The biology of gender, from DNA to the brain | Karissa Sanbonmatsu

Again a biologist destroys the idea that gender is binary, male / female.   Really just as science moved on from the ideas of 2,500 years ago of biblical writers that couldn’t understand the solar system or have an idea of germ theory, it has moved on from the 1950s stereotypical two genders model of male / female only model popular in the 1950s, where men were automatically at the top of the chart.   Science from a scientist destroys tradition.  Female / male brains develop differently in the womb.   Well it was never this way before or hey tradition was this all my life so it should still be.  It is not just feelings, it is based in science facts.  Hugs 

How exactly does gender work? It’s not just about our chromosomes, says biologist Karissa Sanbonmatsu. In a visionary talk, she shares new discoveries from epigenetics, the emerging study of how DNA activity can permanently change based on social factors like trauma or diet. Learn how life experiences shape the way genes are expressed — and what that means for our understanding of gender.

Matt Walsh is WRONG about sex | The Biological Sex Constellation

This is for those who have tried to say that gametes are the total determination of sex. That is wrong and has been wrong for some time. Again gains in scientific medical studies shows sex is not binary. Medical understanding has evolved, knowledge has moved on from the textbooks of the 1950s. I wish some people could. What an incredible video. At the very end in a small few second clips he explains about his finger nails. Hugs

chapters

00:00 – introduction

02:50 – building a visual model of biological sex

12:20 – sex isn’t binary

15:55 – what is a female?

21:19 – charting intersex people on the sex settings graphic

25:20 – 45,X/46,XY mosaicism

29:35 – conclusion

Man has screaming tantrum in Petco because of its gender-neutral bathroom

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/07/man-has-screaming-tantrum-in-petco-because-of-its-gender-neutral-bathroom/

A private gender neutral bathroom is normally one that is single person / family usage with a door lock.  This raw outrage is what right wing lies and propaganda that trans people are just men trying to attack little girls in bathrooms.  This man felt entitled enough to shout and abuse lower level employees in public over his perceived grievance.  He felt he wouldn’t face any consequences for doing so.  Also these people think they are the only people that have a say and they voice the opinion of the majority of people when they do not.   They get to decide who has what rights in public, no one else.  They are in charge in their minds.  Trans people have been around forever and using public bathrooms for as long as the facilities existed.  How crazy and entitled have these right wing maga outrage addicts.    Hugs

Even his dog seemed embarrassed of him.

By Molly Sprayregen Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Man holds dog on a leash while yelling at Petco employees

Photo: Screenshot

A video has been making the rounds on social media of a man having a meltdown inside a Fairview, Ohio Petco because the location had a private gender-neutral bathroom.

The footage depicts the man yelling at employees: “This is stupid! People have had enough of that crap. I don’t care what your policy is.” In the meantime, his terrified (and perhaps embarrassed) dog tries to pull him in the opposite direction.

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One employee then tells him to “ask to speak with somebody.”

“I just did!” he screamed, gesturing toward the person behind the desk at the grooming department. “She just told me it didn’t matter. She’s about to talk to me like that?”

He then begins to walk out.

“Stop with the gender-neutral sh*t,” he says as he heads toward the exit. “Men and women are different.”

He then demanded the employees “pass it up the chain” because “people are tired of it.” As he says this, an employee stands at the door and emphasizes that he needs to leave.

“You’ll have to do that because it’s your concern,” the employee says.

As the man repeatedly tells him to “pass it up the chain,” the employee again responds, “I don’t have a problem with it so I’m not going to.”

@rach.arianna

Gender neutral bathrooms. Screaming at employees over gender neutral bathrooms. @Petco employees handled this so well, major props to them! #makeracistsafraidagain #snowflakes #republicansoftiktok #pride #publicfreakout

♬ original sound – Rach

The incident comes on the heels of a chaotic Pride Month during which conservatives repeatedly called for boycotts of any company that expressed support for the LGBTQ+ community or sold Pride merchandise.

In addition to posting videos of themselves walking the aisles of stores like Target and being outraged by rainbow clothing, some even threatened violence, with multiple Target locations receiving bomb threats.

