Today's Battle

In reply to L.H.Crum at the New Mexico Daily Lobo
He states

One could make the argument that I am part of a minority because I enjoy rugby. However, I don't need to promote a "rugby day of remembrance"....

My reply:

L.H.Crum completely misunderstands the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Perhaps the name should have clued him in. It is not a Day of Celebration, nor a Day of Pride. It is not a day for espousing any particular cause. It is not even a day for demanding basic Human Rights.

It is the Day where we remember our dead.

It is the one day of the year, the only day of the year, where we gather in all solemnity to remember those of us who have been tortured and slain, butchered, crucified, burnt, or gunned down, not because of anything we've done, nor of our beliefs, but because of who we are.

It is the one day where we read out their names, and ages, some as young as ten this year, in voices that shake with emotion and shared grief.

Those who would deny us this day want us to to die in silence. They do not feel comfortable being made aware of the fact that every month two transgendered Americans are butchered without mercy. They wish that if we are to be butchered, that we just die quietly and not stain the carpets with our blood.

We do not ask others to remember our dead, for they are ours, not theirs. We do not even make this a day for taking action to stop the carnage. But although there are many who would deny us the right to live, to exist, we will not die quietly, nor without reminding others that we are dying, every few weeks another of our number slain by bigotry and hatred. Even if we are denied the right to exist, we demand the right to have our deaths noted and not forgotten by our own. Even if the rest of the world does not, We remember Our dead.

What others do about that remembrance is up to their own consciences.

The Next Big Thing

Over at TechLifePost, a prognostic article I wrote about the likely near-future of Space Development.

I wrote it before the questionnaire I mentioned in the previous post was made public, but the writing has been on the wall for some time now. Now things could change of course, my reading of tea-leaves is only 70% or so accurate at best, but that's really the way I think things will go. Had the Ares-I project not been in severe technical trouble, had off-the-shelf components actually been adequate, things may have been different. But they're not.

The New Race for the Moon?

From Moon Daily:

India will be able to send a manned mission to moon by the year 2020 if everything goes as planned, Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G Madhavan Nair has said.

That's one heck of a big IF.

"If everything goes as per the plan we will be ready to send a man to moon by 2020", he added. "On one side we have the capacity and technology, on the other side we need to provide training to a human being to survive the condition on moon and the zero gravitation," he added.

That's a bit more like it. I'm not at all sure they have the capacity though - no heavy lift boosters (Ariane V or bigger) that would be needed for a Von Braun "assemble stack in NEO" plan, and certainly nothing to rival the "all in one go" approach of the Saturn V. To be talking about lunar missions when there's not even been a manned orbital one yet seems a little... ambitious?

"This demands for more amount of training on the ground, and we would be spending one third of the budget on training and development of technology," he further said.

1/3 is a bit low, considering the lack of experience so far. But it's at least in the right ballpark. We'll see.

"US and China are two main contenders who want to send man on moon by 2020. Though they have not yet announced anything but they have the capacity and adequate funds to send man to moon by 2020," he added.

I'm not sure he's correct there either: China is looking more towards 2025, and the US Manned Space Program is liable to come to a grinding halt in the near future. From the Houston Chronicle :

The Texas congressional delegation is launching a campaign to combat potentially deep budget cuts for NASA as President-elect Barack Obama focuses on rescuing the nation's economy.

The drive comes amid expectations that billions of dollars will be shifted from various federal agencies into new programs to stimulate the economy and stabilize the financial system.

With tough trade-offs ahead, NASA's supporters are bracing for a hard look by the new administration and Democratic-controlled Congress at the space agency's $20.2 billion budget for the current year, which includes $5.8 billion for the shuttle and $3 billion to develop the Orion moonship.

The open-ended rescue is expected to leave Obama little leeway to fulfill an expensive campaign promise he made in Florida to close a five-year gap between the shuttle's retirement and the moonship's inaugural as a way to keep 6,400 high-paying jobs at the state's Kennedy Space Center.

Now, said Scott Pace, the director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, "money for space is going to be extremely tight."

"That leaves you a difficult choice," Pace added. "Change the schedule or change the program."

