Bathroom Bills are Bullshit

Bathroom sink

Content Warning

The following post contains some traumatic and triggering scenarios. There is foul language and references to body parts.

North Carolina just made it a law that transgender people will no longer be able to use bathrooms in state owned buildings. It’s only slightly more nuanced than that, but the reality is that implementing this law means that colleagues, friends, members of my family, and likely me* will not be able to go to the bathroom when visiting anything from schools, to the capitol, to state parks. And this is bullshit.

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Joining a New Team of Accessibility Professionals

bathroom signs

The last two and half months have been quite an adventure. During this time I applied to work with over 50 companies. I conducted interviews with 28 of them. I went to multiple rounds of interviews with a dozen; and 8 went as far as doing whatever the company used as a technical gauge or code test. Discussions with four companies got to the point of discussing salary. I visited in companies on both the east coast and the west coast.

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A Way to Express Oppression

Blackjack

Social media is a tool that can be used for great good (rallying rebellion and protests against tyranny), great evil (rallying mobs to harass people), or plain fun (cat gifs). Most of us using social media will surround ourselves with people we want to communicate with. A lot of times, these people have the same political, social, and economic views as us, but in some cases they don’t. We all have that one uncle or aunt that is our polar opposite, but because they’re family we try and tolerate their extreme ideas.

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Open Letter to Stewart Butterfield

Yesterday, Stewart Butterfield of Slack emailed his team letting them know that the San Francisco office would be closed in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I think this is brilliant. He makes a good case for why more companies should be closed and we need to continue the fight for civil rights.

These are people who have been beaten, and burned, and raped, and shot, and hanged because they stood up for their own basic dignity. Not people asking to take something from someone else. Not people threatening harm. People asking for an equal right to vote, to have freedom from violence, access to education and housing, and the right to make a living.

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Hello World

This isn’t an easy post for me to write. I hadn’t planned on writing it yet, but then on October 2nd, 2015 I gave a talk and while I knew what is in my slides, I didn’t realize I was outing myself while I was speaking. I guess I was just in the zone. This is what happens when you don’t rehearse and know your lines verbatim. You wing it and say what works in the moment.

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