So a state run by the party that wants to shrink the size of government and maintain the right of the state to do as it please is going to court to force the federal government to give the state money. Is that about right?
This is a specious argument, though probably beyond the scope of this thread.
Leaving aside whether the funding is being given to educational institutions in the state versus directly to the state, in theory people who support small government would be inclined to oppose a lot of federal funding. But they would also oppose taxing the people to pay for big government. Once the government is taking all that money in taxes - and they take just as much from small government supporters as they do from big government supporters - then you’d be foolish to refuse to take back what you’ve paid in, regardless of what your personal philosophy is.
You can argue for one set of rules or another, but when you play you have to go by what’s actually in place.
IMO it would be considered very highly offensive. Since many of us do not “pass” and will never “pass” even with $1M in surgery, while the intent of the ad may be good it would instead try to cast some transgender people as “good” and “acceptable”, versus those who are “undesirable.” The African-American community went through this somewhat in the 1960’s, when light-skinned African-Americans were cast in films, appeared in advertisements, and were more likely to be hired because they could pass as being "close enough to ‘normal’ ".
Sure I get an easier time because I pass. Most people who meet me out of context and who don’t know about me think I’m just a lady with a “smoker’s voice.” I could have gone stealth (not “deep stealth”) and eventually just blended into the woodwork. I kept my job and my spouse and I could have just lived as any other lesbian woman.
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t turn my back on all the people - all my people - who will and are being harassed in bathrooms, being fired, denied employment, denied healthcare, and suffering just because genetics didn’t bless them with a hormone disorder in addition to being transgender, like mine did.
I’m convinced the vast majority of the issue is simply fear of the unknown and the fact that the average person really doesn’t have the capacity to show empathy towards others. Most people who hate and fear us have never sat down for a talk with one of us. They’ve never just had that time to sit over coffee or lunch and realize that “hey, this person isn’t a monster, they’re not a drag queen, they’re not a loon, they’re just someone I can have lunch with and talk about stuff with.” I’ve done this innumerable times with people, who have got up from the table and hugged me, or cried, and sometimes even become pro-trans-rights activists afterwards. Even worst-case, I’ve never had anyone get up from the table still hating.
Now if I could just schedule a lunch date with the entire state of North Carolina…
I think this discussion is primarily about the Obama administration directive and not the NC law specifically. But FWIW, NC itself does allow for changes in birth certificate, so the law would only present problems such as you describe for transpeople from other states who find themselves in NC.
Of course, as noted in another thread, as a practical matter any transperson who looks like their gender identity is going to be able to use that gender’s bathroom with impunity, regardless of what any law says. (Especially since there’s apparently not any law governing what bathrooms anyone needs to use anywhere, so it’s not like there’s any real risk of any legal action just from using the “wrong” bathroom.)
The lawsuit and the funding cut-off are independent from each other. North Carolina’s lawsuit had nothing to do with funding or threats over funding. The Administration could choose to cut off funding or not, and can choose to sue or not.
But as everyone acquainted with this area is aware, cutting off funding would be an empty threat when made with respect to the laws of an entire state (which I guess is what the media calls an “implicit” threat). No administration has ever done that, even during desegregation when it would have been much more popular. Instead, they opted to sue for enforcement and to continue to fund. Which is, of course, why no one in power actually views the guidance as a threat to remove “billions of dollars” in funding, as you put it, except when it suits them to gin up conservative outrage. They know that the way things work in the real world is that the federal government gives you lots of chances, almost always involving some kind of court action, before funding is even threatened, much less removed–and that’s if you’re some kind of small state college. If you’re Texas or North Carolina, they just sue. As they did here.
So, again, it is quite bizarre to view a statement about the scope of Title IX to be dictatorial over-reaching, whether you characterize it as a threat or not. (You’ve also avoided the follow-up questions in that post, but I would be idly curious to see your answers. Here they are: Would conservatives prefer that the DOJ ignore the requests for guidance and simply jump straight into litigation? Or is the only non-dictatorial option to decline to enforce their view of Title IX at all?)
I guess I disagree that the Federal government should have just shut up and waited for some hypothetical future “politically correct” time to stand up for people’s human rights.
