All purpose news and politics thread part VII: News & Politics Total Landscaping

[Catlady in training]

Biggest ever survey of trans Americans finds 94% happier after transition

The largest survey of transgender Americans ever conducted has found trans people continue to suffer discrimination, harassment and even violence at work, in medicine and at school – but that people who transition have much higher satisfaction in life, and many have supportive families.

This is the first report to document transgender experiences en masse in eight years, and comes amid sustained political attacks on trans rights from conservatives.

“There’s still a drought of information available to lawmakers, the media and advocates regarding our experiences and our needs,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Coalition for Transgender Equality (NCTE), said, according to NBC News.

“At best, we’re working in a vacuum of information. At worst, we’re combating dangerous misinformation being spread by anti-trans extremists,” he continued. “Without question, the misinformation and lack of understanding is underpinning these escalating legislative attacks against our community.”

The report, called the 2022 US Trans Survey, presents an early look at findings from a survey of more than 92,000 people who identify as binary or nonbinary transgender adults. It is the first such report since the NCTE produced a survey of more than 28,000 individuals in 2015. Individuals were asked a variety of more than 600 possible questions. No respondent received all questions.

Importantly, the transgender survey is large but is not random. Although surveyors weighted the responses to try to account for biases, people who took the survey might still be unrepresentative of transgender people living in the US as a whole.

The report found that 94% of transgender individuals who live at least part of the time in a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth – in other words, who “transitioned” – were either “a lot” (79%) or “a little more satisfied” (15%) with their lives. Nearly 98% of respondents were receiving some kind of hormone replacement therapy, which made them “a lot” (84%) or “a little” (14%) more satisfied with their lives.

“Obtaining hormone therapy through the informed consent model and having access to surgery has definitely changed my life for the better,” one survey respondent, named Taylor, said. “It certainly didn’t fix all of my problems instantly, but it fixed a lot of problems that my dysphoria caused. Now that I’ve been on HRT and had surgery, I can live my day-to-day life without pain, dissociation, and misery.”

Conversely, the sustained political attacks on transgender individuals, almost entirely from the right wing, made about half of trans respondents (47%) consider moving location. At least 10 states force trans individuals to use public bathrooms that correspond to their gender assigned at birth in at least some situations, as opposed to a choice aligned with the gender they identify as; 22 states ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth; 24 ban transgender youth sports participation.

Transgender individuals also continue to suffer discrimination, harassment and even violence. More than a third were experiencing poverty (34% compared with 12% of the US population). More than one in 10 (11%) said they had been forced out of a job because of their gender identity, and about 18% were unemployed (compared with 3.5% of the US population in December 2022).

Further, nearly one-third (30%) said they were verbally harassed in the last 12 months and 39% said they were harassed online. About one in 10 (9%) said they were offered unequal treatment. Three per cent said they were physically attacked in the last 12 months.

These experiences contrasted sharply with the support many trans individuals received from family, support that tended to increase with age. Forty-three per cent of trans individuals aged 16-17 said their families were supportive, all the way up to 63% of individuals older than 65 who felt their families were supportive.

“My whole life has been affected by the fact that my family was very accepting of me,” said Amanda, who is older than 50. “I’m not exactly sure why, but both of my parents always supported my gender and sexual expression even before it was popular to do so. They would intervene at school and in the neighborhood, so I never had the problems that most people had growing up.”

I think it is fair to state that people who oppose access to transition want the exact opposite: for people to remain unhappy and depressed.

[zinderel]

Biggest ever survey of trans Americans finds 94% happier after transition



I think it is fair to state that people who oppose access to transition want the exact opposite: for people to remain unhappy and depressed.

Despair, misery and suffering are the point, for those who hate as much as the right hates.

In the eighties and nineties, they preached from the pulpit and spoke openly in interviews about ‘God’s judgement on queers’ in the form of HIV/AIDS, and how the global queer community had ‘brought it on ourselves’ by existing and not hiding and rotting in our closets. That we deserved to have our ‘blood upon us’ and be put to death, or be sent to camps, or should just kill ourselves if we refuse to convert. All because some hateful, old, cishet white dudes decided to focus on three verses - one in Leviticus, one in Romans, and one in Jude - that have become deliberately interpreted as ‘God hates fags’ by MONSTROUS human beings. Matthew Shepherd’s brutal death brought literal cheers from some so-called ‘christian’ churches. Pastors TODAY still call for the death of queer folx, still spread hatred and lies at CPAC and Prayer Breakfasts, and Sunday services and YouTube and Twitter and other outlets around the country.

And always using those same boring, snatched-out-of-all-context verses (not ONE word from Christ Himself in support of their awfulness, and PLENTY condemning it, of course…): the one from the Old Testament (that’s nestled in a whole list of things other religions in the area do that Hebrew people were no longer to take part in, as part of the covenant), the one from a former hunter and killer of Christians (who ‘miraculously converted’ after failing to stamp out Christianity, and proceeded to codify misogyny, homophobia, and hierarchical rules into Christ’s teachings, all while conveniently making himself the Most Important Christian Ever), and the one from whoever actually wrote Jude.

