Category: Tumblr crossposts

fichty:

“Dear friends,

for the past year, my mother’s cousin, Siamak, and her uncle, Baquer Namazi, have unjustly been imprisoned in Iran. We have now learned that they have been given a 10 year sentence in prison. Our family has been going through very tough times, and with the news of this 10 year sentence we are now scared that our 80-year-old Baquer, who has been suffering from a heart condition alongside other ailments, will not be able to survive.  

Both Baquer and Siamak Namazi are respected international citizens who have dedicated their lives and resources to humanitarian causes.  They are absolutely innocent and should be freed immediately.  As Iranian-Americans, it seems as if they have become victims of a political game that is being played between Tehran and Washington.

It would mean lots to me if you go like/share our Facebook page so that we raise awareness to this injustice and get more support.

For more information, you can also visit our website, www.freenamazis.org”

Please please please help. Reblogging this takes a second and liking the Facebook page as well. What may feel like an inconvenience of two seconds to you is extremely important for my friend. Any support could make a change. Thank you for your time

rememberwhenyoutried:

kellhorreur replied to your post: “westfailia replied to your photo: “We here in the British right-wing…”:

I thought the tories didn’t *actually* want Brexit.. Are they pretending they want to now because someone told them they can’t?

Individual Tories might or might not want Brexit, but what they definitely don’t want is to lose any more voters to UKIP, and they wouldn’t be Tories if they didn’t value their own personal advancement over the good of the poor or the country, so we’re leaving the EU, probably breaking the union up, and demonising people of colour because James Chinless the 3rd Earl of Shithole doesn’t want to lose his sinecure.

Anonymous:

I’m a feminist and I’d also like to be a good trans ally. Why are there so many trans people who characterize playing with dolls/wearing dresses/liking pink as a sign they were a girl, and why do some say that their interest in sports was a sign they were a boy? It may not be a community-wide issue, so forgive me that. It strikes me as essentialist and somewhat tactless. Is it okay for me to question people who say things like that? Thank you for your insight!

thedeadflag:

neopianranter:

shrineart:

hobbitsaarebas:

jenniferrpovey:

hopeology:

jenniferrpovey:

anartificialaspidistra:

thedeadflag:

This is actually a form of institutional violence that trans people, largely trans women, face.

To copy-paste from a previous post I made on this matter:

Growing up, I had a few trans lady friends who were hyped about being openly/visibly butch and/or gnc trans women when they began transitioning.

Three of the bunch committed suicide after basically being blacklisted out of access to medical transition. Others were wealthy enough to be able to move to where they could have a second or third shot. A femme trans lady friend forgot to apply nail polish and makeup to one of her sessions with her doctor, and that led to him keeping her from medical resources for the next two years of care, and she, as well, ended up killing herself. I could keep listing story after story with similar narratives and endings, it’s really pretty common.

Gatekeeping, whether it’s within a medical context, or a social one, relies on heavily policing trans women to prescribe to normative gender expressions dialed up to 11. We don’t, and we tend to suffer. And I don’t think it’s at all fair to cast blame on trans women who follow those norms, not when our survival is paramount and we’re coerced into those conditions via potentially fatal consequences.

Like, I’m a sloppy/lazy femme in terms of my expression, often shifting towards the hoodie and jeans aesthetic because it’s just comfy, but every doctor’s appointment, every tribunal over my transition, best believe I was probably among the most stereotypically feminine presenting ladies those docs saw that day. Not a chance I’d risk it. Every job interview, every meeting when I was looking for housing, same deal. Survival wins over the microscopic impact I might have on the reproduction of gender norms in those instances, especially when my continued survival means I can live to fight those (and other) battles in other ways less tied to my survival.

So, to be blunt and concise, it’s not trans folks upholding harmful notions of gender. It’s cis folks…cis men and cis women, weaponizing society against us to uphold gender norms through us because we’re deemed as threats and as less legitimate, so our standards are often exponentially higher than our cis counterparts.

