and media fueling them, and the money fueling the organizations. Do you have a giant bulletin board in your office, like a detective, with pictures and pushpins and strings connecting everything?
IJ:Yes, we have. Generally, we create what we call sitemaps. And we kind of look for who’s where, and who are they connected to, and how they link back. And at a certain point it, you know, you don’t even have to do that as much anymore because you hear a name, or you see an organization, and you go, “Oh yeah, there are links to X.” In the right-wing space that fuels a lot of his hate, you see the usual suspects and don’t have to look that hard.
LGBTQ Nation:There’s been a recent focus on drag shows and story time hours by frontline groups and media outlets like Libs of TikTok and Project Veritas. Is that a shift away from casting young people as villains, like the ones playing girls’ sports and 10-year-olds testifying in state legislatures, and moving to adults as villains or what they’re calling groomers? Is that an easier sell for hate groups and far-right media than attacks on kids and parents?
IJ:I don’t see it as an either/or. I see it as an expansion of the battlespace rather than a conversion of it from one thing to the other. We have to understand from the perspective of the right that these distinctions about gender and gender identity, it’s like blurred into one thing. Drag is very threatening because it has wide acceptance. It’s about bending gender, right? And about the part of gender that’s an illusion. And so for them that fits very much in the space of trans people.
And when I look at conservative media, they haven’t let up at all on trans people and trans kids. You know, we have anti-trans bills that were passed this year in Georgia and in Florida, and as a centerpiece of the campaigns of [Republican Gov. of Texas] Greg Abbott and [Republican Gov. of Florida] Ron DeSantis, and on and on and on. There was a huge emphasis in Uvalde in an online campaign that moved to conservative media that then moved to a member of Congress to say that the shooter was trans. So, I don’t think that it’s a flip. It’s looking new to us because it’s greatly expanded, but it’s actually not.
LGBTQ Nation: Tell us about the Betsy DeVos/Prince clan, and why we don’t hear about their influence.
IJ:Can I take those questions in reverse? I would say why don’t we hear about it, one, because they’re powerful people and people are afraid of powerful people, including newspapers, and we know that. Secondly, I think it’s because they have a degree of mainstream credibility because she was a secretary of education, even in the midst of a controversial administration. And one of the reasons why they’re so effective is because their extremism is cloaked behind this air of comity and rectitude. There’s a certain way in which she composes herself, which I think doesn’t scream extremist.
LGBTQ Nation:And how about the DeVos/Prince clan itself?
IJ:When we say the DeVos family, we’re talking about the fusion of two billionaire families into one. Betsy DeVos was born Betsy Prince into the really wealthy Prince family. And then she married Richard DeVos. It’s actually a giant clan, a billionaire clan. And there is not a far-right organization, and in many cases designated hate groups, who exist without the largess of that family. Betsy DeVos, or Betsy Prince and her husband, Richard DeVos are the second generation in this billionaire kind of clan.
Richard DeVos’ father, for example, was extremely important to the founding of the Heritage Foundation. The Prince family, which is Betsy DeVos, helped to fund the headquarters of the Family Research Council, which is designated by the SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center] as a hate group. And they’ve been involved in so many far-right organizations throughout the decades. And so what you have here in this second generation is kind of a sophistication of their operation and particularly in Betsy Prince, this kind of fusion of strategy, of money and a whole host of other things.
LGBTQ Nation:How does that manifest itself?
IJ: So this family is kind of the royal family of the Christian nationalist movement. And they set the example for how to move money throughout the right wing for all of the other really wealthy families. They participated in an annual gathering of Christian nationalist billionaires called The Gathering, in which Betsy DeVos is on tape coaching them in terms of how, as a wealthy person in this far-right movement, you move money to other things, and encouraging them to do so. There is religious extremism in their views, which is what’s driving a lot of this.
As well, all of the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies came out of the DeVos Center for Family and Religion that’s housed in the Heritage Foundation. People were moved from that center into the Trump administration where they began to disseminate these policies. I think that we have to keep in mind that Betsy DeVos is just the most visible person of this large, far-right billionaire clan that has been active for over 40 years.
