President Obama on Late Night

So, President Obama was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night, and it was interesting. Video of the interview is available here. The President, appearing at UNC Chapel Hill, did really well selling his support for not increasing interest on student loans, and I thought when he said that he and First Lady Michelle Obama, who both funded their law school educations with student loans, only paid off those student loans eight years ago was a remarkable moment. Especially because it wasn't designed to be one.

He is a politician running for reelection, so he talked about the importance of education and left out the yucky bits like how education is not really the great equalizer we all pretend it is, and how it sure as shit doesn't guarantee young graduates a job these days. I personally believe it would have conveyed strength, honesty, and integrity to acknowledge these problems and address them straightforwardly, rather than evade them, especially since it's not like not speaking these realities is fooling the people affected by them, but there's only so much time in the show and he did have to make an appalling joke about how he's surrounded by women (Michelle and their daughters) and sometimes has to retreat to the presidential man cave with Bo (their male dog) to watch Sports Center and drink beer. (Really.) (Ugh.)

I did genuinely love when he talked about how he enjoys the Key & Peele sketch in which he has an "anger translator." Given the number of times we've all thought, "I wonder what he'd really say, if he could," it was both funny and moving to get an insight into the frustration he has bearing the usual weight of the presidency, with the added burden of wanting to never play into the bullshit stereotype of the Angry Black Man.

Overall, the appearance basically followed the same pattern as the rest of his presidency: I found him likeable and disappointing. (Which, given that the only other opinion I've had of any president is "unlikeable and disappointing," is a pretty good track record.) I just seriously wish he'd can it with the "man cave" material. Jesus Jones.

Here's my favorite bit, in which President Obama Slow Jams the News with Jimmy and Tariq.

Jimmy (at his desk): You might have seen this in the news—President Obama has asked Congress to stop the interest rates on Stafford student loans from going up this summer. [cheers and applause] Yeah, yeah, I was gonna make a joke about this news, but I don't think it needs a joke. You know what I'm talking about, Tariq?

Tariq: Yeah, Jimmy. I think you're saying you wanna slow jam this news. [cheers and applause]

Jimmy: That's right—I wanna slow jam the news! And I'm not the only one!

[The stage curtains open and President Barack Obama walks out to sustained cheers and applause. Jimmy walks over to greet Obama; they shake hands. The President smiles and waves at the crowd.]

Obama: I'm President Barack Obama [cheers and applause] and I, too, want to slow jam the news.

Jimmy: Hit it presidential-style! [The Roots play "Hail to the Chief," then segue into their usual slow jam riff.]

Obama: On July 1st of this year, the interest rate on Stafford student loans, the same loans that many of you use to help pay for college, are set to double. That means some hardworking students will be paying about a thousand dollars extra just to get their education. So I've called on Congress to prevent this from happening. What we've said is simple: Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people. [applause]

Jimmy: Awwwwww yeahhhhh. [laughter and applause] You should listen to the President. Or, as I like to call him, the Preezy of the United Steezy. [laughter and applause; in the background, Obama nods] Things were heating up inside Congress' chambers, behind all those closed doors, so the President made a few discreet calls across the aisle. He said, [sexy voice] "Hey—let's get together on this one. Without an affordable Stafford loan, where can a student turn? The Pell Grant is a beautiful thing, but, with college getting more expensive, is it enough to satisfy all your collegiate needs? Aw, PELL no!" [laughter and applause]

Tariq [singing]: Aw Pell no. If Congress doesn't act, it's the students who'll pay / The right and left should join on this like Kim and Kanye. [cheers and applause]

Obama: Now there's some in Congress who disagree; they say keeping the interest rate low isn't the way to help our students; they say we should be doing everything we can to pay down the national debt—well, so long as it doesn't include taxing billionaires. [cheers] But that position is that students just have to make this rate increase work. Frankly, I don't buy it!

