tothemoonandback

Laverne Cox: Bathroom Bills “Criminalize Trans People” And No One Is Talking About It

Because the people don’t actually “feel” like becoming educated on LGB and especially T issues.

We Are With You

things you do not do at a coffee shop: sit down next to the girl with her headphones in and start talking to her

allow me to elaborate

it’s 12:45. the office internet is spotty, and i have a very important webinar to watch about a product release. my boss gives me permission to go to the nearby coffee shop. i go to the coffee shop, order my coffee, and settle myself at a table. there aren’t many tables in this particular shop, so i have every expectation that someone will probably end up sitting with me sooner or later.

popping in my headphones, i load up my webinar. it begins.

and then HE ARRIVES. he orders coffee. i must have made eye contact (MY MISTAKE) because once his coffee is in hand (probably a latte, he looked like someone who would want 66% of his drink to be steamed milk instead of pure caffeine) he sits at my table. not across from me, even, but next to me.

i give the universally polite closed-lipped smile of acknowledgment. “hello. i see you’ve decided to sit at this table. this is me acknowledging that, and now this is me going back to my webinar.”

if things had stopped there, we would not have a story. it is a terrible story. strap yourself in.

so there’s me, sitting with my headphones on, watching my webinar. the speaker is discussing versioning in the new release. 

i hear a faint noise. i look up at the dude. he smiles. i pop a bud out of my ears. “hey,” he says. 

“uh, hi,” i say, and i turn back to my webinar. 

“what are you watching?” 

my hand pauses. “webinar for work,” i say, flashing him that tense please shut up i’m busy smile.

“what do you do?”

look, dude, i get that you’re interested in a conversation, but i am fucking working. but i’m also nice, so i say “look, this is really important, so i–”

“sure sure, but what do you do? what kind of webinars are you watching?”

THE KIND THAT REQUIRE MY FUCKING ATTENTION BECAUSE THIS IS ABOUT A NEW ROLEOUT FOR SOFTWARE THAT I USE FOR A CRITICAL OPERATION AT MY OFFICE AND WHEN IT INEVITABLY BREAKS UNDER THESE UPDATES, I NEED TO KNOW WHAT AREAS OF THE SOFTWARE ARE MOST LIKELY TO BREAK THAT’S THE FUCKING WEBINAR I’M WATCHING

“ones for work.” i put my ear bud back in my ear.

i look away. 

surely surely this will deter my new friend

i should be so fucking lucky. he starts talking about his start up. i turn up my volume. he leans into my space. i take out my ear buds to tell this guy i really can’t talk, and at the same time i frantically make eye contact with one of the baristas. 

“i think you’d like my assets,” he says.

the barista disappears 

there is no hope left in the world. all is barren and ice. dude continues to talk. i try to watch my webinar, ignoring him. i’m typing at the same time. he has to know i’m not paying attention to him.

he continues talking. i cut him off. “look, i’m very busy right now.” i wait just a second. he shows no interest in leaving. “i’m also very gay.” he scoffs. “you’re too pretty to be gay.” and the back of my head must have blown off and splattered on the windows behind me because what the fucking fuckity fuck bro

THEN SUDDENLY LIKE A BOLT OF HEAVENLY LIGHT IN THE MIDST OF A DARK AND TERRIBLE STORM THERE APPEARS THE BARISTA FOLLOWED BY SOMEONE IN A SUIT like who the fuck wears a suit at a coffee shopBUT THER E IS SUIT MAN AND HE IS MAGNIFICENT AS HE DESCENDS LIKE A DARK AVENGER ON MY TABLE

“is there a problem,” my beautiful dark avenger of holy fury asks

“of course not. she asked me to join her–” I DID NO SUCH FUCKING THING ALSO WHO THE HELL LIES LIKE THAT. i stare at him, agape, floored by the presumption. 

the avenger turns to me. “did you do this, ma’am?”

“no,” i say, aghast, horrified, still too stunned to formulate a particularly scathing put down

the avenger turns to the bro. “i have to ask you to leave, sir.”

“buy we’re just talking!” bro says

“sir. you have. to. leave.”

“i’m just trying to get to know her!”

“it’s pretty obvious that she doesn’t want to know you.”

It’s the man on the bus touching me, thinking he had a right to my body.

