Shower-Nuts Take Credit for Maryland Legislature Failure
Fascinating email today from the Citizens for a Responsible Whatever. The email comes from CRW President Ruth Jacobs, the subject line was GREAT NEWS-"MARYLAND BATHROOM BILL DEFEATED":
You might remember that New Hampshire shower-nuts called their bill the "Bathroom Bill" and it was such an embarrassment to their state that the legislature brought it back and voted on it again, making sure that delegates understood it had nothing to do with bathrooms. You would think it would have ended there, but no, our Maryland shower-nuts figure their followers are ignorant, they wouldn't have heard about that. And they're right.
The CRW has worked very hard to make sure that the rest of us don't have to treat transgender people fairly.
But wait! There's more!
They are so proud. Of all the important legislation facing our state, the question of giving equal rights to transgender people generated more "calls of outrage" than anything. This really is the most important thing to them, making sure that Marylanders retain the right to discriminate against transgender people.
There's even more -- this is a newsletter with content, I tell you.
Okay, now I'm getting mixed up. Are they saying that "LGBT special interests" want to pass a "peeping tom" law? Is it a "bathroom bill" or a "peeping tom" bill? And why is it either?
Wow, I just followed a link in this thing to HERE. This is unbelievable -- it's a pdf of a flyer that starts like this:
So apparently they want to call this a "bathroom bill" and a "peeping tom bill."
Okay, well they make it easy to spot the stupid ones, it's clear where the line is drawn. The CRW's flyer has a list of Maryland politicians who supported the gender identity nondiscrimination bill. In the next election they will announce their support for some candidates. That will make it easy: vote for the candidates they oppose, and vote against the candidates they support.
You might remember that New Hampshire shower-nuts called their bill the "Bathroom Bill" and it was such an embarrassment to their state that the legislature brought it back and voted on it again, making sure that delegates understood it had nothing to do with bathrooms. You would think it would have ended there, but no, our Maryland shower-nuts figure their followers are ignorant, they wouldn't have heard about that. And they're right.
We have GREAT NEWS! With your help we were able to STOP the defective Maryland Bathroom Bill. (Gender Identity-HB474/SB566).
We want to let you know about this victory and plan for success next year. This win protects freedom of speech, conscience and safety and privacy for women and children for another year!
But you need to know that narrow special interest homosexual advocacy groups are expecting the support of your legislators again in 2010 for the same defective legislation.
Our County has been the source not only for defective Gender Identity, but for failed Same-Sex Marriage legislation. This newsletter and our new flyers show how our legislators are out of step with the rest of Maryland. We need to plan now to stop the "next 2010 Gender Identity Law."
Please forward this email to your friends and take the time to read about ways that you can help to make Montgomery County more "Family Friendly."
The CRW has worked very hard to make sure that the rest of us don't have to treat transgender people fairly.
But wait! There's more!
"YOUR PHONE CALLS"
In late February and early March, Maryland's legislators used our tax dollars to hold hearings. The opposition was so confident that they were going to pass their "Bill" quickly and go on to their next victory that they predicted a vote by the Maryland General Assembly on the Bill by March 13, 2009.
But Maryland Citizens For Responsible Government was there. WITH YOUR HELP, we were able TO LOBBY, HAVE MCRG SPEAKERS AT THE HEARINGS AND TO GENERATE MORE CALLS OF OUTRAGED PROTEST AGAINST THIS LEGISLATION THAN ANY OTHER ISSUE FACING THESE COMMITTEES.
The legislative session ended with a complete failure of HB474 & SB566. The bills did not even get out of committee
They are so proud. Of all the important legislation facing our state, the question of giving equal rights to transgender people generated more "calls of outrage" than anything. This really is the most important thing to them, making sure that Marylanders retain the right to discriminate against transgender people.
There's even more -- this is a newsletter with content, I tell you.
MO. CO. LEGISLATORS-SOURCE OF ANTIFAMILY LEGISLATION
26 of the 31 Maryland State Delegates from Montgomery County have been 100% approved by the anti-family LGBT (homosexual) lobby. In comparison, the Maryland General Assembly has 188 members and only 26 of the other Assembly members had a similar LGBT approval rating.