Jimmy: Mmm mmm mmm. The Barackness Monster ain't buying it! [laughter and applause; Obama nods] We all know our legislative body's in the House, tossing and turning late into the night, but still Republicans disagree—and could even filibuster. But if they do, the President said they're gonna feel it buster. [applause; Obama nods]

Tariq [singing]: The GOP is steady saying no, no, no / They should find something new to do like Tim Tebow. [applause]

Obama: The reason it's so important to keep down costs is so we keep college affordable.

Jimmy: And the President knows his stuff, y'all. That's why they call him the POTUS—which means Person...on...top...? [turns to Obama] What is it—?

Obama: Jimmy, POTUS stands for President of the United States.

Tariq [singing]: He's the POTUS with the mostest! [cheers and applause]

Obama: Let's keep the rates down on college loans!

Jimmy: The loan you save may be your own!

Tariq [singing]: Let's get it / Together / And make our lives better / 'Cuz a college degree / Is more than a few letters / If college loans rise / We'll have financial blues...

Jimmy: And THAT is how we slow jam the news!

Obama: Oh yeahhh. [wild cheers and applause]

Jimmy: Give it up for President Barack Obama!

[President Obama walks over to Jimmy and they shake hands. Obama drops his mic in the nerdiest way ever. Jimmy laughs and drops his mic. Obama laughs.]

True Fact: When Obama dropped the mic, I laughed for TEN MILLION YEARS!

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Coincidence, I'm Sure

[Content note: anti-choice legislation]

Two Facts:

A. A South Carolina Senate panel "on Tuesday approved a budget clause eliminating a woman's ability to get an abortion through the state health plan if she's a victim of rape or incest." Although this is part of the South Carolina budget debate, it is clearly not a fiscal issue, since "[t]here have been no insurance-covered abortions for rape or incest for at least six years, according to data from the state Budget and Control Board."

B. The South Carolina Senate includes not a single woman. It is the only all-male state Senate in the United States at present.

COINCIDENCE! I'M SURE!

(Note: I am well aware that there are anti-choice women, some of them serving in legislative bodies and helping to push through the latest assaults on the right to choose. However, approving legislation about something that happens to people with uteri, without including a single uteri-bearer in the discussion, signals how very profound the Republican contempt for women is at present. They have learned nothing from the reaction to the all-male contraception hearings. And they don't intend to learn, either.)

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Photo of the Day

US President Barack Obama speaks with host Jimmy Fallon during an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon at Memorial Hall on the UNC campus on April 24, 2012 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Obama made an earlier appearance on the campus as part of a effort to get Congress to prevent interest rates on student loans from doubling in July. [Getty Images]

I'll publish my review of the show shortly. In the meantime, get a load of those grins!

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Open Thread

Hosted by Indiana Jones' fedora.

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Question of the Day

What discontinued food or beverage do you wish were still in production?

(If you need some inspiration, see Spudsy's Open Threads for the week ending March 11.)

This is so gross and '90s, and Deeky will mock me mercilessly for the rest of our lives for this, but I totally miss Zima.

It was one of the few alcoholic beverages I ever enjoyed, so naturally it went out of production almost immediately, lol.

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Twitter Recommends...

OFFS! Give it up already, Twitter! I ain't gonna follow Judd Apatow!

Stop bothering me.

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Quote of the Day

"We are writing you today as professionals, academics, and policy experts who have researched, analyzed, and defended against security threats to the Internet and its infrastructure. We have devoted our careers to building security technologies, and to protecting networks, computers, and critical infrastructure against attacks of many stripes. We take security very seriously, but we fervently believe that strong computer and network security does not require Internet users to sacrifice their privacy and civil liberties."—From a letter to members of the US Congress, from "a group of prominent academics, experienced engineers, and professionals [who oppose] CISPA and other overly broad cybersecurity bills."

It's a great letter, and you can read the whole thing here.

Or just peruse my executive paraphrase: "Dear Congress: Stop proposing and passing bullshit. Sincerely, People Who Know What They're Talking About."

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Shakespeare's Sister

Every election it happens. I start getting emails from dudes, always dudes, wanting to know why it is that I can't just stick to the political news and stop mucking it up with all the feminist junk.