Like, I live in liberal Canada, and this gatekeeping shit still happens. I have sat down and taught so many trans people how to strategize and what language to use, what narratives will provide the path of least resistance, so that we can get what we need in the aggressively oppressive system we live in.

Like, as a young child, I played hockey, I liked micro-machines, I liked video games, I liked climbing trees, riding bikes, building forts, and track & field.

I told my therapist that in my third session when she asked about my childhood, just minutes after telling me she felt I was ready for hormones. I had to endure 23 more sessions with her, spread across the next year and a half, to get back to where I was mid-way through that third session, a long enough time for her to forget enough about those remarks on my childhood, before I could get access to hormones. When she asked about my childhood again in the 22nd or 23rd session, I told her I played with dolls, and that secretly, my favourite colour was pink as a child, and that I yearned to play house but no one would play with me, that I’d try on my mom’s shoes and some of her clothes, etc. etc. And after I tossed out enough cliche elements of the standard narrative (basically painting myself as a very heterosexual hyper-feminine 50?s housewife), I got access. I can’t say that if I ever got interviewed on public media that I’d stray from that safe narrative, because chances are, my doctors would/could see, and I could lose access to healthcare, employment, housing, etc.

Like I said, I’ve had friends who forgot to wear nail polish and were punished for it. I had a friend…in the dead of winter…who wore pants to an appointment and was suddenly told by the doctor that he had no confidence that she was a ‘real’ trans woman. A trans dude friend of mine got in a car wreck and had busted up ribs, and couldn’t wear his binder comfortably for a while, and his doctor refused to renew his prescription to T. He eventually had to find a new doctor, endure the waiting list, and get back on, which took like, 9 months.

So if we’re saying things like that, it’s almost always a self-defense mechanism. It’s very hard to tell who we can trust, and who has the power to derail our transitions, or kill our support networks, etc. And while I’m sure if all trans people revolted and told the truth, it might help disrupt that system of norms and standards and gatekeeping, but I could never ask others like me to take a stand on principle that would likely kill a great many of them. I know that without HRT, I wouldn’t survive more than maybe three months, it’s really that simple, and I know so many others in the same boat. It’d be like walking into a building burning from a three-alarm fire to try and activate the inactive sprinkler system, instead of calling the fire department to put it out. This isn’t our responsibility. 

I think it’s important to remember that trans people who are coerced into expressing these narratives are a tiny demographic, so our ability to significantly ‘reproduce’ or ‘essentialize’ any gender norms is negligible at best. And that in the overwhelming majority of the world, trans folks have to comply with exaggerated gender norms for our gender simply for survival. And that survival must take precedence over worries of us reproducing harm that we’d only be reproducing because cis people can’t get their heads out of their asses over their need to police everything about our bodies and our lives.

Like, in case you’re not aware, the “born in the wrong body” language stemmed from trans patients decades and decades ago, who were being experimented on, sterilized, mutilated, and tortured. Eventually doctors listened to us and our pleas to just treat our dysphoria, but our language didn’t fit necessarily with their worldview. They couldn’t accept that pre-transition trans men and trans women were actually men/women. That we had men’s/women’s bodies. That we were male/female. So we were coerced into using their language for us, in order to get the treatment we needed, to get any shred of support we could get. The cis-dominated structures of science and medicine are to blame for that sexism, cissexism, essentialism, etc. as well.

We’re just trying to get the help we need in a world that does not want us to get that help, and will generally only provide it if we tell them everything they want to hear. Some of the greener, fresh out of the closet trans folks push that sort of language/narrative hard, because it’s what they’re exposed to, it’s what they’re taught keeps them safe, and it’s pretty wrong to be critical of someone for surviving and actively reducing harm against themselves from society at large.

So if you get the urge to criticize a trans person for bringing that sort of thing up, maybe instead criticize the structures that prevent us from saying anything else.