Parents protest school district’s no opt-out policy for LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/07/parents-protest-school-districts-no-opt-out-policy-for-lgbtq-inclusive-curriculum/

Gay and trans people exist, get over it!   Gay and trans kids exist.  LGBTQ+ people are real and in every part of society.  We deserve equality and our civil rights.  We deserve representation in media as much as white religious people.  These programs are not sexual acts or positions instructions.   These programs do not teach kids how to change their genders and flaunt their parent’s god.  What they do is give kids information on what some feelings they are having might be, they teach that different people exist.  These programs increase understanding, acceptance, and tolerance for people that are different.   That is what really is horrifying to these religious bigots.  They seem to think if they deny that LGBTQ+ people are real, if they wipe out any representation of them in media of all kinds, they can make the LGBTQ+ disappear.  Poof, gone.  It doesn’t work that way!  It is like claiming that redheads don’t exist and removing books and movies that have redheads in them that redheads will disappear.  Do they think if they ignore people of color, they will just stop existing?  It doesn’t happen that way.  Like red hair and skin color being LGBTQ+ is something you are born as, it is not learned or a lifestyle choice.  Remember there have been gay and trans kids / people in all the history of the human existence. I grew up in a time and place where there were no books about gay kids, there were no movies with gay kids, there were no out gay people among anyone I knew.  Yet I was gay, I knew it in every part of me that I was attracted to boys growing up.  I felt it, I was experiencing it, but I had no understanding of what it was.  As I got near my teens, I thought I was the only one in the world that felt this way.  How great it would have been for me in school to have been able to see a movie with a gay boy and have it be accepted as normal.  How great it would have been to read stories of gay boys instead of straight boys and girls only all the time.  It is like if you were black and had to watch movies or read books with only white people in them.  And think how great it would have been had a teacher explained to me and my classmates what those feelings were, and that there was a world of good role models for people like me.   Think of the years of teenage bullying that could have been avoided or tempered if the schools / teachers had inclusion and acceptance programs.  These religious bigots want their kids to be able to shame and insult / bully LGBTQ+ kids without any push back or consequences.  These bigots have to learn to coexist with others.   They are not living in a bubble, in isolation.  They are like the Amish except they are not happy with themselves being allowed to ignore advances / changes in the world but they are demanding that everyone else do so also.  They are demanding that everyone live as they do and the world pretend that only they are real.     Hugs


A group of parents is suing the school board to allow them to opt their children out of LGBTQ+-inclusive lessons.

By John Russell Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Parents protest Montgomery County Public Schools no opt-out policy.

Parents protest Montgomery County Public Schools no opt-out policy.Photo: Screenshot/WUSA9

Parents are demanding that a Maryland school district allow them to opt their children out of its LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum.

As Axios reported last month, in March, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Rockville, Maryland, ended a policy allowing parents to opt their students out of the district’s pre-K–12 language arts curriculum, which had been updated to include books featuring LGBTQ+ characters.


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According to a district statement on its “Inclusive and Welcoming Learning” initiative, the LGBTQ+-inclusive materials are part of the district’s efforts to cultivate “an inclusive and welcoming learning environment” and “to create opportunities where all students see themselves and their families in curriculum materials.”

In a Frequently Asked Questions section of the statement, the district notes that there is no “explicit instruction on gender and sexual identity in elementary school as part of content instruction,” adding that the LGBTQ+-inclusive books “include a diversified representation of people.”

The decision to end the opt-out policy, which the district instituted last October, led to an outcry from religious groups and members of the community. Protesters began showing up at Montgomery County School Board meetings in late March.

In May, a group of Christian and Muslim families sued the Montgomery County school board and superintendent, arguing that not allowing them to opt out of the lessons violates their First Amendment rights.

“Our clients represent families from all across Montgomery County with diverse religious faiths,” Will Haun, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty which is representing the families, told KATV in May. “And while they have differences on those issues, they share one thing in common, which is the right of parents to direct their children’s religious upbringing and their education, especially when it comes to sensitive issues, like a person’s identity, their child’s own identity.”

According to WUSA9, the lawsuit points to a Maryland law that requires school systems to establish opt-out policies for students. But in its own court filing, MCPS said that the school administrators are allowed to deny opt-out requests if they become too burdensome.

“Individual schools could not accommodate the growing number of opt-out requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment and undermining MCPS’s educational mission,” MCPS’s response read.

Last Thursday, both protesters and counter-protesters again descended on a Montgomery County School Board meeting. As WUSA9 reported, the protest against the no opt-out policy was led by Muslim parents, one of whom argued that religious children were being bullied and labeled as bigots by their peers.

“You say you want to protect the rights of trans children and their families while simultaneously you violate the rights of other children and their families,” Nadhira Rasheed said.