I think you’re wrong about this. NC isn’t suing over the DOJ letter specifically, but if they prevail in their lawsuit it would likely have ramifications for the funding issue as well. These issues are related, as the DOJ letter to NC itself noted.
As you may or may not be aware, the DOJ letter applies to educational institutions, not to states. The administration doesn’t usually have to carry out their threats against institutions, because the institutions generally cave without a fight. cite. NC is in bit of a different situation here, because of the conflicting state law applying to state educational institutions.
This is an empty assertion.
The DOJ was not responding to “requests for guidance” in sending out directives to the entire nation. They could easily respond to anyone who asks with their view and not send out threatening letters to the entire nation.
I have no idea how you could have gotten that message from anything I’ve written in this thread.
LOL. Sure, sure, the lawsuit preceded the DOJ letter and makes no mention about threats of funding, but it was clearly in response to that later-in-time event because time is a flat circle and it could have “ramifications.”
I see no need to proceed further. Please continue to prove how the dictator-in-chief rules through non-binding guidelines.
As a teenager, I knew one person who I think was a transwoman. I never knew her name, although we as teenagers called her a terrible nickname behind her back, because we were terrible. I think she was homeless. She would come sit next to teenagers on benches downtown and not say anything. It freaked us out. We didn’t understand.
In retrospect, it’s likely that she faced a fair amount of social ostracism for being transgender, possibly enough to exacerbate any underlying mental illness, possible enough to lead to homelessness (no job, no family, no support network). I was part of the teenage punk scene in my town, and we were all weird, and maybe she hoped we’d be a little more accepting–which, awfully, we weren’t. I never did anything besides get away from her and then gossip about her behind her back, but that was bad enough.
The lesson I took from it at the time was completely the wrong lesson: since I knew no other trans person (or at least didn’t know that I knew any), I assumed that she was representative, that trans people were scary crazy homeless people who creeped on teenagers.
Which is to say, Una, I think you’re right. As I grew older I started thinking about transgender stuff in the abstract, but had a hard time shaking from my mind the idea that trans people were crazy and creepy like that one woman I’d known as a teenager. It wasn’t until I started listening to media figures, or conversing with trans people, that I was able to start getting past my own stereotypes and bad ideas.
I didn’t say it was in response to it. I thought I pretty clearly said it wasn’t in response to it. But your question was “how are the North Carolina schools doing with their loss of “billions of dollars” in funding” and my response was that if NC prevailed with their lawsuit their schools would likely not lose funding.
As noted previously, the DOJ letter to NC linked Title IX and Title VII as regards this matter. cite
Do you disagree with this or is this some rhetorical showmanship? (ISTM that the premise of your question was that the two issues were linked, or you shouldn’t have been asking about schools in NC specifically.)
Of course she likely didn’t have to be mentally ill at all to be homeless. The homeless problem of transgender youth and adults is horrifying. One of my best friends, the former national marketing manager of a big pharma company, was fired for coming out 20 months ago, and within another 4-6 months, after even being turned down for minimum wage jobs, she’s about to have to sell her house to survive. From a 6-figure salary managing an 8-figure sales effort, to risking homelessness in 2 years.
Another friend of mine is a PhD molecular biologist who worked on new cancer drugs, who was fired for trans, and after 4 years she has finally burned through her 401k and savings and will likely have to sell her house and move into a roommate situation this summer. She can’t even get hired at 7-11. When I worked at a charity that helped prostitutes on the streets of KCMO, I encountered a transgender former attorney, who was fired for being transgender, took to alcohol as a result of losing her career, lost the ability to practice independently, and eventually after a 6-year spiral ended up hooking.
There’s a thousand stories, most of them sad. What good was served to humanity to throw away the services of a talented marketing manager, biologist, and attorney, because they were transgender? For that matter, what good is served by firing another friend from freaking fast food for being transgender, or any job? And yet each year conservative Republicans fight tooth and nail to prevent any sort of non-discrimination legislation to simply give us the same chance to play on the employment field as others.
Because we’re freaks, monsters, psychos, and criminals.