This is really interesting and a perspective I hadn’t ever considered.

Trans men and women are pressured into performing masculinity or femininity more than cis men and women.

I used to think that trans people tended to be that way, then I realized society pressures them into it.

Whilst I, as a cis woman, can get away with speaking in public in jeans and a button down shirt (I do like to femme out when I feel like it, mind), a trans woman has to wear a dress and heels.

I, as a cis woman, can follow motor sports and like Top Gear. A trans woman who likes those things has to hide them.

And not only is this oppressive, but the pushing of trans women into stereotypically feminine roles can deny society the talents they may possess in traditionally masculine areas. The expectation to perform extreme femininity is likely to push trans women out of STEM, for example.

Trans men, on the other hand, are pushed even more into toxic masculinity and “macho” values than cis men. I don’t think it’s as much of a gap because the extreme forcing of gender roles is actually worse for men than it is for women. I can wear a pantsuit. If my husband were to wear a skirt… (He wouldn’t, he’s not the type, but…)

The moment I announced my transition to the public, someone I worked with on a professional level asked, incredulously, when I was going to start “dressing like a woman.”

I was wearing Tripp pants, a tank top, with a bra, and sneakers. I asked him what a woman dresses like? His answer “Well, that opens a whole can of worms.”

Yeah, you see what happened right there? Women are not expected to dress a certain way. But if I want to be seen as a woman, I have to dress drastically different from what I did before. I have to “show I want it.”

On top of that, if I hadn’t told my psychologist about how when I was a child I didn’t feel comfortable playing with boys or sports, she wouldn’t have approved me for Estrogen. She told me that because I didn’t wear makeup and lipstick, it was hard to “justify transitioning.”

We don’t do this to force women into feminine roles, but we are punished, neglected, and killed if we don’t match up with “feminine” or “masculine” based on what other people expect. It’s terrifying.

I think cis women are pushed into feminine roles. I have failed to get jobs because I insisted on wearing flats or did not wear makeup.

But trans women get it worse, because they are constantly having to prove that they’re women. And ironically, some of the people who harass trans women the most are the same people who tell cis women they’re “supporting patriarchy” if they wear makeup. (I only wear makeup when I have an actual reason to, because dang it, that stuff is expensive and annoying!).

I’m a trans therapist and I advise my trans clients to straight up lie to their doctors and other psychologists/psychiatrists if it gets them hormones. I tell them to make up the whatever stereotyped, unrealistic “trans narratives” they need to if it will get them access to hormones and surgeries they need. The medical system is not set up to protect or help us, it’s set up to safeguard cis people from being like us. 

This is why the entire idea of gatekeeping and everything relating to it needs to be burned to the ground. If anyone tells you gatekeeping is a good idea–no matter whether they are cis or trans–they are wrong and they are condemning trans people to death. 

This is something inherent in the system that we have to fucking advocate for fixing because it fucks people up badly.
I’m so grateful for our local medical community. When my fiance told the hospital he was trans they listed him as male in my contact info. When he told our doctor she has made every effort to use proper pronouns when she talks to him and has been great about it.
We still need to look into getting certain things done for him such as removing his breasts and I know this is the aspect of it he’s not looking forward to dealing with.

This was a great post. The only part I don’t agree with is stating you could never ask others to take a stand against these policies. Because the cis community isn’t going to make that stand for you. Though many of us will of course stand by you all, and offer our support, those types of stands need to be made by the people who need the change. Rebellion is hard, it’s messy, and yes people can die. But without the courage to do so, your needed changes will never occur.

It’s cis people’s responsibility.

I can’t ask other trans people to step up and put their own lives at risk based solely on principle. They can volunteer, but I could never ask them to let cis people put a knife at their throat and let the cis people decide if they live or die. 

I have known dozens of presently dead trans people whose deaths were caused by gatekeeping. I can’t ask people to die for principle alone when this is not their fault, and when they can often live through the gatekeeping process if they play by the rules, and end up with happier, less dysphoric lives.