LGBTQ Nation:How did DeVos end up as education secretary in the Trump Administration?
IJ:They didn’t know who to appoint to anything because their win was a surprise, right? So they were like, “What in the world are we going to do?” So they turned to Erik Prince. It’s gonna sound familiar, younger brother of Betsy. And he’s like, okay, we’ll get you linked up with the right people. And one, he clued them into his sister and, two, they went to the Heritage Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation said, “Boy, you know, this is actually what we’ve wanted to do for a really long time.”
And so it flows that the Heritage Foundation would recommend Betsy DeVos because their family is a longtime founder at that center and they know that she’s been really active in education and educational circles. And then they basically started to populate the entire administration with people recommended by a combination of the Heritage Foundation and Erik Prince and that’s literally how she got in the mix.
LGBTQ Nation:The DeVos family are adherents of Dominionism. What is that?
In Ecclesiastes, there is the charge to basically create theocracies that are based on kind of a real religious caste system. And so how do you do that? The way you do that is something called Dominionism. And that is to say that you seize the seven mountains of society, you gain control of those things. And once you have control of them, you can then move society towards this theocratic vision. And so what are some of the seven mountains? They’re business and finance, they’re education, they’re the media, arts, etc. So the charge for Betsy DeVos at this epic gathering in the early 2000s was to charge really wealthy people and billionaires to pick their mountain, and then focus on it. As people who have been told over and over and over that their wealth flows from the fact that they are chosen and special, you can see how they gravitate towards something like Dominionism, and they have. Their whole family has.
LGBTQ Nation: I’d like to zero in on one particular group as an example of one at the bottom of this organizational hierarchy. What can you tell us about Gays Against Groomers? It appeared out of nowhere about six months ago, fully formed and led by a woman named Jaimee Michell. Do you think it’s organic?
IJ:There’s very little on the right that’s organic. It’s really funny, because I have to explain this a lot to mainstream and even the liberal funders, where, you know, on the left, a lot of things are organic, and people just form them and then they get funded. A lot of times, what happens on the right is, they’ll say, “Who’s gonna start an organization that will do X?” And then someone raises their hand.
This is one of the things we’re going to document next year on the podcast, but one of the things that they do on the right is that they go out and they shop for people from the communities that they’re targeting who are willing to essentially carry the message that they want them to carry if they give them a large enough check. And so they will go out and they’ll look for a Jaimee Michell — this is not uncommon — they’ll be actively looking for these people online or elsewhere. And once they find them, they will either engage them or platform them or say, “Can we introduce you to other people?” and that’s literally how it gets started.
A lot of the TERFs that you see platformed, and TERF organizations, it’s all because the Heritage Foundation went and found them and put them on a panel, and after that, all those people began to be kind of off to the races in terms of their public voice and platforming and a whole host of other things.
LGBTQ Nation:It says very prominently on the Gays Against Groomers website that they’re “a 100% independent, self-funded nonprofit organization.”
IJ: They’re not an official 501(c)(3). I think they claim that. I don’t think there are any 990’s on them. So, to self-assert that you’re self-funded, without in any way showing that you’re self-funded, and the fact that they have so many people — I can look at it right now and say they have a budget of close to a million dollars? Or over a million dollars? So where did that come from? There’s not a million dollars-worth of Gays Against Groomers money in the gay community, right? It’s not an organic conversation. Whereas like, okay, Gays Against Guns. Can they go out and do a GoFundMe campaign amongst people, raise money? Yeah. There’s support for that. But no, there’s nothing organic about this. It reads to me like a slick version of the ex-gay organizations that were funded and founded by Focus on the Family in the 1980’s.
LGBTQ Nation:What’s in store for Season 2 of Anti-Trans Hate Machine?
IJ: We are focusing on the way that the right has manufactured a cultural and media debate about the validity and worthiness of trans people and trans kids, and then has gone on to weaponize that to justify both political and actual violence.
LGBTQ Nation:What do you mean by weaponize, exactly?
