Idiot Duck Box

This is Rita Hester. Rita was born in 1963, in Hartford, Connecticut. She loved rock music, food, and dancing. She often holidayed in Greece. She had a pet cat, and a boa constrictor.

In 1998, Rita was murdered. In 1999, Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in her honour.

Nobody took them down. But I watched people barely even notice them. The following year, I made them more eye-catching - paid for color printing, made the background pastel pink and blue, formatted them like lost posters, and at the top, wrote: "will you remember me?"

That got noticed.

I repeat. This soccer league allows all trans people to compete.

What league doesn’t do this, you may ask? The equivalent men's soccer league.

It’s very obvious that there is tons of rhetoric around how trans people competing in sports is unfair. That’s like the main argument used against us being allowed to compete. He’s saying the presence of trans people on a team can be proof that this is not the case.

He is not taking a spot away from trans women. He is participating in the only professional league that will allow him. This league also allows trans women to compete. There is not a single spot in the league that is exclusive to only trans people that he is taking up.

This is not a win because the PR on this has obviously completely fucking failed to the point where almost nobody knows the actual rules and restrictions around this.

I have seen a huge amount of vitriol against this guy, this team, and this league for wanting to compete in his sport and doing it in the only trans-inclusive league around. The league that ALSO lets trans women compete.

We could talk about why trans women aren’t actually enrolled in the league despite rules allowing them, but instead y'all want to be mad at another trans person because he's doing his best in a shitty situation.

This single trans guy, who is *also* systematically denied from accessing sports leagues that actually align with his gender, is not evil for participating in a sport in the *only* way he can. Trans women exist in men's sports leagues as the only ways in which they can still play in sports. And yet I have never seen a single campaign or genuine call to action about preventing trans women from having the "privilege" of being able to access men's sports leagues because they're taking away from trans men. Because that’s stupid as fuck and transphobic as fuck and just serves to continue to oppress a group that is being denied access.

I repeat. This soccer league allows all trans people to compete.

What league doesn’t do this, you may ask? The equivalent men's soccer league.

It’s very obvious that there is tons of rhetoric around how trans people competing in sports is unfair. That’s like the main argument used against us being allowed to compete. He’s saying the presence of trans people on a team can be proof that this is not the case.

He is not taking a spot away from trans women. He is participating in the only professional league that will allow him. This league also allows trans women to compete. There is not a single spot in the league that is exclusive to only trans people that he is taking up.

This is not a win because the PR on this has obviously completely fucking failed to the point where almost nobody knows the actual rules and restrictions around this.

I have seen a huge amount of vitriol against this guy, this team, and this league for wanting to compete in his sport and doing it in the only trans-inclusive league around. The league that ALSO lets trans women compete.

We could talk about why trans women aren’t actually enrolled in the league despite rules allowing them, but instead y'all want to be mad at another trans person because he's doing his best in a shitty situation.

My gf: "That parked car came out of nowhere"

Silence your phones, not your moans!

My gf: "That parked car came out of nowhere"

Apparently there isn’t much news coverage of this outside of the islands

Towns are flooded, homes destroyed and collapsed, roads collapsed, lives at risk, gas leaks from the flood damage

Haleiwa and Waialua are currently evacuated because the 120 year old dam is at risk of bursting

Mind you that damn is owned by Dole. Theyve known about it needing to be fixed for years and years and years. Despite having more than enough money they refuse

The state has been trying to buy it out from them for years so they can fix it, but the sale hasn’t gone through

Keep in mind that the Dole family were the ones who illegally imprisoned Queen Liliuʻokalani and illegally overthrew the monarchy.

If I see another goddamn person say how sad this is for the tourists whose “trips were ruined” and compare a messed up vacation to people losing their homes, belongings, and livelihoods, I’m going to lose my mind

I am so lucky that my family or friend’s are safe and the few whose houses flooded didnt have it too bad, but so so so many were not as fortunate

If you haven’t heard anything about this until now, I suggest looking into it

The sirens didn’t go off until the flood had been going on for hours. Our state government is spending so much money on a fucking monorail we don’t need rather than fixing the infrastructure.

It’s been the locals and Kanaka doing the most to help get people to safety from the start

I don’t really know how to end this

I just need to know people are aware

Dole the fruit company started the dole plantation in 1901 in Hawaʻi as the “hawaiian pineapple company”

Dole the fruit company got big from plantations, colonialism, and exploitation in Hawaiʻi

Dole the fruit company monopolized land for their plantations, exploited local labor as well as immigrant labor from the people they shipped in to work, and depleted the soil and introduced toxic pesticides

Dole the fruit company was the cousin of Sanford B Dole who helped overthrow the monarchy and became the governor of hawaiʻi afterwards

Dole purchased the island of Lānaʻi and made it tbe largest pineapple plantation in the world

Lānaʻi is now 98% owned by larry ellison, cofounder and chairman of oracle

Dole the fruit company had sugarcane plantations across hawaiʻi as well as pineapple

For over 150 years, millions of gallons of water were diverted daily from natural streams to sugarcane plantations on Maui

This caused irreparable damage to the ecosystem and is largely if not wholly responsible for how dry Maui is to this day

The dryness of Maui played a huge factor into the severity of the Lahaina fires

That control over water shifted political power to colonizers which aided them in overthrowing the monarchy

yes, dole the fruit company owns a dam in Hawaiʻi

they still have massive pineapple farms in hawaiʻi

The dole plantation on Oahu is now a tourist attraction where they’ll take you on the “pineapple express train tour” or the “plantation garden tour”

BUT

that in no way means it isn’t still an issue

this is an earthen dam, not a concrete one

it was not meant to last this long

Earthen dams are weakened every time it rains. So even though it’s no longer at imminent risk of failure, the danger is still there

Earthen damns begin to erode once water runs over them

Here’s a good, local news article on this that @proustianrevelry linked in the rbs

When they learned I was #local or whatever (I am BARELY local. I have Hawai'ian family, I have lived part of my life here, but I'm too haole to be local), they told me they didn’t think the flights would be full because it isn't "peak season." Spring break? Maybe they think people who live here don’t travel anywhere else.

When I told them my family lives on Maui, two of them told me that they had actually planned for their trip to be "in Maui" and changed it to O'ahu due to "the weather." Such a shame, they said. Maui is such a perfect vacation spot, they said. O'ahu doesn’t have beaches that are as nice. "Yea, Maui nō ka 'oi," I said, briefly forgetting who I was talking to. They had no idea what I meant.

One of them went to Maui last in winter of 2023. Less than 4 months after the fires. Peak "we told people repeatedly to not fucking come here" season. I grew up there. I remember. HThe sirens didn't go off when they should have, just like this month. I know someone who died. He was the reason I took music classes in college. They brought it up so casually.

The lady who had been to Maui tried to ask me about local spots on O'ahu. She tried to name a few places. She didn’t know how to pronounce them. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I had been shockingly well-insulated from tourists.