lgbt
Trans characters in the first big video games of 2017
Trans characters in the first big video games of 2017
Laura Dale, writing at Polygon:
The past month of AAA video game releases might be the most interesting I have ever experienced as a trans woman, meaning someone who was designated male at birth but is now living as female. While far from perfect in execution, I can point out three trans characters in three separate AAA video games released in the past four weeks. That’s pretty unbelievable.
I’ve been playing Zero Dawn with my wife and it’s a truly remarkable game. I wish I hadn’t missed the trans character’s introduction, but now that Dale points it out it does seem like a respectful, if imperfect, attempt to include a trans person in Aloy’s world.
The perils of marriage equality
The perils of marriage equality
Professor Kimberly Mutcherson of Rutgers Law School writes at Concurring Opinions about Professor Katherine Franke’s recent book ‘Wedlocked: the Perils of Marriage Equality’:
We do not want to reinforce familial hierarchies by forcing people into specific family arrangements in order to warrant recognition (2 parents only), nor do we want to fetishize outsider families such that those who do not fit that model are denigrated for their choices (i.e., the adoptive parents who choose a closed adoption or the birth mother who opts for such an adoption thus perhaps not being queer enough in their choices). In thinking about the ways in which reproductive justice calls for us to respect the right to have a child, not have a child, or parent that child in a safe and healthy environment, the upshot for me is that the reproductive justice paradigm does not demand that outsider families conform to some particular form in order to help dismantle hierarchy.
I have thought about this concern since undergrad, where postcolonial literature, feminism and even semiotics courses touched on the nature of othering as an active verb, something done to a group of people. I was lucky enough to take a course in law school called Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and the Law with Professor Leonore F. Carpenter which expanded my understanding and interest in the dynamics of queer identity, family and legal frameworks.
The specific concern with which I’ve been preoccupied since then is that there is a danger in radical acceptance or the success of various equality movements. The danger I see is in achieving a nominal or “seat at the table” equality that normalizes othered groups to the frameworks of the groups that have historically done the othering.
One infuriating example of how I think about this stuff is the so-called equality of separate-but-equal, which of course was not equality at all. In the case of race, equality is not allowing non-white people to do all the stuff white people are allowed to do, but allowing non-white people to do whatever it is non-white people want to do, which is really what has always been allowed to white Americans.
I see Professors Franke and Mutcherson making a similar point about the danger of seeing marriage equality as squeezing queer couples and families into 1) heteronormative cis-gendered and/or culturally/racially segregated family models or 2) altogether new models, sometimes developed by hand-wavingly obnoxious if well-intentioned hetero-cis folks. Maybe I’m mistaken, but the overall approach as I see it being explained by these two scholars is essentially to stop putting up new roads and signs for queer families and just get the hell out of the way.
Read Mutcherson’s entire post, it’s worth it. And I’ve added “Wedlocked' to my Kindle wishlist, which is growing faster than I can keep up.
Missouri Teenagers Protest a Transgender Student’s Use of the Girls’ Bathroom
Missouri Teenagers Protest a Transgender Student’s Use of the Girls’ Bathroom
I can’t blame the students for protesting. Kids can be cruel, and kind of dumb. I certainly was.
But parents and attorneys like Derrick Good display a shameful vacuity in couching their bigotry in terms like “physical privacy.”
Karen Workman quotes one such parent:
"My goal is for the district and parents to have a policy discussion,” said Derrick Good, a lawyer who has two daughters in the district and wants students to use either facilities based on their biological sex or other gender-neutral facilities.
Requiring the teen in question, Lila Perry, to use the men’s room is no different than requiring Mr. Good’s daughters to use the men’s room. The absurdity of Good’s position is that it presumes Lila is a male pretending that she is a female so she can infiltrate Mr. Good’s daughters' physical privacy in the ladies' room.
And the twisted aspect of this circumstance is that Good’s “fight” for that privacy has obliterated Lila’s own physical privacy by turning her gender dysmorphia, with which she appears to have otherwise been coping rather well, into a national news story and an indictment of her morals.
This isn’t the first time the Christian advocacy group with which Good worked have used the plight of a child to their benefit. The hilariously named “Alliance Defending Freedom” compared “threats to its freedom,” which, hilariously, it claims are “multiplying,” to the death of a small boy on its Who We Are page.
It’s not impossible though for such people to change their minds. Consider the father of D.W. Trantham, speaking in a story about parents pulling a child out of D.W.’s school after the school allowed her to choose which bathroom she would use:
Her father Tim believes people getting mad over transgender bathroom choice is a red herring. He thinks most people are just uncomfortable or scared of what they don't understand.Tim admits he used to be the same way.
“I was some of those people myself at one point in my life,” Tim said. “I didn’t understand what transgender was or the issues involved.”
Ms. Perry is not discouraged:
She said she knows of other, younger transgender students in the district and wants to open a dialogue so they have a better high school experience.
