Becky’s Blog

Dr. Aviva Nubel returns to “The Rebecca Juro Show” to update us on new developments in her case.

Dr. Nubel was forced to give up her license when a couple of selfish transwomen reported her to the New Jersey State Nursing Board. It’s a horrific story of an incredibly kind, giving, and generous professional who was basically run out of the state, really not because of anything she did but because of who her patients were, transitioning transsexuals.

Both one hour parts of my first interview with Dr. Nubel are here:

Part 1

Part 2

It’s all live tonight on “The Rebecca Juro Show”! Don’t miss it!

The Rebecca Juro Show
The LGBT Internet Radio Talk Show That Puts The “T” First!
Streaming Live Thursdays, 7-9pm Eastern, 4-6pm Pacific
And Rebroadcast Throughout The Week
On QMO
http://www.queermusiconline.com
And Live Every Week
On WKCJE TLGB Radio
http://www.wkjce.org

Studio Call-In Line: 928-257-3171

NEW! Show Website: http://rebeccajuro.qmoradio.com/

Show Email: rjuroshow@gmail.com
Podcast Archive: Homepage: http://beckyjuro.podomatic.com
RSS Feed: http://beckyjuro.podOmatic.com/rss2.xml
Becky’s Blog: http://transadvocate.com/beckygrrl

New York’s Gay City News is reporting that over fifty people protested outside the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Midtown Manhattan Dinner this Saturday, and that the event was snubbed by every single gay, lesbian, and bisexual elected official in New York City.

The motivation, of course, is HRC’s continuing support of the crippled, elitist, and discriminatory version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which passed the House last November. What’s most interesting here, however, is that it seems that it’s no longer simply fair-minded and supportive LGBT activists who are refusing to play along with HRC’s divisive political games, but that now the organization and their elitist bigotry has become so politically unpopular to so many Democrats that even politicians, who often seem deaf, or at least unmoved by the interests of minorities as small as transgender and gender-variant people, are choosing to make a statement in not endorsing HRC’s divisive politics by showing up for their events.

Of course, this is New York City, one of the most socially and politically diverse and liberal places in the country. Only a fool would extrapolate this one event in this one city as evidence of a national turnaround in terms of how HRC is seen in political circles. And yet, it’s a start.

Several local politicians and political players have come out strongly against HRC, including Christine Quinn, Speaker of the New York City Council and an out lesbian, who many believe will likely become New York’s next mayor. While attributing Quinn’s absence from the event as due to scheduling conflicts, her spokesperson also added in an email to Gay City News that Quinn “…has also made clear that she was very disappointed that the action taken by Congress with the Employment and Non-Discrimination Act did not include gender identity. Moreover, the Speaker is stunned that the Human Rights Campaign is penalizing those Congressmembers who support a pro-LGBT agenda, and who voted against the Act because it didn’t include transgenders. The Speaker applauds her colleagues from New York — Congressmembers Clarke, Nadler, Towns, Velazquez, and Weiner — for their stand.”.

Other pols of note not attending the HRC dinner included Quinn’s expected rivals in the NYC Mayoral race, city Comptroller William Thompson and Congressman Anthony Weiner, who voted against the crippled version of ENDA in the House and made an impassioned speech on the floor of the House in support of the inclusion of gender identity protections in the bill.

And hey, let’s at least give Joe Solmonese some credit. At least he had the courage to say something in defense of the sellout tactics employed by himself and his organization this time that amounted to at least slightly more than “Trust us, we’re HRC and we know best.”.

“I have to ask myself: When did we all become so impatient? When did we say to ourselves, okay that civil rights thing, I’ll give it a year, maybe two, then I’m done,” Solmonese said at the dinner, “Let me be very clear: No, we are not done. We are in the grueling, blinding middle of this fight and the middle of this fight is the hardest part.”

Well, at least Solmonese is finally standing up for himself and his organization. Too bad he still refuses to do so for non-martini-drinking, non-wealthy, non-white, non-conventionally gendered LGBT Americans HRC claims to be fighting for.

Make no mistake, boys, girls, and everyone else: This is war, and it’s a war which those who are truly on the side of American justice and equality are going to win. The tide is turning, and it’s people like us who are turning it. While some might be loathe to bring Presidential politics into this fight, we can’t escape the correlation here. As the candidate of change soars past the candidate of politics as usual, toward the Democratic nomination and eventually to the Presidency,  so too do our own political fortunes rise along with Barack Obama’s as HRC’s are falling right along with Senator Clinton’s. It’s not at all a coincidence that those who would compromise the ideal of equality for all Americans for their own political convenience like Barney Frank and most of the HRC Executive Board are working for the Clinton campaign.

