On Election Day in 2016, Henry Seaton, a transgender man who was then 18, showed up to his local polling place in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, to vote for the first time.

Seaton showed his state ID. But the poll worker gave him a confused look and called over another poll worker to look at Seaton's identification.

Then, in front of the Nazarene church where he was supposed to vote, the poll workers asked him about what they saw as a discrepancy between his ID and his appearance.

"I had to out myself as transgender," said Seaton, now 24. He had legally changed his name at the time, but the gender marker on his Tennessee ID still said "female."

That outing, he said, "can be brutally dangerous, especially where I was living, which is a conservative suburb."

"It's not just embarrassing, but it's terrifying to have to do that --- to try to read the room and see, like, are they going to kick me out? It can be really dehumanizing to have your whole identity nitpicked just so that you can cast your ballot and have your voice be heard," added Seaton, a transgender justice advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee.

With early voting for next week's election underway in many states, Seaton is unlikely to be alone in his experience. While trans people may face barriers to voting in dozens of states, Tennessee is one of eight where they could face particularly challenging obstacles at the polls this month because of both strict voter ID laws and a simmering culture war, in which transgender people have been thrust to the forefront. This year alone, more than 160 state bills to restrict trans rights have been proposed across the country, according to the ACLU.

"People who might be inclined to harass marginalized voters at the polls are more aware of trans people's existence," said Olivia Hunt, the policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality. "So I expect that we're going to hear more stories of trans people being harassed, whether by voters, poll workers, poll monitors or other folks who are present during the election."

Impact of voter ID laws on trans voters

Voter identification laws differ widely by state. The majority of them, 35 states, will require or request that voters show some kind of ID for the 2022 election, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Eight of those states have strict photo ID laws. In Tennessee, for example, voters are required to show government-issued photo IDs, and student IDs aren't acceptable.

Since the 2020 election, 12 states have enacted new or stricter voter ID laws, according to VoteRiders, a nonpartisan voting rights organization.

In the 15 states without ID laws, voters' identities are usually verified by checking them against their voter registration information, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Proponents of voter identification laws say they prevent fraud and protect election integrity, but critics say they disproportionately affect Black voters, students, the elderly, disabled people, those who are low-income and trans voters.

For example, 8% of white eligible voting-age citizens didn't have valid government-issued photo IDs, compared with 25% of Black voting-age citizens and 16% of Latinx, according to 2012 data from the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Voter ID laws can also create problems for trans people in particular, who might change their names and gender presentations as part of their transitions, and updating their IDs would require them to also legally change their names and potentially their gender markers.

There are an estimated 878,300 voting-eligible transgender adults in the U.S., according to a September report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, and about 414,000 of them live in 31 states that conduct their elections primarily in person at the polls and also have laws that require or request that voters show some form of ID. Nearly half of the eligible trans voters in those 31 states, about 203,700 of them, don't have IDs that reflect their gender identities and the names they go by, and 64,800 of them live in states with the strictest voter ID laws, where photo IDs are required with few or no alternatives available, according to the Williams Institute.

"We hear stories from voters after most elections that they were challenged at the polls because their driver's license or other ID didn't match their current appearance or that the name that was on it did not match in the poll worker's mind the gender presentation that they had," said Hunt, of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Obstacles to name and gender marker changes

Hunt said some states make it difficult and prohibitively expensive to legally change one's name and gender marker. In nearly all states, residents have to submit petitions to local courts for name changes (in Hawaii, a resident would submit an application to the lieutenant governor).

Nine states also require residents to publish their name change announcements, often for three to four weeks, in local papers, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Eighteen additional states have what the organization calls "unclear publication requirements" or rules that allow courts to waive the requirements. The publication requirements allow creditors or anyone else to object to name changes.

Wisconsin has both a strict voter photo ID law and an unclear publication requirement that can sometimes be waived for residents who want to change their names. In Milwaukee, for example, residents have to file petitions for their name changes with local courts, then publish notice of their name changes in local papers for three consecutive weeks, said Alex Corona, the director of community programs at Diverse & Resilient, a local LGBTQ health advocacy group.

After Milwaukee residents publish their name changes, Corona said, they have to appear in front of judges again. Then, residents have to update their names with a variety of state agencies, including the Wisconsin Vital Records Office, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security office, among others.

Corona navigated the process herself in college. She said she found it so complex that she was inspired to help other trans people navigate the process. To date, she has helped more than 125 people change their names.

"It involves being able to speak on behalf of yourself in court, and a lot of people, trans or cis[gender], are afraid of the court system, because we've never been taught that's supposed to be helping us," she said. "It's still very threatening, and it makes you feel like you're doing something bad or you're not supposed to be doing it. They ask you repeatedly if this is what you want to do, and it's like, 'Yes, I want to be myself.'"