Shakesville has been an overtly feminist blog for so many years now that I can't imagine whence comes my correspondents' expectation that it would be anything else. It may be that they came to know me through a place that tends to link or syndicate only my non-feminist political work, or it may be that they remember when this space was more preoccupied with the incessant drumbeat of corruption and fuckery emanating from the Bush administration.

It's not that I believe the Obama administration is vastly different; I don't. (Would that they were.) But I do find less to which to object, and, more importantly, I have simply found, over time, that I am more effective and my work more meaningful when I am not flinging fistfuls of mud at ancient stone citadels but working with the people who might be inclined to build something else altogether.

This makes some people angry. Some of them have even gotten themselves banned, because they can't stop telling me what to write about and how to write about it. You've seen them in comments. Some of them flounce with grand rhetorical flourishes about how this space isn't "serious" because it gets feminism mixed in with the "important issues," or some variation thereof.

Once they're banned, they shake their digital fists at me in my inbox. Just to be sure that I get the message I am terrible and feminism is stupid. Noted!

[Shakespeare's sister] lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton's bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.

—Virginia Woolf, concluding her essay "A Room of One's Own."

I am Shakespeare's Sister.

I am the heir of Shakespeare's Sisters before me, who carved out rooms of their own, tiny pieces of space and time, in which they formed the habit of freedom and mustered the courage to write exactly what they thought. I heard their whispers, their haunting encouragement, telling me to put on their bodies laid down and become born. And on October 5, 2004, I was born Shakespeare's Sister.

It is because they worked for me, all of Shakespeare's Sisters who went before, because they worked for me in poverty and obscurity, that I could be born. I took up their legacy with breathless gratitude and compelling need, and I created a room of my own, built of 1s and 0s. There I began to honor them, as best I could, drawing my life from their unknown lives, being born and born again every day, as Shakespeare's Sister, beneficiary of a legacy I only deserve if I endeavor to enrich it with my own contributions, no matter whether infinitesimal or grand, as long as they are honest and true.

I was, for quite some time, standing alone in the center of my room, which was precisely as good and precisely as flawed as I was. In this good and flawed and mostly empty room, I formed the habit of freedom, to the extent that it's been granted me, and, with some intrinsic courage and the rest conferred by anonymity, I wrote exactly what I thought.

And I invited people in.

My room became, by virtue of those who entered it, better than I am, and worse. I built the room bigger, for more people to come inside. It became better than I am some more, and worse. I discovered that the fight to be born and born again every day, the work in poverty and obscurity for all the other Shakespeare's Sisters who will come hence, was just one part of a fight with many parts. Making the room a safe space is a fight. Making the room accessible is a fight. Making the room as warm at its center as at its margins is a fight. This fight is my obligation and my muse. Its mere existence inspires and taunts me in equal measure. Work that teaspoon…

But sometimes I am so busy fighting for this room, and against so many things outside it, that I struggle to find the energy to fight for myself, for my voice, for my agenda within it. Easily and casually come the demands for my silence or my acquiescence to what visitors to this room deem important. Boldly come their orders, their exhortations to be less feminist, accompanied by exasperated sighs, wholly devoid of any suggestion a moment's thought has been dedicated to contemplating the careless audacity of conveying exhaustion with fighting misogyny, when they will never be its direct target. Enough, they moan. It's a distraction. It's a bore. The poor souls, burdened by having to hear about misogyny in a space where their presence is not required, created by a person who cannot escape misogyny for a solitary moment. There is no day, no hour, no single breath drawn or exhaled in an entire lifetime, free of misogyny for Shakespeare's Sister.

And so she will not accommodate demands to be free of her fight in her space.

I cannot walk away from misogyny for a moment, and so I cannot for a moment walk away from feminism, either. I cannot set it aside any more than I can set aside my womanhood. No—I will not. The choice is mine, and I choose to face the world equipped at all times with the only tool of self-defense I have against inequality. Feminism is my sword and my shield, which I carry because the world is hostile to me, not the other way around.

I fight because I have to. My obligation. My muse.

