Tag: article

Judge: Transgender People A Protected Class, And The Military Can’t Enact Trump Ban

vocifersaurus:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

folly-of-alexandria:

nbneer:

profeminist:

“A federal judge late Friday barred the federal government from implementing President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender members of the military, finding that the ban had to be subject to a careful court review before implementation because of the history of discrimination against transgender individuals.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman of the Western District of Washington ruled that transgender people were a protected class and that the injunctions against the implementation of the ban that had been issued in December should remain in place. She wrote that there was a “long and well-recognized” history of discrimination and systemic oppression against transgender people, that discrimination against transgender people was clearly “unrelated to their ability to perform and contribute to society,” that transgender people have immutable characteristics and that they lacked relative political power.

“Transgender people have long been forced to live in silence, or to come out and face the threat of overwhelming discrimination,” Pechman wrote.

“The Court also rules that, because transgender people have long been subjected to systemic oppression and forced to live in silence, they are a protected class. Therefore, any attempt to exclude them from military service will be looked at with the highest level of care, and will be subject to the Court’s ‘strict scrutiny.’ This means that before Defendants can implement the Ban, they must show that it was sincerely motivated by compelling interests, rather than by prejudice or stereotype, and that it is narrowly tailored to achieve those interests,” Pechman wrote.

While Trump had tweeted that he consulted generals and military experts about the ban, Pechman wrote that the government had “failed to identify even one General or military expert he consulted, despite having been ordered to do so repeatedly.”

Read the full piece here

THIS IS HUGE NEWS and can have major implications for trans rights moving forward in the US, as it establishes a precedent for legal treatment of trans people as a protected class due to ongoing persecution. This means it would be illegal to fire someone, to refuse them a job, or a home/apartment rental, because the person is trans.

Folks, even if you’re a pacifist / anti-military, remember:

THE TRANS BAN DOES NOTHING TO STOP MILITARISM, AND EVERYTHING TO LEGALIZE & NORMALIZE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE TRANS COMMUNITY.

💖TRANS PEOPLE ARE A PROTECTED CLASS 💖

This declaration of Trans people as a protected class is important beyond the military because it has effects on laws that would seek to implement discriminatory practices towards trans people in other areas of US law.

❤ YASSSSSSSSS ❤

CHECKS AND BALANCES MOTHERFUCKER

Judge: Transgender People A Protected Class, And The Military Can’t Enact Trump Ban

YIVO Announces Discovery of 170,000 Lost Jewish Documents Thought to Have Been Destroyed During the Holocaust | YIVO Institute for Jewish Research | The Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Collections Project

librariansofshield:

The new discovery is of particular note for its wealth of manuscripts, precious religious writings—in Hebrew and Yiddish—record books of shuls and yeshivas; mystical writings, and more. Additionally, the collection contains post-war and wartime materials, such as poetry written while in the Vilna Ghetto by Abraham Sutzkever. All other materials that have previously been found from this time period in Eastern Europe precede the outbreak of WWII.

YIVO Announces Discovery of 170,000 Lost Jewish Documents Thought to Have Been Destroyed During the Holocaust | YIVO Institute for Jewish Research | The Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Collections Project

‘M*A*S*H’ Finale, 35 Years Later: Untold Stories of One of TV’s Most Important Shows

jhscdood:

bitty-crocker:

Recently Farrell caught up with the M*A*S*H family to share a story. In the process, he captured in a few short paragraphs what no writer outside the family circle ever could:

“For the first time in many years I returned to the Fox lot to work on a miniseries [FX’s American Crime Story]. On the second day, I was told to report to stage 10 and did. Once my work was completed for the day, I couldn’t resist the temptation to wander over to stage 9 to see what, if anything, being there would bring back for me. I have to say it was a magical couple of minutes. Pushing through the big door I stepped in and immediately traveled back almost 35 years. The sense of familiarity and warmth was so great I almost laughed aloud. I was overcome with memories. The smell of the place, the feelings that came to me, were completely comfortable, welcoming and embracing. Visions of all of you and so many more flooded over me. The jokes; the laughs; the deep, thoughtful conversations; the tricks; the clowning; the long days; and the good, hard, powerful work were all somehow still there. It was as though a vestige of everything we put into the show had somehow been imbued in the bones of the place. I think it has. And I am the luckiest actor in the world for having had the good fortune to be part of that company.”