They blamed queer folx for 9/11. We were among the reasons listed for why young people protested Vietnam. We caused the fall of Rome. They claimed that ‘the Nazis were actually gay’. They have called us sexual deviants and focused on spreading fear and disgust at what we do in the bedroom - not one aspect of which is anything cishet people don’t do in THEIR bedrooms, too… - for decades. They said we wanted to destroy marriage (by fighting for the right to get married…). They accused us of DELIBERATELY spreading the disease (not just to ourselves, but to innocent straight people, too!) that they said their god sent to kill us. They accuse us of grooming and kidnapping and brainwashing children. They accuse us of demonic possession. They export their hate to other countries, helping craft and support laws that encourage THEM to kill us. They do all of this while calling themselves ‘christians’.

Or they betray their faith by pretending that their hate isn’t religiously motivated. It’s just ‘common sense’, or ‘science’, or ‘freedom to express differing opinions’. They ABSOLUTELY want to see violence against us, carried out by ‘the faithful’. They choose their words carefully and deliberately in an attempt to provoke violence against us, while remaining comfortably protected by the wiggle room of ‘religious freedom’ and ‘free speech’. And they play ‘oppressed victim’ when called out on it.

Far Right ‘christianity’ WANTS people who go against, or simply live outside of, its teachings to suffer. It’s why every policy far right ‘christian’ Republicans come up with involves the deliberate infliction of suffering on SOMEONE Jesus personally uplifted or spoke about expecting His followers to uplift. Here are just a smattering of people who have been targeted to suffer at the hands of the GOP and it’s ‘christian’ ideals while the ‘Christian’ Republicans enrich themselves: the poor, women, children, immigrants, the homeless, the starving, the sick, the needy, the outcast, religious minorities. Every GOP policy in my lifetime either punishes or oppresses or dehumanizes or burdens or otherwise causes pain and distress to one of those, or enriches the already wealthy, or both.

And yet, people like Mets insist we’re ‘paranoid’ for remembering our own living history. For recognizing what the GOP and its ‘christian’ base are doing, daily, to this country. For calling out how this has all happened before, here or abroad. Try as they might - and BOY have they tried! - the religious far right has failed to erase queer folx, people of color, or ‘uppity’ women. And when we’re treated with love and compassion and respect, we thrive, and the culture thrives. They just got a lot of us killed through their lack of compassion, lack of action, and deliberate cruelty. And they keep trying, every day, to finish what Ronald Reagan and the Religious Right started.

And we get semantic-ed to death when we call that out.

It’s ‘unfair’ of us to bring up the past.

We apparently have to keep pretending that these people are ‘christians’ because of ‘religious freedom’, and ‘patriots’ because they ‘fly tattered flags from their gas guzzlers on their way to support a wannabe dictator’.

((To be clear, Mets has stated plainly at every turn that he disagrees with the various racisms and homophobias and misogynies and terrorisms and war crimes and election crimes and high crimes and misdemeanors and rapes and murders and wastes of taxpayer dollars that his party has taken part in, committed, ignored, gaslit about, or supported. He deserves credit for being one of the good ones. But he still defends his party at every turn, and insists every time that it’s just a few bad apples, not the party itself, that’s the problem. He still continues supporting and running interference for that party, no matter how atrocious their behavior.))

[Gray Lensman]

BiBi has definitely shown that he's motivated more by revenge than political solutions.

It might be survival more than revenge. The conflict is the only thing keeping him in office right now, and like Trump, the office might be the only thing standing between him and jail.

[CaptainEurope]

17 GOP yeas on effort to break filibuster on Ukraine aid package:
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Ernst
Grassley
Kennedy
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Romney
Rounds
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Wicker
Young

Bernie Sanders, Independent, who spent his honeymoon in Russia, voted no.

[Kirby101]

17 GOP yeas on effort to break filibuster on Ukraine aid package:


Bernie Sanders, Independent, who spent his honeymoon in Russia, voted no.

Sanders is opposed to aid to Israel without a cease fire, not aid to Ukraine. Your comment was needlessly suggestive. Unlike many in the GOP, Sanders is not a Putin pawn.

In a written statement explaining his opposition to the deal, Sanders focused entirely on the funding it would have provided to Israel. He said the nation had the right to defend itself against Hamas, which launched attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip four months ago, but Sanders criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, driving many more from their homes and blocking humanitarian assistance.

“This bill provides $10 billion dollars more in U.S. military aid for the Netanyahu government to continue its horrific war against the Palestinian people,” Sanders said. “That is unconscionable. That is why I will be voting NO.”