Rachel Hull, the parent of a non-binary child, was among the counter-protesters. “Much of the opt-out arguments are couched as parental rights and religious freedom,” she told WUSA9. “But what it boils down to is that the LGBT+ community is being told that their very existence is abnormal. And that their identity should be a source of shame.”

Italy begins stripping lesbian mothers of their parental rights

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/07/italy-begins-stripping-lesbian-mothers-of-their-parental-rights/

Right wing governments working with Christian churches to deny rights to LGBTQ+ people.  To stop equality, to stop same sex marriage.  To deny family status at the same time as right governments and churches claim family units are best for children.  We already know that children raised in same sex households do as well as or better than children in traditional opposite sex households.  This is an attempt to make anything but the traditional male / female relationship status meaningless.  Sure you can have civil partnerships but you get no rights with it, same with same sex marriage in the US if the republican fundamentalist religious right has its way.  Because it is not good enough for those people to be able to do their things, do their beliefs, follow their own doctrines, their goal is to force everyone else to live by their church rules also.   Hugs

 
Two lesbian mother and baby on bed having fun
Photo: Shutterstock

In conjunction with its crackdown on the rights of same-sex parents, the Italian government has begun retroactively stripping same-sex parents of their legal connection to their children.

Michela Leidi told the Daily Mail that she “cried for ten days” after receiving a letter informing her she would be removed from her daughter’s birth certificate. “It was as if I did not exist.”


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The couple doesn’t know why they were targeted as one of the first to have their legal status changed retroactively, as in most cities the policy has been focused on new babies born. They said their community, friends, and family have always supported them.

“I suspect the government is afraid that a family that looks different, like ours, can be as happy – maybe even happier sometimes – as a traditional family,” Liedi said. “On paper, they say Giulia has one mother but we know she has two. We will do everything possible to prove we are a good family.”

Her wife added, “No one from the government or the prosecutors came to see that we are a happy family with a happy baby.”

While same-sex civil unions have been legal in the country since 2016, same-sex couples do not have the right to adopt, thanks in part to opposition from the Catholic Church. Surrogacy remains illegal in Italy and there are restrictions that prevent the adoption of “stepchildren” by one parent. Medically assisted reproduction, like in vitro fertilization (IVF), is only available to heterosexual couples.

Viola became pregnant through artificial insemination, and the couple had to travel to Spain to receive the treatment.

Until March, there were several Italian cities where same-sex couples could be listed as “parents”—as opposed to “mother” and “father”—on birth registrations. But the Interior Ministry began sending letters ordering an end to the practice. 

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, made anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric a cornerstone of her campaign for office. She opposes allowing same-sex couples to adopt as well as marriage quality, calling civil union “good enough” for LGBTQ+ couples.

“Yes to the natural family, no to LGBT lobbies,” she declared last summer.

Under current Italian law, the member of a same-sex couple who is not legally recognized as a child’s parent could lose custody if the legally recognized parent dies or the relationship ends.

This is particularly horrific for another couple, Vanessa Finesso and Cristina Zambon. Finesso is the one who gave birth to their daughter after undergoing IVF in Spain. Even though she used Zambon’s egg, Zambon has been threatened with the loss of parental rights by the government. Finesso has cancer and is worried that if she dies, her wife will lose custody of their daughter.

The order also leaves the children of same-sex couples in jeopardy in other ways. “Children end up having limited access to key services and benefits, such as healthcare, inheritance, and child support,” Angelo Schillaci, a law professor at Sapienza University in Rome, told BBC when the policy was first announced. “At present, only one parent is recognized by law, the other one is a ghost. In real life, parents and children play together, cook together, play sports, and go on holiday together. But on paper, they are apart, the state does not see them. It’s a paradoxical situation.”

In the city of Padua, where Finesso and Zambon live, 27 families (33 children) have gotten warning letters that one parent may lose parental rights and be stripped of their place on their kids’ birth certificates. Some plan to leave the country for good.

But the mayor of Padua, Sergio Giordani, is defying the government’s orders and continuing to issue birth certificates recognizing two-mom families.

“My phone is full of pictures of happy families with shining eyes,” he said. “I’m really proud of what I’ve done.”

