Rachel

The S-word

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 00:10:47 GMT

A series of demonstrations known as Slut Walks have or will soon be held in many major cities. They started because of a statement made in January of this year by a representative of the Toronto Police that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized." While I find the original comment to be abhorrently indicative of victim-blaming, the walks themselves really don't resonate for me and I'm hoping that in writing about it I'll be able to put my finger on why.

One piece that's been making the rounds points out the racial element:

As a word used to shame white women who do not conform to morally conservative norms about chaste sexuality, the term very much reflects white women’s specific struggles around sexuality and abuse. Although plenty of Black women have been called “slut,” I believe Black women’s histories are different, in that Black female sexuality has always been understood from without to be deviant, hyper, and excessive. Therefore, the word slut has not been used to discipline (shame) us into chaste moral categories, as we have largely been understood to be unable to practice “normal” and “chaste” sexuality anyway.

I don't identify as a woman of color*, but a similar idea applies in that "slut" feels just as irrelevant to me as a woman who doesn't date or have sex with men.

Now, I've experienced enough street harassment to be decidedly aware of just how ignorant the police comment was. The utter irrelevance of what someone's wearing (beyond it containing female gendered markers) to whether one experiences sexual harassment became crystal clear to me during high school, when I was catcalled while walking down the street wearing a one-size-fits-all broomstick skirt and an oversized t-shirt (a burlap sack would probably have been more form fitting and shown more skin). But harassment and assault aren't about sex appeal, they're about macho cred, so my long hair and skirt were enough to make me a target.

But the least physically safe that I've felt, by far, is when wearing gender non-conforming clothing (and I'm still pretty solidly on the female side of the spectrum, the occasional flannel shirt or cargo pants notwithstanding)*. After all, as another piece I read points out, "men often target those they believe to be the least powerful in the social hierarchy and, therefore, least likely to report them to (or be believed by) the police." The organizers of SlutWalk DCare certainly correct when they say that "No one should equate enjoying sex with attracting sexual assault." But I'm most concerned about assault in exactly the opposite context, when my gender expression is interpreted as a sign that I don't enjoy sex with men. So while I'd encourage anyone who's so inclined to attend (D.C.'s is scheduled for August 13th), I don't plan to do so myself.

* This isn't to say that I'm oblivious to the threat of attack when I'm wearing my clothes that are less on the butch side; few woman are. But even those clothes don't tend to be particularly tight or revealing, so "slut shaming" still doesn't feel like it has a lot of personal relevance for me.

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 02:41:36 GMT

Friday night I saw Ameriville, "An explosive fusion of storytelling and the infectious rhythms of jazz, Gospel, and hip-hop" that "puts the state of the Union under a microscope...through the lens of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath." My bias notwithstanding (I went largely to support a friend who was working tech), I genuinely think that technically-speaking it was extremely impressive.

Perhaps most strikingly, they used lighting and choreography to infuse the show with exquisite form, shadow, etc. in a way that was clearly deliberate but done so seamlessly it "felt" unconscious.

The show is very much experiential (no Brechtian acting here), taking the audience through a crisis of faith in the American dream particularly brought to the forefront by Hurricane Katrina. It's intense; though there are distinct "scenes," they aren't separated by blackouts or closed curtains like in "traditional" plays so the show flows continuously. That being said, they did a great job of varying more intense "scenes" with those that might be equally serious but have a more humorous approach. Similarly, they alternated "simpler" monologues and dialogues with montages that managed to be complex without feeling "busy."

Throughout the show, they used the device of repeating/riffing on snippets from well-known songs, and by doing so repeatedly and with an eclectic range of songs that paralleled the show's "embrace U.S. diversity" message turned the music into a unifying motif. Also, I'm now in lust with the actress's voice.

This great promotional video clip should give you a sense of what I'm talking about above.

Content-wise it was definitely thought-provoking for me, though I suspect not in the ways the creators/performers intended. Two of the scenes that most people found most powerful (including the friend who I "dragged" along, a.k.a. "asked if she'd like to go") really rubbed me the wrong way.