Trans people, specifically trans women, will always be my top priority. And I would never ask any of us to toss ourselves onto a flaming pyre out of principle to try and smother it (key word being try…we alone cannot dismantle the system of power wielded against us) when I could push for cis people to get some goddamn water and put the fire out. We deserve to live and be happy, and cis people deserve to put the work in to make that easier for us, because cis people are still killing us daily, directly or indirectly.

So don’t talk to me or any of us about courage or death. When you’ve got lists and lists of dead friends and acquaintances, when you’ve literally had to put your life in another person’s hands ready to be snuffed out on a goddamn weekly basis for years, with everything to lose and nothing but the basic human experiences to gain, maybe then you can talk to us about courage or death.

Fucking hell

Go keep talking about all of this in the abstract, like you have any understanding of what’s at stake or how to fix this. You’re part of the problem. As a cis ally, it’s your job to boost trans people’s voices on this matter, spread awareness to other cis people, do the grunt work, because cis people will always have more power than trans people to enact those changes, and the stakes for you in putting your energy and time into those changes will always be slim to none (whereas for us, it can easily be life or death). That’s the point of cis allyship. it’s literally super safe for you to work for change for trans people, where it’s super dangerous for us to lead the charge, which is why SO MANY OF US DIE, generally avoidable deaths if cis people could keep their heads out of their asses and spent a few hours penning and pushing through legislation and doing basic activism work.

Cis people have always been weaponized against trans people by society, and cis allies of ours are meant to act as our shields, our tools, for us to utilize in creating change and eliminating our oppression. 

So fucking listen, and be an ally

cameoamalthea:

fattyatomicmutant:

A friend is telling me Trump may be winning but like

fuck

November the eigth ain’t even here yet

It’s about the polls and here’s the issue

Trump has supporters who will vote for him no matter what he does. Trump himself has said he could shoot someone in the middle of a crowded street and still have supporters.

So those supporters LOVE Trump and will show up no matter what happens. Then you have others who don’t like either candidate, but we’re thinking they couldn’t support Trump a week ago because of the sexual assault scandals.

As time passed those people began to care less about the scandal. Every time Trump manages to go a week without a new scandal everyone forgets about the last one and the old supporters will always be there either way.

Hillary doesn’t have hard core supporters who love her and are super excited. Hillary’s supporters are more ‘she’s the best we’ve got’. Also, liberal/progressive voters tend to be more idealistic so they don’t like voting ‘no matter what?’

So a conservative might say ‘I’m not a racist myself, and I don’t like the KKK, but the fact the KKK endorses Trump won’t stop me from voting for him’.

A progressive might say ‘Hillary Clinton has said and done problematic things, so even though voting for her is essential to protect the rights of oppressed groups I’d feel better if I didn’t vote for a problematic person so I’m staying home.’

Trump knows this. That’s why his campaign strategy has been to make Hillary look bad to people won’t vote for him. Targeting black voters with Facebook content about things from the 90s (Trump’s policies and Supreme Court would do harm now and Hillary would be better, but the focus is on her not being good enough).

Then unlike Trump, scandals don’t happen and then go away after a week. Hillary’s emails have been an issue since 2015 and no one wants to move on. They just keep hammering it, and any new development reaffirms the line that something really bad must have happened.

So Hillary goes from being 5 points ahead to one point behind. This isn’t because Trump got more popular, he has the same white voters he’s always had but Clinton has lost support among the ‘lesser of two evils crowd’.

The Republicans who didn’t really want to support Trump are more willing to show up and vote to stop Hillary Clinton. The progressives are more likely to stay home or vote 3rd party because they don’t want to support “the system” or someone they feel isn’t perfect.

Basically Trump is winning in the polls, and it’s not because more people are voting for him. It’s because more people won’t for Hillary Clinton to stop Trump.