This article is full of gems from cast and writers from the show!

OK WELL IM CRYING NOW BUT IM FINE IM FINE

‘M*A*S*H’ Finale, 35 Years Later: Untold Stories of One of TV’s Most Important Shows

Sean Kirst: For Valentine’s Day, a quiet, but monumental, love story

autisticadvocacy:

“Their marriage, which will reach 25 years in August, is a quiet and monumental symbol of advances in civil rights for the disabled.”

This is beautiful. Disabled people shouldn’t have to choose between sharing their lives with someone and receiving supports they need, and this is a really good example of what is possible for DD and ID people if they are given the freedom to both live and love without being penalised for it. For those who don’t realise it, many disabled people who want to share their life with someone in the US have to choose between love and their benefits and supports that enable them to survive.
Sean Kirst: For Valentine’s Day, a quiet, but monumental, love story

lierdumoa:

inqorporeal:

chronicreality:

xzienne:

skary-child:

cruzfucker69:

i hate when the teacher’s like “write about a bad time in your life” like i ain’t tryna get a social worker up my ass, thanks tho fam

This ain’t no joke I had to write a essay about what your scared of so I did it (I was scared of growing up and where my life was going) it was great got a 100 but then I got sent to councilors office and was sent to therapy cause they thought I was suicidal and on the verge of breaking…Apparently they ment like spiders or some shit…

Also like, not everyone finds that at all useful or cathartic.

“Write about some difficulty you’ve experienced personally.”
“Aight fam let me just break down into tears and skip the rest of my classes.”

Yes! I had a psych professor ask us to discuss outloud the hardest thing that ever happened to us literally two days ago and I said “you realize the position you’re putting us in? I feel obligated to lie to not only save my peers the awkwardness but also because I will find no relief in answering honestly but rather anxiety. The hardest thing in my life is having people repeatedly tell me I should find some sort of catharsis in reliving my trauma so someone else can feel pity for me!”

The whole class backed me up because they didn’t want to either! Those kind of exercises are only helpful for people who don’t have any real past/current issues– which is no one btw.

On par with this are those fucking self-assessments where they want to to be optimistic and positive about the future. You’re sitting there drowning in college stress and anxiety so bad you can’t look another human in the eye, fighting depression so that you can eventually achieve a piece of paper that might get you a better job if the economy doesn’t tank itself (guess what, it did), and the most optimistic thing you can think of is that the class ends in 20 minutes.

#why do they do this though ~ @inqorporeal​

OH! I KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS!

There’s a WIRED article that explains the history behind this practice. 

Basically, this guy named Jeffrey Mitchell had a traumatic experience, then after months of PTSD, he told a confidant about the event that traumatized him. Retelling the event to a confidant was so cathartic for Mitchell that his PTSD went away after. He did a bunch of research to see if his personal experience of catharsis and relief could be replicated in other people suffering from PTSD. Years later he published a paper proposing a formalized psychiatric treatment revolving around this idea that expressing a traumatic experience helps relieve it. The paper was so influential that the whole psychiatric community adopted “critical incident stress debriefing” (CISD) as a standard treatment for PTSD.

Unfortunately … it’s bullshit.

Not only does the CISD treatment program Mitchell came up with not help the majority of patients who try it, but it actually makes PTSD worse in the majority of patients who try it.

The WIRED article explains why:

CISD misapprehends how memory works…. Once a memory is formed, we assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.

None of this is true. In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don’t remain constant. 

…the very act of remembering changes the memory itself. New research is showing that every time we recall an event, the structure of that memory in the brain is altered in light of the present moment, warped by our current feelings and knowledge. 