One was about hate crimes and right from the beginning used very loaded imagery - an image of a burning cross as the background, and three actors chasing the fourth and the fourth miming being hung. The person being "lynched" then has a monologue that, by offering a super-abbreviated reason that various groups hate various other groups, is I think supposed to show the absurdity of racial hatred, making statements that are accurate depictions of how a given group thinks but that are so ridiculous they're funny in a way. That....didn't work for me. I think that most ethno-racial "othering" is a matter of competing for limited resources (whether that be concrete like land or intangible societal respect) - settlers say the indigenous people are savages to justify taking their land, "white" people (even those who don't benefit economically from it) perpetuate the subjugation and enslavement of "black" people because hey, we may be dirt poor but at least we aren't them, etc. Over time, however, that original reason is no longer important because the violence perpetrated by the other side is more than enough to fuel ongoing fear and hate. As I interpreted it, this scene failed to account for either of those factors. (Actually, though it certainly dealt extensively with class, the show as a whole left me feeling like they should have done more debunking of the "limited resources" idea because it ties in so much to their message about the importance of supporting our fellow countrymen.) With the imagery making me viscerally tense up but the attempt to deconstruct racism not working for me, I wound up frustrated by the scene.

The other scene that seems to have done a lot more for other people than for me was about religion being used to justify violence. Except that half the examples weren't theologically-motivated. Now, I admit, I'm touchy about comparisons between flat-out, deliberate genocide and, and racism-motivated production of shitty, but not, for the most part death-inducing, conditions* and the conflation of the two didn't leave me well-disposed towards their point. To be blunt, it made me feel like they were co-opting other people's pain without acknowledging what makes it unique, which I find disrespectful. Between the two issues, this scene really didn't work for me.

That being said, trying to articulate why these scenes bothered me was certainly thought-provoking, though almost more in making me aware of how much my time around Israelis has shifted my perceptions than in the way the show was intended. One of the scene that got to me most was probably the one featuring an elderly Hurricane Katrina victim struggling with crappy (non-)response to PTSD. I also really liked a scene about a father dying while saving people from the floodwaters that (facilitated by one of those musical riffs mentioned above) had a brilliantly-done message about the importance of taking action rather than leaving things entirely "in G-d's hands."

Just as my preferred and...less-preferred scenes say more about me than about the show, so does my struggle with the format of the show. I'm aware that "spiraling" (as opposed to linear) narratives are characteristic of oral histories/storytelling and that it's a bit of a trend in theatre that embraces "minority" experiences to lean to a greater or lesser extent in that direction. Knowing that, however, didn't stop me from spending much of the show trying to fit the pieces/scenes together.

One way or another, I'm really glad I went to see this show. It was thought-provoking, had a good message, and was beautifully executed. And tickets for people under 30 are available for only $10 :) (they only list it on the site's fine print, but are super nice when you call to get the tickets).

* The friend with whom I went to the show asked me to clarify this bit. From what I sent to her: "My issue was with comparing what I see more as xenophobia marginally tempered by a token nod to human rights (internment camps) to the deliberate fostering of an ideology that justifies the creation of a class of okay-to-kill people in order to avert class riots (by poor whites in North America or by poor Christian Germans and Poles in Europe)."

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:36:19 GMT

If you or anyone you know in the D.C. area is looking for a roommate starting anytime between now and late January and going indefinitely, please read the following.

Who and What:
I'm a tidy, quiet-but-friendly, LGBT-friendly, responsible, non-smoking woman looking for 1-2 similarly-inclined roommates of any gender. BIG bonus points if you have some understanding of identity politics.

An important note on the “who”: I’m not comfortable with pork or shellfish in the kitchen and am looking for roommates who are cool with that. Are you a vegetarian who’s okay with occasional meat in the house? A Muslim with a shellfish allergy? Keep kosher (if so, I'm cool with ramping up my stringency; we can talk about what specifically you need)? Perfect!

As for other aspects of who/what, I don’t have any pets and excluding dogs am fine with any you might care for. I try to keep my room and common spaces warm and free of scented candle/incense fumes, but it's somewhat negotiable. Similarly, if you're bothered by cooking odors we would probably have to work out a schedule or something. If you have a strong opinion about something I didn’t mention (i.e. central air vs. window unit, apartment vs. house, dishwasher, in-unit laundry, cable) chances are that I’m flexible.

Where:
I’m not set on a specific neighborhood or even a specific jurisdiction but do have several criteria for any potential neighborhood. It should be:
- walking-distance from at least a couple of Metro station and/or bus lines with frequent service, including on weekends,
- walkable (i.e. no sidewalk-less roads, minimal sprawling parking lots),
- relatively ethnically/racially diverse (meaning no more than 70% of the population from any one group),
- relatively safe,
- affordable (no more than $900/month/person incl. all utilities), and
- not make me feel like living there will soon cause other people to be forced from their homes due to gentrification.