Corona said the process can take at least three weeks and up to four months in Milwaukee County. Some other counties in Wisconsin, she added, may require residents to have their fingerprints taken at local police stations or go through criminal background checks.

"But if you want to, there are ways to get involved in the process," she said. "You can jump through all of the hoops and the loops --- most of them are on fire --- but there are ways to still participate in the system and to force ourselves into a system that doesn't want us and needs to represent us."

'Suspicious looks' and fear of violence

When poll workers evaluated Seaton's ID at his suburban polling place in 2016, he wasn't afraid only of not being allowed to vote.

"They did finally let me go in, but I did get some suspicious looks, because when you do that, everyone else can see that you were flagged, as well," he said. "And in a state where voter fraud and 'election integrity' is so crucial to a lot of people, that can be really not just stigmatizing, but it can lead to a lot of suspicion."

Advocates say trans voters in battleground states could be more likely to face such suspicion at the polls.

Arizona, for example, requires voters to show IDs at the polls, but they don't have to include photos. Seaton mentioned comments by state Sen. Kelly Townsend, a Republican, who in May spread unfounded allegations of mass voter fraud and said she was pleased with "all you vigilantes out there that want to camp out" at election drop boxes. Then, last week, during early voting in Arizona, some voters were recorded on video and followed by a car out of the parking lot. The Arizona secretary of state referred the report to the U.S. Justice Department.

Trans people are more likely to face harassment if they haven't updated their IDs to reflect their gender identities and chosen names. The Center for Transgender Equality's 2015 U.S. Trans Survey found that 25% of respondents reported being verbally harassed, 16% reported being denied services or benefits, 9% reported being asked to leave venues and 2% reported being assaulted or attacked after having presented IDs that didn't align with their gender expressions.

Fears about having an ID challenged, misinformation about voter fraud and the wave of anti-trans legislation and rhetoric over the last few years are all factors for trans voters, Seaton said, especially in a state like Tennessee, which enacted five laws last year that target transgender people.

Last year, Tennessee became one of 18 states that bar transgender athletes from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identities, and it also enacted a law that a federal judge struck down in May that would have required businesses in the state to post warning notices on their public restrooms if they allowed trans patrons to use the facilities that matched their gender identities.

Seaton noted that conservative podcast host Matt Walsh also held a rally at the State Capitol in Nashville on Oct. 21 to oppose gender-affirming care's being provided at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. In September, Walsh claimed on Twitter that doctors at the hospital "mutilate" children through gender-affirming procedures. Vanderbilt Medical Center said in a statement that Walsh's tweets "misrepresent facts" about the care it provides and that parental consent is required for all treatment of minors.

Jace Wilder, the education manager at the Tennessee Equality Project, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group, said he has received emails about trans people "that are scared to even attempt to go vote because of how vicious it has become here."

He said some trans people want to use their right to vote, but not if "it's going to actually put a target on you before you even get to walk in the door with whoever's behind you making a judgment about you --- maybe making comments potentially ending with more violence."

Wilder said that when he voted in the 2020 election in Nashville, a poll worker stared at his ID for about five minutes in silence before Wilder felt compelled to out himself as trans and explain the discrepancies. He said he's afraid that this year trans people are more likely to simply be turned away entirely, "because it's become acceptable to consider trans people as fraudulent at this point."

On the first day of Islamophobia Awareness Month, I find out I have been dismissed through Twitter.

That is unacceptable.

— Shaima Dallali (@ShaimaDallali) November 1, 2022

and seething. celebrating and mostly in favour of the sacking

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-63477692

I mean have we not all at some point posted something along the lines of 'Jews, remember the battle of Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning”? And yet only this brave Muslim woman is held accountable for it

This is only 6 months after the UK government cut all ties with the NUS for repeated incidents of antisemitism.

Student politics is where people go who are completely obsessed with politics but somehow either too incompetent or too left wing to get into real politics so you get nothing but complete loons.