FP, here’s the order of events as I understand it:
-The Civil Rights Act was passed. AFAIUI, there was no discussion either way at the time of how the law would affect transgender Americans.
-Decades later, people brought up that question.
-Courts looked at the law and at the issues, and said, yup, looks like the language of the law prevents discrimination against transgender people as well. This is how things work. The law also didn’t mention any individual by name, or any corporation by name, but that doesn’t prevent the application of the law to particular individuals or corporations. Courts look at laws and figure out what cases to apply those laws to.
-The DOJ determined that what the courts had decided would be relevant for future enforcement actions.
-North Carolina passed a law unprecedented in our nation’s history.
-The DOJ looked at this new law, and looked at the Civil Rights Act, and looked at how courts had interpreted the Civil Rights Act, and determined that probably courts would interpret the new law as violating the Civil Rights Act. This, too, is a completely normal action for the executive branch to take.
-Lots of school districts were like, woah, DOJ, give us some guidance! How’re you planning to enforce the law that you’re tasked with enforcing?
-The DOJ said, okay, sure, here’s what we think the law means, and here’s how we plan to engage in enforcement actions. Once more, entirely appropriate.
Now, of course the DOJ doesn’t make a unilateral declaration. That’s what lawsuits are for. People that get dinged by enforcement agencies turn to the courts for remedies if they think the people enforcing the law are not enforcing it correctly.
That’s how divided government works:
-Legislators write the law.
-Executive agencies enforce the law.
-The Judiciary decides whether the law was correctly enforced.
If the executive branch is too wishy-washy to enforce the law, the whole thing breaks down. So they have to enforce it. And that necessarily involves making some decisions about how the law should be understood. Does it apply in this particular case? What about this one? This one? How does the executive branch decide?
So of course they’re going to decide to enforce it, and of course they’re going to interpret it (“interpret” should be understood as a basic function of human language and not as some sort of postmodern exercise).
Now, maybe the problem is that they told people how they planned to enforce it? Is that what’s being read as a threat? Should they have kept their interpretation of the law secret until they slammed some state with an action? Who does that help?
And of course states will sue in court. Even if the states are being dumbasses about the particulars of their complaints, that’s a totally legitimate functioning of government.
TL;DR: This is all government functioning as it should. No executive overreach, no bullying, no blackmail. Congress writes; President enforces; Judiciary resolves disputes.
Sorry - it was not meant to be directed specifically to you. Just ranting.
FWIW, it’s very helpful in “consciousness raising” among people who, until reading posts like yours, imagine that we can “sit on the sidelines” and “not get involved.”
I was drawn into abortion rights and gay rights the same way; by watching real people get hurt. What started out as “Not my issue” became my issue, because it goes so far beyond mere abstract injustice. Real people are getting hurt. That demands our attention.
So…from someone who needed his eyes opened…thank you for all your posts here and all your work on the topic.
First, thank you very much for posting here. It may feel like you’re banging your head on a brick wall, but you are doing a lot of good.
And now for a story that is not sad:
i was doing some biological field work some years ago at a remote field station. One of the visiting university researchers was a trans woman who had made the full transition only a couple of years before her visit. We were all in pretty cramped quarters, being a small field station and all. She was a very nice person and an excellent researcher who did great work. She retained her job at the university, and from our conversations, it was apparent that she had been accepted by faculty, staff and students alike. She seemed to be very happy in life.
Oh don’t see how, but oh well. Tell them they’re wrong.
Having a long history of support by society isn’t a justification. Hating transgender people has a long history of support by society too.
I’m not conflating two issues anyway. I’m saying that one brings up a new one. That’s okay. It doesn’t hurt transgender people to say so.
Of course I think other poeple are wrong about things. So do you. That’s life. I’m not ignorant.
Which is directly contradicted by the North Carolina law and the proposed Texas law that demands that the selection be based on one’s birth certificate.
You’re wrong about that, for both NC & TX
North Carolina.
So you can’t identify as transgender until after surgery.
Texas
You need outside verification and it’s still up for review by a specialist.(Specialist what?) are they neutral or a hired gun?