#zooey zephyr

[pitterpatterletsgetater2]

I haven’t seen a lot of talk about this, and I know we’re all emotionally/mentally exhausted in the USA with rights being stripped, but I think this is important. She’s a brave fucking woman, who is no longer allowed to speak for the people she represents.

Much like the Pearson and Jones expulsion, this is a flagrant move against democracy. However unlike P&J, she wasn’t expelled, just not allowed into the House meetings and not able to speak. She can vote, at least, but…that’s not much in a republican majority.

[porterdavis]

[yourdailyqueer]

Zooey Zephyr

Gender: Transgender woman

Sexuality: Bisexual

DOB: 29 August 1988

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Politician (Democrat), activist

Note: One of the first trans woman to be elected to the Montana legislature

[uncanny-tranny]

In montana US today, I was present for the censuring of trans rep Zooey Zephyr. She has been forbidden from speaking and from entering the chamber for the rest of the year. Please help raise awareness of them silencing our voices in this small state.

I've been sort of keeping tabs on her, it's genuinely fucked up and horrifying. While it's not surprising, it's still horrifying to know that democracy isn't necessarily what is important to America. She was voted in, and she is representing her constituents. Or she should be, rather. If you are out protesting in Montana, please be safe. Keep each other safe. You have people who want your voices heard.

Let Zooey Zephyr speak. Montanans deserve a voice.

[liberalsarecool]

Toby Morton bought MattRegier.com

Matt Regier is the Montana House Speaker and a hot pile of human garbage.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lil Kalish at HuffPost:

The first-ever mobilization of trans voters around a presidential candidate took place on Zoom on Tuesday, as around 1,000 transgender people, including lawmakers, advocates, health care workers and celebrities, logged on to show support for Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the presidency. Trans Folks For Harris was one of numerous identity-based webinars to support Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month. Over the last few weeks, many LGBTQ+ advocates have embraced Harris, touting her decadeslong record of supporting LGBTQ+ rights, and her decision to make Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who transformed the state into a “trans refuge,” her running mate. This came just after Advocates for Trans Equality released a report showing that 75% of eligible trans voters turned up to the polls in the 2020 presidential election, compared to 67% of the general U.S. population — and that trans voters make up a crucial part of the electorate.

“We know our rights and our progress are on the line, but so is our very sense of belonging,” said Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, who was elected as the first openly transgender state senator in the country. If McBride wins her bid for Delaware’s open House seat, she would become the first transgender member of Congress. “We have the opportunity, but more importantly, the responsibility in this election to show a trans young person who fears that the heart of this country is not big enough to love them too, that no matter what extremists say or do, our next president and vice president continue to have their backs,” McBride continued. The Harris-Walz campaign has yet to release any concrete policy plans on civil rights ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, but advocates say Harris and Walz have demonstrated their commitment to supporting LGBTQ+ rights, access to abortion and the rights to bodily autonomy overall. A draft of the Democrats’ platform, which was released in July, outlines their fight to restore reproductive rights, address racial inequalities, and protect democracy.

“It’s a step forward to ensure that trans people, especially Black and Brown trans women, have the representation and the resources they need to live with dignity and pride,” Zahara Bassett, CEO of Chicago trans advocacy organization Life Is Work, said on the call. “We need to make sure that our future is one of equity, justice and liberation for us all.” Harris was one of the first elected officials to publicly back marriage equality in 2004, and she refused to defend Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, in 2008. As a prosecutor, she also led the charge to end the so-called gay and transgender “panic defense,” a legal strategy often used to seek a lesser offense for perpetrators of anti-LGBTQ+ violence or murder by claiming that the victim made same-sex sexual advances. In June 2023, Harris became the first sitting vice president to visit the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement, and the site of the historic 1969 uprising of LGBTQ+ people fighting back against police raids in the New York City bar. And earlier this week, Harris released a video on X outlining how former President Donald Trump vastly restricted LGBTQ+ rights while in office — and how he would do so again if elected. Trump has already promised to roll back several policies, including blocking access to gender-affirming care for minors and rescinding the Biden administration’s Title IX rules that expand protections for transgender students. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, introduced a bill in the upper chamber to criminalize gender-affirming care for trans youth.