Basically, Mitchell waited until he had some emotional distance before trying to recall the memory, and he had full control of the situation. It was fully his decision. Nobody was pressuring him to talk about it. So he felt safe. Thinking about the memory from a place of safety allowed his brain to re-contextualize the memory as harmless.

Conversely, pressuring a patient to recall a traumatic memory, particularly when it’s still fresh in their minds, makes the patient feel very unsafe. Recalling a bad memory in this unsafe context only serves to re-traumatize the patient. 

[link to the whole article]

#MDSen: Chelsea Manning files to run for U.S. Senate in Maryland

justinspoliticalcorner:

Justin Jouvenal at WaPo: 

Chelsea Manning, the transgender former Army private who was convicted of passing sensitive government documents to Wikileaks, has filed to run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, according to federal election filings.

Manning, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, would be challenging Democrat Ben Cardin, who has served two terms in the Senate and is up for re-election in November. Cardin is Maryland’s senior senator and is an overwhelming favorite to win a third term.

Manning, 30, was convicted in 2013 of the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Last year, then President Obama commuted Manning’s sentence to time served and she was released from a military prison in Kansas.

Manning moved to Maryland after her release and friends and family raised more than $175,000 to support her through an online campaign. Since then, she has written for The Guardian and Medium on issues of transparency, free speech and civil liberties, according to her web site.

#MDSen: Chelsea Manning files to run for U.S. Senate in Maryland

thegayreich:

WW2 Veteran Comes out as Transgender aged 90

A WW2 veteran has come out as transgender at the age of 90 and is happy to finally be receiving female hormone treatment.

Patricia Davies says she knew since the age of three that she was a woman but lived in fear of how people would react for decades until doctors changed her medical records to “female” last year.

Even though she had opened up to her late wife about her feelings in 1987, who bought her jewelry and dresses to wear in secret, she remained living as Peter after receiving abuse from people in the street and fearing “electric shock treatment”.

The retired industrial photographer, who served in the army between April 1945-1948, has a distant aunt who once lived to 104 years old so hopes she has “similar genes” to keep her going so she can now enjoy life as a woman.

Patricia, from a village in Leicestershire, said: “It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I was living a lie.”

“I have been keeping quiet. I have slowly started to tell some of my neighbors. Everybody said ‘don’t worry, as long as you’re happy.”

“I’ve known I was transgender since I was three-years-old.”

“I have always been attracted to women but not in a sexual way. I’m not gay. My attraction to women was that I wanted to be like them. I would have liked to be like the pin-ups.”

“I was never totally unhappy. I always made the most of things and looked on the bright side of things. I’ve always had a wicked sense of humor.”

“Because of the general hostility of people I kept quiet. It wasn’t until recently that I felt safe to come out and I felt an overwhelming desire that I wanted to break free. So I came out and I’ve not regretted it.”

Patricia served in the army from April 1945 until April 1948, leaving when she was 21 and getting married only a few months later.

During her time in the armed forces, she served in the Far East, India, East Africa and Palestine.

Patricia said: “You took your life in your hands in the army. I lost a couple of mates and had a close shave myself.”

“I had to keep my mouth shut about being transgender, you couldn’t flaunt that as that would have been a disaster.”

“Transgender wasn’t really known in those days. I would have been classed as homosexual, which would have caused problems in the army. I would have ended up in prison. But I got through it.”

“But it was alright overall and I feel quite proud having served during the war and having done military service, in particular during the trouble in Palestine.”

“Perhaps Hitler got news I had joined in April 1945 and gave up. That’s what I like to think.”

“I feel quite relieved, quite happy. [The best thing about coming out] is being accepted as a woman. That has been something I’ve wanted all of my life.”

“If people don’t like what they see then I don’t care but no one seems to be causing me any trouble. Nobody questions it though. Nobody seems to bat an eyelid, they accept me as I am.”

“I’ve been made most welcome in the societies. I think people will benefit from being educated on this a bit more.”

Here’s to Patricia getting a couple more decades to live her best life.