If you still need more proof, you’re getting it now. For those who believe that we need civil rights laws that protect every American right now, not when it might be politically convenient years from now or even decades from now, there can be only one real choice for President, and it certainly isn’t Hillary Clinton.

Tonight on the Rebecca Juro Show: Open Phones!

We’ll be taking your calls at 928-257-3171. You set the agenda, you choose the topics! Obama’s surging…he’s now won ten in a row! Is Hillary finished? We’ll get into that and a lot more tonight!

It’s “The Rebecca Juro Show”, real LGBT community radio talk radio, the kind that turns it’s back on the corporate quotas and elitist and watered-down social and political agendas to give you the full breadth and diversity of political thought and opinion in our community!

Don’t miss it!!

The Rebecca Juro Show
The LGBT Internet Radio Talk Show That Puts The “T” First!
Streaming Live Thursdays, 7-9pm Eastern, 4-6pm Pacific And Rebroadcast Throughout The Week
On The TransFM Radio Network
http://www.transfm.org
And On QMO
http://www.queermusiconline.com
Show Email: rjuroshow@gmail.com

Call in with Skype: Usernames (no quotes) “beckystudio” or “azmtbear”

AIM: RLJ5862

Back when I first came out transsexual and began getting involved and familiar with community-relevant media in the mid-90’s, there really wasn’t a heck of a lot of out there for transgender and gender-variant people. With the exception of the few offerings specifically intended for transfolks, virtually all of it was directed exclusively toward the interests of gay men and lesbians. In those days, it was a pleasant surprise to find something that actively and directly spoke to the gender-variant segments of our community.

As frustrating as that was, though, it was particularly infuriating when there was a news story which would have gotten plenty of community media coverage if it concerned gays and lesbians but because it was chiefly of concern to the gender-variant it would instead be all but completely ignored everywhere except in transgender-specific discussion forums.

One such story was GenderPAC’s repudiation of its founding mission to represent the interests of Transgender-Americans to instead focus on the much broader issue of gender rights and freedom in general. The move instigated a firestorm of protest and resistance from transgender activists, especially those who had actively supported and participated in the founding of GenderPAC and then had found themselves ostracized from the organization’s agenda and leadership.

Despite the loud public outcry from the transgender community over this move, the vast majority of so-called “LGBT media” (for by then the acronym had come into common usage as a PC nod to inclusiveness even though the actual content still remained focused on those first two letters) simply ignored it. There was plenty being written and said on the topic, but virtually all of it was coming from within the trans community itself. After several months of community media silence on what was probably the single most significant transgender-relevant story of the time, some of us decided to start calling out these media publicly.

At the time, I was a loyal listener of the first commercial LGBT Internet radio station, GAYBC, and decided to take on the issue there first. Even though GAYBC had been somewhat better than most, taking on trans-relevant topics and issues now and again as an occasional show feature, for the most part they’d basically ignored this story, along with most other stories and topics of interest to the transgender community, right along with the rest of the “LGBT” media. I started calling into GAYBC shows, bringing up the topic, and emailing the hosts. Eventually, John McMullen, President of GAYBC and host of the station’s flagship talk show, agreed to set up and host a panel discussion on the topic.

While it was certainly a step forward to get this issue aired out publicly on a media outlet as mainstream as GAYBC, it ultimately proved to be little more than a shot in the dark. The rest of the “LGBT” media didn’t pick up the story to any real degree, and this continued to be the case for years afterward, even though GenderPAC’s mission redefinition continued to be a topic of intensive debate and discussion within the trans community itself. Then, in 2001, a friend and I decided we’d had enough and we decided to do something about it ourselves.

Marti Abernathey and I had become friends through GAYBC and we were both frustrated about the lack of coverage of transgender-relevant issues in mainstream “LGBT” media. We both listened to and enjoyed GenderTalk, a Boston-based broadcast radio show focusing on transgender and gender-relevant topics and issues hosted by Nancy Nangeroni which was archived online, but when I emailed Nangeroni to ask her to cover the GenderPAC story on GenderTalk she declined. One day, while discussing the issue in the GAYBC chatroom, Marti and I came up with the idea to create and host our own Internet radio show to directly take on the issues critical to our community which even GenderTalk refused to cover.