Apparently she wasn't even told today as well and had known for a while

https://x.com/realBenBloch/status/1587506162542563328?t=YEHZ3_JoH7icXYvxEkZvUw&s=19

https://x.com/anasaltikriti/status/1587509451287838722?t=HvcqMaQ4ujy87vzaHKxNCQ&s=19

https://x.com/DrRoundglasses/status/1587508065036914695?t=w-pw56WuLL7lhPZEskBJsQ&s=19

It's a Mossad op to remove all Muslim public figures

https://x.com/AmmarKazmi_/status/1587479808929419268?t=2INGjmBpVrCCnHeWiKPozA&s=19

https://x.com/Om_Kimiya/status/1587521120265293832?t=zbZ4x7TQuT9G2kytZHzeYw&s=19

Union of Muslim students (her previous employer) back her up

https://x.com/fosischannel/status/1587515654705389568?t=vLC-oMrNBzyCOzlPzxjGcQ&s=19

Jews dance on the grave of another oppressed minority

https://x.com/realBenBloch/status/1587476963408711681?t=S0C7e4RXlO3YSTTXEWyV2g&s=19

Not sure what they're going for with these ones? They seem to think Twitter can somehow get her reinstated

https://x.com/BHPanimalwatch/status/1587522389814173696?t=ug7_ZocRuK6frow-yst-1Q&s=19

https://x.com/LastmanZaf/status/1587524465671667713?t=ZibPZ0LmwhNRdkqWZWx3bA&s=19

The Union themselves have gone full radio silence and haven't tweeted anything since the firing

This is the most centrist link I could find. Thanks groundnews app!

In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes. We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself. We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks. Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”

Another example: When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA vaccines have won out. But at the time, many people in public health were either neutral or expressed a J&J preference. This misstep wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.

Obviously some people intended to mislead and made wildly irresponsible claims. Remember when the public-health community had to spend a lot of time and resources urging Americans not to inject themselves with bleach? That was bad. Misinformation was, and remains, a huge problem. But most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.

We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge. Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family’s masked hiking trips. But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We need to forgive the attacks, too. Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.” It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high. And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.

No

The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.

Unfortunate if true, I've been waiting for the massive alohacel drama that the eruption would cause

Reddit discussions are actually reasonable, except our friends at stupidpol (who don't believe trans lives matter) say:

Turns out massacring everything that makes your society a society isn’t a good long term strategy

Can't wreck your society if there's no such thing as society. Thatcher tapping head

Trigger Warning: Thatcher phobic

Lately, drag has been dragged through the mud.

The art form has been cast in a false light in recent months by right-wing activists and politicians who complain about the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Opponents often coordinate protests at drag events that feature or cater to children, sometimes showing up with guns. Some politicians have proposed banning children from drag events and even criminally charging parents who take their kids to one.

Performers and organizers of events, such as story hours in which colorfully clad drag queens read books to children, say the protesters are the ones terrorizing and harming children and making them political pawns — just as they’ve done in other campaigns around bathroom access and educational materials.

The recent headlines about disruptions of drag events and their portrayal as sexual and harmful to children can obscure the art form and its rich history.

WHAT IS DRAG?

Drag is the art of dressing and acting exaggeratedly as another gender, usually for entertainment such as comedy, singing, dancing, lip-syncing or all of the above.

Drag may trace its roots to the age of William Shakespeare, when female roles were performed by men. The origin of the term is debated, but one possibility is that it was coined after someone noticed the dresses or petticoats that male actors wore onstage would drag along the floor. Another casts it as an acronym — an unproven notion that notes in scripts would use “DRAG” to indicate the actor should “dress as a girl.”

Drag performances could later be seen on the vaudeville circuit and during the Harlem Renaissance. They became a mainstay at gay bars throughout the 20th century, and remain so.

RuPaul took things a step further with his reality-competition show “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which became an award-winning hit and allowed drag to explode in popularity — and into the mainstream.

IS DRAG SEXUAL?

Many drag opponents cite nudity in their objections. Every performer makes different choices, but drag queens often wear more, not less, clothing than you’d see on a typical American woman of the 21st century, at a public beach or on network TV.

Their costumes tend toward extravagant, sometimes floor-length gowns. Drag queens may use false breasts, wear sheer costumes, and use makeup or other means to show cleavage and appear exaggeratedly feminine.

The difference, performers note, is that opponents of drag see sexual deviance in the cross-dressing aspect.

Drag does not typically involve nudity or stripping, which are more common in burlesque, a separate form of entertainment. Explicitly sexual and profane language is common in performances meant for adult audiences. Such routines can consist of stand-up comedy that may be raunchy — or may pale in comparison with some mainstream comedians.

SHOULD CHILDREN SEE OR DRESS IN DRAG?

It’s up to parents and guardians to decide that, just as they decide whether their children should be exposed to or participate in certain music, television, movies, beauty pageants, concerts or other forms of entertainment, parenting experts say.

Performances in nightclubs and brunches meant for adults may not be suitable for children, while other events, such as drag story hours, are tailored for children and therefore contain milder language and dress.

Drag performers and the venues that book them generally either don’t allow children if a performance has risque content, or else require children to be accompanied by a parent or guardian — basically, how R-rated movies are handled by theaters.

