marjaerwin

“Big Government Won’t Let Us Use the Government to Out and Endanger Trans People”

*headdesk*

The right wing seem to hold that state-sponsored discrimination, harassment, and violence against marginalized groups isn’t “big government,” and that trying to limit state-sponsored discrimination, harassment, and violence against anyone except themselves is “big government.”

example:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markmeckler/2016/4/big-business-and-big-government-threaten-north-carolina-residents-over-bathroom-law/

from a discussion of voter identification laws in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/17617242

Then what's your problem? Get the passport and go vote. When you said you couldn't get an ID for medical reasons, I thought you were bedridden or something.

What is your problem? I went over all this in my first post on the thread. I am a pacifist. I don't vote. I don't want to do anything to legitimize the war machine. I am also trans. I am concerned by the implications, not just electoral, of systems which require everyone to have valid identification and then bar certain people from getting valid identification. I have a passport because it's the only unambiguously-valid identification I can get. But this is Virginia. A lot of things here require state identification, not federal.

My guess is you are refusing the ID they want to give you because it doesn't align with your view of yourself (ie, m or f).

There is a legal catch-22. The identification has to conform to policy, and it has to describe the bearer. For trans people, it can do one or the other, but not both. For trans people, the discrepancy can mean being outed, and facing violence, including murder. I was bashed before transition, and I am still living with ptsd, and still concerned about safety issues.

Don't expect the world around you to break its back on your behalf. This is much of our problem in the US today. Everyone expects the world to cater to their every need.

There was that Tennessee politician who said he would kill us if he saw one of us. There is the violence I've faced. There is the unemployment rate in our community. There is the profiling of poor trans womyn of color as born prostitutes and the legal harassment that comes from that. There are the lgbt youth being thrown onto the streets by cissexist/heterosexist parents.

These are matters of survival. I'm not asking for people to break your backs. I'm asking for people to stop attacking us. At a beginning a day without rape. [*] A day without bashings. A day without another murder.

[*] been a while since I've read that speech. Dworkin addressing a men's group.