The Transgender Military Experience: Their Battle for Workplace Rights

Although there have been studies that focus on the experiences of the gay and lesbian population serving in the United States military, few have focused on the experience of active duty transgender service members. Transgender individuals transgress the binary conception of gender by deviating from societal gender norms associated with assigned sex at birth. The Department of Defense has set policies and standards that reflect a binary conception of gender, with a focus on conformity. We argue that able-bodied gender variant service personnel are just as capable of serving their country as anyone else. Because of the repercussions associated with active duty transgender military personnel, our sample is small and involves nine clandestine service members and two international service members who wanted to share their stories from a different perspective. Snowball sampling was aimed at finding current active duty and reserve transgender service members. Using a combination of telephone interviews and questionnaires, data were collected from active duty transgender service personnel throughout the United States and two from international militaries that allow transgender people to serve. Data collection focused on the overall experiences of the participants along with questions regarding workplace discrimination, suggestions for policy changes, and their views about the overturn of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Our findings add to a growing source of information about the transgender military experience in the U.S. armed forces and the importance of overturning discriminatory workplace policies that negatively impact transgender service members

So Much for Darwin An Analysis of Stormfront Discussions on Race

Even though people who actively participate in the white nationalist movement appear to be a relatively small percentage of the global population, it appears that racist and anti-Semitic attitudes continue to inform a new generation of white nationalists, many of whom populate discussion forums on Stormfront, online since 1995 and billed as the first Internet site in the hate genre. Membership in extremist groups and support for sites like Stormfront embody specific attitudes about race, the importance of the existence of biological races, intellectual superiority of whites, and justification for these beliefs that is sometimes framed with a religious perspective such as Christian Identity. This project is based on a content analysis of Stormfront discussion forums posted online between the years 2010 and 2017. The findings indicate that some discussants are willing to admit the existence of small percentages of mixed DNA without giving up their white identity. They understand the concept of mass migration and human breeding patterns. Others stand ready to argue these points and discredit DNA testing whenever possible. Hatred of Jews is a recurrent theme throughout Stormfront forums, no matter the topic of discussion and both William Pierce and Wesley Swift are gaining currency with younger discussants on the site. Additionally and maybe most importantly, a mentoring system is in place where more mature and seasoned white racialists share race science anecdotes and articles from J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen, among others. They also provide information and answer questions about Christian Identity ideology in an effort to build bridges from one generation of racists to the next

HATE SPEECH, PREJUDICE, AND BIBLICAL INTERPRETATIONS

There has been a long legacy of hate speech, prejudice, and the use of various scriptures from the Bible to uphold anti-Semitic and race based ideologies in the United States. The institution of slavery was based on economic gain for white plantation owners and the southern aristocracy prior to the Civil War. In order to justify enslavement of Africans, rhetorical devices were used to assure inferior status. Many white Christians believed their slaves could be controlled by conversion to Christianity and some actually believed they might even be able to achieve salvation if they did what they were told and never rebelled against their masters. The next groups to experience hostility based on their religion and to some extent, culture, were Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Italy. In the 1800s as European Jews came through Ellis Island in hopes of escaping pograms and genocide in their home countries, they were stereotyped as Christ killers and sub-human by some and unwelcome outsiders by many native born whites. This paper explores the history of hate speech, prejudice, and the Bible. Based on some pseudo-religious theories rooted in white supremacy, I attempt to explain how hateful rhetoric seeped from the fringes into the mainstrea

Anti-Diversity Movements in Europe: Lessons for the U.S.

Anti-Diversity Movements in Europe: Lessons for the U.S. By Dianne Dentice, Ph.D. 936-468-2241 [email protected] In recent years, various social factors have given rise to two far right political parties in Europe: 1) The National Front in France and 2) The Golden Dawn in Greece. The National Front is a right-wing French political party founded in 1972. In White Nationalist circles, it is most commonly associated with leader Jean-Marie Le Pen from 1972 to 2011. He is the father of Marine Le Pen who has recently run for President of France and done remarkably well in the polls. Since its beginnings, the party has strongly supported French nationalism and strict controls on immigration. Supporters are xenophobic and anti-Semitic. After assuming leadership of the party from her father in January 2011, Ms. Le Pen distanced herself from some of the more extreme views associated with her father and the old guard. However, she continued to present immigration from Islamic countries as a threat to France. Ms. Le Pen led the party to a record showing in the first round of elections in March 2011 and in the first round of the 2012 presidential election, she finished third. Although Le Pen did not earn a place in the second round, she won 18 percent of the vote, the highest-ever first-round total for a National Front presidential candidate. With an endorsement from President Trump, she ran again in April 2017 and lost to Emmanuel Macron with 34% of the vote. The Golden Dawn grew from a fringe group of Greek nationalists exploiting fears over immigration to wider mainstream acceptance after the Greek economy crashed during the 2009 financial crisis. Leader and founder of the group, Nikos Michaloliakos, systematically gained political traction resulting in 18 elected parliamentary seats of Golden Dawn members in 2012. In 2015, approximately 380,000 Greeks voted for Golden Dawn candidates. With an economic recession in full force and mandated austerity measures imposed by the government, one group of voters voiced dissatisfaction with the government in general. The other group stated that alternative political choices became important since mainstream elected officials were the cause of their relative deprivation and economic woes. The rise of a neo-Nazi party in Greece is a stark warning as to how the far right uses recessions to build support and get right wing candidates elected to public office. Both of these movements are a case study in the links between economic downturns and social unrest

The Escalation of Trump Stormfront and the 2016 Election

Since David Duke ran for public office and was elected to the Louisiana state legislature in 1989, leaders of the far political right have been trying to gain a foothold in mainstream electoral politics. In a campaign tinged with populist rhetoric, Donald Trump emerged victorious in the 2016 election. What does this mean for the American white nationalist movement

Dawn of a Silver Millennium: Millenarianism, Futurity, and Utopia in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon

The story of Sailor Moon, told and retold in countless forms in the thirty years since the original manga’s publication, is imbued with a cosmic sense of time. The modern-day protagonists’ personal journeys are tightly interwoven with the distant past of the Silver Millennium and the far future of thirtieth-century Crystal Tokyo. But only the manga is fully willing to grapple with what the future means for its own present moment. Written in the early 1990s during Japan\u27s Lost Decade, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon dramatizes the angst that accompanies the imminent arrival of a new millennium. As the Sailor Guardians engage their enemies in battle, the ordinary citizens of Tokyo worry that these strange happenings are portents of a complete break in history coming at the new millennium’s dawn. But even as millennial despair pervades its pages, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon offers something else: a vision of millennial hope. The new millennium is indeed a break in history. But that break consists of a thousand-year period in which Sailor Moon reigns as Neo Queen Serenity over a worldwide utopia where war has been abolished and death is largely unknown. Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon is thus a millenarian text, one that situates itself within both eastern and western millenarian traditions. A proper understanding of this context helps to elucidate the enduring appeal of Sailor Moon’s promise of a new (and Silver) Millennium that transcends the bounds of history and pierces the depths of cosmic time