Far be it from me to align with Democrats on any matter, as I regard their positions on many issues, such as Climate Change, outlandish and unstudied. But there is a matter going on the the Montana House of Representatives where that party is in the right and where the Republican majority needs to get a grip.
Rep Zooey Zephyr* (D-Missoula) is a transgender female. She ran and was elected as such. She needs to be seated. Right now she has been expelled and prevented from attending to her duties inside the chamber, and must cast votes from the hallway outside. There has been no official censure.**
Zephyr has brought much of this on herself by joining in protests and chanting from the gallery with other protests. That short of behavior is unbecoming. Any member who behaved in this matter, no matter philosophical alignment, would likely be censured, maybe even expelled. Elected officials are there to debate issues in a rational and sane manner, and not to hold placards and yell and shut down the legislative process. .
Zephyr is also prone to dramatics, for instance saying about Senate Bill 99, which would outlaw mutilation of sex organs in youth,
“‘If you are forcing a trans child to go through puberty when they are trans, that is tantamount to torture, and this body should be ashamed.”
When this remark triggered an objection from Republican majority leader Sue Vinton, Zephyr replied,
“The only thing I will say is if you vote ‘yes’ on this bill and ‘yes’ on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”
That is out of line. She should apologize for her intemperance. Concerning the bill itself, our current climate is one that has school teachers and others who work with youth creating gender doubt, something I regard as abusive of youth. There is no need to deliberately sow gender confusion.
Indeed going through puberty and the teen years as a person whose body is trapped in the wrong sex is difficult. But the extreme procedures used remind me of capital punishment – if you make a mistake, it cannot be undone. So make them wait, give them time to be sure, and when they come to the age of majority, set them free.
Transgender extremists are a hard lot to take seriously, in my view, making themselves out to be victims because they willingly place themselves in positions that invite disrespect. Riot police had to be called to House chambers to break up a protest demonstration. Seven were arrested. If Zephyr would accord herself with decorum, the situation would not have gotten out of hand. Yes, of course Republicans have overreacted, and behaved stupidly. In the end, they will lose this battle due to their own arrogance, and not because of Zephyr and company.
It is as if they were baited.
Zephyr is now suing the Republicans, and will probably win. The Montana ACLU, which sat in silence and took no action as our Bill of Rights was shredded by the WHO and CDC during the Covid nonsense, has seen fit to support Zephyr on this matter. So they are not a bunch of eunuchs after all!
OK, that last remark was intemperate. Move to strike from the record.
______________
My first question: Is that really her name? I see nothing in Wikipedia indicating otherwise. Wiki usually gets real names, as opposed to stage names, correct.
___________
PS, and too late, this all begins to smell of a setup. For one, I am not convinced that votes are counted, so that Zooey’s victory might have been manufactured. That means the confrontation is also manufactured, and we are witnessing a stage play. Her (his) expulsion then becomes theater. I do not doubt, given her masculine appearance, that she really used to be a man.
I ask readers to invade my home and stop these posts before they originate. I may be too stupid to live.
___________
A censure vote passed on Monday, May 1, 2023. It was because of her comments that I cited above.
Piece of Mindful 
I’m glad you recognised your own stupidity. It’s all a show and many of us know that now. But it can still be difficult not to get caught up in the movie. I still watch cricket even after all of the match fixing. Why should politics be less entertaining?
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And why is it only the trans women that are doing these types of things? I haven’t seen seen a single trans man screech about the right to use a men’s restroom or engage with bio men in sport, or beat up other men.
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Of course it’s theatre. “Zephyr’s” absurd “blood-on-your-hands” comment continues the normalization of batshit-crazy overreaction to disagreement that made Covid impossible to talk intelligently about. I remember, when I was in my 20s or early 30s, watching the cable news broadcaster Nancy Grace go on totally unhinged hysterical rants about accused criminals in show trials, and I wondered if her role–if Rush Limbaugh’s role, and other obnoxious broadcasters’ role–was to normalize and maybe even instill personality disorders. (I often had the same thought when I read Miles Mathis.)
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To answer your question: his name is Zachary Todd Raasch. He’s in a relationship with another one of his kind, Anthony “Erin” Reed, a former drug dealer who, funnily enough, was forbidden by the court from wearing his ex-wife’s clothes during their divorce proceedings. Unfortunately, if you want the real name of a “person of gender” these days, you can’t trust Wikipedia at all. Only certain reviled cypergossip websites will tell you the truth when even mentioning someone’s birth name is a horrible offense (the subcultural term for it is “deadnaming”).
