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| Witchvox Chapter: Wren's Nest News | Chapter Page Views: 56,551,656 |
 Plaque Dedicated At Transgender Memorial Author: Arin Mikailian Source: Los Angeles Independent (CA) Title: PLAQUE DEDICATED AT TRANSGENDER MEMORIAL A plaque honoring victims who were murdered for being transgender was unveiled Nov. 20 at the Matthew Shepard Triangle in conjunction with the Transgender Day of Remembrance. More than a 100 members of the transgender community and their supporters gathered at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Crescent Heights Boulevard carrying white roses and candles to witness the unveiling and remember departed friends. “From a place of wonder and magic we were born, to a place of misunderstanding and hatred we have been taken,” an excerpt from the plaque reads. Shirley Bushnell, a member of the West Hollywood Transgender Task Force, addressed those in attendance and thanked everyone who helped bring the plaque to fruition over a course of three years. About 200 transgenders were murdered worldwide between Jan. 2008 and June 2009, according to a July report by the international group Transgender Europe. Additional Article Link: [Click HERE] | |
| Community Thoughts: There are 3 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Lump In My Throat | Nov 29th. at 7:49:01 pm EST |
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Aritimi (RotterdamJct/Schdy/Scotia, New York) - Email Me Ypsirroselee, you just quoted my favorite book in the whole world. It's horrible anyone to be murdered, especially because someone else doesn't think they deserve to live. I can't imagine what it's like to be TG, to feel deep inside that your outside doesn't match what you are inside, to always feel like you don't belong. I never felt like I belonged either, but that's due to birth defects. maybe because of that, I feel drawn to the plight of anyone who is unfairly discriminated against because I know from personal experience what it's like to be the outsider. Hate crimes should never be forgotten. True, a memorial plaque will never bring back those taken so brutally, but what happened to them and why should never fade from memory. |
| Unreasonable Expectation Of Bigotry | Nov 29th. at 2:59:54 pm EST |
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me The second linked article of this pair addresses more serious issues, than those of a superficial plaque in the first. The notion that rest rooms and locker rooms be segregated over sex, just as many Southern states used to also mandate over race, is rooted in a bad twisting of a 4th Amendment legal interpretation called "a reasonable expectation of privacy". The use of that theory to exempt sex discrimination nominally banned by the 14th and 19th Amendments, and rooted in issues of religious discrimination banned under the 1st, is a problem long overdue to be remedied. In effect, what courts have done is give legislatures a pass to codify common forms of bigotry inherently at odds with legal standards, under that notion of privacy. In reality it's not a reasonable expectation of privacy, but an unreasonable expectation that prolific lingering bigotry trumps civil rights of others. These issues are not distinct to transgenders, but their more visible presence in society does make long standing issues of bigotry over gender roles and sexuality more overtly obvious than more subtle or not physically visible artifacts of the same social and legal issues. Existing sex discrimination and segregation of bath and locker rooms, as mandates of many building codes, and exemptions from anti-discrimination laws more broadly, are rooted in assumptions that men prey on women, and gays, lesbians, and more complex rainbows of sexuality either aren't real or should be oppressed by public policy and law, and that our legal system does nothing wrong codifying artifacts of paternalistic cultures that traditionally treat females as chattel property, to be traded from father to one and only husband until death. Changing broken laws based on those archaic assumptions that violate civil and human rights as now defined does require sick religions like that of the Wildmon or Dobson followers to change. That change does not in any way violate their rights, but rather reflects on how members of supremacist monoculture hate cults have every right to personally be dysfunctional sickos relative to a diverse society in which they live, but do not have any right to harm their own kids nor to coerce their dogmatic pathologies on others, or use taxpayer funded mercenaries with badges, truncheons, and guns to coerce their monoculture supremacist dogma on others in violation of the rights of neighbors. What's seen here regarding transgenders is essentially equivalent to the wider range of religious values and practical issues the same hate cults attempt to suppress against pagans and many others, except that TG's reflect their core civil rights needs in physical ways. As to the allegations by well funded hate cult leaders that anti-discrimination law will enable sexual predators, in some few cases that's likely true. However, it's likely to be a trivial number compared to how some people use roles as family or church members, including in many cases as evangelical Deacons and other clergy, to enable or cover molestation, or intimidate victims into not reporting same. The developmental psychology reality is that kids who grow up being taught to think for themselves, develop clear self images and realistic personal boundary concepts, and learn clear decision making skills, are far more immune to being victimized by predators than those indoctrinated that book dogma mandated by authority is the only way they can live, and so are easy targets to be manipulated by others using similar abusive processes. The second article notes that there have been zero cases of the types of molestation bible hate cultists claim in Colorado, or any of the 16 states where trans people are included in anti-discrimination protections, yet there are numerous states where large church corporations have filed for bankruptcy protections to evade liability for child molestation they've enabled or helped members and clergy evade prosecution. In at least one state, a large church corporation became a convicted felon for criminal justice tampering helping its clergy evade prosecutions. The statistics backed reality is that those complaining about the affects of more effective non-discrimination laws are using comparatively trivial straw men, when it's their own dogma and practices that demonstrably stunt child development and have a documented history of real abuse. It is in no way the right of individuals or hate cults to use law to prop up broken dogma, nor archaic bigotry over gender roles. Desegregating bath and locker rooms over sex, just as was done with scofflaw schools in the 1960's using Federal Marshals against corrupt local governments, is just as overdue as that race enforcement. The fact that millions of people aren't used to functioning as mature adults is not a valid excuse to proliferate oppressive, discriminatory laws, that impact all of us. Transgender issues merely make the underlying issues more of a visible paradox with no practical resolution other than catching up civil rights enforcement to the specifications of 90 and 140 year old Constitutional amendments. |
| I Cannot Begin To Express... | Nov 28th. at 5:11:10 pm EST |
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Ypsiroselee (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - Email Me ...how much it means to me to see this happen. It saddens me, however, to know that it is so very necessary to memorialize individuals for just wanting to finally feel real. To quote from "The Velveteen Rabbit" about becoming real... "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." Finally, people are caring enough to see us as real people, even if in extremis. |
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