Last night was just the beginning. Here’s a list of the dozens of protests scheduled for TODAY, from Birmingham, Alabama to Seattle Washington.
This info in this list comes from GetGroundGame.com, and only includes protests taking place today; there are some scheduled for the days ahead that I have not listed.
The list at GetGroundGame will be updated throughout the day; my list here will not. So check there for the latest info and to see what protests have been added, as well as for protests scheduled in the coming days. If you have a protest to add to the list, contact @JessLivMo. on Twitter, not me.
If your city isn’t listed, see @JessLivMo‘s Twitter feed, which has info on it that hasn’t yet made it onto her big list.
CBC:
Thousands in Montreal. The metro was packed at my station, but that’s normal at rush hour. When I transfered to the blue line, the station was packed — very unusual, it’s usually empty even at rush hour. We tried to squeeze in, but some people got stuck waiting for the next train. Then the train basically emptied at the station for the vigil. One train holds over a thousand passengers. It took about 15 minutes to get out of the station. There were a lot of people.
Waiting for my friends, a man asked me what the hell was going on. I broke the news to him. He seemed almost uncomprehending. 30s before my friends arrived, the mayor of Montreal walked by.
There were speeches. I heard an occasional word, but the sound system couldn’t fill the square. Plenty of cheers. Some signs, but not as inventive as at other protests — people need time to come up with those.
As we were leaving (my friends were getting cold), we were slowly inching away along when the call came: “À qui la rue? À nous la rue!” — one of the standard chants in marches in Montreal (roughly: whose street? Our street!). I turned around to see the Wobblies had unfurled a banner and were leading a march.
So we switched from walking home to marching home, chanting slogans against racism and islamaphobia, behind a sign with the hammer and sickle.
First we took half the street, then the other half. When we spread out, the first block there were a few cars and a city bus. The police moved fast to redirect traffic so we’d have the whole street without cars. Cross traffic honked in support. And one person in anger, but mostly in support.
I learned two things in discussions during and after: (1) the deradicalization centre in Montreal has been doing interventions in Quebec City with right-wing extremists, and had warned the mayor there at a conference in October. He insisted there was no radicalization, but it was good to keep things in mind in case it spread (uh, douchebag, it’s spreading *from* Quebec City!)
And (2), every Friday, Vice puts the finishing touches on their weekly video that they publish every Wednesday. The one going out this week, that they finished last week after a couple weeks of work: right-wing radicalization in Quebec City.
In news which surprises approximately no-one, Alexandre Bissonnette, the mosque killer, is reported to be a big Trump supporter:
http://www.journaldequebec.com/2017/01/30/voici-ce-que-lon-sait-sur-le-suspect-de-la-tuerie-de-la-mosquee
So that’s something for Trudeau to talk about, next time he chats with Trump.
Yeah, as a gender nonconforming person (I just refer to myself as butch) it’s annoying seeing the constant debate on how I should view my own gender.
I like masculine clothing and I see the clothing I wear as masculine. It’s annoying when people are like “actually there’s no such thing as gender you aren’t masculine”.
you wouldn’t talk to a gender conforming cis man/woman like that.
Leda Atomica:
Ha! I knew this name would be confusing if I kept using it here. There was at least one time I had to explain on an anti-abortion site that Leda was not my daughter but my cat, who, at the time of writing, was dead, and who therefore didn’t particularly feel any angst over the possibility that her mother might have aborted her. I got the name because, when faced with the actual prospect of picking my name, all the clever options I didn’t write down vacate my mind. Leda got the name because she had a feather obsession. In retrospect, that seems slightly tacky. We also had Edmund, who got his name for his skill in climbing up my bare legs. We now have Ricky, who came with that name and is known as Richard J. Kitty when he’s being a pain (it pisses me off that he shares a middle initial with the current president, especially since he is also orange); Fuzzy, who should be obvious; Dawn, who was named by my son and is otherwise known as Stretchy McStretchypants, Doofus McCatface, Dawn of the Dinosaurs and The Thing From Planet Huh? All pre-owned kitties, all fabulous. I work at a vet clinic to subsidize my cat habit.
@kupo thank you for explaining the block quotes! I do see the ‘quote’ button now and I feel a little silly for not noticing it before 😛
@GrumpyOld SocialJusticeMangina – I think you may be operating under some misconceptions. I didn’t really want to get into this, but to start with, the ‘man in a woman’s body/vice versa’ language was forced on trans people by cis gatekeepers (therapists, doctors, etc. who we need to impress to access transitional care); there is an older generation of trans people who do use this language to describe themselves, but it’s because they’ve been told to do so by people who have power over how they present themselves.
And trans people, on the whole, do not decide they are trans based on gender stereotypes. I didn’t realize I was a trans man because I played with trucks instead of dolls as a kid. If anything, I’m more stereotypically feminine than masculine, actually; I bake, sew, and pursue creative projects. I’m not a very aggressive person and I don’t like sports at all. Gender stereotypes and gendered traits have little to nothing to do with being trans, and a trans guy is just as likely to be into ‘girly’ things as a cis guy is; likewise, there are many butch trans women out there, and trans women who pursue typical ‘masculine’ interests or careers.