A place that meets ALL of these constraints may not actually exist, but from what I can tell the Columbia Heights/Petworth/Mt. Pleasant area might be a good bet and I’m open to other neighborhoods as well.

If this seems like a good fit, please email me at [my last name].[my first name].a@gmail.com (or hous-maje5-1973156063@craigslist.org).

From today

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 02:51:08 GMT

My grandfather passed away in his sleep early Wednesday morning. Today was the funeral.
Here is what I said:
As I’m sure all of you know, for most of his life my grandpa always had a joke to tell. It seems only appropriate to tell one of his oldie-but-goodies now.

Joe Klein and Rabbi Cohen were waiting at heaven’s gate. An angel came to take Joe in and handed him a gorgeous embroidered robe and a golden staff. A few minutes later, the angel came for Rabbi Cohen, and handed him a plain linen robe and a wooden staff.

The rabbi asked, “Angel, I don’t mean to be petty, but what gives? I worked for the spiritual growth of my congregants for forty years. Why did I get such simple things compared to Joe, a cab driver who barely made it to synagogue twice a year?

The angel answered: “Well, here in heaven we work on results. During your sermons, most of the congregants were, if not asleep altogether, at least zoned out. Every single time Joe drove his cab, though, he inspired people to pray.”

While I can’t imagine Grandpa’s behavior inspiring that effect exactly, hopefully, by virtue of him having worked for the IRS, the principle will hold….

…..

My grandfather was a sweet man who made the world a better place. I wasn’t quite sure what words would do him justice. But he had a lot of stories that he shared with us about his life before I knew him, and telling some of them, plus what I learned about how he lived his life, seems like a good starting point.

…..

During our school breaks, [my sister] and I would often visit him and Grandma for several days at a time. I remember him keeping busy, and in hindsight probably wearing himself out, trying to make sure we had a good time by taking us to the pool, the public library, and to dinner at Hot Shoppe’s were we met some of his friends. Over the years I think we went through every Shirley Temple and Three Stooges video at the rental store. As we got older, we would sometimes join him for a game of checkers or Scrabble. When he came up with some obscure vocabulary word to make use of a truly unlucky set of letters, it served as a reminder that he was really quite a bright guy. You might never know it unless you played Scrabble with him, but he really had a very impressive vocabulary. His unassuming demeanor, however, served as a lesson that intelligence doesn’t have to be shown off.

…..

While I can’t speak to what he was like in his younger days, I remember Grandpa for being one of those too-rare people who sets an example of being unafraid to admit one’s faults. He regularly told a story about his navigation skills. As a young man working for Veterans' Affairs he and his co-workers frequently went on road trips. This was before the interstate highway system, so the navigator truly had his job cut out for him. The group gave the responsibility to my grandfather, and they never got lost once. At every intersection, he’d say which way to go and they’d do the exact opposite.

…..

My grandfather was a World War Two veteran. For the earlier portion of his service he worked as an MP. At one point towards the end of the war the army accidentally sent a group of MPs into an area that still had enemy troops, and most of the group was killed. Grandpa told us that if he had been one space further ahead during assignments, he would have been part of that. Whether because of that experience or just because of who he was, though, I always felt like he strove to make the most of the moment he was in at any given point in time. His ability to find something positive in nearly any experience is clear from his other war stories.

As a MP he helped to guard POWs. He didn’t have as many stories about the German POWs, but had a sense of humor about the Italians. The town in upstate New York they were in had a lot of Italian-American women whose husbands, brothers, sons, etc. were off at war themselves. During the prisoners’ outside exercise period, some of them were paying a lot more attention to the women just outside of the fence than they were to the soccer ball. My grandpa gave the impression that in breaking up the blossoming romances he sometimes felt more like a chaperon at a high school dance than he did an MP.

Grandpa shared that the women in the town felt badly for the poor young prisoners away from their mothers’ Italian cooking, and worked together to make them some home-cooked meals. Under the Geneva Convention, however, the same food must be offered to both prisoners and guards. Somehow, I doubt the signatories of that convention intended the guards to benefit so much from the agreement. Needless to say, my grandfather put on some weight during his service.

…..

