Visiting my favorite Dr. and extra favorite nurse yesterday. "Bless your heart', yes I used that on my favorite nurse after she brought in several of her friends to see me. "She talks about you all the time and we wanted to meet you." came from the others. Thus, "Bless your heart." used again to my favorite nurse after a couple hugs. Southern slang for those who need to look it up.
Doc and I talked about the problems Trump is investing on the transgender equation. I had passed some data to him about where and how deeply I was embedded with life and all those around me. He asked if he could share it with someone else. "Of course", the more we share the better off all of us will be.He introduced me to a young lady who to my astonishment is still employed and works with transgender. She was ultra sweet. She asked me to stay in touch even though I'm not a client or patient of hers.
When we got back to Trump, Doc thought it would be a couple years before things became "normal" again. I disagreed. It's going to take ten to twenty years before we are allowed to be a part of the human equation. Before I was hopeful all this would get a fresh start in the Supreme Court. After reading what the court did in the UK I am beginning to doubt. I wish I had a more hopeful brighter look to the future. What I'm seeing in my visions, it doesn't look good. Walking up in a cold sweet all wet and freezing to death from what I've seen isn't instilling any confidence. Anyone who claims they are able to foretell the future are likely con artists. I pray it's not our future. A lot of times things I've seen never come to be.Above all else, understand the future is fluid and changes all the time.
People, be really careful about outing yourself. Please don't use your passport at this time. It seems confiscation of passports has now become the thing for this administration.Driver's license and other official government documents in the red states may also be seized. Share hard medical facts and medical research if you may. Emotional knee jerk reaction isn't going to work. Don't tilt at windmills. Doesn't help and proves to the haters we are insane as Harry Benjamin, rest his soul in hell, described us.Every question why most believe a couple men who wrote a book on transgender and yet don't believe thousands of pages of medical research? Keep in mind there are a thousand degrees of transgender. It's not a simple one is or one isn't equation. Transvestite is transgender light, they like who and what they are. Dressing takes care of the trans problem for them.
I love all the boys and girls who got caught up in this Boy-Girl, gender blender. Please take care and stay safe.
always
Barbie Jean Lee
John 15:18
Comments
ten to twenty years
An executive order is just that and the next executive can rescind those orders. So long as nothing gets passed into law, then this whole mess can reverse itself in a couple of years; legally after this term of office..
Yes, the attitudes that got us into this mess will take longer but without "executive" backing that too will wilt and return to status quo. Which, let's face it, was already not all we could have hoped to start with.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
I am of two minds here……..
On the one hand, I agree with your assessment of Trump’s executive orders - they are most assuredly not law. A statement by the State Attorney General for Maine regarding the White House suing Maine over allowing transgender athletes to compete in their correct gender comes to mind - “While the President issued an executive order that reflects his own interpretation of the law, anyone with the most basic understanding of American civics understands the President does not create law nor interpret law.”
He is of course correct. Congress, or the various state, county, or municipal governments can create law - but not the executive branch of government. Further, only the judiciary can interpret those laws; that is in fact the purpose of the judiciary. An executive order is nothing more than a directive given by the President to the various agencies within the executive branch, and is not law.
However, the current Congress has essentially ceded its powers to the President by refusing to act against his blatant power grabs and abuses of power - not to mention his butt buddy Elon Musk. Trump is exercising powers given only to Congress, and the Republican majority continues to allow him to do so. An example of this is his imposition of tariffs, which is a power given only to Congress by the Constitution. Congress gave the President the ability to issue sanctions, etc. under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in 1977. Trump is using that act, along with the 1974 Trade Act to justify his actions by calling this an “economic emergency” - much as he has declared Venezuelan and El Salvadoran gangs to be “terrorist organizations invading the US” in order to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act by declaring that they are “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion" on US territory.
We all know that these are abuses of the law, but unless Congress acts to take their powers back - not likely as the Republicans are either afraid to stand up to Trump, or have their heads too far up his ass to see what is happening - or the courts act to stop him. This is the more likely scenario, but with a right-wing, conservative majority controlling the Supreme Court thanks to Mitch McConnell, this is not likely to happen either. Although the court did surprise me by voting 9 - 0 in favor of the government “facilitating” the return of a man incorrectly deported to an El Salvadoran jail. A wish-washy response at best, but much more than I expected. Perhaps Trump has gone too far for even them!
The point being that as I stated, you are correct regarding Trump’s executive actions - but Barbie Lee has a good point in that it will probably take years beyond Trump for our lives to return to where we were previously. Trump, Musk, and the rest of their wrecking crew have gone too far to simply turn back the clock. In another four years, who knows just what will be left of our government, and what actions will need to be taken to fix or replace what they have trashed?
How many will suffer in the meantime? How many will lose their jobs and find other work? And how long will it take for them to do so? How long will it take to find qualified people to replace them, and how long will it take to replace the knowledge lost? How far will our education systems and research organizations fall before we are able to restart? How many will die due to Trump’s ignorance and uncaring attitude?
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but Alexandria and its libraries were sacked in less time than that. It is easier to destroy than to build, and we can only hope that we don’t fall too far before we can rebuild.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
I didn't intend
I in no way intended to suggest that simply rescinding the executive orders would fix everything. There will be long term repercussions as you state. While four years isn't forever, it is a long time. And if left uncheck, these executive orders, will indeed disrupt lives. Not to mention the sociological impact in making transphobia an acceptable sport will have. That is the part that will take years to recover. Laws can change overnight, but the thinking of the general public is like a granite cliff face; it erodes slowly.
In the last forty years, in my little corner of the world, a great deal of progress has been made and the progressive attitude has managed to shout down the conservatives. But with federal backing the conservatives are likely to try to take back the ground they have so begrudgingly given up.
In four years of this mayhem we may be back to square one.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Try to avoid the same error from the first time around
My gut feeling is that we are not only losing 10 or 20 years of progress, but that we are turning the clock back to the mid to early 1960s. That is easily 60 years of progress down the drain.
If you go check out the success stories on Lynn Conway's web site, you will notice that our early trans sisters were in general rather cautious in their lobbying and fighting for our human rights. In general they advocated for a quiet granting of basic human rights to the trans population.
The backlash really gained traction when trans-women went to court to impose their “right” to access women only spaces or to be considered as women in competitive sports!
One of the first to do so successfully, Renée Richards, has later in her wiser years acknowledged that her hot-headed legal fight against the tennis regulators was not the best move in the long run.
And in recent years several prominent sports “celebrities” trying to switch camps in competitive sports has greatly contributed to the current backlash we see in anglophone courts and society today. Or they have tried to reap financial gain with celebrity status and make so-called reality shows out of their transitions. In my extremely humble and personal opinion the so-called reality shows are not really unscripted reality, but choreographed and pre-scripted to resemble some kind of [distorted] reality to fit the narrative proposed and promoted by the producer.
Because, given the current backlash, the trans-women population needs to start wearing diapers when going out in public, or risk the public humiliation of peeing on themselves for lack of access to public toilets, or worse risk severe dehydration to avoid needing to use public toilets.
Please keep in mind that we trans people are a spectrum. And not all of us are able to lift our skirts and pull down our panties to show that we need to use the bathroom without urinals.