[Jack Dracula]

Saving it for his book like all the other GOP guys that want to come out later and say they were part of the "reasonable ones".

Aka pulling a “Boehner”.

[CaptainEurope]

Sanders is opposed to aid to Israel without a cease fire, not aid to Ukraine. Your comment was needlessly suggestive. Unlike many in the GOP, Sanders is not a Putin pawn.

He was used as one against Hillary Clinton. And he likely knew and did not care.

[AnakinFlair]

It might be survival more than revenge. The conflict is the only thing keeping him in office right now, and like Trump, the office might be the only thing standing between him and jail.

It's probably both. The more he opens his mouth, the more I'm starting to agree that he, and many of his cronies in the government, really do want a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. At the very least, he deserves to be dragged to The Hague and tried for war crimes.

As for the arguments before the Supreme Court- one thing that's sticking out to me is can what happened on 1/6 be defined as an insurrection? Or was it just a riot? Or can it be considered both? I almost feel that if it was supposed to be an insurrection, all of those people storming the Capital would have refused to leave, and they would have had to send in the National Guard and there would have been more gunfire and bloodshed. As it was, they came, the stormed, they acted like idiots, and they left.

[kidfresh512]

It's probably both. The more he opens his mouth, the more I'm starting to agree that he, and many of his cronies in the government, really do want a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. At the very least, he deserves to be dragged to The Hague and tried for war crimes.

As for the arguments before the Supreme Court- one thing that's sticking out to me is can what happened on 1/6 be defined as an insurrection? Or was it just a riot? Or can it be considered both? I almost feel that if it was supposed to be an insurrection, all of those people storming the Capital would have refused to leave, and they would have had to send in the National Guard and there would have been more gunfire and bloodshed. As it was, they came, the stormed, they acted like idiots, and they left.

Because, they didn't get access to the members of Congress they wanted. Just because they didn't actually get their hands on Pelosi, or Pence etc doesn't mean they didn't go in with the intent to harm them or stop the due process of the counts.
This is what these GOP and right wing shows etc that try to downplay what happened and whine about all the people who were jailed etc. Most didn't actually get their hands on anyone! Just sightseeing as citizens!

[Tami]

It's probably both. The more he opens his mouth, the more I'm starting to agree that he, and many of his cronies in the government, really do want a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. At the very least, he deserves to be dragged to The Hague and tried for war crimes.

As for the arguments before the Supreme Court- one thing that's sticking out to me is can what happened on 1/6 be defined as an insurrection? Or was it just a riot? Or can it be considered both? I almost feel that if it was supposed to be an insurrection, all of those people storming the Capital would have refused to leave, and they would have had to send in the National Guard and there would have been more gunfire and bloodshed. As it was, they came, the stormed, they acted like idiots, and they left.

A riot is chaotic and unplanned. January 6th was planned and executed by those who consider themselves an 'Army', a militia. Some got caught up in it, others did it with intent and on the orders of Trump. January 6th was an insurrection.

[Deathstroke]

First person I thought of was Hannity, but I guess it could be a number of folks...

True, but your guess is a good one, I'd say.

[CaptainEurope]

Trump Says Jan. 6 Was an Insurrection

Trump lawyer Jonathan Mitchell rejected the notion that the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, qualified as an insurrection.

“This was a riot,” he said. “It was not an insurrection.”

Trump’s legal team also tried to throw cold water on the idea in a filing earlier this week, writing that the “events of January 6 were not an ‘insurrection’ as they did not involve an organized attempt to overthrow or resist the U.S. government.”


Trump disagrees, apparently.
“They kept saying about what I said right after the insurrection,” he said outside Mar-a-Lago after arguments concluded in Washington, D.C. “I think it was an insurrection caused by Nancy Pelosi.

It was not clear immediately if he actually meant the former speaker of his current primary opponent, Nikki Haley.

[Reverse Happy]

He was used as one against Hillary Clinton. And he likely knew and did not care.

Was something wrong with Hillary running a tough primary against Obama? Or Obama running against her?

[Kirby101]

He was used as one against Hillary Clinton. And he likely knew and did not care.

I think you are thinking of Jill Stein. Sanders ran against Hillary and then endorsed her when she was nominated. Now it is true that there was a campaign to anger Sanders votes against Hillary. And we can see Russia's hand in that. But Sanders was never part of that and asked his supporters to vote for Hillary.
There was another candidate bigly in the pocket of Putin.

[CaptainEurope]

I think you are thinking of Jill Stein. Sanders ran against Hillary and then endorsed her when she was nominated. Now it is true that there was a campaign to anger Sanders votes against Hillary. And we can see Russia's hand in that. But Sanders was never part of that and asked his supporters to vote for Hillary.
There was another candidate bigly in the pocket of Putin.

Sanders was briefed on the Kremlin actively trying to help his campaign and stayed quiet about it for weeks until the Washington Post reported on it. Only then did he tell Russia to stay out of US elections.