Ms. Cuddles has been on a bit of a weight loss journey, but it would be a deranged mind that saw her shape as anything obscene.

For comparison. Just two short years ago, the cactus in question was visible and the teacher in question was approximately five years younger.

Help, my class pet (cactus) was edited out of the photo by the school photographer, am I eligible for compensation?

Imagine if Democrats were campaigning on "No immigrants in sports" or "No healthcare for Black children" or "I don't support biological Jews". You know it would be outright evil. Why does your calculus change when those same arguments are made about trans people?

Extra chuffed to see the final version of "She Calls Me Love," the creepy/adorable debut by @lydlow.bsky.social. Expect to see lots more of them.

They can stop being bigoted. They can deal with their discomfort, try to get over it. We can’t stop existing. Any judge or politician or journalist who treats trans people as the problem in this hateful campaign should be laughed out of their job.

Their discomfort with trans people existing, however genuinely felt, is their own issue to work through. Yet they wield the full force of state and federal power against us.

Cis people aren’t being hounded out of bathrooms. They’re not being denied healthcare. They’re not forced to flee their homes for their own safety.

Putting cis people’s discomfort on the same level as our right to exist is insulting. The idea that we need to be removed from public life so you don’t have to have a mildly awkward conversation with your kid is ridiculous. Yet the state bends over backwards to serve those uncomfortable cis parents.

This is not how laws are supposed to work, madam! You should consider yourself fortunate that the judge didn’t order you to go fuck yourself!

Seriously, read the article I linked above, then read some of this testimony: ‘"You don't know what's going to happen" in a private space like a bathroom, and it's comforting to know that under SB 244 bathrooms will be places "where everyone has the same genitalia," [the testifying lobbyist] said.’

These two groups are considered to be of roughly equal importance by the law, at the moment. The fact that these are even being seriously considered as equivalent should be deeply humiliating to everyone involved.

I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind. Millions of people with vast documentation of persecution and hatred as a result of discriminatory laws. Versus a handful of cis people who don’t much like the idea of a stranger in a public place having genitals that don’t match their expectations.

The state’s testimony centers parents who came near a trans person in a public bathroom and felt “discomfort” or “unease.” They and their children were confused or unsettled. Those, according to the state, are harms that can only be rectified by stripping trans people of their rights.

This is what kills me. Just down the road from my home in Kansas, the state is making a case for the necessity of their new law that excises trans people from public life. (They didn’t have to make this case while passing the law, as it was rushed through in a gut-and-go prohibiting public comment.)

“Rights were removed, children have faced humiliation and segregation. My daughter has been out of school since July, as have so many supported trans kids. Sport as leisure is already a no-go. We can’t use our local swimming pool without stress. Public bathrooms are a potential source of aggression.