Special March Updates from Vered
Note: There are a lot of swears. If you’re offended by the language, rest assured that I’m offended by the attempt to create more dead kids.1
What the fucking shit is it now?
Today, I woke up to an email titled "How Are You?”
She was wondering if I was doing okay, given what had just happened. I had no idea what my friend was referring to, so I checked the local news.
Extremely unpopular5 local man AG Ken Paxton, who is has an election tomorrow for senate, released an opinion. He stated that Texas's ban on gender affirming care for minors means therapists also can't diagnose or treat gender dysphoria. Apparently this man loves legislating without being a legislator in addition to practicing medicine without a license.2
Lots of very smart people have said "this is illegal" and "that's not how laws work."
My statement? I don't fucking care about his hail-Mary bullshit peacocking.
Some bad stuff happened this weekend. As a result, I'm checking the news every few hours to see if two dozen of my family members have been killed. I am worried that my aunt with dementia is going to die, buried in a shelter her own government knew was unsafe. I have no space to care about this stochastic terrorism bullshit.
Lots of things can be said about the types of people who make laws targeting teenagers. He's a creep. He's a bully. He's perhaps incapable of human love.3 We've never needed permission from these types of people to love, to hug our children, to share a slice of cake with our neighbors.
When I hear these types of political announcements, I think about Umberto Eco’s essay on his experience as a child in Mussolini’s Italy. I think about how important it is for us to call out the stupid, the hateful, the bullies’ contemptuousness of the weak - lest we risk our democracy.
In my country today there are people who are wondering if the Resistance had a real military impact on the course of the war. For my generation this question is irrelevant: we immediately understood the moral and psychological meaning of the Resistance. For us it was a point of pride to know that we Europeans did not wait passively for liberation. And for the young Americans who were paying with their blood for our restored freedom it meant something to know that behind the firing lines there were Europeans paying their own debt in advance.
Lots of great people are working on the ground to make sure everyone knows how desperate to score political points this is. Lots of great people are working to make sure his opinion stays that way.
It's like they say: opinions are like assholes, and Ken Paxton's is incredibly loud. 4
Until I get a legal sign that this means a goddamned thing, I have people to love, friends to roast, and teenagers to support.
Come to my free CEU next week to hear me curse more and talk about how French existentialism is needed for current moral challenges!
If you wanna buy me a pizza, you can do so here.
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a.k.a. please don’t sue me
1 None of this should be considered formal assessments of someone’s character, defamation, etc. This all should be interpreted in the vein of “talking shit” from someone who doesn’t know these people, isn’t a lawyer, and only specializes in keeping teenagers alive. “STOP MAKING ME BE A LAWYER” does not refer to me magically transforming into a lawyer, like I’ve made some kind of pact with a talking anime cat. I’m talking about how ridiculous it is that I need to think about legal things to do my job of keeping teenagers alive. The mental health specialty should be the only one that is taken seriously. Demonization is not great for the mental health of the groups being demonized, in this case transgender teenagers. That is my formal statement. Information on the phrase “stochastic terrorism”
2 I am not a lawyer. From KXAN: Karen Loewy, Lambda Legal’s senior counsel and Constitutional Law Practice director, called it “baseless and overreaching.” She added that it went “far beyond” what the Texas Legislature approved. I think telling doctors how to treat patients is a form of practicing medicine without a license, but I’m not a lawyer, just an angry fuckwit - don’t sue me.
3 “He” is not referring to anyone in particular. See Analysis: Texas officials bully transgender kids for political points from the Texas Tribune for the term applied to multiple politicians.
4 I assume. I blessedly have not had personal experiences with Ken Paxton’s asshole, and am basing this on the assumption that demonstrating hatred towards another group will give you digestive distress.
5 With me, and here is a quote from CBS: "I would really hate to be John Cornyn right now. He is going to have a bloody, bruising primary with Ken Paxton, one of the most overwhelmingly unpopular elected officials in the state of Texas, and I think that we're going to come out of that situation in a really good spot," Scudder said.
Until next time,
Vered