IJ:So, you create a conversation. It’s like what happened in the 1930s — and there’s nothing analogous to the Holocaust — but there is an analogy to how you got there as a society. And one of the things that happened in the 1930s is that they just started a conversation about the bad people that needed to be separated from Germany. And that conversation was actually started by the Nazis. Once that conversation had reached a certain level, they use it as justification — they weaponized it — to then begin this campaign of physical separation and then targeting. You create the conversation, and then you recognize the conversation that you created, in order to take the action that you really want to take.
I gave up about 5pm I think. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to bed. I tossed, turned, rolled over until I fell asleep. By midnight I was again awake. The pain in my back and shoulders is too much to lay in any manner or direction. I got up at 1pm and went to the computers. The one loving this is Odie who is sprawled on my desk purring and snoring.
I feel like there is a hand around my spine in the middle of my back. It is squeezing and letting go, then gripping and pulling, then letting go, then squeezing again. The pain can get so bad I have to take all of my allowed medication basically putting me asleep or unable to concentrate / reason well.
At 10 PM I took a 12 hour long acting morphine, a backlofen, two 50 mg tramadol, and an 800 mg Ibprofen. All are the max now allowed by FL law, as the legislature knows more than the doctors that are trained and treating me do. I used to take much stronger morphine which helped but the Republicans in the Florida government who never studied medicine in any advanced learning feel that my pain is not worth their political posturing.
At 2am I took another two tramadol’s and a baclofen.
This was happening in several places in my spine. They just gave me injections into my spine near the base. The part near the yoke, I could tell you the place if my mind was clearer, but as Ron can tell you they have to go sideways into the spine so the needle is long and yes painful. But they really help. I am not sure if it is the same as they give women giving birth but it is great at stopping the pain.
But until now they have been trying to treat the middle of my back with muscle injections. That has failed. So I have another MRI for that section. Also again my pain doctors are insisting I up my pain medications. They want me on fentanyl. I like what I have as I can control how much I take and how. I lose that with the stronger medications. It will flood my system regardless of my activities or what I wish. But I cannot continue as it has been for the last three months. I am at the end of my tolerance.
I blame nothing but my own body and my efforts after the hurricane to help to return my home to a usable / livable state. It caused a lot more damage and pain than I had before. Too bad FEMA cannot pay for pain and suffering. The wealthy can hire people to fix the problem or afford to stay elsewhere, us poor have to deal with it as we can. I am at a loss as to what to do now, how to move forward. The goal is to get the next MRI and see what it says. If they can do injections into the spine to kill the pain, OK. If not we have to think of the next step.
Hanging out there always is surgery. But every doctor I have talked to tells me it is a never ending slippery slope. If I have the first one, I will need to have more regularly as the things hurting me back there will grow or happen even faster. It will become an arms race in my spine.
The reason for this post! I have not been able to sit and process news, the most lately I can do is watch videos. Those I think have value I have reblogged. (even with the new chair there is a spike going into my middle back) I have not looked at the comments in over a week. I plan to do that this morning. I have set aside the time to reply to as many as I can. Randy asked me today about the other blogs I went to and love. I told him I just cannot get to them, every second sitting in my chair is like a nail gun driving nails into my back.
Anyway I wanted everyone to know. I want everyone to understand why I am not getting to the wonderful comments I love. I will do so as soon as they inject my spine or increase my medications. Hugs and lots of love to all. Scottie
After writing this but before sending it I went to bed about 6 AM. I got up at 10:30 AM. Back to sitting in my chair trying to rev up my mind. Hugs
With these haters / bigots lying and making things up along with projection is the standard way they do stuff. They claim the other side is promoting violence while they get the Proud Boys to attack drag queen events. They claim the other side is full of hate while they call the LGBTQ+ evil. Another thing she claims unnamed studies that find parents find they are unable to stop their kids from being trans or non-binary, implying that laws and the left are blocking the wishes of good god loving parents to take care of their kids. The truth is parents cannot stop their kids from being born with a different gender than assigned at birth or being born non-binary but that is how they are when they are born! These people who push the idea that people can be converted to a gender are the same people who support the totally debunked idea of conversion therapy for sexual orientation. Hugs
LibsOfTikTok founder Chaya Raichik has regularly made false and misleading comments about teachers and children’s hospitals. (YouTube)
Libs Of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik has said LGBTQ+ people are “grooming children” and are “evil” in a disturbing Fox News interview.