A whopping 29 out of 31 MO. CO. Legislators were sponsors for the Peeping Tom/Gender Identity (HB474/SB566) legislation this year.
If you are surprised to learn of these legislative leanings to the liberal left, so were we. It was made clear to us however that legislators don't want their constituents to know what they are supporting and how they are voting. One of our callers was even asked by the aide of the legislator sponsoring the Gender Identity Legislation how she could have heard about the legislation.
Check out which Legislators sponsored GENDER IDENTITY AND/OR SAME-SEX MARRIAGE Bills.
LGBT SPECIAL INTERESTS HAVE ALREADY ANNOUNCED THEIR AGENDA FOR ANOTHER "PEEPING TOM" (GENDER IDENTITY BILL) IN 2010.
Okay, now I'm getting mixed up. Are they saying that "LGBT special interests" want to pass a "peeping tom" law? Is it a "bathroom bill" or a "peeping tom" bill? And why is it either?
Wow, I just followed a link in this thing to HERE. This is unbelievable -- it's a pdf of a flyer that starts like this:
Should special rights be given to men who want to dress up like women?
Whatever Happened To Protecting Women And Their Children?
Don’t Allow Men in Women’s Bathrooms or Showers!
STOP “2010 Peeping Tom” Legislation
YOUR LEGISLATORS BETRAYED YOU
So apparently they want to call this a "bathroom bill" and a "peeping tom bill."
Okay, well they make it easy to spot the stupid ones, it's clear where the line is drawn. The CRW's flyer has a list of Maryland politicians who supported the gender identity nondiscrimination bill. In the next election they will announce their support for some candidates. That will make it easy: vote for the candidates they oppose, and vote against the candidates they support.
posted by JimK at 10:04 AM
24 Comments:
I wonder if they're aiming to be named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"So apparently they want to call this a "bathroom bill" and a "peeping tom bill.""
And, apparently, you don't.
That's because their argument, that requiring business owners to let anyone use any bathroom they feel like will lead to abuse by people who tend to be abusive, is one that most people tend to agree with.
Apparently, CRC hasn't heard that liberals in Maine decide whether arguments are valid or not.
Problem is, the old adage, "as Maine goes, so goes the nation", has not always been true.
Bottom line: in this year of temporary victories by the gay agenda , Maryland still draws the line against this lunacy.
And TTF has only sour grapes.
Trans women do not belong in the Ladies Locker rooms! CRC knows that and now maybe the public is beginning to notice.
“These trans women, both those who were heterosexual and those who were homosexual, responded genitally and subjectively in categorical ways. They responded like men. This seemed to point to an inborn system of arousal.”
Source: (Meredith Chivers (.member of the editorial board of the world’s leading journal of sexual research, Archives of Sexual Behavior) .Archives of Sexual Behavior January 25, 2009 New York Times Magazine)
The full paragraph: Heiman questions whether the insights of science, whether they come through high-tech pictures of the hypothalamus, through Internet questionnaires or through intimate interviews, can ever produce an all-encompassing map of terrain as complex as women’s desire. But Chivers, with plenty of self-doubting humor, told me that she hopes one day to develop a scientifically supported model to explain female sexual response, though she wrestles, for the moment, with the preliminary bits of perplexing evidence she has collected — with the question, first, of why women are aroused physiologically by such a wider range of stimuli than men. Are men simply more inhibited, more constrained by the bounds of culture? Chivers has tried to eliminate this explanation by including male-to-female transsexuals as subjects in one of her series of experiments (one that showed only human sex). These trans women, both those who were heterosexual and those who were homosexual, responded genitally and subjectively in categorical ways. They responded like men. This seemed to point to an inborn system of arousal. Yet it wasn’t hard to argue that cultural lessons had taken permanent hold within these subjects long before their emergence as females could have altered the culture’s influence. “The horrible reality of psychological research,” Chivers said, “is that you can’t pull apart the cultural from the biological.”
It is ludicrous to suggest that anyone should be banned from a public restroom because there is some possibility they would become aroused by the kind of person using the next stall.
I am curious to know if Anon believes lesbians should be allowed to use public women's restrooms.
