Has New England been lost to the Ents?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Feral plants swarm across lost farmland: has the lesson of Day of the Triffids been lost on the Americans?

Comments

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Unsurprisingly it only takes two comments to get to, "Overpopulation! Disaster! Sterilization!" However, that does lead to this interesting tidbit:

Little known fact about Sweden, that supposed bastion of liberal idealism: If a Swedish transgender person wants to legally update their gender on official ID papers, a 1972 law requires them to get both divorced and sterilized first.

Sweden is considered extremely gay-friendly, with one of the highest rates of popular support for same-sex marriage, and more than half the population supports gay adoption. Arguing that the current law is both unpopular and abusive, the country's moderate and liberal parties want to see it repealed. In response, the small but powerful Christian Democrat party formed a coalition with other right-of-center parties to join in upholding the requirement for sterilization. End result: a proposal for new legislation that allows trans—a preferred term for many people who undergo gender reassignment—to be married but continues to force them to be sterilized.

When trans people can't present official identification matching their preferred gender presentation, they can suffer "frequent public humiliation, vulnerability to discrimination, and great difficulty finding or holding a job," says Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Program at Human Rights Watch, in response to the law.

http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2012/01/sweden-still-forcing-sterilization

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

For irony's sake a sex change operation in Iran requires... nothing really; Tell the authorities that you're getting a sex change, you'll then be able to schedule a date for the operations and once you have that the authorities will update your birth certificate appropriately without any real fuss, due to the hard work of Iranian trans-activist Maryam Hatoon Molkara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Hatoon_Molkara), who managed to get two fatwas from both a pre- and post-revolutionary ayatollah okaying it and thereby giving Iran one of the most liberal transrights laws in the world.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

That's certainly not something I expected.

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

The problem is that gay is assimilated into being trans in Iran--if you're biologically a guy who's into other guys, well, you must be a woman. Else, y'know, stoning.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting way to solve the Obvious Problem that Everyone Must Be Straight.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

No, it went from 'humans crowding out animals' straight to Horror Oh Noes Forced Sterilization(tm) Would Be The Only Way!

Nary a nod to letting all these 'sluts' buy contraceptives through their insurance plan, or other, yanno, practical VOLUNTARY things.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Because if they have access to birth control, they'll stop being pregnant all the time and have time do science and look at the rocks and realize how to extract lunar He-3 from them

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Has anyone tested those New England rocks for 3He? I THINK NOT!

And I'll point out that the Adirondacks are largely made of anorthosite, just like the lunar highlands.

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

::like::

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Were overly fertile transgendered people a real problem in Sweden?