Red State Fear

Telling the men in our lives the reality of our lives

Read on Substack Jess Piper Oct 10, 2024

(Note from Ali: Jess wrote the anti-misogyny rant I was thinking of.)

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

~Maya Angelou

I go solo camping often. I head up to the North Shore in Minnesota or down to Northwest Arkansas and hang out a few days by myself or with my daughter. My husband is a big ole, corn-fed country boy who will not sleep on the ground, so we leave him at home.

I love to sleep outside, but the very thing I hate about camping is sleeping outside — exposed. As a woman, this is something I think about a lot. When I wake up for some unknown reason and wonder if I heard something in my sleep. Or, I wake up to actually hearing something or someone. I get scared. I get nervous. I wonder why in the hell I do the things I do and take the chances I take.

And then I go back to sleep and wake up on Lake Superior or Devil’s Den and hike to waterfalls and forget it all until it is time to go back to sleep outside. Love and hate.

Lake Superior, Split Rock Lighthouse State Park.

I once asked my husband if he’s ever afraid when he is alone. He laughed out loud.

“Of what? Why would I be scared?”

I tend to be an overthinker, but I can’t tell you how many times I have wondered about his statement of fact. He is not scared. Of men or animals or most of the danger I intuitively see around me. He has nothing to be scared of — he is physically imposing and there is not one law on the books that will harm him.

He has never worried about walking at dark. Or encountering someone on a trail. Or sleeping outside. Or most of the things that take up a lot of my mental space.

He has lived his life completely unencumbered by his environment, even as a resident of a red state. A homegrown Missouri man.

Sure, the Missouri GOP trifecta, a supermajority, has defunded the schools and let our roads crumble and closed hospitals and generally made a nuisance of themselves, but that is exactly what they were to him. An inconvenience. Annoying. Turds in the punchbowl, but nothing to get too riled up about.

He was just living his life.

He didn’t see it. Not because he is not empathetic. Not even because he doesn’t pay attention to politics. It’s because he has lived his life with a privilege he didn’t know existed until I pointed it out. Because, until he saw the world through his daughters’ eyes, through my eyes, these things just never occurred to him. He didn’t deny privilege, he just didn’t see it. He isn’t uncaring or a dolt — he just had absolutely no experience being marginalized. I had to tell him.

Once he saw it, though, he couldn’t look away. He was disgusted. He understood.

This is where I should mention something that I have spoken of in front of safe men. When I tell them that I have been sexually assaulted as well as almost every woman I know, they are astounded. When I tell them of sexual harassment, they are amazed. And then, one day it clicked for me. These are good and safe men and the predators know it. They don’t hurt women while they are around. They don’t talk about it or joke about it, because these men wouldn’t put up with it. The good guys have often really not been a witness to the behavior we have endured because they are just that…good guys.

I am not making excuses for the menfolk.

The men in my life will attest to the fact that I constantly push them to see what we see. I am hard on them. I ask that they look beyond themselves and be an ally to others. To be a witness and bear witness.

We don’t need protectors, but we do need witnesses.

As a woman, as a mom of girls and granddaughters, I have no degree of safety in Missouri and I know all of my girls fall into the same category. They are not safe from sexual assault or rape. They are not safe after a sexual assault or rape. They will likely be dismissed, or worse, blamed. They would be forced to bear the child of their rapist. They would likely be forced to co-parent with their rapist.

Missouri has a total abortion ban with no exemptions for rape or incest. Not that it would matter…I am sure there is some process to that exemption as well and I really hate the notion that a woman or girl can’t have bodily autonomy unless she has first been violated.

Writing that sentence made me sick at my stomach.

Missouri women have been denied care because of the abortion ban. A Kansas OBGYN, Dr. Ahmed, shared a story last week about her Missouri patient who suffered a miscarriage:

“She came in for a follow-up still bleeding,” said Dr. Ahmed. “Turns out there was some tissue that was still there. Retained tissue in that setting can become infected, can cause a lot of bleeding, so I discussed with her the options.”

The patient decided on medication and Dr. Ahmed says she prescribed it. But the following morning, she received a fax from Walgreens on Stateline after prescribing Misoprostol or Cytotec for the miscarriage stating, “Under Missouri law medication abortion is now illegal. Please advise patient to fill across Kansas border”.

Missouri has also had a 25% decrease in OBGYN residency applicants willing to come to our state because of the ban. That decreases care for all women, not just pregnant women.

We aren’t safe in Missouri.

The good news is that Missourians will get to vote on Amendment 3 in a few weeks. This amendment will restore abortion rights in Missouri. We will be the first state to overturn a complete ban.