He talked appreciatively of his mother law, with whom he and my grandmother stayed for several months after he returned from the army. “She never said anything about my weight or made me self-conscious,” he recalled, “She just started every meal with these huge, healthy, delicious salads.” Just as he learned a trait for which he could strive by watching his mother-in-law, by telling us the story he taught me to appreciate, and try to emulate, positive qualities in others.

…..

Once he retired, however, he took another tack to stay healthy. He went for long walks every day. Because he didn’t particularly like to be outside (apparently he was traumatized by all the bugs that bit him at the park near his house as a young boy), he would walk the halls of his apartment building. Though it wasn’t his intention starting out, in the process he got to know many of his neighbors better. While I have inherited his proclivity for walking when possible, I admire the friendliness that enabled him to befriend what otherwise would have been the strangers upstairs.

Wherever he went, he went out of his way to acknowledge people as people. Even in the hospital earlier this month, the nurses were impressed that he, at 95-years-old, not just remembered them but actually remembered their names.

…..

Grandpa, simply put, was a good person. The way he lived his life truly did make the lives of those around him better, and I feel lucky to have had the chance to know him for as long as I did. Part of me still doesn’t really believe that he’s gone. But I know that his stories – both those he told and those I saw him live – have had a permanent impact.

A links post

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 06:48:46 GMT

I seem to have inexplicably switched to primarily posting links on Facebook and a few days ago realized that doing so likely amounts to spamming people there so am trying to switch back to LJ where it's a bit easier for readers to opt in or out. Links, most shamelessly stolen from other people, (and some duplicates of things I posted to FB a couple of weeks ago) are sorted and labeled.

U.S.-Focused
I don't have much to say about Arizona SB1070, which effectively encourages police officers to racially profile and forces anyone who could potentially be mistaken for Latino or otherwise not of U.S. origin to have to carry I.D.

Meanwhile, Tim Wise's piece on "Imagine if the Tea Party was black" has been making the rounds. It's well done (it clearly comes from someone who's used to speaking), though probably preaching to the choir for most of the people who read my LJ.

U.S. military's response to PTSD

Study Casts Doubt On the 'Boy Crisis'.

The (Greater) Middle East
Meanwhile in the Middle East, a few rockets were fired from Sinai towards Eilat for the first time in a few years, and one of them hit Jordan instead.

And it's kind of sad that this story about Jerusalem officials investigated for accepting bribes in exchange for approving new Jewish construction actually made me happy because it suggests that the most blatant of the land thievery isn't consistent with officials' actual sentiment (since they apparently had to be bribed to approve it).

Remember in 2008 when a member of Israel's legislature said that earthquakes are divine retribution for failing to criminalize gay sex? Well, officials in Iran apparently have a slight correction: earthquakes are actually due to immodest female attire! A student at Purdue decided to put the latter claim to the test today in what has been termed 'boobquake'. Incidentally, regardless of whether one goes by the Israeli or the Iranian religious ideologues' claims, what does it say that a meteor fell on a sex-segregated (religious) beach in Tel Aviv?

Queer
Apparently in order to fight GLB folks' right to marry Texas is...forcing them to stay married (the state thinks granting them a divorce would involve implicit legitimization of the marriage). Somehow I can't help but think of Wanda Sykes' bit on how the best way to protect the sanctity of marriage isn't to ban same-sex marriage but to ban divorce (and, having had both a divorce and a same-sex marriage, she should know).

In the meantime, a San Francisco gay softball league is discriminating against bi. players of color. Aside from "Wow, that's messed up" all I can really say is that I'm glad that in this case a lesbian org. is not only not involved in the bi. phobia (and racism) too common in monosexual-dominated orgs. but is actually providing the players' lawyers.

In happy queer news, the Philipino gay party was approved and gay swans set up nest at the world's only swannery. Lastly, have a sweet clip of Ivan Coyote doing spoken word: To all of the kick ass, beautiful fierce femmes out there...

Science(ish)
A three-decade dispute over control of an island in the Bay of Bengal was recently resolved - the island was submerged by rising sea levels.
Drinking three or more cups of tea a day is as good for you as drinking plenty of water and may even have extra health benefits. I still think that when I want a hot beverage I'll stick with hot water with fresh mint, sage, and sugar or hot water with lemon and honey...
In case you hadn't realized that octopuses are mad smart, now there's video proof.
Many new laptop models have mini-seismometers built in (to detect falls and thereby turn things off to protect against damage) and if you have one you can download a program to help researchers and even send out early warnings to surrounding areas.
Russians generated element 117.
New fuel cell technology to be commercially available in the near future?