[...] Today’s embrace of Harris is in stark contrast to how some LGBTQ+ voters remembered her last bid for president in 2019. Back then, some advocates took issue with Harris’ tenure as a prosecutor for how she pushed for criminal penalties for parents of truant children and which led to the arrest of many Black and brown people. Many also noted how as attorney general, Harris’ office denied an incarcerated trans woman’s request for gender-affirming care. Harris has since apologized and said she takes “full responsibility” for her office’s actions. But still, not all LGBTQ+ voters are convinced. Harris’ support for the Biden administration’s policies towards Israel’s war in Gaza has alienated some of these voters. In the Democratic primaries this year, hundreds of thousands of voters cast “uncommitted” ballots as a form of protest to push for a cease-fire and end U.S. weapons transfers to Israel.

For the first time in American Presidential history, an organized mobilization effort for trans Americans to support Kamala Harris’s Presidency bid has cropped up, featuring a Trans Folks For Harris Zoom call. 🏳️‍⚧️

[jasondamien93]

👏🏳️‍⚧️✊

[themosticonicseveredhead]

when i sat down to watch the 2023 World Forum for Democracy's "Women, Democracy and Peace" talk, i can safely say i did *not* expect Montana State Representative (and noted ttrpg enthusiast) Zooey Zephyr to quote Brennan Lee Mulligan, but i can hardly say i'm disappointed

truly a woman of the people

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Today the far-right dominated Montana legislature, after first silencing her, plans to censure and expel its first elected trans woman member, Zooey Zephyr, just as the Tennessee legislature did to two young Black men. 

All because she dared to condemn legislation that will kill and torture trans children -- something that Democratic Party leaders and Joe Biden have refused to condemn, much less take action against.

These attacks go far beyond the scope of electoral politics. They are attacks on the right of oppressed people to be represented or even speak on matters that directly affect them. Fortunately, there is a growing fight-back movement to #LetHerSpeak. I have no doubt that there will be a fierce struggle to restore her seat if she is expelled, as there was for Justin Jones and Justin Pearson in Tennessee.

"Blue check" fans of Elon Musk are now openly calling for the public executions of trans people, their families and their health care providers. This is a fight for the whole working class and progressive movement. 

If you haven't spoken up, if you haven't joined a protest, if you haven't paid attention -- the time is now. 

- redguard

Artwork by Lee Leslie

[lenbryant]

Zooey Zephyr celebrates at LGBT prom, with a surprise ending.

[odinsblog]

What an asshole

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr spent her first day in legislative exile Thursday relegated to a bench in a noisy hallway across from a snack bar outside the state House chambers where she is no longer allowed.

Zephyr defiantly stayed put even after the Republican House speaker said she couldn’t be there and a House security officer threatened to move the bench where she had set up her laptop. She listened to debate and voted remotely from there, with a gold sticky note on the wall above her head that read “Seat 31,” her seat assignment in the house. The note was placed there by transgender and nonbinary Rep. SJ Howell.

Republicans had wanted Zephyr to participate from behind the doors of the House Minority’s offices a day after they voted to ban her from the House floor for the rest of the session, which ends early next week.

Her refusal to do so came as Democrats sought to keep Zephyr’s banishment in plain view after a week’s worth of nationwide public scrutiny over Republicans’ unprecedented actions to silence her, which continued Thursday.

Republicans moved to sideline Zephyr further by shutting down the two committees she serves on and moving the bills they were to hear to other committees, Democratic Rep. Donavon Hawk said in a statement.

(continue reading)

[theatreofthelivingmind]

When I saw Zooey Zephyr proposed to her girlfriend Erin Reed...well, my week got a bit better.

Congrats to the couple 👭

[thoughtportal]

Zooey Zephyr

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ryan Adamczeski at The Advocate:

When House Speaker Mike Johnson announced a ban against transgender people using the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identities inside U.S. Capitol buildings, Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr was “literally in the bathroom at the Capitol." The out transgender lawmaker tells The Advocate that she felt a sense of déjà vu when she saw the news on her phone as she was – literally – minding her own business. While ironic, it was a moment not unlike the day she was censured by the Montana House of Representatives for defending trans youth.