The bad news is that our bodily autonomy is even put to a vote. That geography dictates our rights. That random folks will get to decide if we are first or second-class citizens. That we have been treated as less than. That our rights have been up for debate.

This is red state shit. We are used to it. It is constant and it is something we live in fear of every day. It is the thing I point to when I am speaking to the men around me. I never let them daydream their way back into complacence. I don’t let them fade into the peace of not knowing…of not being engaged. I don’t let them forget the fear of the women around them. I keep them awake.

Woke. (Emphasis mine- Ali)

I don’t want to be scared of living in Missouri anymore. I don’t want anyone to be scared in their home state. This is why we have to speak on it. Say it.

The reality is that we cannot gain our rights back without involving men. I have such good men in my life. Would they have voted yes on Amendment 3 without me telling them? I’d say yes. Would they be as rabid in telling other men around them to vote yes if I had not worked on them for so long? Maybe not.

It’s not that we are dealing with self-centered jerks. It’s that they didn’t know what they didn’t know.

Now they do.

~Jess

Peace & Justice History for 10/11:

It’s National Coming Out Day!

Brief history of National Coming Out Day
https://www.advocate.com/exclusives/2019/10/11/coming-out-day-brief-history

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october11

Transgender Youth-reblog from Janet:

“We need cis allies to speak up for us. Vote to remove the bigots from positions of power. The biggest thing you can possibly do right now is to vote. Vote for Democrats. Because, no, they aren’t perfect, and no one is. But they are a darn sight better than the alternative.”

Suicide Rates Among Transgender Youth: A Call to Action

Let’s talk about the GOP refusing to work for disaster funding….

Q&A: How the UK became the first G7 country to phase out coal power

https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/coal-phaseout-UK/

Snippet:

By Molly Lempriere and Simon Evans

26 September 2024

The UK’s last coal-fired power plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, will close this month, ending a 142-year era of burning coal to generate electricity.

The UK’s coal-power phaseout is internationally significant.

It is the first major economy – and first G7 member – to achieve this milestone. It also opened the world’s first coal-fired power station in 1882, on London’s Holborn Viaduct.

From 1882 until Ratcliffe’s closure, the UK’s coal plants will have burned through 4.6bn tonnes of coal and emitted 10.4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) – more than most countries have ever produced from all sources, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

The UK’s coal-power phaseout will help push overall coal demand to levels not seen since the 1600s.

The phaseout was built on four key elements.

First, the availability of alternative electricity sources, sufficient to meet and exceed rising demand.

Second, bringing the construction of new coal capacity to an end.

Third, pricing externalities, such as air pollution and carbon dioxide (CO2), thus tipping the economic scales in favour of alternatives.

Fourth, the government setting a clear phaseout timeline a decade in advance, giving the power sector time to react and plan ahead.

The UK’s experience, set out and explored in depth in this article, demonstrates that rapid coal phaseouts are possible – and could be replicated internationally.

As the UK aims to fully decarbonise its power sector by 2030, it has the challenge – and opportunity – of trying to build another case study for successful climate action.

(snip-MORE)

Peace & Justice History for 10/7:

An especially sad item within.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october7

Bathrooms with a view: Cutting windows into student restrooms is a new level of weird

https://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/opinion/editorials/2024/10/02/bathrooms-with-a-view-cutting-windows-into-student-restrooms-is-a-new-level-of-weird/75479753007/

I bet the next election will be well attended and these people will lose their seats and new progressive inclusive people will win. That is what has happened all over when the right bigots and haters snuck into school board seats, they go too far trying to erase the LGBTQ+ kids / people from existence, then they get kicked out. Sadly by then the damage is done. What they hell do they want people perving on kids in the bathrooms for? To make the kids scared to use them and to make sure the weird kids are not doing weird gay stuff in them, right? Hugs. Scottie.

By the way. We have a hurricane headed right at us. It will be here Wednesday at around noon, but we have three days of wind and rain beforehand. It will hit at a class three. It is projected to hit just above us but could hit us directly. We will be spending the next few days getting as much done as possible, stocking in cat food Ron forgot and getting more gas and propane for the generator. It is unlikely that pole of ours will survive another storm as it is already leaning hard. Repair crews are already stretched thin in other areas so won’t be able to come rescue us in our time of need. Going to be a very long few months. Hugs. Scottie

YORK DISPATCH EDITORIAL BOARD

York Dispatch

At the risk of stating the obvious, South Western’s elected school board is making some strange decisions.