Queer Folks in the UK are Being Denied Sexual Healthcare Due to Budget Cuts

https://www.intomore.com/culture/you/queer-folks-in-the-uk-are-being-denied-sexual-healthcare-due-to-budget-cuts/

A new study has exposed the startling lack of access to sexual healthcare in the UK. After testing the healthcare resources across Great Britain, the researchers nearly half of all requests for doctor’s appointments concerning sexual health were denied. 

The study was conducted by Terrence Higgins Trust, a nonprofit focused on HIV and sexual health services, with support from British Association of Sexual Health and HIV. In the UK, the National Health Service is funded by the government, and the researchers wanted to examine “the state of sexual health services after a decade of austerity.”

Under the persona of a ‘mystery shopper’ called ‘Gabriela,’ the researchers contacted 57 clinics in England, Scotland, and Wales to try to book a sexual health appointment. ‘Gabriela’ was described as being in her mid-20s, having recently had unprotected sex with both men and women, and as experiencing no symptoms. The researchers chose this persona in order to test whether clinics prioritized symptomatic patients, given that asymptomatic patients are common in STIs like chlamydia.

What they found was that 49% of appointment requests in all three countries were denied. The remaining 51% did offer face-to-face appointments, but with wait times averaging 13 days (19 in rural areas).

While these appointments were successfully made by telephone, online booking proved challenging. In England, only 10% of clinics offered online booking, none in Wales, 44% in Scotland.

Only 11% of clinics offered walk-in appointments without exceptions. Postal STI testing, meanwhile, varied wildly. All clinics in Wales offered mail-in testing, but only 56% in Scotland did.

In consequence, the researchers are calling on all three countries to provide free year-round postal testing, easy access to online appointment booking, and to reduce wait times to no more than 48 hours.

“The sexual health of the nation has consistently been ignored by Central Government,” said Richard Angell, Chief Executive of Terrence Higgins Trust. “A wake-up call is needed. If more than 1,000 new STIs being diagnosed each and every day does not incentivize policy change and renewed investment, it is hard to see what will.

“Ultimately, you get what you pay for – the lowest real terms spending on sexual health is matched by the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections.

“The Government should guarantee long-term funding settlements for sexual health services at a rate of inflation plus 1 percent so as to address years of consistent under-funding.”

The bad samaritans: How a lack of empathy among Republicans is a threat to us all

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/07/the-bad-samaritans-how-a-lack-of-empathy-among-republicans-is-a-threat-to-us-all/

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD - MARCH 6, 2014: Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD – MARCH 6, 2014: Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).Photo: Shutterstock

“Under the Hitler regime…the most important thing that I learned…was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problems. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence.” -Joachim Prinz, Rabbi of Berlin, exiled in 1937 to the United States, from his speech August 28, 1963 in Washington, DC

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” –Voltaire


 

After engaging in the games for a while, one of the friends, Jeremy Strohmeyer, walked toward the restrooms. Seeing that he entered the women’s room, the other young man, David Cash, walked in to see what Jeremy was doing. He noticed that Jeremy was playfully throwing wadded paper towels at a young black girl, who seemed at first to have enjoyed the attention.

But then the scene turned violent. Strohmeyer grabbed 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, placed his hand over her mouth, and spirited her into a toilet stall as Cash watched by the sinks. He entered an adjacent stall and mounted the toilet edge allowing him to peer down as he saw Jeremy continuing to muffle the girl’s screams and warning Sherrice to keep quiet or he would kill her.

Not wanting to get involved, Cash returned to playing video games. He did not attempt to stop his friend from attacking the young girl. He did not seek help or call law enforcement officials. He calmly played games and waited the 20 minutes it took for Jeremy to return. David asked Jeremy what had happened.

“I killed her,” Jeremy asserted with a certain serenity in his tone on that summer evening in 1997. Soon thereafter, the two friends coolly entered nearby casinos where they enjoyed mechanical rides and continued to play video games until it was time for them to return home.

With the assistance of the video security system implanted at the casino, Strohmeyer was eventually caught, tried, and convicted to life imprisonment for rape and murder. Cash, on the other hand, was never indicted because inaction was not a crime in Nevada at the time.

In reaction to the case and the lack of charges against Cash, Richard Perkins, Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, sponsored the Sherrice Iverson bill requiring Nevadans to notify law enforcement if they witness violent acts committed against a child. The law took effect in 1999, and a similar measure passed in California one year later.