The choices are ‘Good’ vs ‘Terrible’ And people are saying, I’m not voting unless we get to pick something great. Except the the election isn’t ‘no one wins, let’s change the system and have a do-over’ if people don’t show up to vote, the person with the most votes win and you can bet the racists are showing up.

The reason to talk about this now, rather than next week, is so that maybe we can change things before it’s too late by encouraging people to vote.

sterekseason:

Don’t forget that your vote does matter.  

Even if you live in a typically red or blue state, this election is about more than just the next president (but that is important so please vote for Hillary).

There’s a chance for the Democrats to take back the House and Senate.  

There are local issues to vote on, judges to elect, town council members to be voted on. 

Your one vote matters. It matters a lot. Please, if you live in the U.S., get out and vote on November 8th (or vote early, that’s always an option).

So please, please, please vote. 

cumaeansibyl:

elodieunderglass:

iwasawas-strings:

legolokiismighty:

theprettiestboy:

sillysadskeleton:

mazarinedrake:

Donald Trump is exactly the kind of person that Jesus would have thrown out of the temple and beaten with a stick, and the fact that so many self-identified Christians want to put him in office tells you pretty everything wrong with white American Christianity. 

Because Jesus had authority at temples and beat people.

I 100% can’t tell if you’re joking here but he actually did chase people out of a temple at least once for using religion for their own selfish gains, complete with literal table flipping and improvised whips

So really it’s not that he would have trump thrown out as much as he would storm in and accuse him of turning his father’s house into a den of thieves before upending a table on his head

Dude, Jesus not only chased them out, he broke stuff they were selling, let loose all of their animals, and fucking flipped all the money-changing tables.

Jesus 100% would have been chasing Trump out with a table leg.

Canon Jesus 10000% better than fanon Jesus

Canon Jesus did some very weird shit. Like, just before throwing the market out of the temple, he stole a donkey, then cursed a fig tree because it didn’t have any fruit on it. The next day, or possibly immediately, everyone was amazed that the fig tree he had cursed was withered. He must’ve been in a fuckin weird mood. Going through a Dark Period. The Chaotic Mage of Light losing his shit just a little bit.

“So, what the fuck was that, Jesus?” someone asked as they’re all looking at the horribly withered corpse of the poor cursed tree.

“The power of prayer,” Jesus said absently.

“… wait, is cursing literally a form of prayer? Because some Wiccans are going to be really upset about that, like, they have a whole threefold law thing, is this… okay?”

“Listen,” said Jesus, “If I tell a mountain to get back in the sea? The mountain will get in the fucking sea. Do you want me to tell you to get in the sea?”

And they were all like, “Good demo, Jesus. Good lesson.”

Meanwhile, he was having the aforementioned public brawl in the temple.

Just keep that in mind during this election cycle – viable answers for What Would Jesus Do include flipping tables, stealing animals and striking down shrubbery with magic, all in one week.

Before Holy Week in the church calendar comes the lesser-known festival of Christ Doesn’t Give A Fuck Week

cameoamalthea:

fattyatomicmutant:

A friend is telling me Trump may be winning but like

fuck

November the eigth ain’t even here yet

It’s about the polls and here’s the issue

Trump has supporters who will vote for him no matter what he does. Trump himself has said he could shoot someone in the middle of a crowded street and still have supporters.

So those supporters LOVE Trump and will show up no matter what happens. Then you have others who don’t like either candidate, but we’re thinking they couldn’t support Trump a week ago because of the sexual assault scandals.

As time passed those people began to care less about the scandal. Every time Trump manages to go a week without a new scandal everyone forgets about the last one and the old supporters will always be there either way.

Hillary doesn’t have hard core supporters who love her and are super excited. Hillary’s supporters are more ‘she’s the best we’ve got’. Also, liberal/progressive voters tend to be more idealistic so they don’t like voting ‘no matter what?’

So a conservative might say ‘I’m not a racist myself, and I don’t like the KKK, but the fact the KKK endorses Trump won’t stop me from voting for him’.