$3 billion - or even $8.8 billion - isn't much compared to the cost of the economic bailouts, or Obama's new educational, health and welfare programme. But every little bit helps - "a billion here, a billion there, and soon you're talking about real money" as was so notoriously said in the US Congress.

The real problem though is not the technology - for US space scientists are the best in the world. It's not even the money, for there's plenty if it was allocated in a half reasonable fashion. No, the problem is that the US manned space effort is not primarily aimed at putting Americans into space: it's aimed at distributing financial pork from the political pork-barrel. The problem is illustrated by the article's continuation:

The state's congressional delegation of 20 Republicans and 12 Democrats is counting on building alliances with other House members, making good on promises of bipartisan cooperation with the White House and lobbying efforts by NASA contractors to help combat the looming challenges.

"The trick will be to show what manned space flight can do for the nation, rather than what the nation can do for manned space flight," said Pace, a former NASA associate administrator.

Appealing to national concerns also can pay dividends, said Susan McManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida who has watched federal support for NASA ebb and flow. " 'Economy,' 'competition,' 'national security' — those are buzz words that win allies," she said.

It's not real - they're Buzz Words, mere ploys to get a slice of the pie.

"As Congress looks at ways to stimulate the economy, it cannot ignore the fact that the JSC is a mainstay of the Houston community that directly and indirectly impacts tens of thousands of jobs," Cornyn said in a recent speech.

NASA's spending accounts for more than 39,000 Houston jobs in areas such as retail, health care and construction, according to studies by the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Some Texans are looking to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a veteran of a 1986 shuttle flight who chairs a NASA oversight panel.

The thinking? Obama might support spending for the manned space program because it would benefit Florida's Kennedy Space Center — an economic jewel in the electorally important state. That, in turn, would spill over to benefit Houston's JSC.
...
"We're used to working together as Team Texas," said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

Not Team America. That's the problem. Everyone wants their share of the pie, jobs in their electorate. Whether the program succeeds or collapses under he weight of inefficient dilution of resources is immaterial. Whether Americans ever go into space again after 2010 matters least of all.

From Fox News:

WASHINGTON — U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking U.S. space agency officials to quantify how much money could be saved by canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle next year.
...
The questionnaire, "NASA Presidential Transition Team Requests for Information," asks agency officials to provide the latest information on Ares 1, Orion and the planned Ares 5 heavy-lift cargo launcher, and to calculate the near-term close-out costs and longer-term savings associated with canceling those programs. The questionnaire also contemplates a scenario where Ares 1 would be canceled but development of the Ares 5 would continue.
...
Logsdon also said he did not see any significance to the omission of cancellation questions about COTS, space shuttle, space station or other programs.

Executives at Alliant Techsystems (ATK), the Edina, Minn.-based prime contractor for the Ares 1 main stage, told Space News Nov. 25 they were not alarmed by the questions the transition team is asking about Ares and the Constellation program, which encompasses not only the shuttle replacement but also hardware NASA would need to land astronauts on the Moon.

"They are doing due diligence," said Charlie Precourt, ATK's vice president of NASA space launch systems. "If you are the incoming steward of all federal agencies you are going to ask a spectrum of questions like this."

Of course you are.

But if I were you... I'd start circulating your resume, if you know what I mean?

Chainsaw Bayonet???

Now where have I seen something like that before.... oh yes.

For Children of All Ages

AdventureQuest Worlds (AQW or AQWorlds) is a fully Flash-animated RPG (role playing game) that your child can play that we believe is quite a bit different from most other large scale online games. Players battle against hordes of monsters and enemies so that they can grow stronger and obtain ancient weapons of unimaginable power. They follow long quest chains to unlock key story elements. Players need nothing more than their web browser and the latest version of the Flash plugin to play.

Always changing!
We are always creating and adding new content to the game and updating the main game engine to improve the experience for everyone. New quests, areas, items or events show up every week in AQWorlds!

Multi-player Functionality
We do have a bad word filter in place to prevent players from saying bad things. We also have 'canned chat' servers that only allow for players to communicate with our pre-written messages . To be on the 'chat safe' servers, the players need to play on the Moglin servers, such as Twilly or Zorbak.