Asked on a 1999 CBS 60 Minutes segment, The Bad Samaritan, whether if given a chance, he would do things differently, Cash said, “I don’t feel there is much I could have done differently.” Asked a similar question during an interview on a Los Angeles radio station, Cash gave a similar reply and added: “How much am I supposed to sit down and cry about this?” he asked. “The simple fact remains that I did not know this little girl. I do not know starving children in Panama. I do not know people dying of disease in Egypt.”

The Long Beach Press-Telegram quoted Cash as saying that he wanted to sell his story to the media. One movie company offered him $21,000. He added. “I’m no idiot,” he declared. “I’ll (expletive) get my money out of this.”

In not taking action to intervene on behalf of Sherrice Iverson, David Cash colluded in her death. “Enabler” is the term given to those who fail to act to help abusers. “Passive bystander” or “bad Samaritan” is the name for people who are conscious of bad actions developing around them but fail to intervene.

Though I have studied the Holocaust and other genocides, until I discovered this case, I always had the gnawing and seemingly unanswerable question pulling at me, “How could these incidents have taken place throughout the ages”?

David Cash taught me that mass murders happen on the macro level when people on the individual and collective levels let them happen, when witnesses– so-called “bystanders” – do little or nothing to intervene. When people either allow their fear or reluctance to “get involved” and supersede their empathy.

David Cash refused to see, hear, and stand up to do the right thing in the face of evil around him.

For the past eight years, the not see Republican Party has continually refused to see, hear, and stand up to the would-be authoritarian dictator, Donald J. Trump. By burying their heads in the political sand, they have permitted Trump to grab, assault, and ravage our governmental institutions physically and figuratively.

I now fully understand the process in the rise and takeover of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

Staying silent

Empathy, that special and majestic human quality, has always been a vital life force of our humanity. As we understand in psychology, unless there is developmental delay, infants demonstrate the rudimentary beginnings of empathy whenever they recognize that another is upset and then show signs of being upset themselves. Very early in their lives, infants develop the capacity to crawl in the diapers of others even though their own diapers don’t need changing.

Though empathy is a part of the human condition, through the process of socialization, others often teach us to inhibit our empathetic natures with messages like “Don’t cry,” “You’re too sensitive,” “Mind your own business,” “It’s not your concern.” We learn the stereotypes of the individuals and groups our society has “minoritized” and “othered.” We learn who to scapegoat for the problems within our neighborhoods, states, nations, and world.

Through it all, that precious life-affirming flame of empathy can wither and flicker. For some, it dies entirely. And as the blaze recedes, the bullies, the demagogues, and the tyrants take over by filling the void where our humanity once prevailed. And then we have lost something very precious.

David Cash represents the termination of empathy on the individual micro level, resulting not only in the possibly preventable rape and murder of a young girl, but the death of his own soul. And when the demise of empathy comes to people who are around powerful leaders and their willing subjects, the consequences, on the macro level, become exponentially deeper, more toxic, and more tragic.

Jeremy Strohmeyer and Donald Trump were cast from the same mold with their narcissistic, sociopathic personalities. Cash comes from the same mold as many current members of the Republican Party in that they lack sufficient empathy, which overrides their actions.

For example, Trump knew early of the deadly potential of the Coronavirus, but he decided to lie to the public while failing to mobilize any discernible national policies and actions due to concerns for stock markets over the health and safety of the people. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.

Trump has referred to our military personnel as “suckers” and “losers” for joining the military, for being captured, for dying, and for receiving meager financial compensation. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.

Earlier, he carelessly blamed the mayor of London for being incompetent after a terrorist attack on his city. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.

He accused the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico of playing politics and being ungrateful, and the Puerto Rican people of being lazy and expecting everything to be done for them on their “bankrupt” island after a “500-year” storm virtually shut them down and people clung desperately to life. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.

He referred to white nationalist neo-Nazi terrorists in Charlottesville, Virginia, who showed up for a so-called “Unite the Right” rally, as well as the counter-demonstrators, as “Good people, on both sides.” Regarding his reference to the white nationalists, many Republican leaders failed to speak up.

He mocked a disabled reporter, took away the rights of trans students to use bathrooms most closely aligning with their gender identities, demonized Latinx people, Muslims, and women, ridiculed Gold Star parents who sacrificed so much while Donald Trump sat on his gold-plated toilet and attempted to take away affordable health insurance from an estimated 20 million low-income people. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.

And he behaved as if the series of package bombs sent through the mail to leading Democratic politicians and activists was nothing more than an inconvenience during the closing days of the midterm election season. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.