We knew we didn’t have an easy task ahead of us. It took us the better part of a year to put together the technical backend to make it happen, and once we had that working, we set about creating our show. Taking from what we’d heard on GenderTalk and GAYBC and adding liberal helpings of our own ideas and opinions, we debuted our show, which we dubbed “Trans-Sister Radio”, in April of 2002.

Our sound quality was terrible and we had technical issues by the truckload, but somehow we got it on the air and did some pretty damn great community radio during our all-too-short four-month run. Finally, the finances caught up with us and we had to take the show off the air, but we’d made our dent, creating and hosting the very first Internet-based transgender-relevant radio talk show ever.

After TSR was off the air, Marti and I both did stints co-hosting with Ethan St Pierre and took our opinions to the blogs. Marti eventually went on to found Transadvocate.com while I teamed up with Producer Mike Scott to create and host “The Rebecca Juro Show”. Last year, both Marti and I joined the editorial staff of the Bilerico Project, helping to bring a level of transgender inclusion to the site that’s still virtually unequaled in LGBT community media.

Ironically, the penetration of LGBT-relevant content in commercial radio has sadly remained nearly non-existent over the years, with only the marginally inclusive pay-to-listen Sirius OutQ making discussion of LGBT topics available to radio listeners on a daily basis, as Hollywood and even commercial television have shot past radio at lightning speed in presenting LGBT-relevant and inclusive content, giving us television shows like “Will and Grace”, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, and “Dirty Sexy Money” (featuring the very first regularly-appearing transgender character on television played by an actual transgender actor), and groundbreaking movies like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Transamerica”.

The real action in LGBT talk and opinion media, however, our community’s truly cutting-edge thinkers and opinion-makers, just can’t be reliably found in commercial community radio or television anymore, if they were ever really actually there to begin with. With the advent of the blogs, Internet radio, and podcasting, the true home of community-relevant opinion, commentary, and provocative discussions of interest to today’s LGBT community has moved almost entirely to the Internet. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there are now hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of different perspectives from all walks of LGBT life available online, and that explosion of perspective and diversity has now completely overwhelmed the tiny number of narrowly-focused “LGBT”-relevant offerings in this genre found on satellite radio and elsewhere in commercial media.

Now, people like me, Marti, and so many others are able to have ourselves and our opinions heard regularly on Internet radio, podcasts, and the blogs, offering free, worldwide access to everyone with an interest. Unlike in the past when media like GAYBC, Sirius, and the gay and lesbian print media were pretty much the only game in town, Internet-based LGBT community media is now the majority by a wide margin, competing directly for listeners and readers with the relatively small handful of currently available commercial media offerings intended for LGBT people. It’s a very different, much more diverse world for us as LGBT community media consumers than it used to be.

Sadly, commercial radio still offers LGBT listeners interested in community-relevant news, politics, and opinion little more than the well-produced but only intermittently-inclusive “The Michelangelo Signorile Show” on Sirius and the completely sanitized and virtually emotionless “The Agenda with Joe Solmonese” on XM as flagship examples of what satellite radio considers entertaining and informative LGBT community-relevant opinion programming. With this being the most commercial radio is apparently prepared to offer our community, it’s hardly surprising that LGBT radio listeners are leaving these media behind in droves and turning to the Internet for the kind of community talk radio and print commentary which really pulls no punches and takes on the topics and issues they really care about in a hard hitting, take-no-prisoners style, the kind of LGBT community radio which speaks directly to them and to the issues which are really important in their lives.

The LGBT community-focused blogs are no less a part of this movement as well. Many LGBT-relevant community websites now list links to popular online community blogs and other media, as well as to articles published at these sites. Blogs covering the full diversity and breadth of topics and news important to our community, such the Bilerico Project and Pam’s House Blend, have enjoyed explosive growth during this time, often breaking stories and new developments far more quickly and efficiently than the vast majority of commercial LGBT media are able to.

With LGBT mainstream commercial radio in particular remaining relatively stagnant in availability, content, and diversity since the mid-90’s, perhaps due to the upper management of these media companies being more concerned with drawing the most lucrative listener demographics and keeping costs down rather than with producing content that’s truly relevant to their listeners, it’s no surprise that Internet radio creators, podcasters, and bloggers have kicked the community media door wide open, filling that void and going where commercial LGBT opinion media has not only not gone before, but doesn’t seem especially interested or motivated to go in the future. Where once there were just a few of us out there making content available online specifically targeted to those segments of our community commercial LGBT media has consistently failed to adequately represent and serve, there’s now a plethora of cost-free and commercial-free alternatives all over the Internet for LGBT’s who still aren’t getting what they want and need from commercial radio and television.