That is the context of this room. It was built by a woman. A feminist woman. Shakespeare's Sister, carrying the weight of all of Shakespeare's Sisters with her, as she clumsily stumbles toward making long, greedy use of the opportunity they provided her, sucking up every last drop of the chance she's been given to do what others could not and pay forward with interest the chance to another sister of Shakespeare who may just now be warily peering into this room and thinking there's something I like in there…

I want her to be born, too. More than I want just about anything else. I want her to know the feeling of putting on their bodies, our bodies, laid down, putting them on and finding home.

That possibility requires my vigilance, my unyielding defense of myself, my voice, my agenda, in this room I created and we all filled. I am reasserting them all, because there are so few rooms like this one.

I want to say that again. There are so few rooms like this one. That makes me proud, and happy, and sad. And it underlines why it is such a breathtaking impertinence to suggest making this room less feminist. Nearly every other room in the world, virtual or corporeal, is less feminist than this one. Nearly every other room in the world will accommodate the demand to be free of feminist standards, of feminist politics, of a feminist lens.

If less feminist is your preference, the rest of the world awaits you.

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Number of the Day

[Content Note: Rape culture.]

$1.5 million: The amount of funding earmarked for rape crisis centers that was vetoed by Republican Governor of Florida Rick Scott, because the funds "weren't a good use of taxpayers' money and did not serve a statewide need."

By the way, April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

*confetti*

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The Return of the Debtors' Prison

While the financial wizards who tanked the economy in Washington and on Wall Street continue to float back to earth unscathed on golden parachutes, Lisa Lindsay of Herrin, Illinois was sent to prison for failing to pay a $280 medical bill she received in error.

Two Americas, people. Two Americas.

[H/T to Shaker Cami.]

UPDATE: See also: "Debt Collector Is Faulted for Tough Tactics in Hospitals." Via Atrios.

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Photo of the Day

From the Telegraph's Photos of the Day for 24 April 2012: Birds perch on a branch during a spring snowstorm in Pembroke, N.Y. [AP Photo/David Duprey]

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Thomas Paine: Teaspoons vs. Tea Partiers

Considering how much the Fox News/Koch Brothers Tea Partiers like to selectively proof-text the Founding Generation of the United States in order to prove that they were all totally Ayn Randian bootstraps! types, and definitely not dirty protesting hippies, I thought Shakers might get a kick out of these quotes:

Exhibit A: 18th century teaspoons:

"Where liberty is, there is my country," Franklin once said, to which Paine replied, "Wherever liberty is not, there is my country."

Exhibit B: On economics and criminal justice:

"When, in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the work-house and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government."

Both are quoted in Jill Lepore, "'A World of Paine" in Alfred Young, Gary Nash, and Ray Raphael, ed., Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), a highly recommended collection of essays. For the record, I'm not a fan of proof-texting, but quotes like this are a good reminder that the elite white men usually dubbed the "Founders" were far from monolithic, let alone representative of all the American Revolution's participants.

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Daily Dose of Cute

Sophie, like many cats, likes to "knead" when she's getting pet, and usually it's just the garden variety kneading, but sometimes she gets super happy and does The Big Knead, in which her kneading is so dramatic it looks like she's riding an invisible bicycle. Here she is kneading my fat belly while I scratch her back (set to Yann Tiersen's beautiful "Yellow"):

Video Description: Sophie the Torbie Cat lies beside me on the couch, kneading my midsection with her paws, while looking completely blissed out. She pauses to lick her paw, then her armpit, before she starts kneading again. She looks into the camera and winks.

She's such a sweet, happy wee cat. I love her to pieces.


Sophs

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Disability 101: Remembering, Part Two

[Content Note: References to trauma.]

Part One is here. Again, I want to reiterate I don't fancy myself, nor should I be received as, some sort of spokesperson for a community of people with disabilities or an expert on disability advocacy. This is a piece born of my own personal experience as a person with disabilities and as a person who loves and interacts with people with disabilities.

So, here's the other thing about failing to remember that your family member, friend, or colleague has a disability: It can be triggering.