It’s the man who called me a fat cow for telling him to watch where he was going because he almost ran me over.

It’s the saleswoman yelling “WHY DONT YOU SPEAK MY LANGUAGE” to a Muslim man.

It’s my mom telling my sister being gay is a phase.

It’s my classmates saying women wearing revealing clothes are “asking for it”.

“Pence is no Uncle Joe.His record as governor indicates that he is willing to completely undermine the core values of a free country in order to impose his own vision of theocratic control.

While Donald Trump is a bumbling political idiot, Mike Pence is actively against the people and possibilities that we need to help America to have a strong future. His career has been built on hateful exclusion, not intelligent inclusion.

Here are some things that every voter should know about Mike Pence:

- Science and invention helped build America, but Mike Pence is 100% anti-science. He chooses not to accept the preponderance of evidence that supports anthropomorphic climate change, and he thinks schools should be required to teach Christian “creationism” mythology alongside evolution in science classrooms.

- Mike Pence is anti-environment. As governor, he has vetoed every piece of environmental regulation that has crossed his desk. He doesn’t want the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, and he does want to open up pretty much every part of our country to oil and coal companies. No more wildlands under Pence. He is one of those irresponsible extremists who think that God gave us the world so we could just use it up, and when it is all used up the second coming will occur. There is no Biblical basis for this belief.

- Females make up more than half of the American population, but Mike Pence is anti-woman. He has said the Disney movie “Mulan,” which was based on a centuries old Chinese poem, was the work of a “mischievous liberal” trying to groom young children to accept women in combat. “Despite her delicate features and voice, Disney expects us to believe that Mulan’s ingenuity and courage were enough to carry her to military success on an equal basis,” he wrote on his radio show’s website.

- He obsessively pursues a personal vendetta to take Title X funding away from Planned Parenthood because Planned Parenthood provides abortion services. Title X money CANNOT be used for abortions. Abortions are paid for by the recipient or through private, tagged donations. Taking away Title X will not impact abortion services, but it would leave thousands of women without access to cancer screenings or birth control.

- Speaking of birth control, Mike Pence once again revealed his historical ignorance in saying that condoms are “modern” and “liberal.” He thinks all women should be pregnant unless they can’t afford a baby, in which case they should abstain from sex, even if they are married. That’s right: sex is only for procreation in PenceWorld. If you can’t afford the diapers, then hubby should be sleeping on the couch.

- Mike Pence is also anti-gay, to the point of denial. He doesn’t want the government to pay for cancer screenings, but he does want the government to pay for abusive “conversion therapy” programs that systematically undermine the victim’s self-esteem, and then indoctrinate them into robotic gender-appropriate behaviors. He has signed into law a bill that allows discrimination against LGTBQ customers based on religious belief.

- As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence was personally responsible for an outbreak of AIDS when he refused to allow clean needle exchanges for drug addicts. Instead, he asked people to pray for the addicts.

- Mike Pence is racist. He thinks there is “too much talk” about institutional racism in law enforcement because “police officers are human beings.” His solution is unity through “faith.” The Indiana governor has tried to prevent Syrian refugees from settling in his state because the “pose a threat to safety of residents.” Pence argued that his policy was based on fear, not race, so it wasn’t discriminatory. A Federal Appeals Court dismissed his racist arguments on October 3, 2016.

- A Federal Court also had to block his bizarre anti-abortion law that required burial or cremation for fetuses, whether miscarried or aborted, no matter how far along the pregnancy had progressed.

- Mike Pence is pro-birth, but not pro-life. He once funneled $3.5M dollars from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families into programs that counsel against abortion. He wants those women to have those babies, but he doesn’t care if the kids starve or live on the streets afterward.

- Mike Pence has refused to comply with federal guidelines aimed at reducing prison rape.

When you add it all together, you can see that the most dangerous part of the Trump-Pence ticket is …that calculating quiet man who will be leading the charge from behind. Mike Pence is basically against anyone who is not white, conservative, Christian, and male.

When Mike Pence was a young lawyer on the rise, he challenged a longtime Democratic congressman for a seat in a Republican-leaning Indiana district. He seemed to have it in the bag until voters were stunned to learn that he had been using political donations to pay personal expenses including the mortgage on his house, his credit card bill, groceries, golf tournament fees, and car payments for his wife.”

Spite, fuel me