For the last two years, they’ve fixated on which bathrooms LGBTQ+ kids use. In 2023, officials in this Hanover-area district played musical chairs with school bathrooms in a misguided attempt to appease the loudest bigots among them — ending up with five different types of bathrooms.

After a low-turnout school board election in which several far-right members joined their ranks, they hired a Christian law firm, decided to begin banning books and reopened the bathroom issue. Board President Matthew Gelazela, who was elevated to his post after previously serving as the board’s most vocal bomb-thrower, pointed to Red Lion’s discriminatory policies as something to aspire to.

UPDATE:Amid parent complaints and national scrutiny, South Western School District boards up bathroom windows

Now, upon the advice of that law firm — the Harrisburg-based Independence Law Center — the board approved spending $8,700 to cut windows so passersby can look into the so-called “gender-identity” student bathrooms.

Yes, you read that correctly.

These adults want to make it easier for other people to watch your children while they’re in the bathroom. It’s absolutely mind-boggling.

Gelazela, who’s steadfastly refused to explain the logic here, said in a public meeting that the windows help “[add] privacy in the toilet facility” and that they “increase oversight of the wash area.”

There’s a reason public restrooms tend not to have windows — or, if they do, they have frosted glass.

No one wants to be spied on when they’re relieving themselves.

Gelazela, in pursuing his book ban, repeatedly said he’s trying to protect the children.

But this latest decision does just the opposite.

More:Parents question school that cut windows into student bathrooms amid anti-LGBTQ+ push

More:‘Our politics can be done with a sense of joy,’ Tim Walz tells York crowd

The parents who spoke to The York Dispatch about the latest bathroom renovations said their children no longer feel comfortable using these bathrooms. One of the parents went to the principal and asked for an exemption to allow her son to use a different bathroom further away from class.

Her 13-year-old doesn’t want to be spied on while he’s in the bathroom.

And we don’t blame him.

It’s creepy and weird.

And let’s not ignore the bigger picture: This is happening at a time when this and other York County school boards are pushing policies that would restrict what books students read, what sports teams they compete on and even which pronouns they use.

All of this is part of an attempt to erase LGBTQ+ people.

Cutting a window into these bathrooms is an intimidation tactic designed to make sure students who use the so-called “gender-identity” facilities — and, let’s be honest, any student who doesn’t fit neatly into the worldview of the school board’s far-right majority — know they’re being watched, controlled and judged.

In their quest to punish LGBTQ+ kids, however, the misguided “adults” on this South Western School Board are doing the things they accuse others of doing.

This is an invasion of privacy and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

It needs to stop.

‘It’s very powerful’: New Hampshire ruling protects trans kids from being outed

Nico Romeri, 17, joined an amicus brief supporting a policy that bars school personnel from disclosing students’ gender identities – and won

When Nico Romeri came out as transgender at 14 years old, he first shared the news with his closest friends and a therapist. The private conversations he had outside of the home helped him feel more comfortable to then approach his parents, who supported his transition. If anyone else had revealed his gender identity to his family on his behalf, he said it would have been disruptive to his coming out process.

“I really wanted to have a one-on-one discussion with them, where they knew I trusted them and they trusted me,” Romeri said. “Having that break of trust before you’re confident enough to tell other people is a huge deal.”

A recent ruling helps ensure that other trans students will have the protection to come out to their families when they’re ready. The case came about in May 2022 after a New Hampshire mother inadvertently learned from a teacher that her child used a different name and pronouns in school. The parent argued that the school policy, which advises school personnel not to disclose a student’s transgender status, infringed upon her ability to raise her child as she sees fit. Along with his mother, Heather, Romeri joined an amicus brief in support of the school policy.

In August, the New Hampshire supreme court upheld a lower court’s ruling on the school district policy, affirming trans and gender nonconforming students’ rights to privacy concerning their gender identities and presentation at school. The decision is the first such ruling to come out of a state supreme court, and according to Chris Erchull, senior staff attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the ruling could set guidance for other states and federal courts fighting similar cases.

“When there’s no US supreme court precedent, federal courts have to look around at what other courts are saying for precedent,” said Erchull. “So it is going to be very powerful and persuasive.”

Erchull, who filed an amicus brief in the case, said it was critical for students to have a supportive framework that allows them to explore their gender identity in school.

Hearing that [my children are trans] from someone else would have been not good for our relationship

Heather Romeri

“It’s not a public school teacher or administrator’s place to make a decision about how and when to talk to families about these really intimate, sensitive matters,” he said. “It is in the best interest of everyone if the information comes from the student when the student is ready, on the student’s own terms.”

