Tennessee getting ready to throw poor students under the bus.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

As much as there are bigots and fools, there are many, many members of the gay community who see us as allies. Case in point: I belong to a GLTB EMS activism community who, right from the start, opened its doors to us "breeders" (intended benignly) in the EMS community and who has posted several updates in thanks for their straight supporters.

We're all playing for the same team here. Does it really matter who's batting and who's pitching?

And tell your daughter, Rog: we ain't leavin her side. She's not alone.

I can't accept the breeders thing.  I wouldn't call a homosexual a pillow-biter or a donut-puncher, and I won't take "benign" derogatory names off of anyone else, either.

That's how this exclusion shit starts.  Little tiny hypocrisies.

I guess it doesn't bother me because I used to hear it all the time when I used to volunteer for LIGaLy in NY. They meant it in an inclusive way and usually while they were referring to themselves as "fags." As in: "We love you guys. We're just a happy family of fags and breeders."

There are subtle connotations attached to these colloquialisms (IE: the difference between "fag hag" and "fruit fly") and mostly, they're intended to be colorful but not outright derrogatory. It's why I find the whole "Cis" thing to be downright repugnant: it's not colorful or playfully teasing at all. It's a serious, hardcore label glued onto people while there are so many of us crouched down with a scraper and a bottle of goo-gone.

However, I know things change and I lose track. Perhaps that one has?

Well, context means a lot.  If everyone's okay with it, I'm not going to slap my Culture Police hat on and start thumping on people.

As for the CIS thing, I found it to be a little horrormirthy at first, but eventually isolated my problem with it as "YOU CAN'T LABEL ME!  I'M NORMAL!  UUUNG!", and then had a good laugh at myself.

But you may notice that since the term ceased to be offensive, it was then morphed into "CISHET", meaning CIS/heterosexual, which is a deliberately calculated means to blast home the point that the exclusionary policy is being expanded.

Nailhead, meet hammer.

And it didn't take very long, did it? I expect even more fucked up labels to come down the pike shortly.

My reaction when I see this stuff is that if I have to essentially MARRY INTO a damn community forsaking all others etc., etc., to be seen as supportive or whatever, fuck it. I can override that when necessary, but is everybody going to do that? It's really off-putting, and that's sad because trans people get fucked over a LOT.

But to this particular echo chamber, it isn't about trans people getting randomly murdered, etc.  It's about THEM and how SPECIAL they are.

The people who get dead are just grist for their mill.  It's offensive as hell.

The thing that is odd and particularly offensive about it is how often the echo chamber takes on the tone of "Champion of the Oppressed", when at the same time railing AGAINST people who are "cishet white males" calling themselves "allies". It sounds a lot like saying that when the people I love, who love me, demonstrate their support of me, they're really trying to steal my "specialness". That's offensive on a number of levels.

I don't like it. The echo chamber doesn't speak for me. I don't speak for gay men. I can't even speak for mixed race bisexual single moms, other than relating my own attitudes and opinions and those of other mixed race bisexual single moms.

And for fuck sake, leave me out of the separatism bullshit completely. I am SO not down with the "I hate straight white men" thing. That is not my bigotry and I don't accept it.

Nigel is riding the correct

[navkat]

There is this really bizarre notion in American academia (only there, it seems) that discrimination only exists within a power relationship between groups.

Therefore, so long as white straight men have more power than everyone else, no comment or act against straight white men can be discriminatory.  Or, if they are, it doesn't matter because of said power disparity.

Needless to say, this is retarded.  It mistakes the very problems of institutional racism as all acts of racism, that institutional sexism as all acts of sexism etc.  I won't deny that institutional discrimination is the greater evil.  That's the point of power, you can do stuff with it, and therefore when power and discrimination are married together, it is pretty awful.  But does that mean, for example, a young Asian male in the UK who sets fire to a synagogue because he believes Jews perpetuate the suffering of the Ummah, is not being a bigot? 

Power springs from the barrel of a gun.  Or from a box of matches and access to petrol.  It's crude power, but a very real sort.  To focus on the insitutional problems obscures the different varieties of bigotry and discrimination that exist, all of which inflict pain and suffering based on a person's skin colour, or gender, or sexual orientation/gender affiliation.

The US is a nation of extreme everything; extreme stimulus, extreme reactions. The converse is that it's like we sort of dissociate and trivialize whenever someone isn't covered in their own vomit, bleeding their eyeballs out in the streets. I mean, not to RWHN the thread but that's why we fail to see things like drug addiction as an illness: we skip right over it. We go straight from "You're fine, everything is normal" to "OH MY BLOODY GOD, THROW HIS ASS IN JAIL."

I suspect the trivialization of bottom-up bigotry is a function of that.