A progressive might say ‘Hillary Clinton has said and done problematic things, so even though voting for her is essential to protect the rights of oppressed groups I’d feel better if I didn’t vote for a problematic person so I’m staying home.’

Trump knows this. That’s why his campaign strategy has been to make Hillary look bad to people won’t vote for him. Targeting black voters with Facebook content about things from the 90s (Trump’s policies and Supreme Court would do harm now and Hillary would be better, but the focus is on her not being good enough).

Then unlike Trump, scandals don’t happen and then go away after a week. Hillary’s emails have been an issue since 2015 and no one wants to move on. They just keep hammering it, and any new development reaffirms the line that something really bad must have happened.

So Hillary goes from being 5 points ahead to one point behind. This isn’t because Trump got more popular, he has the same white voters he’s always had but Clinton has lost support among the ‘lesser of two evils crowd’.

The Republicans who didn’t really want to support Trump are more willing to show up and vote to stop Hillary Clinton. The progressives are more likely to stay home or vote 3rd party because they don’t want to support “the system” or someone they feel isn’t perfect.

Basically Trump is winning in the polls, and it’s not because more people are voting for him. It’s because more people won’t for Hillary Clinton to stop Trump.

The choices are ‘Good’ vs ‘Terrible’ And people are saying, I’m not voting unless we get to pick something great. Except the the election isn’t ‘no one wins, let’s change the system and have a do-over’ if people don’t show up to vote, the person with the most votes win and you can bet the racists are showing up.

The reason to talk about this now, rather than next week, is so that maybe we can change things before it’s too late by encouraging people to vote.

bicatperson:

Yeah, okay, I’m gonna do one more of these.

Because it’s an ugly sexist myth that Hillary Clinton has never gotten anything done, and Donald keeps saying it anyway, because he knows his supporters will never bother to look it up. (Also to distract from his own record of bankruptcies and lawsuits and not getting an Emmy.)

And even on the left, you get people saying “how can we trust Clinton, even if her positions sound good, how can we know if she’ll follow through?”

Gee, I dunno, maybe we can look at her forty-year track record and extrapolate from there.

(Buckle up, this one’s gonna get long.)

In fact, let’s go back farther, let’s look at Hillary Rodham the Wellesley undergrad, 1965-1969:

• This kid pushed for everything from “increasing the number of black students and faculty members” to “a better system for returning library books
• Seriously, Hillary did more to advance racial justice while she was in college than Trump has done in his entire life
• …and
  one friend remembers her as the only white person who called with
  sympathy when MLK was shot

And then let’s talk about Hillary the law student, lawyer, and professor, with some First Lady of Arkansas thrown in:

• 1972: went undercover to expose secret illegal segregation in Arkansas private schools
• 1973: went door-to-door for the Children’s Defense Fund, looking for people whose kids weren’t getting to school, and asking why
• Turns out the reason was usually “the school can’t handle my kid’s disability”
• In fact,
  pre-1975: “U.S. public schools accommodated only 1 out of 5 children with
  disabilities. Until that time, many states had laws that explicitly excluded children
  with certain types of disabilities from attending public school.”
• HRC researched and helped prepare the CDF report that was a major catalyst for the US finally making that illegal
• 1975: you may have heard that this was the year when Hillary was the (court-appointed) defense attorney for a rapist (who pled guilty)
• but you probably haven’t heard what she did next:
• She founded the first rape-crisis counseling hotline in Arkansas
• And this was not a symbolic gesture
• This was not something she halfassed for the sake of looking good
• Hillary made herself a nationally-renowned expert in the field
• Listen: “In 1975, I helped start the first rape crisis center in Atlanta.