JimK
One may want to be careful when citing Chiver’s work. (From the article: What do women want? Which starts with: “Meredith Chivers is a creator of bonobo pornography.”)
(From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&em )
“While the subjects watched on a computer screen, Chivers, who favors high boots and fashionable rectangular glasses, measured their arousal in two ways, objectively and subjectively. The participants sat in a brown leatherette La-Z-Boy chair in her small lab at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, a prestigious psychiatric teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto, where Chivers was a postdoctoral fellow and where I first talked with her about her research a few years ago. The genitals of the volunteers were connected to plethysmographs — for the men, an apparatus that fits over the penis and gauges its swelling; for the women, a little plastic probe that sits in the vagina and, by bouncing light off the vaginal walls, measures genital blood flow. An engorgement of blood spurs a lubricating process called vaginal transudation: the seeping of moisture through the walls. The participants were also given a keypad so that they could rate how aroused they felt.
The men, on average, responded genitally in what Chivers terms “category specific” ways. Males who identified themselves as straight swelled while gazing at heterosexual or lesbian sex and while watching the masturbating and exercising women. They were mostly unmoved when the screen displayed only men. Gay males were aroused in the opposite categorical pattern. Any expectation that the animal sex would speak to something primitive within the men seemed to be mistaken; neither straights nor gays were stirred by the bonobos. And for the male participants, the subjective ratings on the keypad matched the readings of the plethysmograph. The men’s minds and genitals were in agreement.
All was different with the women. No matter what their self-proclaimed sexual orientation, they showed, on the whole, strong and swift genital arousal when the screen offered men with men, women with women and women with men. They responded objectively much more to the exercising woman than to the strolling man, and their blood flow rose quickly — and markedly, though to a lesser degree than during all the human scenes except the footage of the ambling, strapping man — as they watched the apes. And with the women, especially the straight women, mind and genitals seemed scarcely to belong to the same person. The readings from the plethysmograph and the keypad weren’t in much accord. During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more. Among the lesbian volunteers, the two readings converged when women appeared on the screen. But when the films featured only men, the lesbians reported less engagement than the plethysmograph recorded. Whether straight or gay, the women claimed almost no arousal whatsoever while staring at the bonobos.”
From this one might be tempted to conclude that all women, (including heterosexual women) are aroused by watching gay men and lesbian women have sex, and the fact that they “report” less arousal than their genitals indicate appears to be some kind of cover-up. In fact, women are apparently more aroused by watching bonobo chimps having sex than a naked man walking the beach. Indeed, much of the time they seem to be under-reporting (lying about?) their arousal – except in the case of lesbians watching lesbians. How many heterosexual women actually think this is true?
(Warning: Adult Material Ahead. Explicit anatomical vocabulary is used. Skip to the next post if you are under 18, or are easily offended by discussion of male and female anatomy.)
Chiver’s use of plethysmographs on transsexuals is terribly problematic. Genital reconstruction for MTF patients can be surprisingly realistic from an external perspective. They are able to duplicate the size, shape, labial folds, urinary function, and clitoris while (usually) preserving nerve function associated with the more “pleasurable” aspects of one’s genitalia. Some surgeons will use the urethra to line the labial walls as a mucosal membrane. Interestingly, and perhaps unexpectedly, the new genitalia smells as one would expect as well, and is even susceptible to yeast infections if proper hygiene is not maintained.
“Under the hood” however, there are significant differences. The vaginal wall is created (usually) from scrotal tissue that has had the hair removed via laser and/or electrolysis. In the past (I don’t know if there is still a surgeon that does this) a section of colon tissue was sometimes used to create the vaginal wall. Neither of these methods of course replicates all of the intricate vaginal and blood vessel structures of a “natal female.” Although it may look, feel, and smell the same, it isn’t quite. It should be no surprise that Chiver’s plethysmographs were not able to detect the blood flow normally associated with female arousal.
