The most frustrating thing about Harris’s alleged gaffe on trans prisoners is that almost no one bothered to defend it on the merits. But the policy is fine: When the state provides healthcare it should also provide transition care!
The most frustrating thing about Harris’s alleged gaffe on trans prisoners is that almost no one bothered to defend it on the merits. But the policy is fine: When the state provides healthcare it should also provide transition care!
The problem is she also supported V-coding and putting trans women in men’s prisons
Like… this article forgets to mention that she was on the RECEIVING end of that lawsuit
Thank you for saying this! And it's still happening in CA
Right? Like, reaching a settlement with someone who’s suing your apparatus for an injustice but allowing that injustice to continue happening to others doesn’t make you a fuckin hero, icon OR ally
When the state has total control over your body, they have to take care of you. And sadly, in the USA, we generally don’t—not adequately.
It’s incredibly rare even now for anyone to unpack what it really meant and how, yeah, paying for prisoners to transition is just fucking health care.
This drove me nuts.
The alternative is horrendous. People limited by the state to get medical attention they need slowly being tortured to death.
As California AG, Kamala Harris incarcerated hundreds of non-violent “criminals” for marijuana violations. (Don’t @ me with the excuse “she was only following CA law!”) She also ran a weak and hapless presidential campaign. She is the last person I want to hear from today.
At the time she was attacked by Republicans for not imprisoning enough so your statement is a little hard to sell.
Only if you give a shit what Republicans think.
I think it matters a lot if we're going to distort what happened to hell and back..
Just another thing that if the Dems stood strong and proud on. They wouldn't have lost anything while helping move the Overton Window.
Literally every attempt to “moderate” on trans rights — from this policy to trans athletes — is a slippery slope into throwing all trans rights under the bus. These arguments are NOT happening in good faith.
This frustrated me to no end. It felt that almost everyone was buying the premise that the state paying for gender-affiming care for undocumented imprisoned people was some sort of extreme position, when actually, it is quite reasonable and relatively easy to justify as a good policy.
It's so transparently just, "we think trans healthcare is cosmetic surgery for freaks that we hate" but they won't SAY that so they just love to talk about The Implication instead.
I remember reading up on this, and ultimately, I think people do not give a shit about prisoners and would just as soon cut off their healthcare if it wouldn’t be deemed a massive human rights violation or something. But her logic here was sound.
And what bothers me about it to this day is that it's just considered the conventional wisdom that Harris's statement was some wacky far-left position that she should of course walk back. But it's a fine policy!
And being wishy washy on it is actually worse politics too! Retreating makes it look like something is actually wrong. Also, voters LIKE conviction. Saying "No, this is a fine policy. It's moral and consistent and here's why" is good, actually!
The results of taking the other position is never even a consideration: forcible detransition and the torture that does to people isn't ever part of the conversation. But that is the policy of people who oppose what Harris even tepidly supported.
Aye, once again, they use trans folks to throw EVERYONE under the fucking bus and expect that trans folks will bear the blame.
I am going to personally laugh when they gut the 8th Amendment and "sensible liberals" applaud it as a reasonable step forward. I only ask the right that they skip over the torture for us and start it when they jail those libs.
Dark.
Hey, we're not the ones completely oblivious to how the building of systemic oppression works and is eventually used, due to our complete contempt for any group without enough money to donate. I would have solidarity if I got literally any of it in return for the past 15 years.
I literally walked *behind* Cuomo at the pride parade the year that gay marriage was legalized. So the idea that we were the ones not to give it first is bs, too. The beginning of the Niemoller poem owes not one thing once abandoned to the people near the end.
I didn't mean that at all. Men take popular stances that they think will get them votes and then abandon the voters when they take power. Forever so.
Can't say I disagree. I do what I can as often as I can.
Anything less should be considered a violation of the 8th Amendment
Absolutely!! My MAGA BIL tried to "own" me with that during the superbowl ad. I just asked him to Google some sexual assault statistics of people incarcerated and he realized how fucked the situation actually is. Same with "Tampon Tim" stuff and teen suicide. "Pre-bunking" trans issues is harder tho
Meanwhile. www.foxnews.com/politics/tru...
Dems should explain more. That’s their biggest flaw.
It's remarkable these ghouls are still trying to relitigate the 2024 campaign & rehabilitate Harris. It is an effort to say that their policy choices and positions are fine, actually, and you need to get on board. Welp, no, actually MFer. We're not voting for these ghouls.
It was not that long ago that on a very popular Netflix show, denying transition care to a prisoner was shown as a self-evidently villainous abuse of power!
In our rightful demands for additional progress we did forget we still needed to protect the progress we’ve already made.
Also happens to be the law of the land, but that doesn’t seem to hold much sway these days.
The really annoying thing here is that as state AG, she actually fought *against* providing healthcare to trans people in prison, and she lost! And so she said one time on one questionnaire that she has to follow the law and now she’s Marsha P Johnson.
Retreating from values you have always claimed to hold, like human rights for all people (including trans people) is perceived as weakness by our opponents. A “lite” form of bigotry that helps bolster false framing will never be voted for by right wing zealots who can have the real thing.
100%. We need Dems who will say “yes prisoners should get healthcare because they’re humans, and also there should be far fewer of them.”
And the people loudest about not wanting to give prisoners transition care will stop giving prisoners every other type of healthcare too whenever they can get away with it.
People don’t actually *want* the state to provide medical care to prisoners, though. It’s depressing.
"I will uphold the law" was just the dumbest line she could have said. I wonder if that was all Carville would approve...
"I have no convictions of my own" is the translation, fyi. Everybody knows the law isn't blind.
They don't defend it because DNC leadership is ashamed of their own base. They see trans folk as a liability, not yet another source of human diversity.
There is no ”also”. Transition care IS healthcare. I’m sure plenty of people would say breast reconstruction after mastectomy shouldn’t be covered by insurance either, but the US is one of the few countries that does cover it, and I don’t see anyone coming for that! 1/2
Or if they are, it’s certainly a lot more quiet and less mainstream to politicians. 2/2