My birth certificate also says I weighed seven pounds, but things change

My peformance group played a concert late Sunday afternoon. After that Sister, Niece, and I went out for supper. So there was no Sunday movie. I finished the book The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimons. It is a young adult novel. Spencer is a trans boy starting his sophomore year in high school. He’s at a new school, a private progressive school, because of The Incident at his previous school which showed how unsafe he was there. Spencer very much wants to pass as as a boy and not deal with others knowing he’s trans and disapproving. Spencer also wants to play soccer – on the boy’s team. He’s quite good and also good at watching the other team to uncover their weaknesses. His parents are wonderful and he’s already on the hormone treatment, so he looks like a boy. He doesn’t want to change in the same room as the other boys but quickly figures out he only need face his locker – the other boys aren’t looking (showering isn’t discussed). There’s a big problem – his birth certificate says female and he lives in Ohio, a state that refuses to let him change it. Towards the end of the book he says a great line, “My birth certificate also says I weighed seven pounds, but things change.” The other big problem of the book is that Spencer is friends with and also falling for the team’s vice captain, a boy named Justice. His family is so devoutly religious the other children are named Noble, Piety, and Steadfast. He’s at the progressive school only because he has a soccer scholarship. Spencer is afraid of what Justice will say or do when he finds out Spencer is trans. The cover of the book shows a black boy and a white boy discussing soccer plays. Which one is Spencer? In the first third of the book race is mentioned only twice – this character is white and that one is black. I wondered why race was important in describing those two and not any of the others. Only after a third of the story goes by do we learn Spencer is biracial. Other than that minor annoyance I enjoyed the story. It was a fairly quick read, taking about a week for 300 pages. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos welcomed us to Pride Month. She noted that marriage equality and anti-discrimination laws have strong majority support. Alas, the highest profile stories are about hatred. Clawson lists a few, but certainly not all, recent stories. There is the storm over Bud Light using a trans influencer. Target moving or removing its Pride displays because of threats of violence to its employees. A pride event in Bozeman, Montana was disrupted by supremacists. St. Cloud, Florida canceled its pride event because they felt they coudn’t keep participants safe. Republican controlled states are passing laws banning LGBTQ issues and drag shows. Proud Boys have disrupted more than 160 drag events in the last 18 months – even as there are hundreds more stories, including in red states, that demonstrate our progress.

Parents of toddlers are often told about “extinction bursts,” in which, as they try to move their child past a problem behavior, it gets worse. The child frantically clings to the pacifier or cries extra hard when their parents don’t come to their crib the moment they start crying. That’s the Proud Boys and their fellow bigots right now. Marriage equality is widely accepted. Employment and housing discrimination are widely opposed. Drag brunches and story hours are popular events. And the bigots can’t stand it. Instead of a screaming toddler, though, Pride events and drag events face angry, potentially armed adults—a much bigger problem.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported a federal judge – appointed by the nasty guy – ruled Tennessee’s law placing strict limits on drag shows is unconstitutional. First, the law is a violation of free speech. The Supremes have said the even explicit speech is protected. Second, it is too vague. The law doesn’t use the word “drag.” It uses the phrase “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors.” That word “harmful” can mean whatever the complainer or arresting officer wants it to mean. In a pundit roundup posted ten days ago, Chitown Kev of Kos, quoted Beth Hawkins of the education blog The 74 talking about laws targeting LGBTQ people.

It’s no surprise that queer students in Republican-dominated states where these laws have passed are profoundly impacted. But less visible is the dramatic effect the steady drumbeat of headlines has had on youth in places with even strong anti-discrimination laws. Newly released data from the advocacy groups GLSEN and The Trevor Project show increases in hostility, victimization and discrimination experienced by students in blue states as well as red. ... In California — where the first gay couples married in 2008 and schools began teaching LGBTQ history a decade ago — a statewide survey of students found that the number who reported hearing homophobic remarks from adults in school rose from 12% in 2019 to 49% in 2021. That’s an increase of 408%.

