demonlurking

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So, I don’t know if this can really be considered “good” news, but it is at least respectably appropriate news.

Today the murderers of Brianna Ghey were found guilty of her hate motivated killing and sentenced to life in prison with at least 20 years before consideration for parole. It took nearly a year and it was looking like the courts were not actually going to call it a hate crime. But they did and at least one trans woman gets justice.

For anyone not familiar with the case, Brianna was a 16-year old trans girl who was actively involved in helping other trans kids access care and spreading support through TikTok. Last February she was brutally stabbed by two other kids from her school after they failed to poison her. In the planning they expressed excitement about finding out if “it” would scream like a boy or a girl when they killed her.

I am saddened by her passing and at the so many other trans people who have been treated similarly and have had their cases ignored or buried, but at least one person has received justice.

Wikipedia entry for Brianna Ghey

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here we are, just barely a week into the new year and we’re already seeing the same old same old.

thursday, january 4th was the first school shooting of the year. still no more than thoughts and prayers from the conservative right and minimal pushback from the left. this has become “normal”. I remember when Columbine was earth shattering and now it’s “normal”

maybe i should link to the onion article “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”. they’ve only run it 36 times in the last decade, nearly two thirds of those have been in the past 3 years. (22 time since january 1st, 2020.)

in other news Ohio is joining Florida on anti transgender legislation and enacted what amounts to a ban on all gender affirming care via an executive order from the governor who just vetoed a similar bill that had gone through the state legislature. way to send some mixed messages there.

meanwhile Florida has decided to try to force state citizens to sign an affidavit verifying their birth gender in order to get or renew their drivers licenses. effectively creating a registry of gender diverse residents.

we’re already approaching 180 proposed laws this year many seeking to eliminate the legal existence of transgender individuals.

i’m just tired.

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this references netflix's Nimona, if you haven't seen it, do so.

once upon a time, i trusted someone.
i though they were my Balister.
they turned out to be my Gloreth.

now ... i'm trying to figure out where to go from here.
i don't want to wait a thousand years for someone to accept me.
do i continue as i have been? do i "run-away" to live with family with unknown prospects for the future? they've offered. i could.
but i have kids who i would miss and who might not understand.
life right now is stable (i have housing, i have employment, both kinda suck but could be worse). do i risk that for something that could be better, or could be worse?

yes, it's New Year's Day and i am drinking and watching Nimona for, like, the thousandth time. (i really wish Netflix would release it on physical media.) no one reads these anyway, so why do i care.

here i am on New Year's Day feeling vulnerable and betrayed , what's new. tomorrow (tonight, whatever), i go to work as usual at the job i hate to afford the apartment that (while nice) is a symbol of the relationship i thought i had that i have lost.

once again, here i go, screaming into the void, whatever

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No cuts today, this is too important.

Today will be the 24th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.

In the last year, our world has lost 434 transgender individuals that we know of. Of those, 336 lives were cut short by others, and 70 by their own hand.

Here in the "United" States, we lost 109 members of the community, 53 to acts of violence and 33 by their own hands.

(Yes, those numbers don't add up. There are some cases where people died of natural causes or situations what were not deemed suspicious enough to be considered either murder or suicide.)

Once again, these are the numbers that we know of, there are countless others that may have been missed simply because they never managed to leave their closet.

The vast majority of these persons were taken from the BIPOC community.
While I acknowledge the privilege that I was born into by being white, I have become a member of a vilified class of "other". In the past year, of the 109 transgender individuals who were lost, 69 were other trans-women.

Some of this is driven by the fact that the gay/trans "panic defense" is only banned in 19 of our 50 "United" States. And in case you were wondering, Pennsylvania is not one of them (although it is one of the 12 other states that considered banning it). Although Pennsylvania is one of the 26 states that has banned conversion therapy (one of the biggest drivers of LGBT suicide). (However, that ban only extends to state and federal funding for it, not the actual practice.)

I ask that we take a moment to remember those we have lost in the last year, and beyond.

...

Then, I ask us to consider what we can do to reduce these numbers in the future.

To start with, VOTE. Vote in local elections as well as national. Candidates (usually) only get to the national level when they have served at a lower position.

Vote blue, vote Democrat. Don't let split loyalties allow the Republicans to gain a foothold.
The right-wing elements of out governmental system would like to make the existence of LGBT persons illegal (no, this is not hyperbole, if you have questions, look up "Project 2025").

If you care about anyone who is or may be a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I urge you to vote, and vote Democrat. Whoever the candidate is. If third party candidates are allowed to split the non-Republican vote, this makes it easier for Project 2025 to succeed.

I'll get off of my soapbox now. I'm sorry for getting political. Sometimes our current climate infuriates me.

If you've made it this far, thank you.

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Figures taken from the annual report on transremembrance.org and wikipedia.

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so, i don’t know where else to post this, but my thoughts tonight delve, once again, into nostalgia for LJ.

and i realize that today is an appropriate day to mourn the passing of the LJ community.

i don’t know if anyone else has put it together as I have in my head (probably, but I haven’t seen any posts about it)

see, the LJ community dies in little steps, but the first big step was the sale to SUP. when LJ was sold to the Russians there was worry that free speech would become a liability. this caused people to seek alternatives. Some left for Facebook, some MySpace (which was still a thing back then, though it too was beginning to die), some came here to DreamWidth. the problem was that we scattered. not enough people went to any one alternative and the overall community just stopped.

now, we look back and those fears were founded. in 2017, SUP rewrote the LJ TOS and now they conform to Russian law and free speech and particularly LGBTQ+ voices are no longer allowed. their TOS are even written in Russian now.

and I look back on that dead community and realize that it was killed by Russian homophobes. and that makes it appropriate to mourn today.

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we're home from two full weeks Pennsic. however, i have bankrupt my pants. let me know if i've missed anything.

please.

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so, some of you out there may have heard this already. for those of you who read my lj and follow the Wheel of Time series and haven't heard yet, the final book has been declared too long and the publisher will be splitting it into a trilogy.

the official press release and the author's comments on his blog are available to help explain why.

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you don't need to know a whole lot of backstory for this one. but it made me laugh a whole lot and i felt the need to share.

http://www.goblinscomic.com/d/20090303.html

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