Using plethysmographs on FTM is even more problematic. Even if an FTM has a full phalloplasty, there is no way for surgeons (currently) to create the corpus spongiosum necessary to enlarge and swell the penis. FTMs with this surgery need to insert a prosthesis in order to emulate an erection. Did Chivers really expect to measure swelling on FTMs with her plethysmographs??? If the FTM has elected a metoidplasty instead, the clitoris is lengthened, mucosal tissue from the mouth may be used to lengthen the urethra, and “testicles” are implanted into the reformed labia. If you’re not afraid to see the gory details of how this is done, you can check out: (I wouldn’t recommend it if you have recently eaten though): http://www.metoidioplasty.com/articles/metoidioplasty-surgical-technique.html Again though, don’t expect this reconstructed piece of male anatomy to respond like a natural one. It is not surprising that Chiver’s plethysmographs did not detect a “normal” male reaction. I’m wondering how she even managed to expect them to. It’s sort of like going to get an oil change for your car and expecting the gas tank to be full when you leave.
Have a nice day,
Cynthia
Anon complained:
“Trans women do not belong in the Ladies Locker rooms! CRC knows that and now maybe the public is beginning to notice.”
Really? The only public I’ve ever had harass me about the restrooms is the CRG. In fact, at one of the town hall meetings I had a discussion with a guy who was very upset with the concept of “guys who think they’re girls” using the ladies room. After going around in circles with him for a while and getting nowhere, I finally just flat out asked him “What would you think if you saw me walking into the mens’ room?” Still a bit angry and with arms crossed, but without skipping a beat he immediately answered “You’re a woman!” To which I could only ask “So what’s the problem?” He didn’t have an answer for that and just walked off.
Before you try and ban transwomen from the restrooms, keep in mind there are PLENTY of natal women who raise more suspicions when they go to the ladies room than I do. Just hope you’re not one of them.
Peace,
Cynthia
For anyone who cares to help Chivers in her study, you can answer some of her questions here.
She starts off with:
“I'm really curious about something that the sexual arousal study has made very apparent to me...
Women love gay porn. More than every other type out there. Many of the women who've participated in the study (straight, bi and lesbian) have told me afterwards that they really like gay porn.
What do you all think of that? What are your preferences? Why do you think that women prefer gay porn? Do you think I'm seeing a biased sample?”
Have a nice day,
Cynthia
P.S. If the embedded link above doesn’t work, try cutting and pasting:
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.women.lesbian-and-bi/msg/dc1b7496ba9c5774?_done=%2Fgroup%2Fsoc.women.lesbian-and-bi%2Fmsg%2Fdc1b7496ba9c5774
It will take you to an adult content warning page to which you will need to click “I would like to proceed to this page.”
In another part of the NYT article, research by other scientists is cited:
“Investigating the culmination of female desire, Barry Komisaruk, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University, has subjects bring themselves to orgasm while lying with their heads in an fM.R.I. scanner — he aims to chart the activity of the female brain as subjects near and reach four types of climax: orgasms attained by touching the clitoris; by stimulating the anterior wall of the vagina or, more specifically, the G spot; by stimulating the cervix; and by “thinking off,” Komisaruk said, without any touch at all. While the possibility of a purely cervical orgasm may be in considerable doubt, in 1992 Komisaruk, collaborating with the Rutgers sexologist Beverly Whipple (who established, more or less, the existence of the G spot in the ’80s), carried out one of the most interesting experiments in female sexuality: by measuring heart rate, perspiration, pupil dilation and pain threshold, they proved that some rare women can think themselves to climax.”
I know of at least one post-op heterosexual transwoman who is capable of the same thing.
Have a nice day,
Cynthia
The correct control group to use for studies of TS women using a plethy is Cis women who have had vaginal reconstruction due to cancer etc.
This can partly be remedied by repeating the experiment, using all cis gendered women, but half with vaginal reconstruction, half the normal factory model.
Otherwise the whole edifice rests in a bedrock of sand.
The fact that results from the plethy have been proven to be only slightly better than random chance in other contexts doesn't help.
It's not useless: but its use is limited.
The arguments about "peeping tom" bill and "bathroom" bill are ridiculous anyway, as such laws are arteady in effect for 1/3 of the US population.
I think someone would have noticed any problems. Some of those jurisdictions have had the laws in force for over 30 years now, after all.
Zoe, you bleeding heart lefties are all the same, you want special privileges for everybody who's different. If you want to be treated the same as everybody else, the first thing you do is don't turn yourself into a girl.