For me, the most exciting part is watching it all happen right before my eyes. It’s thrilling to be a part of this, to be able to witness firsthand as our community finally demands alternatives to the slick, sanitized, and homogenized radio and television shows which are so common in the commercial media marketed as LGBT community-relevant these days. Instead, those people now coming to the Internet, to us, where kid gloves really come off, where corporate profit-focused agendas don’t water-down the content and diversity, and where the primary concern is serving listeners and readers and creating great media, not getting a higher number in the next Arbitron or Nielsen ratings book than the next guy. Not that there’s anything wrong with making a profit creating community media (would that we all could), but if that profit comes at the expense of properly serving the community you’re creating that media for in the first place, then you know the price is far higher than it should be.

Mercifully for LGBT, and especially transgender, media consumers, the 90’s are over and they’ve been over for a good long time. Hopefully, one day media like LOGO and OutQ will figure that out too, and will finally come to really understand that media by rich, white, gay men focused mainly on the interests of rich, white, gay men just doesn’t cut it in this community anymore, not with the Internet around.

As has been so often the case throughout history, these commercial LGBT community media offerings will have to catch up and keep up with where the rest of us already are, or like other commercial relics of the past once thought to be industry leaders that couldn’t or wouldn’t keep pace with the demands of the modern consumer, they too will ultimately just be left behind.

Tonight, my guest will be activist, blogger, and former Chair of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition, Vanessa Edwards Foster. Vanessa’s been a respected leader in the LGBT and transgender rights movement for many years, and since leaving the reins of NTAC has been an outspoken commentator on our issues, our movement, and our politics. We’ll get Vanessa’s take on some of the hot community issues and more tonight! Of course, as always we’ll also be taking your calls at 928-257-3171! On top of all that, I’ve got another big announcement about the future of the show (Don’t worry, it’s a good one)!

It’s all live tonight on “The Rebecca Juro  Show”! Don’t miss it!

The Rebecca Juro Show
The LGBT Internet Radio Talk Show That Puts The “T” First!
Streaming Live Thursdays, 7-9pm Eastern, 4-6pm Pacific
And Rebroadcast Throughout The Week
On QMO
http://www.queermusiconline.com
And Live Every Week
On WKCJE TLGB Radio
http://www.wkjce.org
Show Email: rjuroshow@gmail.com
Podcast Archive: Homepage: http://beckyjuro.podomatic.com
RSS Feed: http://beckyjuro.podOmatic.com/rss2.xml
Becky’s Blog and New Podcasts: http://transadvocate.com/beckygrrl

(The first two parts of this series can be found here and here)

I’d finally reached the point in my experience with Second Life when I felt comfortable enough within it as an individual to really start exploring the outer reaches of my psyche and try something I’ve wanted to experience for some time but never had the courage or sense of security necessary to do in real life.

I’d been interested in the idea of power exchange play in SL for a while by then, but had found little or nothing about what I was looking for in the few searches I had done to that point. Then one day while in-world, I saw a Mistress leading a male slave on a leash at a fetish mall while I was shopping for dance outfits. Sensing an opportunity, I decided to throw caution to the wind and ask her where she and her slave played. Her response started me on an adventure during which I would learn that you can, in fact, find just about anything you want in SL, if you’re willing to dig deep enough.

I’d been making fairly good money at the dance club, and had a decent amount of Lindens in my purse by this point. The landmark the Mistress had given me led me to a small but well-visited sim where women rule and men are slaves, in many ways the opposite of the numerous Gorean-themed sims found throughout SL. This first sim I visited was interesting, but as someone totally new to the experience I found it a bit overwhelming as scantily-clad men by the dozens threw themselves at me and basically begged me and the other women there to abuse and beat them. Knowing I wasn’t quite ready for this, I decided to teleport away and do a little more research before exploring further.