AQWorlds is like our other games in the sense that we do want players to work together cooperatively to achieve story-oriented goals. However, AQWorlds is the first game that we have allowed chat functionality between players. We do not allow foul language, nudity, extreme realistic violence or drug/alcohol use in our games.

AQWorlds was created to appeal to all ages. It is easy to learn to play. If your child is under the age of 13, you (as the parent or legal guardian) must be the one to set up the account for her or him to play.
...
AdventureQuest Worlds (AQWorlds) is full of interesting stories to read, adventures to experience, and goal driven quests to complete. New events, quests, monsters, NPCs (Non-Player Characters) and items are continually being added to the game. The quests and events help to test the player's mental abilities. AQWorlds is also a great place for kids to practice and improve their reading skills, because all of the NPCs talk to you, and every quest you go on involves reading text to make decisions about how the player continues the quest. The written material in AQWorlds contains no foul language and is suitable for all ages, and is written to be generally understood by players of all ages.

AQWorlds provides an environment that may improve personal skills, including analytical thinking, multitasking and problem-solving. It also includes elements that require players to calculate percentages and use other mathematical skills to better play the game.

That's their story and they're sticking to it.

It also in my experience with my son is actually true. Recommended.

Governance in the Wilderness

At a time when a colleague of mine is still waiting to hear whether a friend of his has survived the Bombay Massacre (and the signs don't look good I'm afraid), it is timely to consider why it happened.

From the New York Post :

No one should feel safe without submitting to Islam, and those who refuse to submit must pay a high price. The Islam ist movement must aim to turn the world into a series of "wildernesses" where only those under jihadi rule enjoy security.

These are some of the ideas developed by al Qaeda's chief theoretician, Sheik Abu-Bakar Naji, in his new book "Governance in the Wilderness" (Edarat al-Wahsh).
...
Since 9/11, Islamist terror movements have been debating grand strategy. Osama bin Laden had theorized that the "infidel," led by the United States, would crumble after a series of spectacular attacks, just as the Meccan "infidel" government did when the Prophet Muhammad launched deadly raids against its trade routes. Yet the 9/11 attacks didn't lead to an "infidel" retreat. On the contrary, the "Great Satan" hit back hard.
...
The jihadis are to begin by giving areas where Muslims live a distinctly Islamic appearance, by imposing special styles of dress for women and beards for men. Then they start imposing the shariah. In the final phase, they create a parallel system of taxation and law enforcement, effectively taking the areas out of government control.

The "wilderness" will provide the cover for bases for jihad operations. Jihad would be everywhere, rather than in just one or two countries that the "infidel" could hit with superior firepower.

In a notable departure from past al Qaeda strategy, Naji recommends "countless small operations" that render daily life unbearable, rather than a few spectacular attacks such as 9/11: The "infidel," leaving his home every morning, should be unsure whether he'll return in the evening.

Naji recommends kidnappings, the holding of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, exhibition killings to terrorize the enemy, suicide bombings and countless gestures that make normal life impossible for the "infidel" and Muslim collaborators.

Once parallel societies are established throughout the world, they would exert pressure on non-Muslims to submit. Naji believes that, subjected to constant intimidation and fear of death, most non-Muslims (especially in the West) would submit: "The West has no stomach for a long fight."
...
Naji asks jihadis to target oilfields, sea and airports, tourist facilities and especially banking and financial services. He envisages "a very long war," at the end of which the whole world is brought under the banner of Islam.
...
Naji's message is stark: Western civilization is doomed. Its last bastion, America, lacks the will for a long war. The "infidel" loves life and treats it as an endless feast. Jihadis have to ruin that feast and persuade the "infidel" to abandon this world in exchange for greater rewards in the next.

Ok, so how do we counter this kind of thing? How have we countered it historically?

You see it's nothing new. During the Cold War, such tactics were used to a greater or lesser extent by groups as disparate as the "Rot Armee Fraktion" in Germany, the "Brigatte Rosse" in Italy, the "Sonoro Luminoso" in Peru, the Nihon Sekigun in Japan, and even the various IRA's, "provisional", "real", "Arm Saoirse Náisiúnta na hÉireann" and so on.

