Quote
May 22, 2012
"A new study suggests that Congress’s level of discourse has dropped roughly one grade level since 1995, a finding that has prompted many to draw obvious parallels between what’s perceived to be the legislature’s increasingly partisan polarization and a playground fight.
But don’t expect to hear House Speaker John Boehner huff “No you shut up” to House Democrats anytime soon: the average grade level of congressional speech is the equivalent of a high school sophomore, down nine-tenths of a grade level since 2005 but still significantly above the 8th and 9th grade levels that Americans speak at on average."

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http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/05/22/dumbing_down_of_congress_sunlight_foundation_study_finds_that_congress_speaks_at_a_10th_grade_level_.html

They also found that extremists at either end of the political spectrum tended to get lower scores. Of course, “grade level” tests don’t tell the whole story: MLK’s “I have a dream” speech rates only a 9.4 grade level, but this doesn’t make the content any less incisive or compelling.

Tags: politics language

Link
December 15, 2011
4 notes
Romney Accidentally Crashes Married Gay Vet’s Date While Trolling for Anti-Gay Votes

“Imagine this. You’re a 60-something gay Vietnam veteran out to dinner with your husband in New Hampshire when Mitt Romney sits down at your table uninvited to ask for your vote in overturning your state’s gay marriage law. You know, the one that allowed you to marry your partner of a few decades or so in the first place…”

(Video at the link.)

Tags: romney politics marriage gay marriage gay

Text
September 17, 2011
8 notes

SSA ends forced outing of trans* employees

This is really good news:

According to a press release yesterday [September 15, 2011] from NCTE, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has confirmed that it has ended the practice of allowing gender to be matched in its Social Security Number Verification System (SSNVS). This will result in the immediate cessation of SSA sending notifications that alert employers when the gender marker on an employee’s W-2 does not match Social Security records.

Commonly called “no-match letters,” these have resulted in outings of transgender employees, often causing unfortunate consequences.

Changing your gender with the SSA still requires surgery, but at least people whose gender assignment at birth doesn’t match their current gender won’t be forced to disclose that at every job. If you are FTM and have a surgeon who is willing to write you a letter that your top surgery constitutes “sex change” surgery, you may be okay, but otherwise, very often what is meant by such surgery is genital transformation of some kind. And not everyone 1) wants that or 2) can afford it.

Tags: transgender news politics outing employment social security administration

Link
September 12, 2011
13 notes
For the Love of Transmisandry

The author of the piece I’m linking to admits to having been to dismissive of trans men’s actual experiences of violence, and I think the “who is the victim more” card is often overplayed, but it is true trans women have generally been dealt a different deck by society, they’ve said this in many spaces, and I think their voices need to be heard.

An excerpt from the critical, and at some points, unnecessarily sarcastic, article:

It doesn’t just bother me that the only trans woman on stage was an afterthought, disempowered and invited at the last minute because the organizers wanted to look inclusive. It doesn’t just bother me that at least one or two rad trans women probably showed up to the first planning meeting but were totally pushed out prior to the group having to find a token trans woman to appear on stage at the last minute. It doesn’t just bother me that the performers were white trans men in college, making no place in the organization for trans women of color sex workers, all while claiming trans women of color sex workers’ experiences as their own.  It doesn’t just bother me that Aydyn & Jaydyn & Caydyn & Gaydyn have actually deluded themselves and really believe their sensationalized fantasy that they will be murdered for trying to go to the bathroom, in spite of the fact that, as a trans man who probably looks a lot like Aydyn & friends, I can say pretty confidently that that’s not something I’ve ever worried about in real life. It doesn’t just bother me that these guys have these smug looks of martyrdom spread across their faces and that they actually believe themselves to be some sort of heroes or “voices” of the “trans community”.

What really bothers me—what really just makes my skin crawl—is that everyone in the audience fucking loves them for it. That everyone in the audience is apparently blind to the fact that transmisogyny is going on in their own, “safe,” queer community, and that bullshit like this is its very birthplace. Or, worse, maybe they’re not blind to it, but they don’t do anything to stop it, they don’t think it’s important and they still treat the purveyors of transmisogyny in the queer community like gods or something. It pretty much makes me want to vomit.

artoftransliness:

Written by Jack Radish over at PrettyQueer.com

Tags: transgender ftm mtf trans women politics misogyny

Link
September 04, 2011
The Persistance of the Color Line, Kennedy

The press viewed this courtship of black voters as largely beside the point for a “post-racial” campaign that had bigger fish to fry on the white side of the street. Kennedy, who teaches law at Harvard, is having none of that. He argues with considerable force that the candidate deliberately set out to blacken himself in the public mind — while taking care not to go too far — and would have lost the election had he not done so. He sees Obama’s courtship of black voters not as tertiary, but as the main event and as the perfect vantage from which to view the campaign and the presidency.

NY Times article on a collection of essays about Obama and race in American politics.

Tags: race politics obama randall kennedy