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Here’s the background on Zooey.
https://montanatalks.com/who-is-zooey-zephyr-who-do-we-have-zero-background/
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Thank you Swede. Good stuff.
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It’s actually very hard to take this guy (sorry, lady) seriously…
The photo seems to have been taken from his school yearbook, when he decided to grow his hair out of spite to piss off his teachers.
I mean how old is he/she? Like, 18?
Give me a fucking break Zack/Zooey.
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There are more than enough photos available, but I wanted to keep to decorum and chose the least offensive, as I don’t want to pounce on the transgender matter like a drunken sailor on leave. The one I used was the official photo taken when Zooey took office in the state legislature.
I still cannot imagine that she won her legislative race, even in Missoula, given the national reaction when Budweiser embraced a trannie to promote Bud Light. Elections have never been on the up and up, but these days a mere push of a button produces a fake victory. 2022 should have produced a massive nationwide turning out [of office] of Democrats, as people were so fed up with them and Covid and the like, but it was not allowed to happen. In Montana in 2020, every Democrat holding high office was turned out, and the legislature was massively taken over by the other party. At least up there I thought maybe votes are counted. But it is counterintuitive, as such is not allowed anywhere else.
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I can’t imagine that either, as Montana looks like a very conservative state. I’ve had a look at the article Big Swede linked and it’s hard to believe that the sole Missoula “liberal” votes resulted in this person being elected, sounds very fishy to me.
Also, I’d like to know whether this person signs official documents with their birthname or the made up one. In Europe trans politicians have to sign and be called by their birth name, unless they had their name changed by deed poll.
And that should bury the “deadname offence” matter once and for all.
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Every election I look at the ballets and there seems to be an increasing “no candidate” slots on the ballots. Or it’s just one person or the same people that it’s always been for the various positions. Mark you have experience, what is the actual steps a regular joe has to take to get on the ballot? Besides getting signatures I read where people have to sit before a council and be interviewed, they don’t just allow anyone to run for local public office.
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Been a long time … 27 years ago. I don’t recall having to have petitions to get on the ballot, as the “two”. major parties were automatic. I just declared and there I was running against Peggy Arnott, endorsed by Marc Racicot, I never had a chance. Neither were bad people, and I knew nothing about politics, did not know not to say what I believed. Just a neophyte. My lone experience told me not to do it again, and while many Republicans were kindly but dumb, like the elephants in Paul Simon’s At the Zoo, Democrats just left me feeling sickly, complete frauds pretending to be progressive but cynical. Left me cold.
I did have some fun. There was another guy running, could not make up his mind, one day a Democrat, the next a Republican. Name will come to me [Jim Bennett]. He was a heavy drinker, and we were all given questionnaires to fill out by reporters and various groups. I asked him to let me fill his out, and “he” wrote some beautiful stuff some of which was submitted to reporters who could not understand how this seemingly incoherent man could put out intellectual musings on many topics. One reporter, Jim Gransberry, openly wondered about this diamond in the rough. Gransberry was considered dean of pundits, always called on to moderate “debates”. Jim B and I and I totally snookered him. Jim B would call me now and then and tell me he needed me to do more writing for him, and I obliged. Great fun. I guess even then I was surreptitiously mocking the system.
I got away from the parties, always having a soft spot for Republicans, who at least could openly espouse true beliefs. My then girlfriend now wife were on a hiatus, I had time to kill and was lonely, so I went on a mission to collect signatures door to door to get Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot.I collected hundreds [thousands?] of signatures, and as a result when the Bush/Gore no choice “choice” was presented to Yellowstone County, a full 5% chose Nader, leaving the Gransberry’s scratching their empty heads. Still more fun! I caused that.
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I hear from No Agenda, for what they’re worth, that 80% of trans kids are F to M. If true, we are seeing the overhyped “M to F’s” being used to groom young men into accepting hyperfeminine* trannies as a suitable alternative to actual women.
*Present subject excepted-
PS- Has anyone heard of “womanless beauty pageants”? Apparently high schools are holding these pageants where boys dress up as girls for judging. Where to begin……?
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remember when “Kids in the Hall” was a comedy?
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Maybe that too, but I think their point is that the op is especially harmful to girls because of their response to social dynamics.. kind of reminiscent of the young women experiencing group madness in The Crucible (say what you will about that fiction)
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