Other Fun Stuff
Scrabble is going to allow proper nouns.
Yiddish Dr. Suess.
Lastly, I couldn't resist also posting KittehRoulette (an alternative to ChatRoulette for those of us who like pussies).

Passover Fun Links Round-Up (x-posted to Facebook)

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:46:03 GMT

Keith Olbermann Comments On Fiorina's Passover Gaffe. I actually think that the (non-Passover-related) part of the clip with her campaign ad is funnier - she showed her opponent as a skin walker (of sorts)! With red eyes!

The Arab Labor episode now infamous for containing an inappropriate "hard boiled eggs" joke (about 8 minutes into the clip) but also hilarious (and wrong) in so many other ways.

Colbert on the spread of U.S. holiday commercialism to Passover.

Top ten Passover pick-up lines (probably only funny for those who have been to a seder).

Funny tips for non-Jews at a seder (probably only funny for those who've been to a seder). I saw it posted with a comment that's the most hilarious suggestion of all: "Tell Catholics to leave the dang egg alone - the three times we've invited Catholics they've grabbed the egg off the seder plate and yelled 'found it.'"

Uncle Jay explains Passover (probably only really funny if you're Jewish.) My favorite part: "There is a way to make matzah taste better. If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes just like butter and salt."

Cute, if ridiculous, parodies of pop songs (probably only funny if you're familiar with traditional Jewish practice).

EDITED TO ADD: This one is just so wrong...I mean...aside from the objectification issue, and aside from the sacrilegious aspect of having the Egypt background/matzah-patterned belt/"Happy celebration of freedom" blended with sexual imagery, that particular magazine, if I'm remembering correctly, is funded by the advertisements it contains. Most of those advertisements are placed by pimps. The irony of exploiting women while wishing (the presumably mostly male clientele) a happy celebration of freedom (and escape from servitude) is...mind blowing.

Spreading the word

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:41:43 GMT

L, G, B, and/or T people in Chicago (Thursday 2/25), NYC (Friday 2/26), and or San Francisco (Monday 3/1) can share experiences regarding housing discrimination with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

happy queer and science links

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:33:57 GMT

I love that enough positive queer news stories have come out recently for me to do a post with that theme (and science stories, 'cause I also have an accumulation of those). :)

Transgender New York State Workers Are Expected to Gain Bias Protection

Houston elected its first openly queer mayor in a run-off election (Though I am concerned as to whether "fiscal conservatism" actually means pushing for a balanced budget or just means cutting social services in order to give rich people lower taxes...) I enjoyed Jon Stewart's take on this election (the clip also includes his most recent quip about William and Mary).

D.C. Council approves same-sex marriage bill. Because everything D.C. does has to be approved by Congress, the question now is whether federal Democrats will (be big enough asshats to) pull a NY Senate...(This is an interesting, straight-focused take on the home rule issue.)

Lambda rising, DC's GLBT bookstore, is closing down. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, that place (along with The Blade, which also closed down recently) has sentimental value for me as one of my first connections to Adult/Established Queer Community, and it's sad to see it shutting its doors. On the other hand, the founder was right (at least in the DC context) when he said, "When we set out to establish Lambda Rising in 1974, it was intended as a demonstration of the demand for gay and lesbian literature...Today, 35 years later, nearly every general bookstore carries GLBT books, often featuring them in special sections." I guess the bottom line, though, is that these guys should be able to retire.

And now the science links:
The Mediterranean could have filled in two years.
New research suggests that sex is based primarily on a single gene (rather than a whole chromosome).
The rats from The Princess Bride are for real (or at least there's a similar species)!
Researchers have used lab-grown cells to engineer fully-functioning rabbit penises. Really the main reason I'm posting this article is because of my amusement at the idea of a whole new meaning for the expression, "F___ing like bunnies" (though presumably were this technology to be adapted to humans they would also be using human, not rabbit, cells).

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:10:14 GMT

I've let a number of important days go by without comment, and while I don't have that much new to say, I want to at least (however belatedly) post some relevant links.

November 20th was the International Transgender Day of Remembrance.
November 25th was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
December 6 was the 20th anniversary of the L'école polytechnique de Montréal massacre in which the killer gunned down women, mostly engineering students, while yelling about how he was fighting back against feminism.
ETA: But apparently I did hit one day spot-on: Today is Human Rights Day.