[navkat]

I also suspect it's exactly why the healthcare system is so borked and yet we can't get off our asses and fix it. You're fine, fine, a little under the weather but fine, sick but fine, OMG You're dead!

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I also suspect it's exactly why the healthcare system is so borked and yet we can't get off our asses and fix it. You're fine, fine, a little under the weather but fine, sick but fine, OMG You're dead!

*presses all the buttons

[Bruno]

That thing this thread was about has been temporarily withdrawn for more study by the irredeemable cunt who proposed it.

http://www.wsmv.com/story/21939902/full-senate-to-hear-welfare-penalty-for-parents

[Bruno]

Haw Haw Heeeeee!

On Thursday, State Rep. Stacey Campfield (R-TN) withdrew his widely criticized bill to reduce welfare assistance for needy families if their children did not perform well in school. The state Senate would have voted on the measure this afternoon, but Campfield pulled the bill after his Republican colleagues refused to support it. Many children's advocacy groups, lawmakers, and clergy have expressed concern over the plan to cut Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) benefits by 30 percent for students who did poorly in school.
As Campfield walked to the Senate chambers, he was presented with a petition of more than 2500 signatures collected by Clergy for Justice to protest the bill. The deliverer of the petition was an 8-year-old girl, Aamira Fetuga, whose mother, Rasheedat Fetuga, is the founder of a local child advocacy group.
As Aamira prepared to explain to Campfield why she was worried about his bill, Campfield dismissed her as a "prop" and hurried away, repeating over and over again, "Using children as props is shameful" as Aamira and her mother tried to talk to him.

Video included at the link.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/11/1855681/tennessee-welfare-prop/

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

YES, EPIC!!!!!!! 

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/12/8-year-old-follows-tenn-lawmaker-around-capitol-until-he-drops-welfare-bill/

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I can't believe that asshole dismissed that little girl as a "prop". I told my kids about it and they were aghast... it  doesn't take an adult to have basic analysis skills and form an opinion.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

He probably doesn't see anybody as really human. Could be why he thinks it's ok to starve people.

[navkat]

I kinda dislike the idea of parents involving their children in political functions and protests too. I don't like it when the Christians have kids under 13 handing out aborted baby flyers for their parents and I don't like it even when I agree with the cause. I don't like the idea of a kid being involved in a campaign whose message necessarily equates to "If I don't get good grades in school, they'll take money away from my mommy and she won't be able to feed us kids." That's not her battle. That's not a burden she should carry and that's WHY ditching this stupid idea is so important.

It's altogether possible the child asked mom "Ooooh! Please let ME hand it to him! Please, please, please? OOOOH!" Very likely, though, someone asked or coached her into it because it's cute and it makes a cute picture. THAT is a photo-op and THAT makes her a prop.

[Pergamos]

I kinda dislike the idea of parents involving their children in political functions and protests too. I don't like it when the Christians have kids under 13 handing out aborted baby flyers for their parents and I don't like it even when I agree with the cause. I don't like the idea of a kid being involved in a campaign whose message necessarily equates to "If I don't get good grades in school, they'll take money away from my mommy and she won't be able to feed us kids." That's not her battle. That's not a burden she should carry and that's WHY ditching this stupid idea is so important.

It's altogether possible the child asked mom "Ooooh! Please let ME hand it to him! Please, please, please? OOOOH!" Very likely, though, someone asked or coached her into it because it's cute and it makes a cute picture. THAT is a photo-op and THAT makes her a prop.

I dunno, I think when the issue directly effects the child, as this issue did, it is a bit different.  If this bill had gone through suddenly the responsibility for keeping her family fed would be much more on this child than before the bill passed.  She chose to take on that responsibility early, for not only herself but also all the other potentially affected kids.  Maybe her parents coached her, maybe they didn't, but 8 year olds are perfectly capable of making those sorts of decisions on their own.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's completely possible that the child wanted to do this and the adults were there to support her.

Children have political opinions, too, and they can be quite passionate about them. They aren't simply passive receptacles of whatever opinions adults shove at them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Aamira's mother is the founder of a child advocacy group... that kind of group does not normally speak for children, but seeks to empower children to speak for themselves. Of course, she could be a giant hypocrite using her daughter as a mouthpiece, but I'm inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.

[Salty]

IMO our elective officials spend too little time with the very constituents they're fucking over.

I cant see the harm of one of the human beings that might starve to death paying a congressman a visit.

Its not the same as, say, marching children with Westboro Baptist signs about.

[navkat]

Aamira's mother is the founder of a child advocacy group... that kind of group does not normally speak for children, but seeks to empower children to speak for themselves. Of course, she could be a giant hypocrite using her daughter as a mouthpiece, but I'm inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.

And that's fine too. I'm just saying; his saying that isn't entirely unfounded or dickish. It happens all the time.