Raichik, the figure behind the virulently anti-LGBTQ+ Twitter account known for encouraging pile-ons and spreading misinformation, elaborated on her belief that the LGBTQ+ community is a “cult” in an interview with host Tucker Carlson.
In the hour-long interview, Raichik and Carlson discussed her since-debunked claim that certain children’s hospitals were performing hysterectomies on trans teenagers.
Carlson asked Raichik if she had any “theories” about what was going on with “evil” people who offer affirming care to minors.
Raichik replied: “The LGBTQ community has become this cult and it’s so captivating, and it pulls people in so strongly, unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”
She went on to claim LGBTQ+ people “brainwash” others to “join” their movement and that it’s “really, really hard to get out of it”.
Raichik also referred to unnamed “studies” on parents who find they cannot stop their children from being trans or non-binary.
Libs of TikTok has over 1.5 million followers and received several temporary suspensions and a permanent suspension from TikTok. (@libsoftiktok/Twitter)
She said the situation is “unlike anything we’ve ever seen”, adding that it’s “extremely poisonous”.
Carlson asked Raichik if she sees a “spiritual component to any of this”, adding: “I don’t think this makes sense at all.”
“No, it doesn’t make any sense and I think – I think they’re evil,” Raichik replied.
Chaya Raichik went on Tucker Carlson and said the "LGBTQ community has become this cult… It's extremely poisonous." She later says "They're just evil people, and they're out to groom kids. They're recruiting."
“And sometimes we try to break it down a lot and we discuss why this is happening, what’s happening and whatever, and I think sometimes the simplest answer is, they’re just evil.
“They’re bad people. They’re just evil people, and they want to groom kids. They’re recruiting.”
Libs Of TikTok refers to LGBTQ+ people as ‘groomers’
This is far from the first time Raichik has shared anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric; through her Libs Of TikTok social media accounts, she has pushed false and misleading comments about teachers, medical providers and children’s hospitals.
Since the account first came to prominence, Raichik has described people who teach children about gender and sexuality as “groomers”. She has also used her platform to hit out at all-age drag shows.
Her most controversial moment came when she claimed Boston Children’s Hospital was performing hysterectomies on trans minors. In the weeks after she publicised her since-debunked claims, staff faced death threats and the hospital was targeted with two anonymous bomb threats.
Raichik originally tried to keep her identity a secret, but her real name was eventually revealed by the Washington Post.
We have a new addition to our home, Ron named him Tupac. We know almost nothing about him. He was a stray that attached to a neighbor’s wife, and when they moved here he came with them. The wife then died and the man said the cat stopped even returning to the house. The man said he did not even know the gender of the cat nor if he had any of his shots, not even his age. The cat is so thin, hardly anything to him, Ron has been feeding him lots and lots of food. Ron made an appointment for Tupac with our vet for 4 PM today. We will have him chipped with us as he human parents, and make sure he gets his shots and all the tests needed to insure he is healthy. I tried hard to avoid this situation, But Ron couldn’t stand the idea of the cat being in bad weather, hurricanes, and the freezing cold. He has another companion that is feral or we would have been adopting that one also. I hope Tupac is healthy or it will break Ron’s heart, he has gotten really attached to that cat. Hugs
Read more HERE: https://jacobin.com/2022/12/ron-desan… “About twenty-five years ago, a woman standing on a sidewalk in Miami was hit by a car driven by someone covered by Allstate Corporation, the giant insurance company that has rung up more than $12 billion in profits over the past three years.
The woman, whose name was Farren Ivey, had to see a doctor because of injuries to her left leg and right shoulder.
But Allstate refused to pay for her full treatment.
So Ivey sued — and she won. Allstate even admitted that it should have paid Ivey’s full medical bill right from the beginning.”
—————————————————————————–
Photo: Shutterstock
Imara Jones accepting the NABJ-NAHJ Journalist of Distinction AwardPhoto: Screenshot
Scottie's Playtime 