This was just posted on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAWf-h39GW8
Texas is reportedly, collating a secret list of TG people in the state. They are collecting names etc of people trying to change their gender on their driving license. no reason given but I'm sure that you can read between the lines.
It is very worrying for all manner of reasons.
This mirrors what happened to the Jewish people in 1930's Germany. First the list. Then the Yellow Star. Then the camps.
It has to be stopped. I'm sure that other deep red states will follow suit very soon.
Samantha
Comments
Dangerous
The problem is things are getting progressively more dangerous nearly everywhere around the world for us. You're seeing these statistics about record 'changing their minds' and 'detransitioning' stories and studies, but I think it's less about being wrong - and more about fear for our lives. I live fully in the closet, but about 15 years ago I considered it viable to go out in public as my true self. I never transitioned due to career choices, and the way my family would react... Fear is a real thing there. Fortunately I never have come out, because in this climate who knows what would happen. I fear just for having so much stuff out there online at this point though. If they want to build lists, there's no way to stay off of them at this point.
If I had the financial means to move to a more reasonable country, I would certainly do so at this point!
I completely understand the
I completely understand the fear of coming out. I only came out and started transitioning over the Summer. My friends that I have come out to so far have been completely supportive of me. My mother, while not fully rejecting me, has been taking it hard. My brother and his wife, well, they completely cut me off, no contact, and even tried to use scripture to prove that I am living in sin, and so they can associate with me. That one hurt the most, not because of them cutting me off, I knew that was probably going to happen, as my sister-in-law is very gay and trans phobic, but the way they did it, using scripture to justify their reasoning.
I myself have not told my work yet, though I will probably need to within the next year.
I do consider myself lucky, though, as I do live in Washington state, unfortunately, more of the red side of the state, but still Washington, and was born in California (California birth certificate), both of which have fairly strong protection laws currently for gay and transgender people.
I do worry about this federal government and that I might have to move fast to try and get my legal name and gender identity changed before I am fully ready, to protect myself, and then fight like hell to keep it.
Longview, Tx
My son lives in Longview, Tx. I wonder if he is involved in this?
Gwen
TG Collection Data
Samantha, this isn't new news as Texas has been doing this same thing or trying for several years now. They have been running into the lawsuits filed in the courts along with the Supreme Court. It's not illegal to collect data as national requests for population not only counts numbers bur also asks if one is pink, purple, black, brown, white, Indian, etc. They also want to know if I'm M or F how many acres I farm, what crops I plant, number of livestock and what kind along with how much money I made or lost. Am I married, how many kids I have and I want to add in baby goats on that question as they are "kids". I'm sure they asked how many times I went to the bathroom but I probably skipped that one. I have not a clue how many times I've filled out forms asking if I'm gay, lesbian, transsexual, or? I'm guessing more than a hundred of them at this stage of my life.
Life and society changes with time. Carried three professional licenses in two different states. I now carry six government IDs where once upon a time I had one when I started driving "legally" I once could walk into any store selling guns and buy one without question if I had the money. I now have to fill out six pages of legal forms, have it witnessed along with copies of my CDL and SS, all faxed to the Fed Gov and wait for approval before I may purchase a gun.
What I want everyone to understand is a person is no longer a non entity if one is a legal U.S. citizen. Those government records are in a national data base and they exist on everyone. They don't have to ask if I'm trans, they already have all that on file. They don't have to ask if I pack heat, they have that on file. They know more about me then I know about myself. I really don't care as it's the world I lived long enough to join in the paranoia and insanity.
Hugs Sam
Barb
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference".
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
All the Doctors/Medical Clinics/Hospitals
All have my information these days. All the medications and how I'm broken in various ways. I'm not Trans, but if I were I'd imagine it would be in modern records theses days.
I'm in Maryland FWIW
Backlash to the choir
I am probably preaching to the choir here. In my opinion this is now becoming the lash in the backlash that started way back when Renée Richards forced herself into professional women's tennis by way of a lawsuit, and the Kardashian/Jenner transition being the straw that broke the camel's back.
For decades, going back at least 100 years now, our trans-ancestors have quietly fought for de-criminalizing and de-stigmatizing of the transgender spectrum. They have worked at thee grass-roots level, quietly lobbying the various legislators and health care providers, as well as trying to raise awareness of the constant discrimination we face.
In the late 1970s and the 1980s trans-people started to slowly become visible, as well as successful, in industries and occupations outside of sex-work and adult entertainment. By the early 2000s only a minority of those transitioning had to resort to sex-work for survival.