Anonymous bullies are all the same, too weak and frightened to take responsibility for their hateful words and deeds so they hide under hoods.
I am grateful to my sisters Cynthia and Zoe and all the other trans people who comment here, for their open and honest input on this and other threads so that others may learn about this issue from people who have direct knowledge about it. I believe knowledge is power while ignorance leads to fear and hate.
"Anonymous"
Your comments are deplorable and comptemptuous. Once again you expose yourself as the ignorant, bigoted, and sinful person you truly are. Your hate and deliberate vileness are beyond the limits of civilized acceptance. You desperately need psychological help, but since you no doubt discredit that as your cure, you should be on your knees asking the forgiveness of your God for your sins. Others here can pray for the redemption of of your soul, but since you obviously lack human decency, compassion, and humility, that would be an exercise in futility. You are truly pathetic!
"I believe knowledge is power while ignorance leads to fear and hate."
Then why do you want teens to be ignorant of the dangers of homosexuality?
to the anonymous of the 9:40am comment:
the anon comments yesterday were not from the usual anon
perhaps they were from you
i'm anonymous
who are you
are you anonymous too?
then's there's a pair of us
don't tell
they'd banish us, you know
how dreary to be somebody
how public
like a frog
to tell your name
the livelong day
to an admiring bog
I don't want MCPS students to be ignorant of the facts of human sexuality. On the contrary, I want our teens to be fully informed by the MCPS revised health curriculum, that was informed by pediatricians who specialize in teen health.
It was the CRC who supported total ignorance for MCPS students on the subject of sexual orientation. They were quite happy with the status quo, and wanted to continue to use the outdated and medically inaccurate curriculum that had been in place for years and made no mention of sexual orientation whatsoever.
Anon claimed:
“Zoe, you bleeding heart lefties are all the same, you want special privileges for everybody who's different.”
And the CRG is now lambasting anti-discrimination laws as “bathroom bills” and “peeping Tom” bills rather than discuss them on their merits.
We have seen this type of behavior before from people who consider themselves “conservatives.” Bush used the scare of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” to whip up public support for a war he could not justify on its merits. Senator Joseph McCarthy whipped up a good “Red Scare” to intimidate, harangue and harass anyone that didn’t agree with his political view point.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macarthyism
“There were also more subtle forces encouraging the rise of McCarthyism. It had long been a practice of more conservative politicians to refer to liberal reforms such as child labor laws and women's suffrage as "Communist" or "Red plots."[6] This tendency increased in the 1930s in reaction to the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Many conservatives equated the New Deal with socialism or Communism, and saw its policies as evidence that the government had been heavily influenced by Communist policy-makers in the Roosevelt administration.[7] In general, the vaguely defined danger of "Communist influence" was a more common theme in the rhetoric of anti-Communist politicians than was espionage or any other specific activity.”)
Lately conservatives have claimed that allowing gays to marry will mean the end of the family as we know it, and it’s all part of the Gay Agenda. Not to mention Carrie Prajean’s admonition: "Unless we bring men and women together, children will not have mothers and fathers."
For people who think like this, putting the “bathroom scare” into people is part and parcel of how they believe the political process should work and they see nothing wrong with it. Lacking a credible threat from communists right now, the LBGT community is a viable substitute. Now, instead of haranguing people for their “Communist Influence,” the see a large amorphous enemy that has been unduly influenced by “the Gay Agenda” which deserves their harassment. It’s the same rhetorical technique, only the words have changed.
America now looks back at the McCarthy era as a very sad, self-destructive, and un-American portion of our history. We now know that the War in Iraq with whipped up with the same kind of baseless falsehoods, but now we’re stuck trying to fix the mess.
It’s only matter of time before Americans look back on this portion of our history and bemoan the hateful and discriminatory rhetoric applied to GLBT Americans.
Peace,
Cynthia
P.S. Thank you Christine!
Has there ever been a documented case of a transsexual woman doing anything improper to anyone in a women's restroom?
Should anonymous be allowed to use any public restroom?
I myself would be concerned being in a locker room with someone who kept his face covered to hide his identity, while he harassed people there.
Is this not the equivalent of what the "usual anon" does here on a regular basis?