Bruce Plante tweeted a cartoon of Biden playing the trunk of an elephant like a violin. Yeah, this didn’t take long. Biden got Republicans to pledge they would not include Social Security and Medicare in their hostage taking over the debt limit. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the ink was barely dry on that deal when McCarthy announced “a commission to explore mandatory spending cuts. In other words: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.” I’m not the only one to notice the rhetoric carefully discusses the “need” to reduce spending without talking about the national deficit or debt or why spending needs to be reduced. Republicans are very aware the other way to reduce the deficit and debt is to raise taxes on the rich. McCarter included a tweet by Steven Rattner that has a chart showing the contribution of the various tax cuts and their extensions since 2002. The data is from American Progress, as is the quote:

If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions—as well as the Trump tax cuts—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio... would be declining,

McCarter noted we’ve been here before – the last time there was a Democratic president. So perhaps this time Democrats don’t play the game and not participate in a commission whose purpose is to recommend policies that hurt all but the rich. McCarter added: “When are we going to get a commission to study tax hikes?” Another Associated Press article posted on Kos ten days ago reported Republican lawmakers in various states they control are pushing a solution to the labor shortage – roll back labor laws that protect teens. After describing the states trying to loosen protective laws the article said:

Teen workers are more likely to accept low pay and less likely to unionize or push for better working conditions, said Maki, of the Child Labor Coalition, a Washington-based advocacy network. “There are employers that benefit from having kind of docile teen workers,” Maki said, adding that teens are easy targets for industries that rely on vulnerable populations such as immigrants and the formerly incarcerated to fill dangerous jobs.

Meteor Blades of Kos discussed the subject again this past weekend. Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa had signed a bill that reduced several protections in the state’s child labor laws. Blades discussed how his grandfather and grandpa’s brother worked in coal mines as slate boys when they were preteens. Then Blades wrote about the history of federal child labor laws. Children and teens didn’t get protections until the Great Depression, and only then because adults needed the few jobs there were. Yes, the new state laws violate federal laws.

But one big problem in the federal government are departments and agencies under-budgeted and under-staffed when it comes to enforcement of existing laws. Like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is now under the gun to complete faster environmental reviews of energy projects, the Department of Labor needs more staff to investigate and penalize violators.

Blades concluded:

Many people argue that having a part-time job is a fine, life-enhancing experience for youths. That can be true. But they are not going to get that from working six hours a night during the school year on the line at a meat-packing plant any more than those slate boys could from risking their fingers and lives on coal conveyors. A serious federal approach to life-enhancing child labor would be to amply fund apprenticeship programs that would provide on-the-job training and education with reasonable pay and modest working hours to allow children to still be children.

Another reason why teens should be protected from abusive labor is poor families may be desperate for the money a teen might be able to bring home. But that likely means the teen isn’t getting educated, trapping him in poverty through his life. Phil Hands of the Wisconsin State Journal tweeted a cartoon showing a cafe with the owners saying

If we don’t get more help, I’m not sure our business will survive. Where on earth are we going to find more workers?

Right next to the cafe is the US border wall with thousands of people on the other side of it. Last Saturday Eric Deggans of NPR talked to Maureen Ryan, who wrote about the toxic culture behind the hit TV show Lost for Vanity Fair and also wrote the book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity And A Call For Change in Hollywood about the ongoing toxic culture there. On the show, the “showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof created an atmosphere where racism and bullying were tolerated and encouraged on the set.” Here are a few of Ryan’s comments:

It's similar to things you still see going on in the comedy world, which is the attitude with comments and maybe even actions that are racist or sexist, homophobic, transphobic. Oh, this is me being edgy. But those edgy comments are really meant to make the people of color in the room, the women of color in the room, the LGBTQIA people in the room - make them aware that they don't have power, and the people making the offensive comment have the power. ... I think that there's an unspoken rule in some people's head - that person is too nice to be truly creative. That person is to considerate to be a genius - which is a horrifying unexamined assumption that I think that a lot of people maybe don't even know that they have in the audience or in the executive suite. This is a thing that I come across time and again, that some people are not seen as incredible geniuses or absolutely undeniable creators that people must give a big contract to unless they are consistently doing things to other people and to productions as a whole that are damaging or unprofessional or just garden-variety crappy. ... If I had to describe my book in one word, the word would be exploitation. People are being exploited routinely, and the exploitation can come in the form of coercive acts from their boss, bullying, racism, toxicity, homophobia, transphobia. They are not paid enough.