Lynn Conway's website provides a study of contrasts, when looking at the pages of successful trans-people. There is a remarkable shift during the 1980s, where the majority of those who transitioned before that time ended up in „adult“ related occupations, while for those who transitioned later that appears to have become a minority.
But then during the 2010s we see a drastic rise of entitled trans-people (mainly male-to-female) who demanded by any means possible to be included in all aspects of life as equals to cis-females, akin to an enraged bull in the proverbial china shop. Where up to that point most of the acceptance, tolerance and rights we gained had been done rather low-key, and mostly remained under the radar. These extremely vocal people with a huge feeling of entitlement shoved the outstanding issues right into the face of Jane and Joe Doe, with the additional trauma of pointing anti-aircraft searchlights straight into the eyes of not only the average citizen, but also the fanatical conservatives and political hyenas and pirañas who smell blood.
Unfortunately, a few impatient and very loud people destroy the gains achieved by several generations of quiet grass-roots activists. And the victims are the majority who just want to live their life with dignity in the best way they can with the means they have at their disposal.
I disagree
I disagree.
The backlash has been building ever since the Stonewall riots. Once "queers" stopped crawling off and hiding whenever the 'phobes kicked the @#$% out of them, the resentment has been building among the haters. They thought they'd won (because God was on their side) when the AIDS epidemic took hold, and were dismayed when the end result was that the majority of the population started seeing gay people as human. The AIDS epidemic galvanized the queer community, but it also got the haters to start organizing to stamp out not just LGBT folks, but ultimately, anyone who doesn't conform to their narrow notion of "normal."
This "backlash" has been going on for at least 30 years (cf. the Heritage Foundation), and the reason they're going after us trans folks instead of "teh gays" is that we haven't been humanized in the popular imagination. But it's obvious that they're after the rest of the LGBT spectrum, because wherever they've gotten into power on a platform of transphobia, they go after the rest -- "don't say gay," banning books, attacking marriage equality, kicking any sort of LGBT people out of the military, dismantling women's rights, etc. Not to mention going after any non-Christians and, indeed, any non-fundamentalist Christians.
"well-behaved" minorities don't get anywhere
There's a saying, "well-behaved women don't make history." It doesn't just apply to women.
We keep getting advised, "keep quiet, be mannerly, and your time will come." But it never does. People complained that the civil rights movement was making things worse for black people, but being quiet never made things better for them, it just got them further oppressed -- but quietly, so the white folks wouldn't be confronted with the violence that maintained their comfortable world. It took "civil disobedience" to start to change that, and IMHO, it was the riots of the 1960's that got your average white person to accept civil rights because they feared that their suburban lawns wouldn't be safe otherwise.
Anti-semitism was socially acceptable and deemed virtuous in the USA (cf.: Father Coughlin) until the public obscenity of the Nazi genocide made the respectable USAans embarrassed to express it overtly.
Gay-bashing has gone on for centuries, and "respectable" gays kept insisting that their fellow gays should keep quiet and not upset the straight folks who were in power; it took "we're here, we're queer, get used to it" to make being gay mainstream.
Ultimately, nothing will satisfy the transphobes but our utter invisibility and our silence when they beat up on and murder us. They revel in our suicides. I think that, ultimately, it is the "impatient" trans people who will get the majority to see us as human and make the transphobes crawl back under their rocks. But, as other oppressed groups have found, there will be backlash ("extinction burst") -- it is inevitable when you try to change things.
civil desobedience vs. entitlement
In principle we seem to be on the same page.
Please note that there is „slight“ and „subtle“, but non the less very significant difference between civil disobedience and entitlement! The former aimed at shining a light on and calling attention towards some social injustice that affects not only „myself“, but also a significant portion of the societal population. While the latter is almost exclusively aimed at obtaining a benefit for „myself“ as the main priority, with little to no regard for the benefit of „others“, and in that process, more often than not, it creates more injustices (often against the perceived perpetrators).
I also want to point out, that in my comment I never advocated the „rolling over and playing dead approach“. In fact, look at this quote from my comment:
Does that sound like „turning the other cheek“ or even „rolling over and playing dead“? To me that quiet fight sounds an awful lot like civil disobedience. That quiet fight, was how the Civil Rights Movement gained its initial traction.
The big difference lies in the fundamental underlying motivation for taking on the status quo: Do I want to improve the life of my fellow human beings as I fight against the injustice I am experiencing; or, do I just want to obtain what I perceive to be my right, come what may and without any regard for the social costs it may incur?