Policies on LGBTQ+ students’ right to privacy varies by school district throughout the nation. In 2015, the New Hampshire school board association issued a model policy to protect the privacy of trans students and to prevent discrimination, which was adopted by 48 of 196 school districts and charter schools, according to a 2020 ACLU New Hampshire report.

The policy was rescinded in 2022 due to conservative pushback, but some school districts, including Manchester, the largest in the state, continue to advise school personnel not to share a trans or gender nonconforming student’s identity to others without the child’s consent. In July, California became the first state to ban school district policies that require staff to notify parents when a child changes their name or pronouns.

Revealing a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation to their family when they’re not ready can lead to suicide and the child getting kicked out of their home, he added. LGBTQ+ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their cisgender and heterosexual counterparts.

For Heather Romeri, it is crucial that students make their own choices about who they disclose their gender identity to and when. “Two of my children are both trans, so they have both been able to come to me at their own time when they were ready to disclose the information they needed to,” she said. “Hearing that from someone else would have been not good for our relationship, not good for … our children [being able to come] out safely and happily.”

Nico Romeri has trans friends who haven’t shared their gender identity with their parents because they fear for their safety, Heather said. “They really believe they will be hurt or they will be kicked out of their house,” she explained. “They have [seen] others who have tried to come out to their parents, and it’s had negative repercussions to them emotionally.” She sees the victory of the New Hampshire ruling as a prime example for other states considering policies for LGBTQ+ students’ rights.

Now 17, Romeri said that he joined the amicus brief to support his friends who don’t have the same supportive environment to transition. “It’s really important to represent the people that can’t voice [their identity fully] and to keep the laws in place.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/03/new-hampshire-trans-identities-outing

A year of war accelerates ‘silent departure’ of Israel’s elite

Brain drain could undermine the country’s hi-tech economy as liberal families conclude social contract has been broken

This summer, the Nobel laureate Prof Aaron Ciechanover joined a group of prominent Israelis gathered in the ruins of the Nir Oz kibbutz to demand a hostage release and ceasefire deal.

Nir Oz was the worst hit of all the communities targeted by Hamas on 7 October, with a quarter of its residents kidnapped or killed. Twenty-nine are still in Gaza.

If the hostages were not brought back, the basic social contract that underpinned Israeli society would unravel, the 77-year-old professor of medicine warned – with catastrophic consequences for the entire country.

He cited an accelerating “brain drain” of doctors and other professionals as a worrying sign that some of Israel’s elite already feel they no longer have a future in the country. And without them, Israel itself might struggle to have a future.

Ciechanover is a long-term critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and joined protests against his government before the war. But concern about this trend is not limited to political opponents of the Israeli leader. Earlier this year, Netanyahu’s former chair of the National Economic Council, Eugene Kandel, joined forces with the administrative expert Ron Tzur to warn that Israel faces an existential threat.

In a paper calling for a new political settlement, they warned that under a business-as-usual scenario “there is a considerable likelihood that Israel will not be able to exist as a sovereign Jewish state in the coming decades”. (snip)

The problem precedes the 7 Octoberattacks and the war that followed, as demographic and political shifts have prompted some secular, liberal Israelis to question their future in a state increasingly dominated by religious traditionalists.

Noam is a father of three with businesses that include a PR consultancy and a cannabis pharmacy. He expected that his 40s would be a time of “less doing, more enjoying”, after decades of hard work.

Instead, he and his wife spend evenings poring over school options in European countries as they weigh up where to start a new life. The war increased the urgency of the search, but it has been a decision born out of longstanding concerns.

“The main reason we are leaving is that we are seeking a better future for our children. Even if peace can be brokered tomorrow, we still can’t see a future we want to be a part of,” Noam said. “The demographics speak for themselves.”

(snip-MORE- not tl;dr)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/06/as-war-and-religion-rages-israels-secular-elite-contemplate-a-silent-departure

PA School District Spends $8,700 Putting Surveillance Windows in Gender-Neutral Bathrooms

The windows were approved following legal counsel from Independence Law Center, a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which has been designated as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group. BY SAMANTHA RIEDEL

(I don’t like this. Aside from the important and actual reasons, how’re the kids gonna smoke in the bathroom? Or buy tampons? Or trade clothes? Now, I realize kids likely don’t do two of those things at school anymore, anyway. But people need their privacy in restrooms. This from the people who are so worried about their own privacy in bathrooms? -A)

A Pennsylvania school district is under fire for installing windows looking into middle-school bathrooms, seemingly at the recommendation of a conservative anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy group.