"I want our teens to be fully informed by the MCPS revised health curriculum, that was informed by pediatricians who specialize in teen health."
Many of the dangers are societal, Christine. Pediatricians are not experts in socialization.
For example, the truth is if a kid took the MCPS curriculum and decided to pursue homosexual activity, he would be in greater danger than if he pursued heterosexual activity.
It's just a fact.
"It was the CRC who supported total ignorance for MCPS students on the subject of sexual orientation. They were quite happy with the status quo, and wanted to continue to use the outdated and medically inaccurate curriculum that had been in place for years and made no mention of sexual orientation whatsoever."
Well, they preferred not to mention it because there are no reliable studies about whether it is a biological phenomenom or an emotional one. Its nature is not settled and yet it has a strenous advocacy movement claiming otherwise.
"We have seen this type of behavior before from people who consider themselves “conservatives.” Bush used the scare of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” to whip up public support for a war he could not justify on its merits. Senator Joseph McCarthy whipped up a good “Red Scare” to intimidate, harangue and harass anyone that didn’t agree with his political view point."
We see that kind of behavior from politicians on every side of the spetrum. Obama's budget must be passed, according to him, to avoid a depression.
It's called hype and TTF has opened whole frontiers in the field.
"Has there ever been a documented case of a transsexual woman doing anything improper to anyone in a women's restroom?"
The argument is that there will be no way to tell a transsexual from an imposter.
"Anonymous"...perhaps you would be so kind as to provide us with the factual data that supports this appalingly ignorant statement: "the truth is if a kid took the MCPS curriculum and decided to pursue homosexual activity, he would be in greater danger than if he pursued heterosexual activity.
It's just a fact."
Oh, of course...I get it now...GLBT students/adults are actually responsible for the outrageous high illegal birth rate; the horrendous growth of rapes in the military and in society in general; the 50+% divorce rate; the skyrocketing rate of SDI's, etc. etc.
You are willfully ignorant and hateful. Get a life!
Citizen
To highlight Citizen's response to Anonymous (above) I cite Jim's blog (Sex-Ed Through the Cell Phone) in which he quotes: "Sex education in the classroom, say many epidemiologists and public health experts, is often ineffective or just insufficient. In many areas of the country, rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases remain constant or are even rising. North Carolina — where schools must teach an abstinence-only curriculum — has the country’s ninth-highest teenage pregnancy rate. Since 2003, when the state’s pregnancy rate declined to a low of 61 per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19, the rates have slowly been climbing. In 2007, that rate rose to 63 per 1,000 girls — 19,615 pregnancies."
I didn't notice any reference to GLBT involvement in these statistics.
RT
Andrea-not anon
First, the junk the shower nuts put out is written like a bad tabloid. I guess education and good writing is anti-family. Second, what a load of bunk - that you are anti-family if you support the rights of LGBT people. I am sure that bigotry is anti-family so I am sure the showernuts and their ilk are more anti-family than our MC legislators.
I was thinking about the showernuts and their nonsense about the "GAY LIFESTYLE" when I was reading Dairy Goat Journal(and you thought I only read radical stuff like the Washington Post). One of the articles was about 2 men("friends") who left Manhattan and the corporate world to raise goats in upstate NY. Farming - another wild licentious activity.
AnonZoe, you bleeding heart lefties are all the same, you want special privileges for everybody who's different. If you want to be treated the same as everybody else, the first thing you do is don't turn yourself into a girl.Oh, dear..
That's just so wrong, it's hilarious.
Anonymous - I'm a RWDB. On the Right, not the Left. Which has led to some interesting debates here as I'm in a distinct minority.
But the funniest thing is that I'm Intersexed. The diagnosis in 1985 was a mildly intersexed male, the diagnosis in 2005 (after I got a most unexpected female puberty, at age 47 yet) was severely intersexed female.
I didn't "turn myself into a girl". No-one who's TS does, they're born like it - all they do is get the rest of the body made consistent with the central nervous system.
I didn't even have to do that, 80% of the change was natural.
Thank you for calling me a "Bleeding heart leftist" though. That's the first time anyone has. Normally, it's "Right wing death b*tch" or RWDB for short. Or something less polite.
It gave me a good laugh.
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