It's not much of a stretch to include the Barbary Corsairs, and even the Vikings in one sense: although these were commercial ventures for loot rather than in support of an ideology, terror for plunder, no terror for its own sake, defence against such attacks was equally difficult.

The problem with this philosophy of warfare is that it doesn't work - it contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. As long as the attacks are relative pinpricks, a bloody nuisance (emphasis on the "bloody"), they do not threaten the survival of the state. They threaten civil liberties, requiring greater and greater restrictions on public life to keep them to a manageable level, but as long as the casualty list is an order of magnitude less than the annual road-toll, the brutal facts are that they can and will be largely ignored.

Should they escalate to an unacceptable level though, the reaction is not going to be to capitulate. First will come a greater and greater imposition on the public, more and more restrictions, until finally, when the choice is to become Medievally Islamic or just plain Medieval, the basic barbarianism that was covered by the relatively thin veneer of Western Civilisation will emerge.

All one has to do is study the Thirty Years War to see just what ruthlessness "westerners" are capable of. It is within living memory that Admiral Halsey spoke the words

Before we're through with 'em, the Japanese language will only be spoken in hell.

And what is more, and what is often forgotten in these more politically correct and civilised times, he meant them, and a lot of Americans agreed with him.

There is a fundamental (not to say Fundamentalist) misunderstanding of the Western Psyche at work here. The Nazis made the same mistake, labelling the "Decadent West" as being too soft to survive the ruthless dog-eat-dog of Fanatical National Socialism. But it wasn't long before the "Decadent West" had been reduced to incinerating schoolgirls in the firestorms of Rostock, Dresden, the great metropolis of Hamburg, and numerous smaller pyres of the innocent and the guilty, mixed together because it was impossible with the weapons of the time to sort them out.

You see, it's not because "we" are saints, incapable of great evil, that we do our damnedest to reduce civilian casualties to a minimum. It's not because we're hedonists either, interested only in the comforts of civilisation. It's because we know that we're capable of enormities beyond their imagination. We hold ourselves in check, continue to take our meds, lest the Berserker Crusader be unleashed.

We rode out the Cold War, which lasted at least 40 years, and could even be said to have lasted since the Paris Commune. Civilian populations in London, in Leningrad, and in Lubeck too endured far worse than mere pinpricks, and their resistance grew stronger with adversity, not weaker.

So what do we do? We endure. Because the alternative is to cry "Havoc!" and let loose the dogs of war. And in the meantime, covert and shadowy units arrange "accidents", and we encourage through appeals to man's baser instincts the treachery that is often such "urban guerillas" downfall. Look carefully on page 23 of the paper, and you'll see the traces of that continuing struggle in pithy one-liners.

How long for? Well, maybe if the Sheikh had read of this little contretemps he might have come to a different conclusion about the ability of Western Civilisation to endure lengthy periods of hostilities. Should it go much longer though, I'm afraid that the evils of "ethnic cleansing" may be deemed "acceptable". And the majority of Muslims who just want to be left in peace will find themselves in a parlous situation, with fanatics on all sides. What is more, as technology advances over the next century, it could be that becoming a Jihadi will result in more-or-less instant termination, be it by airborne laser, or miniature assassin-robots, no bigger than moths. Their target discrimination capabilities won't be perfect, and may not even be very good, but that may not matter too much by then.

Or if things get too extreme... It was Tacitus nearly 2000 years ago who said

ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

Which for the Latin-challenged, is "where they make a desert, they call it peace.".

A Personal Thanksgiving

I'm Australian, so we don't have the peculiarly USAian custom of eating ethnic foods of various varieties - native birds and native berries, not forgetting chimerae like the Turducken.

By I have my own personal Thanksgiving. It was entirely out of pure, blind luck that I kept my mouth shut when young. I didn't know how transsexuals were treated - or rather, maltreated and mistreated - in the 60's and 70's. Had I known, I would have been terrified. And the mistreatment continues to a lesser extent.

From The Gender Gulag at GIDreform.

In 1995, Dr. Deidre McCloskey, a renowned professor of economics at the University of Illinois, Chicago, was taken from her home by sheriff’s deputies with “a warrant for arrest for mental examination.” Dr. McCloskey was a transsexual woman who had come out of the closet to her family prior to social transition, Deidre’s sister, a psychologist, held intolerant views of gender diversity and, like Mrs. Phelps’ nineteenth-century husband, was easily able to procure a civil commitment to a psychiatric ward.

Dr. McCloskey was incarcerated not once but twice at her sister’s insistence.
...
Deidre was interrogated by psychiatrists who displayed utter ignorance about gender dysphoria and the transition process. She was labeled as “manic,” resulting from “latent homosexuality,” decades after the American Psychiatric Association had removed same-sex orientation from the classification of mental illnesses. One psychiatrist demanded, “Are you a homosexual?” “Do you wish to become one?” When Deidre responded “no,” that she was attracted to women, the doctor was incredulous. Reflecting old stereotypes confusing sexual orientation with gender identity, he responded, “Well, then, why are you doing this?”

To regain her freedom, Dr. McCloskey was forced to pay $8000 in legal fees and, astonishingly, was billed $3000 by the hospitals that falsely imprisoned her.

That was 1995. But before then, it was much, much worse. When I was a girl.

April’s “treatments” included drugging her with ether while doctors exacted, “Why do you want to be a woman?” Later, the interrogations were punctuated with sodium pentathol injections. Ashley was given massive doses of male hormones. Finally, she was placed in a public ward and administered electroconvulsive therapy.
...
Phyllis Burke, author of Gender Shock: Exploding the Myths of Male and Female, [4] told the heartbreaking story of Jamie, a transsexual woman who survived fifteen years of hospitalization from age six. “Jamie did not do boy things, and would not lie about it,” Burke explains. Admitted in the late 1950s, Jamie was drugged and given numerous electroconvulsive shock treatments over the span of her imprisonment:

“The treatments never became less painful, and there was nothing more painful than the shock, not even the rapes by the male patients, not even Mother and Father never returning.”

At twenty years old, following an extremely painful ECT treatment, Jamie escaped the institution and made her way to San Francisco and transition to an affirmed life. Jamie asked Ms. Burke to find as many children like her as she could and write about their stories,

“No one is talking about them, … but there are still kids in the hospitals.”

I could so easily have been one of them...

Harsh punishment of gender variant youth occurs in outpatient as well as residential settings. Dr. Arianna Davis today is an advocate for trans and intersex communities and GID reform. Though born with an intersex condition and expressing a strong female identity at a very early age, she was assigned male and later diagnosed as mentally ill for not comporting to that assignment. Arianna was subjected to a gender-reparative therapy regimen at UCLA in the 1980s:

“I was subjected to forced testosterone injections and used as a study subject against my wishes. These things happened (under the physical beatings and punishment -recomended by a therapist of a reparative mindset- the urging of my father and the all too eager compliance of UCLA doctors and researchers).”

Dr. Davis’ story raises the point, a painful memory to so many of us, of how physical violence from parents of gender variant children is encouraged by intolerance from the mental health professions – what has been called, “the sissy-whupping method.”

It wasn't just the children who were the victims here. Parents who dearly loved their children and were terribly distressed by their unusual, apparently abnormal, behaviour were acting out of ignorance, and the best of intent. They consulted the best professionals, the experts in their fields, and were commanded in no uncertain terms to torture their children "for their own good". To physically and mentally abuse them, despite their personal heartbreak, if they were to be responsible parents. How many of these parents have suffered the tortures of hellish guilt as the result? How many children have been estranged, have grown up to hate rather than love them? How many have suicided? And how many parents became brutalised and thuggish to their other children too?

Sadly, the APA never discouraged analogous gender-reparative therapies attempting to change gender identity or suppress gender expression. Indeed, the dictum of “First, do no harm,” does not seem to apply to the treatment of gender variant people within American psychiatry. Nor do the bounds of human compassion and decency, when it comes to enforcing conformity to assigned birth sex. For example, Dr. Ron Langevin of the University of Toronto Clarke Institute of Psychiatry (today known as the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) promoted inhumane aversion treatment of cross-dressing individuals assigned male at birth in his 1983 book, Sexual Strands: Understanding and Treating Sexual Anomalies in Men.
Reminiscent of a scene from Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, Langevin described chemical aversion therapy to “cure” cross-dressing,

“In chemical aversion therapy, the patient is first administered nausea inducing drugs. When he indicates that he feels sick, his favorite female clothes used for crossdressing are presented. He should touch them and look at them as best he can. Then he is overwhelmed by the need to vomit. The clothes are withdrawn and the procedure repeated several hours later.”

Next, he noted the advantages of “electrical aversion” in offering greater “control” over timing. He described the treatment of a patient.

“The conditioning stimuli were pictures of women wearing panties which were followed by the unconditioned stimulus, electric shock. The shock level was set so the patient found it so uncomfortable, he wanted it stopped. In addition to seeing pictures, he was instructed to handle panties and to imagine himself wearing them. After 41 sessions, he said he was no longer troubled by the “fetish” but a month later, it spontaneously recovered.”

You see... it didn't work. They knew it didn't work. So they upped the currents, almost to the point of charring the flesh. This wasn't "ECT", electro-convulsive therapy under anaesthetic, the idea was to intentionally inflict pain. To Torture into compliance. Not in one session, or two, or three, but in dozens of torture sessions, 41 in the case mentioned. And it still didn't work.

What they would have done about someone like me, who wasn't particularly interested in female attire, I don't know. Tortured me until I fit a recognised diagnostic pattern which they could then attempt to "cure"? Stranger things happened. No, I think they would have tried something like this, something I know I would have been vulnerable to. I had a mild taste of it, you see, with the first "expert" I consulted, back in July 2005.

Finally, Dr. Langevin introduced a newer form of “shame aversion therapy” used on a “transvestite:”

“the patient was required to crossdress before a disinterested group of men and women who watched him without reaction or comment. … In this case, shame replaces electric shock … the patient was evidently experiencing shame. He was in tears as he crossdressed and had a look of anguish on his face. He attempted suicide the following day according to the investigator.”

I had the only 15 seconds of suicidal ideation I've ever had in my life after a "mental health professional" harangued me at high volume the day after I went "fulltime". Two days after I was threatened with rape because I no longer "passed" as male in my normal attire.

I was told by this "expert" how much my behaviour was damaging my child, and commanded to cease taking hormones immediately. Except of course, I wasn't taking any... and if my continued existence was damaging my son, well, you can see where my thought processes were going. Had my hormone levels been remotely normal, I would have recognised his misjudgment immediately, and ignored his views. As it was, it took a while. Had I been less than emotionally healthy, yes, it could have been a fatal error on his part. As it was, within 24 hours I'd recovered.

I don't blame (well, not overmuch) some medical professionals for being ignorant of the issues. The field is fast evolving, we are a minority, and few will have seen more than one or two of us amongst the delusional, the attention-seekers, and the just plain selfish. But I do blame any medic in any area where they consider it quite usual to kill a proportion of their patients. And that is what they were doing, driving them to suicide with "cruel and unusual punishment" for committing the crime of not fitting their theories.

It is time for the APA and the mental health professions to extend an apology to all who have been imprisoned or traumatized in the course of these treatments.

I'm not sure it is. I do feel though, and feel strongly, that an in-depth and very public investigation of past treatment should be conducted. Not so much a "Nuremberg" looking to punish the guilty, but an inquisitorial fact-finding inquiry into what has been done in the past, and what all too often continues to be done to children, right here and now.

The apology can come later. First comes the acknowledgement of the crimes, and most importantly, ceasing to commit them.

And I am giving the most heartfelt thanks that I concealed everything. I lucked out.

Today's Battle

From CafePharma - the website for pharmaceutical sales professionals. All posts have been moderated, and passed as acceptable.

And that is what makes the following posts all the worse.

Hello my fellow Novartians. Aren't you excited about the November 20th Holiday of and for Transgender Day of Remembrance. Are you kidding me? Have we as a company and a nation lost our f*cking minds to allow this sh*t. So tell me, what am I to remember? I am confused. But wait, that's what this day is all about anyway, confusion! Remebrance? I'm certain guys like Patton, Omar Bradley, Schwarzkopf, and for you unread mullafukas, Lt. General Chesty Puller, I'm certain they would make certain these homosexual deviants would be made to feel, well, nice, in a pair of lace panties somewhere along the way. When are we as RED BLOODED AMERICANS going to stand up and say "enough of the politically correct horse shit" and tell these queers to go straight to hell. And do not tell me I shouldn't say these things.....I have the right and it is protected by the first amendment and the notion of FREE SPEECH. Yeah , you have the right to take your cobb and send it home the way you choose......Transgender? You gotta be sh*ttin' me......I think Thursday, every bad ass dude in the company should go straight bitch when we make our calls.....the works, dress, panties, wigs, heels, thong and schlong.........damn. Continue to make your one or two calls a day for these fruitcakes and enjoy the check.....I am too damn country to understand this one. Anyone else feel the same?

It's not a "Holiday" of course, no time off work or anything. But mere facts don't mean much to such people when they express their opinions.

When are we celebrating Beastiality day or Pediphile day? Afterall, my sexual orentations shouldn't be descriminated against!

Perhaps your poor spelling should be though, especially in someone selling pharmaceutical products, where a mis-spelt order could conceivably kill someone.

Hello! Uneducated bigot here.
I'm just curious as to why a particular group of people would get their own day of the year to celebrate the fact that they put other guy's dicks in their mouths and asses? Doesn't really seem to me to be something to celebrate, but rather something to make others nauseous. It's freakin' disgusting. I hope you guys enjoy the loads that are shooting on your face on transgender day. Just make sure to wash all of it out of your hair.

I get the feeling that some of these sales representatives aren't just ignorant (and proud of it), but are obsessed with sex. Can you say "projection"?

How about some cheese with your whine. It still makes no sense why such a day is needed. People who live alternate lifestyles want equality, then beg for a special day. You cant have it both ways.

Just to remind everyone - the Transgender Day of Remembrance is not a "celebration". It is not about sexuality, homo- or otherwise. It is the one day of the year where we commemorate our dead - because no-one else does. We don't "beg" for a special day, nor do we ask any others to take note of what we do. It is a very private affair for us, one where outsiders may join if they wish, but we neither encourage nor discourage their taking part. It is our day, the only one we have. A solemn day of Remembrance. But it seems that killing us is not enough - we must be blamed for bleeding on the carpet and spoiling it.

THE MESSAGE IS CLEAR!!!!! ALL A YU TRANNY MUTHAFUSSS NEED TO DIE ANYWAY!
IF I SEE ANY OF U TRN FAGGOTS IN MY NEIGBORHOOD I'M GONNA USE MY HUNTING RIFLE ON ALL OF YU. I NEED THE PRACTICE
WHY DONT YOU MOVE TO SAN FRAN FLAKSCO OR ELSEWHERE LIKE BRAZIL AND PORK GUYS IN THE BUTT THERE ALL YOU WANT!
THE POLICE'LL LET ME GO ANYWAY BECAUSE WE'LL BE DOING THE WORLD A FAVOR

He's right in that regard, the last sentence. In many parts of the world, the police are far more likely to actively take part in the massacre, rather than turn a blind eye. And in many others, not to investigate too throughly, for when a Transgender person is butchered, they mark it NHI - "No Human Involved".

Many would-be slayers know this. They take advantage of it, knowing that even if they get caught, odds are still pretty good that the local law enforcement people will be "sympathetic", and if not, jurors will be. And that is why Federal "hate crimes" laws are needed, to allow the financing of investigations where the local constabulary may be less than conscientious in following up, or even complicit. To at least track the extent of the problem, something not done in the USA today.

I must admit though that the most disquieting thing is that the idiotic malicious obscenity expressed in the post is deemed acceptable conduct for "pharmaceutical sales professionals". It makes you wonder exactly what stuff they're peddling, and whether it's genuine or fake. Because from their posts, they'd be just as happy selling life-saving drugs, snake-oil, or mis-labelled toxic sludge to make a buck.

UPDATE: The thread has now been deleted - I guess they realised that expressing their opinions reflected poorly on their employers.