...battle advanced

Follow this guy on Twitter if you want some more truth in your life. You won’t regret it.

Democrats in the U.S. Senate on Monday evening blocked a Republican-led attempt to enshrine discrimination against transgender athletes in federal law. The lawmakers rejected the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. The bill, part of a more considerable conservative effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights, failed to garner enough votes needed to advance.

After senators voted to confirm President Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon, the upper chamber considered moving forward with the anti-trans legislation. The bill was stopped by a cloture vote, which is a procedural motion that requires 60 votes to end debate and move forward. The vote was 51 to 45.

The legislation, introduced in the House of Representatives by Florida GOP Rep. Greg Steube and passed by Republicans earlier this year with the support of two Democrats, sought to rewrite Title IX protections by defining sex in athletics solely based on “reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” If enacted, the bill would have effectively barred transgender women and girls from participating in federally funded school and college sports.

The bill also called for federal studies on the impact of transgender inclusion in women’s sports and potential “adverse psychological and developmental effects” on cisgender athletes. There is no evidence that transgender athletes are a danger to cisgender peers. While it did not mandate physical examinations to determine an athlete’s sex, critics warned that its enforcement could lead to intrusive scrutiny of all female athletes.

The bill’s failure comes amid a broader, coordinated effort by Republicans to legislate transgender people out of public life. Just last month, Trump signed an executive order titled “No Men in Women’s Sports." Trump used the signing ceremony as an opportunity to spew inflammatory rhetoric, falsely claiming that men have “invaded” women’s sports and that male athletes are “beating up and injuring” women—a claim that has been debunked time and time again.

Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson applauded the Senate’s rejection of the bill, emphasizing the damaging impact of such policies. “Every child should have the opportunity to experience the simple joys of being young and making memories with their friends. But bills like these send the message that transgender kids don’t deserve the same opportunities to thrive as their peers simply because of who they are. And they are impossible to enforce without putting all kids at risk of invasive questions or physical examinations just because someone doesn’t look or dress like everyone else,” Robinson said in a statement to The Advocate.

Trump’s executive order, which threatened to strip federal funding from schools and colleges that failed to comply with his ban on transgender athletes, has already triggered legal challenges. Civil rights advocates and legal experts have pointed out that executive orders cannot override federal civil rights protections, including those under Title IX, and the order is expected to be tied up in court for months.

But seriously, if somebody says this in front of you? Don't point and laugh. Don't say "PATHERS ATE YOUR FACE" or "SERVES YA RIGHT YOU MAGA PIECE OF SHIT" or "BOO FUCKING HOO"

Instead, express sympathy.

Agree with them that yeah, what happened absolutely sucks. And yeah, it appears he maybe lied to get your vote? Politicians lie all the time, and it's a shame he took advantage of you this time.

This approach has at least a chance of making meaningful change. And some people on the Other Side know this, and hate it… seeing it as a way they’ll lose power. They betray their true motivations by trying to discredit empathy and compassion—by characterizing them as weakness. And the language they use, trying to be clever, csn accidentally be most revealing.

“The ‘empathy exploit,’” Musk called it the other day. As if the manifestation of understanding someone else’s trouble, and feeling/expressing compassion for it, was somehow unfair, like using a cheat code in a game to get an unearned advantage. That’s the level such people are operating on: that the only thing that matters is winning the game—whatever they’ve decided the current game is—and (from their POV) fuck whatever human suffering’s being experienced on the other side. If those people weren’t weak, and losers, they wouldn’t be suffering, right?

(exasperated sigh) I know which side of this argument I prefer to come down on, even though it’s gonna really annoy me, sometimes, for years to come. Somebody in the room has to swallow her grim amusement and, when confronted by one of these people, move through into a mode that has a chance to make someone’s life less painful.

(shrug) Can’t be helped. Might as well get on with it, day by day: decreasing local entropy by increments…