Drag story hours, in which performers read to children in libraries, bookstores or other venues, have become popular in recent years. The events use a captivating character to get their child’s attention — any parent whose kid can’t take their eyes off Elsa from “Frozen” gets the idea. The difference here is that the goal is to get kids interested in reading.

Some children have performed drag at age-appropriate events. One 11-year-old who dons a princess dress and tiara was scheduled recently to perform at a story and singing event at an Oregon pub — but was downgraded to “guest of honor” after protests outside broke out into fighting.

“Part of keeping our children safe is allowing them to be children, to be playful, to take risks, and to be silly, without it necessarily meaning anything deeper or more permanent,” says Amber Trueblood, a family therapist. “Many parents are OK with children dressing as assassins, evil villains or grim reapers, yet they seldom take the costume choice to mean anything more than playful and fun.”

THREATS AND ‘GROOMING’

Opponents of drag story hours and other drag events for audiences of children often claim they “groom” children, implying attempts to sexually abuse them or somehow influence their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The term “grooming” in a sexual sense describes how child molesters entrap and abuse their victims. Its use by opponents of drag, as well as by protesters in other realms of LGBTQ opposition, seeks to falsely equate it with libertarianism and other forms of child abuse.

Perpetrators of the false rhetoric can then cast themselves as saviors of children and try to frame anyone who disagrees — a political opponent, for example — as taking the side of child abusers.

The objections are often religious in nature, with some opponents citing the devil at work. Threats to drag events, and story hours in particular, have increased along with the rhetoric. In addition to the protest in Oregon that failed to suppress one such event, organizers of a recent one in Florida did cancel theirs after what they said were threats from hate groups.

The threats are likely an attempt to scare parents into not taking their children to such events, leading them to fizzle out and push drag back into the closet, observers say. Some organizers, parents and performers have dug in their heels, insisting they won’t cave.

In another tactic to discourage attendance, drag opponents have been known to attend performances, take and post a video that lacks context, and then troll or “dox” the performer or venue.

One such video clip showed a profane drag act in front of a young child and framed it as abuse — though the child was with adults and the venue had advised attendees about coarse content, suggested parental discretion and required any children to be accompanied by parents.

Other undermining efforts include a false claim that a performer flashed children at a Minnesota library and another false claim that the head of the Drag Queen Story Hour organization was arrested for child pornography.

Despite some opponents’ claims, drag cannot “turn” a child gay or transgender, although its playful use of gender may be reassuring to kids who are already questioning their identity. That way, therapist Joe Kort wrote in a blog post in Psychology Today, gender-nonconforming kids can have “other templates as they begin to sort out their feelings about who they authentically are.”

How are Canadians adjusting?

At a warehouse on an industrial stretch in Ottawa, giant metal crates of donated groceries are piled high as volunteers sort canned goods, pasta and other foods to be distributed to pantries around the Canadian city. Demand has surged 33% at the Ottawa Food Bank from pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, with visits up as spiraling grocery, gas and rent prices, along with fast-rising borrowing costs, leave more Canadians struggling to make ends meet.

"We are absolutely seeing more people," said Rachael Wilson, chief executive of the Ottawa Food Bank, adding the organization is now spending C$6 million ($4.4 million) a year on food, up from C$2 million pre-pandemic.

Resorting too lol.

Luckily the cold weather are on the case.

At the same time, the Bank of Canada (BoC) has hiked interest rates by 350-basis points in just seven months, one of its sharpest tightening campaigns ever, to try to force inflation back to its 2% target. The result is Canadian consumers and small businesses are being squeezed from both sides, prompting politicians, unions and even some economists to implore the central bank to slow its pace of tightening. The bank this week signaled its tightening campaign was nearing its peak, but made clear it was not done yet, as it hiked rates by 50-bps to a fresh 14-year high.

Trans lives matter even leafs

Look here's the deal, an authoritarian dictatorship only falls when the military or the special security forces join the people in their protests. That is not going too happen in Iran. There reddit r-slurs don't understand this basic premise. Now all those Iranians are going too get killed while the redditor hurr durr's about the Iranians dying for the good fight and the evil Iran doing evil things. When you cheer on people going too certain death and suffering and call it a revolution, you kinda suck and @dont_log_me_out don't respect you or you're cause.

At least the Hong Kong revolution had a real purpose and the slightest possibility of working out.

This however, you could tell from a month ago was only going too lead too far more deaths of protestors.

What @dont_log_me_out am trying too say is the average redditor is a self righteous coward who cheers for others too die for their personal causes.

Conclusion: Lots of dead Iranians. Authoritarians still in charge.

@dont_log_me_out bet the sniffler would agree with @dont_log_me_out on this one.

Trans lives matter ?

Trans Lives Matter

Das right yt bois we're going to plagiarize your previous elites and you VILL like it.