How can anybody be sucked in by such shallow and deceptive swill? It's not like it is in any way convincing or genuine – or even rational. It's pure bullshit and obviously so. Someone wrote a diary that 'the democratic insiders' didn't think Bernie did well in the debate. Wait! What? The establishment doesn't like Bernie? The establishment is willing to tell any fucking lie at all on Bernie? No shit, Sherlock.

It's Transgender Awareness Week, which will culminate on Friday with Transgender Day of Remembrance. That's the day we put aside to enumerate or losses through murders over the past year.

The truth, which we sometimes try to avoid, is that we lose just as many to suicide every year. We try to avoid it because, as Bynn Tannehill puts it, "Those who want to drive transgender people into the closet, legislate against us, and stigmatize us, talk about it all the time in order further marginalize us. It is literally a matter of life and death."

People know that transgender people are at a higher risk of suicide, but why this risk is higher is often not understood by the public, or misused by people who wish us further harm. The statistic that 40% of transgender people have attempted suicide is used all the time to justify all sorts of things that have absolutely zero basis in science.

--Tanneyhill

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer Big Bill Broonzy. Enjoy!

The mother of the trans girl at the center of the controversy in Palatine, IL has posted an essay by the title name at the ACLU-IL website.

The ACLU of Illinois is representing the family in their dealings with the school district. The mother writing the essay says that her daughter's friends call her "the most famous anonymous student." Her daughter is "Student A" in the legal proceedings.

[O]ur daughter is “Student A” at the center of the recent controversy over whether a girl who is transgender should be permitted to use the girls’ locker room. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights says yes. Our school district — Township District 211 — insists that students “of the opposite sex” should not be permitted in the girls’ locker room.

For the record, we agree with District Superintendent Daniel Cates about not permitting students of the opposite sex in the locker room. But the inconvenient fact for Mr. Cates and his supporters is that our daughter is not “of the opposite sex.”

She is a girl.

The district wrongly assumes what many who are not educated about the issue assume: That what makes a girl a girl and a boy a boy is simple anatomy. We believed this, until our daughter came along. Despite early signs — from as young as four, when she declared herself a girl, to the fact that she had mostly girlfriends growing up, played with dolls, begged to wear girls’ clothes, insisted on wearing a Hannah Montana wig while she danced around the living room, and was heavily distraught over the male characteristics of her body — we were still shocked and ill-prepared when, at the end of seventh grade, our daughter again told us that she was a girl and had to live openly as one.

A nation is in mourning today after a horrific ISIS attack that claimed dozens of innocent victims.
That nation is Lebanon.

Sam Melrath, 22, is a trans guy who now lives in Northeast Philly. He came out as trans during 11th grade at Abington High School. He says his classmates were very supportive, as has his family been.

When his junior year ended, Sam got a summer job as a bagger at Giant Food Store in Huntingdon Valley. At the time he was living as a man, dressing as a man, and had chosen the name "Sam," which also happened to be a short version of his birth name.

After he began working there, store management began pressuring him to dress and act like his sex at birth. He says he was pressured to change his name tag from Sam to his given name at birth, even though other employees were allowed to use shortened versions of their names on their name tags, including one female employee named "Samantha" who used the shortened version "Sam."

The following is an essay from c99p member Wendy Davis with permission to repost in it's entirety. She has problems posting essays here so I reproduced it in full upon request by dancingrabbit.

H/T: dancingrabbit

The essay and comments can be viewed here.

The author/s at massprivateI.com (as in ‘Eye’) go full-tilt Godwin, and I don’t blame them a bit. Rather than reconstruct what they’ve written, I’m going to reproduce most of their alert, although I might draw attention to a few of their links with bolds or excerpts. If this ain’t Minority Report pre-crime baseless assumptions from cradle to prison (at least in some locales using some of the related programs), I don’t know what is what is.