My decision turned out to be a smart one. I first looked for more information on the web, but found very little specifically about being a Mistress in SL. Logging in, I did some more searches, visited a few more sims, and discovered that not all of these places were quite so hardcore as the place I’d first been to. Many of these sims took a somewhat lighter approach in general, operating under a strict female supremacist social order, but not requiring or even expecting that this be enforced through the public use of overt BDSM or other physical discipline techniques. I found I was more comfortable in this kind of atmosphere, where the male avatars were respectful and subservient to the females but violent hardcore BDSM play was restricted to certain designated areas in the sim, away from the places where most tend to congregate.

I learned a lot at this sim and became more and more comfortable in the role of a dominant woman as I spent more time there. I also found I had my own particular interests in this kind of roleplaying, and they were not exactly the same at all times. While I’ve enjoyed my time at the Queendom of Bouddicia, and still go back there frequently mainly because I enjoy the people and the atmosphere there, I also found that there were times when I really did want to play the role of a hardcore, violent, and utterly man-hating bitch, mainly just for the entertainment value, though I’d be lying if I said that playing such a role hasn’t helped me to emotionally work through a few real-life issues with men every now and again.

One day, I discovered by chance that a a new sim was getting ready to open in SL. This place is structured as a hardcore “femdom” (female-dominated) monarchy, and the roles fit into an overall female supremacist theme and social and political structure. I found this to be an interesting concept, and so one day, while the sim was still being built, I teleported in to check it out.

After touring the sim and meeting the slave who served as the sim’s secretary and chief administrator, I found myself not only attracted the whole idea of being a part of such an elaborate femdom roleplaying sim, but eventually I was offered and accepted a job there. In this role, I serve as a Mistress, one of the women who dishes out abuse and punishment to slaves as the mood takes me, but I also serve a very specific role and purpose within the sim’s roleplay and political structure, a role which I am intentionally not going into in detail about in the interest of privacy.

Everyone who works at this sim fills a specific role in much the same way as I do, as do many submissives (subs) who come to us and pay to fill a formal submissive role at the sim. These subs generally receive more attention from the dominant ladies than those who simply join the sim’s group freelance and simply show up to play whenever they feel like it, but the demands made upon them in properly fulfilling their roles as “official” slaves are not insignificant. This place is for truly hardcore femdom roleplayers, and therefore the rules and requirements imposed on those with formal roles in the sim, and particularly on the subs, reflect that kind of intense dedication and level of interest in the sim and what it’s about.

In many ways, the place is a fairly large femdom playground, but it’s also much more, allowing participants to delve deep into the roleplay aspects of femdom, sometimes more intensely than those who submit themselves to serve as slaves probably expect. Many visit us once or twice and then never return, perhaps finding the place too hardcore for their tastes, but others find a place for themselves there and become extremely loyal to the sim and to their place in its roleplay. I too have found that I enjoy my time there, as well as the added advantage of getting paid for being there, but I also frequent Bouddicia for the lighter and friendlier atmosphere as well as for the people there.

As you might imagine, I tell no one that I’m a transwoman in any of these places. For one thing, it’s no one’s business unless I choose to make it so. For another, it just gets in the way for me in SL and it’s not how I wish to be seen in-world. I’ve visited SL’s Transgender Resource Center several times and I’m sure I will again in the future, but that’s just something I choose to do every now and then when I’m in the mood. I’ve also found that many of these submissive men want to serve what they see as “real” women and would probably not take kindly to discovering I wasn’t born female. Since there’s generally no advantage in being up front about my RL transsexual status and plenty of potential negatives in doing so, I usually choose to just keep my mouth shut about it. My whip hits just as hard and my tongue is just as sharp as any other woman’s, and there’s nothing to be gained by potentially destroying the roleplay experience for someone by volunteering that information without a very good reason.

I do find this kind of roleplay emotionally satisfying in many ways, and I’m able to indulge in it without incurring any of the risks which might accompany the experience in RL. When I’ve had enough, I simply log out and I’m done. No messy real-life situations or relationships to deal with, no real bodily harm to worry about, no lingering emotions or other issues which transcend the roleplay scene. In a lot of ways, it’s all of the best parts of femdom and BDSM powerplay without any of the negatives.

I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about why I find this kind of thing so interesting and attractive. I’ve never had any interest at all in being submissive, it’s only the role of a dominant which I find appealing and enticing. I suppose a lot of it is wrapped up in being able to insert myself into a situation where I’m completely in charge in all ways and where I can allow myself to indulge in certain emotions and attitudes which would be completely inappropriate elsewhere. I can allow myself to personify these aspects of my psyche in this kind of scenario without bringing them into the real, non-virtual world, or even elsewhere in SL. Despite all that however, I’ve also become interested and involved in the more moderate and, dare I say, positive aspects of femdom, and this interest has now progressed to the point where I’ve taken on a personal submissive, who I’ll refer to here as B.

