We won’t lose Jim Kyle after all. He’s just in Beverly Marrero’s district now. And you know, she probably won’t run anyway. Especially because she’ll see how important it is to keep Kyle’s leadership in the Senate.
So, everyone wins!
Well, except for Democratic women. It will suck for us to not have Marrero. But who cares about us? Amirite?
The more I think about this, the more grossed out I get. If you read the Times Free Press article, it’s even clearer how fucked up this is. First of all, it’s fucked at the level of “does my legislation do what I seem to want it to do?” Floyd heard about an incident in Texas where a woman was fired from Macy’s for refusing to let a teenager she considered male use the women’s changing room. Floyd’s response to feeling outrage over that (rightfully or not) is to introduce legislation to make it a crime to use the bathroom or changing room in a public place of the “wrong” gender?
Macy’s isn’t a public place. Floyd’s bill wouldn’t even address the scenario he’s so outraged about.
For starters, Harwell should read him the riot act for that–piss-poor legislation writing that doesn’t do what you want it to do.
But that needs to be followed up by something and I’m not sure what. Dude hears about a kid doing something he doesn’t like clear in Texas and his response is to file this piece of shit legislation that doesn’t even do what he wants it to do and then he fantasizes about how he’d kill a person like that (and let me point out, apparently in violation of the law he wants to enact, since he’d have to go into the dressing room to do it), in public, to reporters. Yes, under the guise of “protecting” his family.
But Christ, I have to tell you, the list of people I now believe are in physical danger from Representative Floyd based on his words and behavior yesterday is transgender people–especially transgender women, gender non-conforming people of any sort, and his family. And I frankly wouldn’t know how to rank those. I believe his vitriol toward transgender women is clearly at the point where it’s affecting his judgment about whether he’s acting appropriately and affecting his behavior, but he is around his family all the time.
I’m not saying that folks don’t fantasize about killing people. I’m saying that when you’re bragging openly about it to reporters, that’s the time when your boss needs to step in and do something. I can’t think of any other scenario in which a person with a job that requires some kind of public service would be allowed to tell reporters about how he fantasizes about killing certain members of that public and he’d still be allowed to keep his job without any repercussions.
This is a dude whose own words reveal that he is coming unmoored from acceptable social behavior. We live in a state where we’ve had some horrific high-profile murders of transgender women and their killers have never been caught. So, we live in a place where Floyd has reinforcement for his belief that murdering a transgender woman would be repercussionless. I don’t know if he’s a bomb waiting to go off, but dear god, who wants to wait and see? He’s said what he’ll do. And he’s proud of it. I think we have to take him at his word about that.
For the safety of our community, there needs to be some kind of intensive intervention. And I don’t know who other than Beth Harwell can do it.
Will she?
I don’t know.
Tiny Cat Pants 