The Republican supermajority voted to bar Zephyr from speaking on the floor of the state legislature in 2023 after she said that conservatives' ban on gender-affirming care for youth would result in “blood on [their] hands.” Almost two years later, the Republican supermajority has been voted out, and Zephyr has won her reelection campaign. She says that “getting to return to the [state] Capitol and represent Missoula is an honor” – and it’s especially exciting now that she’ll have her full legislative privileges reinstated. “One of the things that you don't have control over is the extent of the cruelty, the lengths to which someone will go – particularly those in positions of power – to try to hurt and exclude,” Zephyr says. “For me, the work was to reveal that cruelty for what it was, and not allow it to take away the things that I did have control over: love for myself, love for my partner, and care for the well-being of my community.”

As Zephyr conducted her work from a bench outside the legislative chamber, her resilience inspired people around the world and in her community – one of whom was director Kimberly Reed. The filmmaker began documenting Zephyr’s life; both her professional struggles as she dealt with discrimination from colleagues and constituents, and her personal triumphs as she planned her proposal to her partner. “As a trans woman from Montana, it was very important to tell the story of a trans woman from Montana,” Reed says. “It may take a while, but the more stories like Zooey's that we put out there, the more trans folks that a large audience can meet, the more we can get through this.” Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr showcases several emotional scenes from the past two years of the lawmaker’s journey, from the crowds who filled the Capitol halls to support her, to the group of women who tried to further demean her by blocking her bench. One particularly moving moment shows Zephyr comforting a trans teen, Sid, who was in tears before they were set to speak against an anti-trans law in front of the state legislature.

[...]

As a second Trump Administration draws near, Zephyr says that she is focused on the bright spots in her life. Because “his administration is often fueled by and enjoys the hell out of chaotic news cycles and vitriolic rage politics,” she believes “our job as a community is to make sure to know when individually we need to unplug and care for ourselves.”

Zephyr also believes that the trans community and their allies have the responsibility to fight “unequivocally for our inclusion and to hold people accountable who fall short of that barometer,” referring to the few Democratic lawmakers who have bent the knee to conservatives and pushed to abandon trans rights. These efforts are short-sighted, Zephyr says, as “we've seen only a handful of Dems who have stood up and allied themselves with anti-trans legislation, and almost without fail, those Dems are gone.” “You cannot throw a community under the bus and at the same time say that you stand for them,” Zephyr says. “[Conservatives] hate our community, and our job is to make sure that we do not somehow cede ground and say, ‘Well, we will accept discrimination in certain areas. We will accept that we are lesser in these spaces.’ There is no asterisk on trans people that you can put on us that we will deem an acceptable form of discrimination.”

Zephyr says that she recognizes the “unfairness” of the situation for U.S. Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first out trans member of the U.S. Congress, as she navigates Republicans’ targeted attacks even before her first term as a national lawmaker begins. While Zephyr has “no doubt that [McBride] will find spaces where she can bipartisanly bring powerful bills that will help people in Delaware and Americans more broadly,” she hopes that the Delaware representative will embrace her role as a symbol for the trans community to rally behind as their civil rights are taken away, even if it is a “burden” she should not have to carry. “With the slew of anti-trans legislation coming, trans people are going to look to Congresswoman McBride in that building and say, ‘Where is she drawing the lines of accepted discrimination? What is she willing to fight for?’ And I recognize the unfairness of that having faced an echo of that in Montana” Zephyr says. “I think she will have to contend with, as many firsts have to, not just the burden of trying to be an effective legislator, but of trying to be a beacon for a community who feels alone, scared, and on the precipice of being abandoned.”

[...] Because trans people were “the closing argument for the Trump administration in this election cycle,” Reed says it was “important to let the joy win, to let the love win out, and for the film to take the advice that Zooey was giving Sid – to not let them get you down.” “If we let them frame the argument every time, it's a no-win situation,” Reed explains. “We need to frame it in our own way, and we need to frame it in terms of love and support and joy and positivity. That's what gets you through. … That's our final argument.”

[...] “It is resoundingly important that we plant the flag of joy, of our own personal joy, and that we do not let these efforts to erase and exclude stop us from making decisions that give our lives meaning,” Zephyr adds. 

Trans Montana State Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) spoke to LGBTQ+ publication The Advocate. Zephyr then called on trans people to “plant the flag of joy”.