Many, though not all, people with disabilities have trauma associated with their disability/s. People with visible disabilities may have been bullied, excluded, had movement or stability aids snatched or broken for "fun." People born with disabilities, or disabled during childhood, may have been exhorted to hide visible disabilities or deny invisible disabilities in order to pretend they were "normal." Some disabilities, physical and psychological, have their roots in trauma—paralysis from a car accident; PTSD from a rape.

That's not a comprehensive list. It's but a few examples of how disability can be associated with trauma.

Forcing someone to disclose a disability over and over, because you can't be arsed to remember, thus potentially risks repeatedly triggering someone—not necessarily because simply having to discuss one's disability is triggering (although for some people, it may be), but because many of us have had to navigate the secondary trauma of "forgetting" where forgetting is not so much "forgetting" as "ignoring."

We may have been obliged as children to pretend we weren't disabled by other children who were scared of difference, by schools who were lacking in appropriate accommodations and accessibility, by parents who were disappointed or embarrassed by a less than perfect child, or who disbelieved us, or who didn't have the resources—financial, emotional—to provide proper care, or who sought to deny the origin of disability to salve misplaced self-blame or actual neglect.

We may have been obliged as adults to pretend we aren't disabled by friends who are scared or intolerant of difference, by workplaces that lack accessibility compliance, by medical practitioners who disbelieve us, by parents who won't deal or can't deal, by partners who don't get it, by our own internalized fear, self-hatred, ableism.

People with trauma-induced disabilities may have had to weather layer upon layer of denialism, neglect, and "forgetting"—silence surrounding the original trauma, being obliged to pretend it never happened, silence around the resultant disability, being obliged to pretend that doesn't exist, silence around the institutional "forgetting," secondary trauma by way of indifference, abandonment, distancing from accountability via accusations of "craziness," in a vicious cycle of emotional abuse that is difficult to navigate and highly resistant to change.

These dynamics may be exacerbated by the fact that they exist between people with disabilities and the people on whom they depend for care, or on whom they were dependent as children.

In some cases, the enforced "forgetting" of disability may have made the disabilities worse than they might have been with proper acknowledgment, care, and treatment.

Failing to remember thus risks triggering not just trauma surrounding disability, but the secondary trauma of enforced "forgetting," to which many of us have been subjected.

It is important to recognize that "forgetting" disability is a common unconsciously or consciously deployed strategy of people and places that are unable or unwilling to compassionately interact with people with disabilities and meaningfully respond to our needs.

Even if that isn't your intent, even if your failure to remember is really just carelessness and not an attempt to harm or silence, that's the backdrop of "forgetting" in the lives of many people with disabilities.

It is important to remember.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Electric Light Orchestra: "Don't Bring Me Down"

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BushQuotes!

Chapter 3, page 26: "Laura knew how much I enjoyed our life in baseball. So she was surprised over the course of the next few months when all I could talk about was how I wanted to change Texas and become its Governor."

No, I really really really really wasn't joking about the fact that this piece of shit should have been titled Privilege and Balls.

[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]

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Primarily Endless

Fun Fact: The best part of any Mitt Romney campaign event is the candidate's 17-minute long cover of "Shout."

So, now that Mitt Romney is the obvious Republican nominee (Mitt Romney has always been the obvious Republican nominee), even though it won't be official until the convention later this year, which I believe will once again be held at the bottom of a barrel, alllllllllllll the hot air that was being expended chattering about who was going to be the nominee (Mitt Romney was always going to be the nominee) is now being expended chattering about who is going to be Mitt Romney's running mate.

There are a few people we can rule out: Everyone who ran against Mitt Romney, for a start, because whooooooooops did you see those people? Did you listen to them? Oh boy. They are so terrible they made Mitt Romney look good—and let me remind you that Mitt Romney lost to John McCain last time around.


