In addition to the driver’s license provisions, the law bans transgender people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity in public buildings and creates a bathroom bounty hunter system allowing citizens to sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for at least $1,000 in damages, including potentially in private restrooms. The bill takes effect immediately upon publication in the Kansas Register rather than the standard July 1 effective date—giving transgender Kansans just days between the override and the invalidation of their identity documents.
The consequences for noncompliance could escalate quickly. Under Kansas law, driving without a valid license is a class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine—though first-time offenders are more likely to face a citation and fine. A conviction, however, triggers an automatic 90-day license suspension. If a person drives during that suspension, they face a charge of driving on a suspended license, which carries a mandatory minimum of five days in jail. Kansas already requires county jails to house inmates by sex assigned at birth.
I never had much respect for MBFC. I remember someone sending me a link to Wonkette’s rating on there and writing them off as being “extreme left” because of this dopey site.
When you look closer at MBFC, it’s exactly the kind of thing you’d see Chomsky talking about for years. The “acceptable spectrum” in American media is exceptionally narrow and MBFC perfect reflects this absurd bias.
I’m sure if someone not used to/indoctrinated by that narrow view were to look at a rating like that, they’d expect Wonkette to be some kind of Marxist-Leninist enclave of people all trying to out-tankie each other and rattling off quotes from Mao’s little red book. It is nothing of the sort, and I’m sure not a few leftists call them “neoliberal shills” and “shitlibs” and so on, LOL.
In fairness, I guess it’s possible it’s not because of MBFC but because of one of the ‘alternative’ sites that sell you a quick, easy, zero thought source evaluation (who just happen to lift MBFC’s ratings virtually identically).
But you’re absolutely correct, it’s centering a mainstream American cultural point of view, which itself is political and biased. The idea of “unbiased” is a joke in anthropological circles for a reason; everyone has bias. Erin’s bias is towards not wanting to fucking die while the New York Times’ bias is towards using neoliberal ideology flirting with fascism to make the maximum amount of money possible, but only one of them is verboten here.