Gender-neutral bathrooms at Emory H. Markle Middle School in Hanover now have large windows on their outer walls, which allow those outside to see the bathrooms’ sink area, but not inside the stalls, as seen in photos shared with local news outlets. The windows have reportedly not been installed in gendered multi-user bathrooms or in changing rooms — and according to South Western School District (SWSD) board president Matthew Gelazela, that means privacy isn’t an issue.

Our students should not consider the space outside of our stalls as private within the multiuser restrooms,” Gelazela said in a statement to PennLive this week, highlighting a district policy that specifically requires “private changing areas” be provided to students. “Areas between our stalls and sinks in multiuser restrooms are not private changing areas under that policy.” Gelazela further claimed that the district is in the process of adding higher stall walls to gender-neutral bathrooms to increase privacy.

According to district board records, SWSD board members approved the bathroom windows — the installation of which has already cost the district $8,700 — after receiving a recommendation earlier this year from the Independence Law Center (ILC), which the district contracted as an outside legal counsel in March.

Around the same time, the board adopted an ILC-recommended policy that restricted teachers from using anything but a student’s pronouns based on “biological sex” and legal name, or a nickname commonly associated with their legal name, at school. They also adopted a plan to allow parents to restrict their children from specific categories of books, another ILC recommendation.

At an August 14 meeting, one board member noted that demolition for the bathroom windows had begun before the board officially approved their installation or knew the costs associated; the board then voted to go forward with the windows by a vote of 6-3.

ILC is a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Family Institute (PFI), itself tied to the far-right Family Research Council, both of which have been designated as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. ILC’s website claims it acts to “secure the blessings of liberty,” which it apparently seeks to accomplish by filing amicus briefs in numerous anti-LGBTQ+ legal cases like 303 Creative v Elenis and Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado.

ILC chief counsel Randall Wenger appeared to distance his organization from the SWSD policy this week, however, telling NBC affiliate WGAL that it was “not our recommendation to create a line of sight into a restroom that lacks adequate privacy” and that ILC believes “privacy in multi-user facilities starts at the door of the room, not the door of stalls,” but that if stalls were made more “like the bathrooms on airplanes,” bathrooms may “open to a public area” where staff can monitor students for drug use or loitering. It was not clear whether SWSD’s policy extended beyond what ILC originally recommended, or if the district had simply not implemented stalls with greater wall-to-ceiling coverage before installing the windows.

Them reached out to ILC for further comment, and received the following statement from Wenger, further denying ILC’s responsibility for the policy: “Independence Law Center always recommends privacy, including increasing privacy within existing facilities. We never suggest putting a window into restrooms with stalls. Facilities with full privacy, like bathrooms on airplanes can open to a public area just as we are all used to on airplanes and coffee shops.” Them also reached out to Gelazela for comment, but did not receive a reply before publication.

According to mission statements and case examples on its website, ILC primarily acts to curtail LGBTQ+ rights and advance Christian ideals and policy goals under the auspices of protecting “liberty,” including what it terms “marriage and the family” and the “protect[ion of] human life” — i.e., opposing abortion, a major goal of the PFI. The organization also has ties to past fundamentalist Christian groups. Prior to his work with the ILC, Wegner was employed by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, an “intelligent design” advocacy group that published and distributed the creationist textbook Of Pandas and People. The distribution of Pandas in a Pennsylvania public school district led to a 2005 district court decision that determined the school board had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Parents of students at Markle Middle School told local outlets they were shocked to learn that the district had installed windows in bathrooms, pushing back against Gelazela’s claim that students’ privacy rights were not affected. “It just raised a ton of concerns for me: privacy concerns, safety concerns, concerns for the kids who need those facilities. I feel like this is a deterrent to keep them from using them,” parent Jennifer Holahan told WGAL. “I can understand needing to have supervision [….] But I also think windows aren’t a solution. I think if it was a real issue, it wouldn’t just be [in the] gender-inclusive restrooms.”

Eric Stiles, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Rainbow Rose Center in York, PA, told PennLive he believes the windows may likely be used to harass and intimidate LGBTQ+ youth in school.

“They’ve done book banning and not using pronouns and outing students to their parents, and now this latest attempt is these bathroom windows that really call into concern the safety of students,” Stiles said. “There will be other students that use the windows, which means they can track each other [….] What does it mean for victims of violence that haven’t been able to come forward? Now you have a big window there. Are they going to have to plan their day on how and when to use the bathroom?”

https://www.them.us/story/pennsylvania-school-district-spends-8700-surveillance-windows-gender-neutral-bathrooms