And there are a few people we can rule in, namely: Rob Portman, because he's from the swing state of Ohio and is not a Mormon; and Marco Rubio, because he's from the swing state of Florida and is GOP-Acceptably Ethnic^TM. And even though he keeps saying he doesn't want to be veep (as does no one who wants to run in 2016 because everyone including every Republican ever besides Mitt Romney and maybe even him assumes President Barack Obama will win reelection this year), he has joined Mitt Romney on the campaign trail, and not just because he's awesome at "doing the shouts."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who, as you may recall, was tasked with finding former President George W. Bush's running mate and found himself, has some hot advice for Mitt Romney during this important selection process: "The thing that I think is important to remember is the decision you make as a presidential candidate on who your running mate's going to be is the first presidential level decision the public's going to see you make. It's the first time you're making a decision you're going to have to live with." No do-overs, no backsies, no reversies, no etchysketchies!

Cheney also said: "I think the single most important criteria has to be the capacity to be president." (Like how he was president while George W. Bush was president.) "That's why you pick them. I think lots of times in the past that has not been the foremost criteria." (*cough*SarahPalin*cough*) "As you watch the talking heads out there now, they're saying you've got to pick a woman, a Hispanic, someone from a big state. They're all interesting things to speculate about but it's pretty rare that the election ever turns on those kinds of issues."

So, in conclusion, pick someone who has the capacity to be president, not a woman or a Hispanic. Love, Dick Cheney.


Finally! Go here to watch Mitt Romney tell students worried about student loans to go to a cheaper college. What a great candidate he is! Just super.

And really finally! "Gingrich hints he may drop from race this week." LOL! Oh no! Keep fighting! Never give up! Don't stop believing! Ha ha just kidding. Get lost.

Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.

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Good News! EEOC Rules That Gender-Identity Discrimination Is Covered by Title VII

This is big news and good news for trans* people in the US:

An employer who discriminates against an employee or applicant on the basis of the person's gender identity is violating the prohibition on sex discrimination contained in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to an opinion issued on April 20 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The opinion, experts say, could dramatically alter the legal landscape for transgender workers across the nation.

The opinion came in a decision delivered on Monday, April 23, to lawyers for Mia Macy, a transgender woman who claims she was denied employment with the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) after the agency learned of her transition. It also comes on the heels of a growing number of federal appellate and trial courts deciding that gender-identity discrimination constitutes sex discrimination, whether based on Title VII or the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

The EEOC decision, issued without objection by the five-member, bipartisan commission, will apply to all EEOC enforcement and litigation activities at the commission and in its 53 field offices throughout the country. It also will be binding on all federal agencies and departments.

In the decision, the EEOC states, "[T]he Commission hereby clarifies that claims of discrimination based on transgender status, also referred to as claims of discrimination based on gender identity, are cognizable under Title VII's sex discrimination prohibition...."

Masen Davis, head of the Transgender Law Center (TLC), says the decision is a "big leap forward." TLC advocates, who brought Macy's case, note that after today's ruling transgender people who feel they have faced employment discrimination can go into any of those 53 offices and the EEOC will consider their claims. What's more, the EEOC could take action itself to sue the employer for discrimination.

"Given the incredibly high rate of employment discrimination facing transgender people, this is incredibly significant for us. Data from the National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that 78 percent of transgender Americans say they've experienced workplace discrimination at some point in time," Davis tells Metro Weekly. "Given that transgender people do not have employment protections in the vast majority of states, this creates a whole new fabric of legal support for our community."

Emphases mine. There is much, much more at the link.

"A new fabric of legal support" is a beautiful turn of phrase. It's tough to overstate the importance of this ruling, in terms of providing access to justice for employment discrimination and communicating to employers that discrimination against trans* workers may have consequences.

Of course, this ruling doesn't erase trans*phobia, and it doesn't magically disappear employment discrimination into oblivion, and it doesn't guarantee that every person tasked with receiving complaints at every EEOC office will fairly assess and address complaints by trans* workers. There is never a guarantee of justice, especially for marginalized people.

But this ruling opens justice-seeking opportunities to trans* people who face discrimination that weren't previously available. It is an important piece of legal and cultural progress, and long overdue.

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Open Thread

Hosted by Sherlock Holmes' deerstalker. (And Watson's cap.)

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Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Lucymaybe: What would be your life's slogan?

"I'm not offended; I'm contemptuous."

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