Fox News Invites Unqualified A**Hole To Give Unqualified A**Hole Take On Transgender Issues

If you want to see just how challenging the fight for true gender acceptance will be, look no further than this clip from everyone’s favorite news network propaganda machine — Fox News.

Below, you’ll see Elizabeth Hasselbeck speaking with discredited psychiatrist and Fox News contributor Dr. Keith Ablow, tossing around fear-based trans prejudice like its shade at the Drag Race judges’ table. Except instead of being funny, it’s actually kind of scary and sad.

The topic is Planet Fitness and Yvette Cormier, the woman who complained about seeing a trans woman in the female locker room. After she returned to the gym day after day to warn the other guests of what had happened, Planet Fitness revoked her membership on the grounds that she was disturbing the other members.

Just to get things straight, Yvette was the one harassing gym members, not the trans woman who went in and out of the locker room twice in leggings and an oversized t-shirt.

They way Hasselbitch and Ablower-than-low talk about it, though, Yvette deserves some sort of national medal. A point they highlight with a graphic in the lower right hand corner which says “Legal Insanity.” Except the actual lawyer involved in the conversation says the opposite.

And as is usually the case on Faux News, the privileged white man is the real victim here. Ablow says at one point, “We are being bullied into accepting things that are untrue to our core feelings.”

You poor dear, you.

Also, sorry Yvette — judging by those side-by-side pictures of you and Carlotta Sklodowska, the trans woman you couldn’t handle in your space, you could use some serious beauty tips from her.

Watch below, and do your best not to gag:

h/t MediaMatters

Dan Tracer

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ED D 340 Social Media Campaign – LGBT Awareness
Here is my awareness video for ED-D 340 at University of Victoria. Also, here’s a link to that (wonderful) piano instrumental of Born this Way (I did not make it)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6o6St8k_uw&feature=youtube_gdata

A Matter of Opinion
If you’re in the mood to hear opposite takes on the same matter, try attending a book group. The very same book, which you might imagine resonates the very same way with every reader, turns out to land as differently on two persons as if one were finding daylight and the other groping through the dark.

I’ll testify to this after two years of belonging to what was starting as a new gay men’s book group. When I first heard about the group, I thought this will never fly. Was I wrong!

Gay men, a lot of gay men, it turns out, read books, and do like to say what they thought about them. (A chance also to meet someone new doesn’t hurt the attendance.) From nine or 10 at the start, the group now numbers several times that, men of different ages and lots of opinions.

Why would I have thought that gay men think alike? What gay men have in common is that they’re men and are gay. Our tastes run the gamut in movies, food, and clothes, and it turns out in books also.

Our group meets one evening a month in the Village in downtown in Manhattan. Jon, the group leader, posts the date but does not issue special invitations; it’s open to any gay man. Still, the room is filled each month — even on the wettest, snowiest night, with men who, happily or not, committed at least, digested the book chosen for that month. There comes a core of steady attendees plus a reliable number of new men curious to try out the event.

We’ve delved into mostly fiction and some non-fiction (people tend to be attracted more to one than the other.) I don’t care for historical fiction, but others do. I like memoir, but not everyone does. I now know not to expect others to agree with what I thought about a book. I may not have changed my mind about the book by the end of the evening, but it’s good to hear opinions other than mine, as earnest as mine. At times I’ve thrown in the pot suggestions for a couple of books to be read, certain they would garner unanimous applause. Wrong again!

Jon, our founder, who remains loyally at the helm of the group, tries in an hour-and-a-half or so to quell those who like to talk too much and give time to those reluctant about speaking. He’s pointed out that the book group causes him to read works he might otherwise not have read. That’s a good enough reason for the group to exist.

Books are chosen by members’ suggestions, and the books have not been limited to gay themes. If what we’re reading is not new, it usually happens that some men have read it before — and found it more, and sometimes, less interesting, on a second go-round.

If the book is recent, there’s a good chance that the author is alive. So far none has been seen. Even if tempted, he might prefer to boycott the meeting. If he comes, he’d better wrap himself in a tough skin to hear that his book is not liked by everyone. As a writer who has created a few books of his own, it’s reassuring to me to be reminded that unanimous praise doesn’t come to even popular authors.

Stanley Ely writes about writing, and reading, in his new book, “Life Up Close,” in paperback and ebook.

www.huffingtonpost.com/stanley-ely/a-matter-of-opinion_b_6851790.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices