Prepare thineselves for the flood…

If the earlier days of the week were a slow news day, the latter half of yesterday brought with it dozens of stories that were all important, and that I wanted to showcase here. But it got to the point where I was holding polls with myself to try and decide which item needed air time more, and I couldn't choose because the scope of several of the stories is so huge, it isn't possible to say that any one story is more important.

I realized that the best thing to do would be to present a shorter post for some of these stories and let the other blogs handle the job of filling in the big blanks I'll leave behind. I'm pointing out the issues, and from there it's up to you how much more information you need on these stories.

But before I get to that, I want to talk about causes and allies, because these are two vastly different things. I'm bringing this up because you may notice a story is missing from the list of recent blog posts, that being the case of Komen for the Cure's removal of funding from Planned Parenthood. People who follow me on Twitter know that I was retweeting the story itself, but they may have also noticed how I didn't retweet links for donating to Planned Parenthood.

Why? Because Planned Parenthood has a long history of being anti-trans. As such, I could never consider them an ally. I can recognize that they do useful things for other women, and I can point out the hypocrisy of Komen claiming to be "pro-life" despite stripping funding for breast cancer exams, which has nothing to do with abortion at all. But I do not wish to support an organization known for turning my people away. Planned Parenthood is guilty of gender discrimination, and that is why I will not donate to them, nor ask people to send them funds.

If, after reading my tweets about Komen, you decide to send money to Planned Parenthood, then it will not be hard for you to find a way to donate without me offering a link. And for the record, I don't expect you to not donate just because I don't. But I will make my reasons for not donating known. You can choose for yourself what you do with this information.

I think what Planned Parenthood does with medical services for women is great, but they are also practicing discrimination against my allies, and I cannot play an apologist and say "they've done some good things too" when the organization's policies continue to cause harm to the trans community.

I can still make you aware of their cause, but I can't call them an ally. This is the moral tightrope I have to walk with many causes, because while I can recognize injustice within another group, I cannot claim that group as my allies when they have histories of being anti-trans, or anti-feminist. (And don't even get me started on how hard modern feminism is on trans women.) When I bring up causes, it's not the right time to mention "But these people are still anti-trans." So I don't. It's more important to me to get exposure for these problems, even if they don't have anything to do with me or my allies. They have causes that need attention, and if I call myself a humane activist, I cannot be selectively deaf to other causes just because they aren't allies. But I also can't turn a blind eye to the harm they do to others, even as they claim to be doing humanitarian work. These groups do practice selective deafness, and that pisses me off. But I won't return the favor. An eye for an eye makes the world go blind, yanno.

I can only hope that one day, other people will try adopting similar policies, so that instead of activists only talking about their core group's interests, they also spread out their awareness of other groups with similar plights. We don't have to all be allies, but if enough activists started breaking down these barriers between us, we might end up making more progress collectively than we would by shouting into our online echo chambers.

Food for thought, anyway. Now, on with the flood.