I heard that bit about creativity being judged by how crappy a person acts and I thought the money people aren’t funding projects based on whether the person is creative, they’re funding based on whether the person supports the power hierarchy. Isabella Delseny-Ernest tweeted a cartoon that’s been hiding in my browser tabs since November and was shared as part of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The cartoon is without words. It shows (I think) a male politician, a male businessman, and a male police officer in the standard see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil poses. Above them is a woman with her hands also at her face, one against a bruised eye, the other wiping a tear.

Stand still and look stupid

I was at the Detroit Institute of Arts this afternoon. I first went to the special exhibit of paintings by Claude Monet and Frederic Edwin Church. There were less than a dozen Monet paintings from early in his career. My favorite was of his wife and son standing on the crest of a windy hill. The Church part, which ends Sunday (the Monet part stays open for another month), focuses his travels around the Mediterranean in the late 1860. Many items on display are quick studies done when he traveled to various sites. He did some full scale works when he returned to America. The most eye-catching is his view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives in which the Temple Mount is bathed in bright light (yeah, a lot of religious symbolism there). He also painted a few artificial scenes in which Greek ruins and Crusader castles and perhaps a few other time periods are jumbled together. We’re told his point is that civilizations crumble. My favorite Church painting is displayed prominently in the DIA, though was not part of this exhibit. It is his painting of the eruption of the Cotopaxi volcano.

After lunch in the cafe I visited the two galleries for temporary exhibits. One had images of homes from fanciful to cute to decrepit. The photo gallery had a series on Detroit Hip-Hop artists (I’ve heard of Eminem, but none of the others).

Then on to the Detroit Film Theater and the documentary, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. It begins with a quote from Lamarr, “Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” He movie starts in her native Austria where she is seen as smart. She noticed that when she entered a room she turned heads. So by age 16 she tried for the movie business. In 1938 she fled Austria, less because of the Nazis and more because of her first husband – she got tired of being the ornament on his arm.

So off to Hollywood, where she was known as “the most beautiful woman in the world.” It was a curse more than a blessing. Playing roles just because she was beautiful was never enough and her career was rocky. When not acting (such as when she was supposed to be sleeping) she used her smarts to invent things. One was a design for an airplane wing for Howard Hughes. The big one was a frequency hopping system to prevent Germans from jamming American torpedoes. The Navy dismissed the idea because it came from a beautiful woman. That technology is now a core piece of WiFi, Bluetooth, cell phones and several other technologies. Lamarr never got paid for her idea. We still don’t allow smart and beautiful women to reach their full potential.

They vote for us when they know us

To correspond to the opening of the movie Milk, here is a bit of background on Harvey Milk. I didn't know that the legacy of Milk inspired San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom to create the "Winter of Love" in 2004, which led to last May's Calif. Supreme Court ruling for gay marriage and this fall's marriage ban. Milk battled Proposition 6 which would have banned gays from teaching in public schools. He said that voters vote for us when they know us, something that the leaders against the marriage ban didn't learn. Even so, Harvey Milk's legacy lives on.

Though the movie Milk is highly praised, and there is even talk of Oscars, critics have noted that all of the big name actors in this very gay movie are straight. Can't progressive Hollywood find big name gays for these roles? Well, no. All of the A-list actors claim to be straight (though insiders say it isn't so, this article won't spill beans). Reason? Money. There is a perception that moviegoers won't be convinced by a man known to be gay portraying a straight romantic or action lead. Actors aren't willing to risk tens of millions and studios won't risk hundreds of millions per film to verify that isn't true.