  I was
  trying to navigate the legal issues related to child assault victims,
  but the law was so new, I was lost, so I asked for help. Everywhere I
  called, the experts would say, ‘Do you know Hillary Rodham? She’s who
  you need to talk to.‘”

• 1977: co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a nonprofit that’s still going strong
• And worked for the Legal Services Corporation – a government service that makes sure low-income people can get attorneys – under Jimmy Carter
• Note that conservatives hate the LSC, in part because it was openly serving gay clients in the ‘70s
• Seriously, open this Heritage Foundation screed and skip to the bit about “homosexual activists”
• (or just read the whole thing, it’s great)
• With HRC’s chairmanship, that agency tripled its budget

• 1979: chair of a committee that expanded healthcare access into rural Arkansas! and helped establish the state’s first neonatal nursery! and a program to help parents of preschool-age at-risk children!

Let’s talk about First Lady Clinton, 1993-2001:

• 1994: (movie trailer voice) In A World where gay sex was literally illegal … where gay people were thrown out of the military, to laughter and applause on the Senate floor … One Political Couple had a politically radioactive idea: what if we stopped doing that?
• 1995: Hillary fought for mental health care for Gulf War veterans, back when the Defense Department hadn’t even worked out that Gulf War PTSD and chemical-warfare-related health issues were a thing
• 1997: long before Obamacare, the Children’s Health Insurance Program
• More than 8 million children got health insurance
• HRC wasn’t even in Congress yet, and her efforts were pivotal in getting the law passed – and then translating it into action
• Same with the Adoption and Safe Families Act, “the most significant change in federal child-protection policy in almost two decades”
• Note: “it expands both adoptions and federal assistance in general to a wider
  population of Americans — single adults, including lesbians and gay
  men, even single elderly people — people usually left out of family
  focused agenda”
• 1999: Followed that up with the Foster Care Independence Act, making sure kids who have aged out of the foster care system could get things like healthcare, housing assistance, and counseling

HRC followed that by immediately getting elected Senator from New York, and then re-elected by an even wider margin, so she served from 2001-2009.

I’m just gonna focus on the 77 bills Senator Clinton sponsored or cosponsored that that became law (although she introduced more than 2000, so imagine what could’ve happened with a Democratic majority):

• Of the 70 GOP senators she worked alongside, a whopping 56 of them co-sponsored at least one bill with her.
• That’s 80%
• That’s the “4 out of 5 dentists recommend…!” tier of approval
• (and STILL you get people trying to spin that as proof that she’s not bipartisan!)
• 2001: Clinton was “instrumental” in getting federal aid for NYC after 9/11
• Then in getting medical treatment for first responders
• And it’s not just the people close to home she works for: check out the
  Afghan Women and Children Relief Act, to “provide urgent funds for immunisation, basic education and other
  assistance to vulnerable women and children, including refugees.”
• You like research and care for leukemia and other blood cancers, right? So does HRC
• You like research and care for breast/cervical cancer, right? And you think Native American women should be covered by the treatment options? So does HRC
• 2002: Requiring pharmaceutical companies to do specific research on the effects their drugs have on children, and label accordingly
• Pediatricians talk about how this has led to real, substantial improvements in their ability to treat kids
• 2003:
  You like research and care for West Nile and other mosquito-borne viruses, right? So does HRC
• Congress’ very first nanotech bill, authorizing R&D funds
• 2004:
  Creating a State Department envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism
• Try to look this one up and most of what you’ll get is furious articles from Stormfront
• 2006:
  You like research and care for babies born prematurely, right? So does HRC – and the March of Dimes loves it
• Protecting people in the armed forces from predatory insurance schemes
• Improving our preparedness for public health emergencies, including
  funding for NHS workers, more consideration for at-risk individuals, and uniform coordination of electronic response systems across
  states
• Look, I’m not saying there will be a zombie apocalypse
• I’m just saying, HRC has taken into account the needs of children, people with disabilities, and people with limited English if there’s a zombie apocalypse
• 2008: You
  like

  research and care for traumatic brain injuries, right? So does HRC

• You
  like early screening and care for congenital disorders that show up in newborns, right? So does HRC
• There’s a whole package of amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act to make it apply more broadly, which, again, just go read the whole thing, it’s worth it
• You
  like

  research and treatment for ALS, right? “A nationwide registry will help us learn what causes ALS, how it can be
  effectively diagnosed and treated, and ultimately how it can be cured.
  This is a tremendous victory.”

