The Provocateur as "Victim"

The other day I got into an argument with someone who watches Faux, I mean Fox, News for hours on end and echoes their whines about "the liberal media."  Now, I'm no fan of Hilary or Obama, but I don't think the "liberal media" has gone easier on them than it did on George W. Bush or Dick Cheyney.  After all, the so-called LM allowed them to get away with leading this country into two wars over lies and allowing the CEOs of large banks to, in essence, drive the world's economy off a cliff.

Also, the so-called liberal media is not all fawning over Caitlyn Jenner, as the Faux Folks might have you believe.  One of Faux's compatriots in duplicity, Breibart News, engages in all sorts of thuggism so that it and its reporters can complain about being "victims" of the LM.


It started when Breitbart  Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro made a point of insulting the trans community by refusing to refer to Caitlyn Jenner by her preferred pronoun.  Then he deliberately provoked transwoman Zoey Tur by asking her, "What are your genetics, sir?"

Tur responded by placing her hand on his shoulder and saying, "You should cut that out now, or you'll go home in an ambulance."  Shapiro claims that after the show, Tur said the two should meet in a parking lot.  From there followed a stream of tweets between Shapiro, Tur and their followers that led to Shapiro making the ludicrous assertion that Tur is an anti-Semite. 

All of this ended with Shapiro filing battery charges against Tur.

From what I know about the incident, Tur was wrong to threaten Shapiro.  However, he and is fans conveniently ignore his complicity in creating the hostile environment in which she made the threat. And he is perpetuating such an environment by re-tweeting all of those who sent him approving tweets.

If anything, the fact that he was allowed to insult a trans woman on national TV for ten minutes before Tur threatened him should put lie his and his ilk's notions about the "liberal media" or about themselves as "victims."

The Charges: She's Black---And Trans

So what is life like for a black trans woman?

The sad tale of Meagan Taylor might tell us more--and worse--than most people could have imagined.

She checked into a Des Moines, Iowa hotel room with a friend who is also transgendered. The staff were "acting really funny" around them, she said.  Then the police showed up at their hotel room.

Now she's sitting in a cell of the Polk County Jail Medical Unit while officials try to figure out what to do with her.  Her bond is set at $2000.  Were she a Polk County resident, she could pay a tenth of that.  But, being from out-of-state, she would need someone local to co-sign, and she doesn't know a soul in Iowa.  She doesn't even have a lawyer.  All of this means that Taylor could be in that cell for months.

So what, exactly, is Meagan charged with?  Well, the hotel clerk who called the cops described "two males dressed as females", with the implication that they were prostitutes.  The cops could find no evidence of that.   They did, however, find a bottle of spironolactone hydrochloride.  in an unmarked bottle in her purse.  I used to take that same drug with estrogen tablets before U had my surgery but, apparently, the cops didn't believe her when she told them it's part of her hormone therapy.   So, she was charged with having a prescription drug without a prescription.

And, to be fair, she did give a false name and Missouri ID.  It’s not clear as to how she got that ID, but it’s hard to understand why that should have led to a charge of “malicious prosecution”, an aggravated misdemeanor.
While arresting her, a police officer ran a check and found she had an outstanding probation violation in her home state of Illinois: When she was 17, she was charged with credit card fraud. She says she did her time for that but admits she still owes $500 in fines.

All right.  You might say that Meagan Taylor is no angel.  But who among us is?  And young trans people often do, out of desperation, the sorts of things (like credit card fraud and using fake IDs) other young people do out of stupidity or arrogance. 

I don’t think most people would want to keep any young person locked up for such offenses.  Incarcerating such people rarely does them any good and costs a lot of money.  So why do Polk County officials see fit to keep Meagan Taylor, a low-level nonviolent offender, behind bars?

By The Numbers, Again

This is for anyone who thinks that our pleas for equality are demands for "special treatment":

Can A Child Be "Outed" For Her Own Good?

I think that, by now, most people would agree that it's wrong to "out" an LGBT person who is harming no one else. 

But how do you discourage kids from bullying a trans classmate--or encourage those same kids' parents to be good examples of tolerance and honesty for their kids--without "outing" the classmate in question?

That's a question a school district in Missouri had to answer when someone who was born a boy was returning to school as a girl.  School and district officials said they were interested in ensuring the child's safety and ability to learn. 

Officials in Raytown sent a letter to parents informing them about the transgender child. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools are not allowed to release most information about a child without the consent of the child's parents. Exempt from this ban are "directory" information, such as a student's name, address, phone number and date of birth, which can be released without consent. However, the school or district must provide ample warning of the release to allow the parent(s) enough time to request that the information not be released.

However, as you can imagine, there's "gray area" in the law. While a student's name may fall under the category of "directory" information, it's not clear whether the student's gender--which, some would argue, is part of a student's medical history--also falls into that category.