I don’t characteristically go into detail these days about my own path to transition, and everyone’s is different, but for myself, my decision to transition came from a feeling that I can describe like this: I felt as if I was living a lie as long as I kept presenting myself as my assigned gender. I felt like I was hiding a part of myself from the world, and the idea of hiding that way for my whole life, growing into an old woman and eventually dying and being buried under a woman’s name, was the worst feeling I could imagine. When I was introduced to other trans people and realized that this was a thing I could be and could do, it was a huge relief – like someone had given me permission to live my life.
None of my life plans changed. It wasn’t like I was depressed at the thought of being confined to a woman’s role. I planned to live my life childless and marriage-free then and I continue to plan to live that way now. I am a person of low aspirations and am very happy working in the loan servicing department of a local bank, while pursuing my writing on the side. None of my hobbies changed or became more ‘permissible’ or ‘normal’ when I came out as a man. I’m just infinitely happier because I feel like I am living as myself, rather than living behind a mask.
Also @everyone else, thank you for your responses, I appreciate them. I do tend to feel like I’m overbearing and long-winded at times, especially here where a lot of people tend to keep their comments short, so it means a lot to me that anyone bothered to read both (!! And here I go double-posting again, of course) of my comments all the way through.
I dont know I like what you say about how older trans people refer to themselves. they have every right to use whatever language they want without younger people accusing them of being some sort of sell out to cis people.
@Victoria honestly you’re right, and I regretted how I worded that after I posted my comment, but I hesitated to triple-post. I didn’t mean that bit the way it came out, and I apologize. I’m from the first generation that fought back against being forced into that particular terminology and I still have some of that fight in me, but that’s not an excuse to disrespect how anybody in the community identifies.
Heck. That wasn’t even a good apology. I’m sorry, folks, clearly it’s time for me to get off the internet and go take a nap before I start eating my other foot too.
So fyi, I’m (currently?) cis and so obviously my voice on trans issues is not to be taken as an authority. I feel this is a needed disclaimer because a. A lot of cis people here seem to think they can use their annoyance with gender stereotypes to invalidate trans people and b. I know I sometimes sound like a pretentious explaining arsehole when trying to contribute to discussions and want to make it very clear if I do that here, it’s unintentional, please call me out.
Having said that: can we all, uh, shush and listen to Preuxfox for a moment? Not even because they’re trans, although yes can we please start prioritising trans voices on their actual lives, but because they are speaking a lot of sense and an awful lot of this discussion looks like cis people seeing an opportunity to voice their discomfort with something they don’t understand and jumping at that chance without thinking about how that’s kind of a shitty thing to do; especially since we know there are trans readers on this blog (and even as a cis person obviously presenting as the gender I was assigned at birth, I know trans people are having to defend just existing basically every minute of every day, and it’s a dick thing to do to put our fellow commenters here on the defensive.)
@GrumpyOld SocialJusticeMangina
I get the feeling you are trying very hard to be inclusive and talk something through so you can understand it, but what you are doing is actually ignorant and harmful. I know that’s hard to hear and maybe it seems like a mean thing of me to say, but please at least think about it. I think you and a lot of the people here who seem so confused on how to reconcile trans issues with their own hatred of enforced gender roles (and I know this is a hard thing to do!) need to do some reading before continuing this discussion. The first thing I read that really helped me was called “not your moms trans 101”, I believe it’s old now but maybe you can find the blog. Or, really, just read stuff by trans people, who have done this hard work for you (because they have no choice) and have published many careful breakdowns accessible on Google. Your request that this be seen as an opportunity for trans people to educate you may have been meant well, but it was demanding that people who are asked to do this all the fucking time put aside their time, effort and emotional resources to educate you, when you could just Google this stuff. It’s harmful, and suggests (inadvertently I hope!) that their time is less important than yours.
I would like to suggest people read assigned male, a webcomic by a wonderful and patient trans girl.
I also recently learned of a… Theory? About womanhood, oppressed genders as a class, and trans people. To my knowledge it was put forward by a cis person trying to limit very harmful terfy rhetoric, but it did seem helpful to me. This was the idea that your identified gender, the gender you are, is what matches your “internal map” that directs your life. This internal map is based on the gendered stereotypes of the society we are raised in. Thus: you can have an understanding that men are expected to be violent. You can understand that you are a man. You can reject the notion of violence as part of your identity, but because this rejection is based on something you acknowledge to be part of a stereotypical “male” gender map, you are still acknowledging you are male, and non-violent, and that is against your societal norms. The fact you are male is not rooted in you being violent; but your rejection of this violence that you understand is expected of you is part of you acknowledging yourself as male. It’s tricky to explain but its about how we internalise the messages we receive about gender roles, even if we don’t agree with them; taking male, female, neither or both messages as directed at us.
Teal deer: Let’s not be shitty about trans people, even if they confuse you. Here’s some suggestions for how to start thinking about this stuff without accidentally harming trans people.
Not talking about shootings, Trump here because I can’t do that right now for mental health reasons. I support David in whatever direction he takes his blog. I agree this is both burn-out territory and of utmost importance.