• btw, this was 6 years before the Ice Bucket Challenge
• Hillary Clinton: Cares About Stuff Before It Goes Viral
• Mapping broadband access across the US, particularly in rural and native
  communities, so we can compare our progress to other countries and
  identify barriers for getting high-speed internet access everywhere
• Hey, Tumblr, you care about keeping sexual predators from targeting children online, right? Here’s a bill with a ton of provisions going at that
• 2009: the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which is still having real-world effects as it lets women and minorities sue for equal paychecks

At this point she was also running for President, but in swept Barack Obama and charmed the hearts of America, so Clinton ended up serving as his Secretary of State from 2009-2013.

There’s no Big Flashy Showpiece you can point to from Secretary Clinton’s tenure. A lot of her diplomatic work was straight-up post-Bush-administration repair work and maintenance. A lot of it was, frankly, unsexy. No one writes breathless headlines about statistically-supported initiatives to distribute lifesaving low-pollution stoves.

Also, she didn’t singlehandedly bring peace to the Middle East. So, y’know, missed opportunity there.

But she was obviously doing something right, because Hillary Clinton had a 69% approval rating when she left the State Department in 2013.

A quick roundup of some things Secretary Clinton pulled off just fine:

• Visited more countries than any Secretary of State in US history
• Seriously, she spent the equivalent of 87 full days on airplanes
• Do not talk to Clinton about stamina
• 2009: Policy nerd Hillary gave the State Department internal reviews and long-term planning on a level they had literally never done before
• (I told you some of this was unsexy)
• 2010:
  Did you know we had a 25-year loss of military defense ties with New Zealand? Yeah, HRC fixed that
• “Clinton enacted a new rule making it easier for transgender
  people to register their identities on their passports. […] At the time, this was the most pro-transgender action by
  the federal government ever, and—coming a full six years before the
  Pentagon announced transgender troops could serve openly—it stands as
  one of the most progressive things Clinton has ever done.”
• 2011: pledging disaster relief for Japan after the earthquake and tsunami
• Oh, and the team behind the takedown of bin Laden
• When surveyed a few months after that, a third of Americans believed Clinton would’ve been a better president than Obama

• 2012: Negotiated an unexpected ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas
• and hey, you want to talk about business experience?
• Clinton’s State Department helped clinch a bunch of business contracts between US companies with foreign governments
• Notables: Boeing and Russia
  in 2009, Lockheed Martin and Japan in 2011, Space Systems/Loral and
  Australia in 2012
• ”…the State Department’s 2012 fiscal-year request includes $1.2 billion
  in programs specifically targeting women, $832 million of which will go
  toward global health initiatives. Tellingly, comparisons with past years
  can’t be made, since the department only started tracking women-focused
  dollars in 2010.“

People keep talking about how Clinton is, historically, one of the most unpopular presidential candidates. Those people usually don’t mention how, three years ago, she was the most popular politician in the United States.

And, look: no one is saying she’s only done good things. You can’t work this long in politics and expect to make only the right choices – follow only the strongest intelligence – back only the best policies. Reasonable people can find plenty to disagree with in her record. Plenty to criticize.

But when people try to claim she’s done nothing?

Or that she doesn’t have any consistent beliefs or principles – that her record doesn’t have constant themes that she’s been reliably standing for since the 1970s?

Hillary Clinton has made real, substantial progress for women’s rights.

Real, substantial progress for people with disabilities.

Real, substantial progress for the rights and protections of children.

Anyone tries to tell you otherwise, you laugh in their faces and start listing things. I bet you anything they run out of patience before you run out of list.