Years of data suggest that between 30 percent and 50 percent of transgender people attempt suicide at least once.1 There is a mountain of data since then, and the Wikipedia article on suicide among LGBT youth is a good starting point if you’re interested in further research.
My point it that as a former Catholic of about 18 years I’m certain it’s rather unChristian to consciously exacerbate what is already a difficult process for transgender youth.
Image is the transgender pride flag
7th Circuit strikes down gay marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana
7th Circuit strikes down gay marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana
The legal momentum favors universal application of the fundamental right of two consenting adults to marry, but that doesn’t make each ruling any less exciting.
Sens. Cruz and Lee Introduce State Marriage Defense Act
Sens. Cruz and Lee Introduce State Marriage Defense Act
At this point the anti-Constitutionalists are trolling themselves. A choice bit from this piece of garbage:
The bill will ensure the federal government gives the same deference to the 33 states that define marriage as the union between one man and one woman as it does to the 17 states that have chosen to recognize same-sex unions.
It doesn’t matter how a state wants to define marriage, whether it’s full of crazy conservatives or mushy liberals. It only matters what the Constitution requires, and that is equal protection under the laws.
All consenting adults with the capacity to validly enter a contract are allowed to marry. Legislating around that fundamental right violates the Constitution.
Facebook Opens Up LGBTQ-Friendly Gender Identity And Pronoun Options
Facebook Opens Up LGBTQ-Friendly Gender Identity And Pronoun Options
Following up on my recent tirade, this made me happy. Facebook has massive amounts of influence, and is influenced by massive amounts of people, and changes like this are a positive step forward in how technology reconciles with shifting norms and modes of self-identificaiton. Good on ‘em.
Now, if Mr. Zuckerberg needs a good charity write-off for tax season, I would be happy to put him in touch with my student loan creditors.
Kansas anti-gay segregation bill is an abomination.
Kansas anti-gay segregation bill is an abomination.
Mr. Stern’s headline sums it up very well. If you don’t believe it can really be that bad, read the PDF.
It is that bad. Ignorance is one thing, but open hostility like this cannot stand and anyone who supports this bill commits the intellectual equivalent of burning the original Constitution to a pile of ashes.
Let me translate that from fiery liberal anger into constitutional principles:
A law allowing the detrimental differential treatment of a class of persons traditionally subject to invidious discrimination because they belong to that class violates the Equal Protection rights granted by the Constitution as to the federal government in the 5th Amendment and extended as to the States by the 14th Amendment.
Let us quote the Good Document itself:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Gotta love that 14th Amendment. There’s nothing ambiguous in the juxtaposition of the Kansas bill and the Constitution. You can’t deny someone equal protection of the laws. You can’t tell me I’m not allowed in your hotel because I’m a man. Maybe if it’s a country club. But not a hotel. Or a restaurant. Or a state.
The use of freedom of religion as a pathetic attempt to hide animosity and hatred is a supreme act of collective cowardice by the Kansan legislators who vote for this bill.
It is an un-American as it gets. But the good news is, as one ruling after another makes ever-more-clear, you can’t stop history.
Baton Rouge sheriff trying to enforce unconstitutional anti-sodomy laws
Baton Rouge sheriff trying to enforce unconstitutional anti-sodomy laws
It’s been ten years since Lawrence v Texas saw anti-sodomy laws declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but I suppose stupidity is eternal. At least the District Attorney is ending the absurdity by refraining from prosecution. There may yet be hope for Baton Rouge.
Minnesota governor signs same-sex marriage bill into law
Minnesota governor signs same-sex marriage bill into law
Number twelve and counting; this looks to be a big year for marriage equality in the United States.
Rhode Island legalizes same-sex marriage
Rhode Island legalizes same-sex marriage
The inexorable march of time sees a tenth state grant gay and lesbian people the statutory right to marry.
Those states who have yet to get on board would do well to hurry: you’re quickly running out of time to look like you were ahead of the curve in the common sense of twenty-first century civil rights.
Remember: 39% of North Carolinians are not fearful and ignorant
The North Carolina amendment alters the constitution to say that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized” in the state.
—CNN
I don’t often take a preachy tone, and this story has little to do with how the law and technology intersect, which is my usual topic on this website. However, I think people should be treated the same, and when they’re not, I get angry. When masses of people vote for something so clearly despicable that it can accurately be called evil, I have to get my thoughts about it out of my system.
And my thoughts about North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage are the following:
One day, the descendants of the 61% of North Carolinians who voted discrimination into their constitution today will look back on what their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did on Tuesday, May 8, 2012 with disgust, much the same way we do when we read the state’s nonchalant 1875 ban on interracial marriage.
To the 39% of folks in North Carolina who voted with morals, ethics, and plain old common sense:
I implore you, for the sake of your children, to leave your state. Seek refuge from those among your neighbors who would so blight the wonder of democracy.
You are the 39%, who refused to institutionalize hate, to legalize discrimination, to dress up ignorance in the guise of religion, or to use family as a pretext for subjugating a minority. Be proud.