The Guardian: Joe Biden's gender discrimination order offers hope for young trans athletes - Discussion Thread

[China]

Missouri Nukes Its ‘Tell Us If You’ve Seen A Trans’ Reporting Form After It’s Swarmed With ‘Bee Movie’ Scripts

 

Who doesn’t love the wisdom of the crowds? Hey, it’s a great thing if you’re seeking comment from the oft-disrespected “stakeholders” known as the people who pay your salaries. Comment periods for proposed regulation ensures a healthy mix of intelligent commentary and unhinged partisanship. You know, like pretty much any congressional hearing.

 

On the other hand, opening up your thing for public comment via the internet tends to ensure those with an agenda will try to take control of the thing. Ask pretty much any corporate entity that saw millions of internet users and still decided the best way to take the pulse of the connected was to trot out a perfunctory CAPTCHA and crowdsurf their way into increased profitability.

 

Behold the wreckage: The PepsiCo crowdsourcing that suggested the next Mountain Dew product should align itself with one of dozens of porn fetishes (“Gushing Granny”) or things possibly even less tasteful (“MTN JEW,” “Methamphetagreen”). Maybe the brains in the Missouri capital thought the same internet that voted to send Taylor Swift to perform a concert at a school for the deaf and rapper Pitbull to a remote Alaskan Walmart to plug his latest album would take this complaint box for bigots seriously and not do turn its sanctimonious suggestion box into another toy for trolls.

 

I’m sure they’ve learned something from this. Unfortunately, the lesson learned won’t be “acceptance” or “don’t write laws specifically to make people you don’t like miserable.” What they will learn is that you just can’t leave a complaint box open on the internet, as Morgan Sung reports for TechCrunch:

Quote

A Missouri government tip site for submitting complaints and concerns about gender-affirming care is down after people flooded it with fanfiction, rambling anecdotes and the “Bee Movie” script.

 

The Missouri Attorney General’s office launched an online form for “Transgender Center Concerns” in late March, inviting those who’ve witnessed “troubling practices” at clinics that provide gender-affirming care to submit tips. The site didn’t ask users to name patients or healthcare providers, but encouraged users to complete the form “in as much detail as possible.”

 

But after days of TikTok and Twitter users spamming the site with gibberish, the tip line has been removed from the Missouri government site entirely. Instead of the online form, the link to the tip line now says that the page no longer exists.

 

Click on the link for the full story

[China]

Transgender Activists Flood Utah Tip Line With Hoax Reports To Block Bathroom Law Enforcement

 

Transgender activists have flooded a Utah tip line created to alert state officials to possible violations of a new bathroom law with thousands of hoax reports in an effort to shield trans residents and their allies from any legitimate complaints that could lead to an investigation.

 

The onslaught has led the state official tasked by law with managing the tip line, Utah Auditor John Dougall, to bemoan getting stuck with the cumbersome task of filtering through fake complaints while also facing backlash for enforcing a law he had no role in passing.

 

“No auditor goes into auditing so they can be the bathroom monitors,” Dougall said Tuesday. “I think there were much better ways for the Legislature to go about addressing their concerns, rather than this ham-handed approach.”

 

In the week since it launched, the online tip line already has received more than 10,000 submissions, none of which seem legitimate, he said. The form asks people to report public school employees who knowingly allow someone to use a facility designated for the opposite sex.

 

Utah residents and visitors are required by law to use bathrooms and changing rooms in government-owned buildings that correspond with their birth sex. As of last Wednesday, schools and agencies found not enforcing the new restrictions can be fined up to $10,000 per day for each violation.

 

Although their advocacy efforts failed to stop Republican lawmakers in many states from passing restrictions for trans people, the community has found success in interfering with the often ill-conceived enforcement plans attached to those laws.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[ixcuincle]

3 GOP candidates for WVA governor try to outdo each other on anti-LGBTQ issues https://www.cbsnews.com/news/3-gop-candidates-west-virginia-governor-anti-lgbtq/

 

Leading up to Tuesday's West Virginia primary, three of the Republican candidates for governor have been trying to outdo each other in proving their opposition to transgender rights. 

 

In TV ads running in West Virginia, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, Chris Miller and Moore Capito have been accusing each other of harboring transgender sympathies while touting their own efforts to restrict LGBTQ rights.

[Larry]

In a decent world, **** like that would make them unelectable in the general. 

 

In West Virginia?......