Trump separated young children from their refugee parents and placed them in cages as if they were feral animals. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.

And he risked the very lives of members of Congress and his own Vice President on January 6, 2021, after he lost over 60 court cases in his attempts to circumvent the results of a fair election. While some Republican leaders harshly criticized Trump at the time, they ultimately reversed themselves and got on their knees to kiss his ring.

Empathy can save the world

Quite frankly, I find few differences between the attitudes and actions of Jeremy Strohmeyer on the micro level and Donald J. Trump on the macro level.  

I find few differences between the attitudes and inactions of David Cash and the majority of the current Republican Party in their refusal to stand up and act in the best interests of a young girl, in Cash’s case, and in service to the fragile democratic experiment we know as the United States of America in the case of the Republican Party.

Though the Cashes and Republicans are more numerous than we can even imagine, empathy has always been an antidote to the poison of inaction, prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and scapegoating, and to bullies and demagogues who take power and control.

Empathy is the life force of our humanness, and ultimately it is the key to our recovery during the current crisis in our country.

I often wonder how Trump’s Republican bad Samaritan enablers can sleep at night and get back up in the morning still willing to degrade and prostrate themselves by attacking our democratic institutions and seriously dismantling our country’s standing in the world.

A recent poll taken by The Hill found that 80% of registered Republicans believe that if elected as the next President of the United States in 2024, Trump should be able to serve even if he is convicted of multiple felony charges, including in the case of willingly and unconstitutionally holding onto classified documents. Even in the case of the documents, many Republican leaders either failed to speak up or they are speaking up in his defense.

Each time anyone enables an abusive action or actor, they keep perpetrators and themselves further from the truth and from help, and they diminish themselves and their integrity more than just a bit.

I have been stuck time and time again on the post-factual campaign, transition, presidency, and now post-presidency of Donald J. Trump. I get stuck on the lies, the verifiable lies, big and small that he spreads and on his direct attacks on our democratic institutions, like the entire judicial system, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the State Department, state legislatures and secretaries of state who would not overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.

Even more troubling, however, are Trump’s enablers who spin the facts by turning themselves into virtual pretzels in defense of Trump’s attempts – to paraphrase Voltaire – to make us believe his absurdities he uses to give himself permission to commit possible atrocities.

His sustained and vicious attacks on what he refers to as the “dishonest and corrupt” media imperil our very freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately, many of the outlets within the Fourth Estate, while making some mistakes, fact-check themselves and our politicians, including Trump, and by so doing, exposes his lies for what they are.

A short round up as I start a new post to catch the Friday to Sunday bunch.

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the Republican infrastructure plan !!

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WTF. These people are not coming to hurt anyone, they are not coming to destroy the US, but to share the dream of a wonderful country. Abbott is proving to be the destroyer and despicable person, as is anyone who would follow these orders. Hey think how we look at the guards at concentration camps, Texas will be thought of in the same way. Scottie
Drag performances in Ohio could be banned from public parks, parades and other places children might be if a bill introduced by House Republicans becomes law.
House Bill 245 expands the definition of adult cabaret performers from strippers and topless dancers to include “entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s or entertainer’s gender assigned at birth.”
Diversity or diversity and inclusion programs are just words for let others than white males have a seat at the table. Seriously, this is what the republicans and MG are fighting. Why would they want to block others than whites / at one time only white males, from having a chance to be included? Racism and misogyny.

Biden got a Target Letter, too!

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The pro-life party! Right! Tell me another one.

Book Bans Are Fascist

A recent wave of book bans and curbs to educational free speech, led in part by Florida governor Ron DeSantis is hurting our children and allowing a vocal radical minority of parents and lawmakers control the narrative.

The Neuroscience of Being Transgender

A few years old but again explains how there is neurological evidence that transgender people have the same brain scans as the gender they identify as.  Even more the video explain how gender is a social construct with examples of how stereotypical female / male differs between cultures.  Great short video that is both informative and easy to follow / understand.   Hugs

In this episode, I discuss the neuroscience of being transgender by explaining the difference between gender identity and biology. I add studies from neuroscience and explain some fascinating findings.

Sources: Coon, D. & Mitterer, J.O. (2009). Psychology: Modules for active learning. Thomson Wadsworth. Belmont: United States. http://upload-community.kipa.co.il/17…

https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc624…

https://academic.oup.com/cercor/artic…

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1…

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2…

http://portal.uned.es/pls/portal/docs…

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art…

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