The relationship between B. and I is quite new, barely more than a couple of weeks old as I write this, and is completely unlike the kind of femdom practiced at the sim where I work. I guess the best description is that of a loving, respectful domination relationship, where I am unquestionably the dominant partner, but my role is not that of abuser and humiliatrix as much as it is of protector and leader, and B. is not a plaything to be tortured and humiliated as much as he is a faithful and obedient servant. We have begun exploring some BDSM scenes together and are learning what works for each of us, but the core of our relationship is one of deep mutual understanding, respect, and trust rather than aggression or any sort of true negativity. B. is the only person in SL who I have a femdom-related relationship with, and one of the very few in SL at all, who knows I’m transsexual. The level of trust between us is deep enough that I knew telling him the truth would not be an issue because I know him well enough to understand that he sees beyond such things, and because knowing that he understands that I do not wish this information shared with anyone else is enough for me to be completely confident that he will never reveal it to anyone.

All of this, of course, is still quite new for me. I’ve never really had this kind of personal relationship with anyone before, and now I have it with a man, no less. B. knows I’m lesbian and that I have no interest in men sexually, so he makes no overt moves in that direction, and yet, at the same time, I feel an affection for B. in a way that I’ve never really felt for anyone before because of the unique nature of our relationship. In all honesty, I’m still discovering what that really means. While we haven’t really discussed it in detail, I believe that B. has far more experience in femdom than I do since he skillfully guides me when he senses we have encountered something I am new to or inexperienced in.

As B. and I learn more about each other and what we seek from our developing relationship, I find myself becoming a better and more effective dominant, taking more control as I become more confident in both my own abilities and knowledge as well as in my understanding of B. and what he wants and needs from me as his Mistress. I do strongly suspect that B. wishes I were not lesbian, but I also believe that if there were any man to whom I might one day find myself willingly giving myself physically and emotionally it would be him. Will that day ever come? Right now, I don’t see it happening, but for some reason I can’t seem to comfortably use the term “never” here, so take that for whatever it’s worth.

For someone who started her SL experience as a veteran online gamer looking for something really new, I’ve found that in spades in the virtual world so much like and yet completely unlike our own that is Second Life. At once, I find myself looking forward to continuing down the path I currently find myself, and at the same time wondering what new and unexpected experiences await me in the future in this place.

While this may be the last part of this series for at least the immediate future, I think it’s highly likely that I will eventually find myself adding new chapters to this series as I continue to explore the seemingly endless variety of new frontiers and experiences which await me in Second Life. It can certainly be reasonably argued that this virtual world has the potential to find oneself “sucked in”, but thus far I’ve been able to maintain a reasonable balance between the demands of my life in the real world and my desire to spend time in this virtual one.

Second Life isn’t where I want to live my entire life, but it’s certainly a place which I enjoy visiting as often as I can. It’s cheaper than a tropical island or even a local club, it doesn’t require packing, a long plane trip, or even a car ride, and best of all, it’s there for me whenever I want or need it to be at a moment’s notice. All things considered, I couldn’t ask for a better, more satisfying vacation from everyday reality, especially since I can take one whenever I need it and still be ready to go when reality calls the next morning. When you get right down to it, it’s “Fantasy Island” with an on/off switch. How could anyone ask for more?

Check this video out.

Kudos to Jason Bellini for at least asking the question. A pity he didn’t bother to follow-up and press for an actual answer when Clinton completely ignored the actual question and went off about hate crimes. She didn’t even have the courage to give a firm answer on that either, even though a trans-inclusive hates crimes has already passed both Houses of Congress. If anyone had a doubt about her lack of commitment to fighting for LGBT equality as President, here’s the video evidence of her political cowardice in action.

Personally, I think it’s just unbelievably sad that even in an election year none of the mainstream LGBT television or radio shows can seem to be bothered with actual journalism, pressing for the facts when candidates and others seek to avoid the tough questions. No wonder the blogs are so popular. As time goes on, it’s more and more evident that we won’t be getting the answers we need to make fully informed choices from these LGBT-oriented mainstream media, nor will we be getting them from Hillary Clinton in any case.