As long as masculinity is established at the expense of a less privileged class, we're going to keep having these kinds of days.

An antigay conservative group with high-powered U.S. political allies has used its influence to support a proposed Ugandan law that would impose the death penalty on "repeat offenders" engaging in gay sex.
Apparently Canada thinks that arson at a place frequented almost exclusively by queers isn't a hate crime.
Principals and bus driver ignored pleas for help from high school student beaten with metal pipe for being gay.
A Florida teenager was told by a McDonald's manager, "We don't hire faggots...You lied to me [by expressing a gender not consistent with your assigned sex]."

How long are people going to persist in using force (physical and/or economic) to impose gendered behavior on others in a way that violates their sense of being? What if we did as much to prevent rape as we do H1N1?

Meme two of two

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:01:19 GMT

(Meme taken from eumelia)
Please comment to tell me: If I came with a warning label, what would it say?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:08:46 GMT

Apparently today is just one of those days...

Anyway, have some science/medicine/archaeology links:
The prospects of saving the world's coral reefs now appear so bleak that plans are being made to freeze samples to preserve them for the future..
Scientists discover antibody that could reduce the damage from trauma-induced major internal bleeding.
The flu vaccine might not actually do much....
Archaeologists unearth "mini-Coliseum"
A new exhibit focuses on a pre-5000 B.C.E. Balkan foothills/Lower Danube culture that was so advanced for its time that they had towns of up to 2,000 dwellings.

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:27:30 GMT

I'll make a "real life" post within the next few days, but links I want to post are rapidly accumulating so I want to clear out my list ASAP. The bulk of the links are related to gender and/or sexual orientation. Within that category there are certainly subcategories, but there's so much overlap between the latter that I didn't try to explicitly divide them. I hope the resultant huge listing isn't too overwhelming.

GENDER / QUEER
While they're still distressingly high, rates of rape in the U.S. seem to be going down.

Meanwhile, a man was recently found guilty, along with raping almost two dozen girls and women, of filming students in the BGU bathrooms. On the plus side, I'm so indignant to have found out about that from the newspaper rather than from the university that I haven't gotten around to feeling violated yet...

A good op-ed about gender equality and women's self-reported levels of happiness that points out that "if you expect less for yourself, you're easier to please": When we're equal we'll be happy.

On a related note, there was a sweet interview with B. Obama where he talks about trying to check his male privilege in their family dynamic.

Not only did a woman win the Nobel prize in economics for the first time ever, but the work for which she won is somewhat heterodox for the field, arguing that private parties can effectively self-govern common resources.

Women more likely than men to be expelled under 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'.

New York has been arresting, prosecuting, and fining queer people for violating a defunct anti-cruising law for the last quarter century, including 85 since May 2008 when, in response to a class action, a judge ordered the City of New York to send letters to the police, district attorneys, and trial judges to remind them that the anti-cruising law was void and should no longer be enforced.
But hey, New York's governor expects to sign a marriage equality bill soon...Anyone else think that the priorities of the (straight people's version of the) Gay Agenda might be a little out of whack?

The U.S. House and Senate have both passed legislation expanding the legal definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation, gender identity, gender and disability. I'm not providing a link to the story itself because the mainstream newspaper articles about it all seem to include quotes from privilege-blind straight, cis-gendered, white, xtian men who opposed the bills. I would, however, like to quote angrychihuahua's post on the subject:

"While I'm incredibly happy about the message that this sends--that we, as a society, value the lives of trans people, of gay and bi people, of women, of people with disabilities--I do have concerns about what effects this will have once implemented, outlined in a previous post about hate crimes legislation. This legislation gives more power to government systems that are racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc., and that could very well be for the worse and not for the better. But I very much hope that it's for the better.

Two cross-dressers (who happened to also be cage fighters) were attacked for their gender presentation and beat up their attackers. That part of the story is freaking awesome, and the video is kinda great in a "dumb boys being shown to be dumb" sort of way. What I find disturbing is that the attackers were just "electronically tagged and given a four-month community order and a curfew from 7am to 7pm". 'xcuse me, I don't care that these people didn't succeed in their hate crime, it should still be addressed by the law!

The Washington Post utterly failed at getting pronouns right, issuing a series of "corrections" to yet another set of wrong gender descriptors.

All male Morehouse College (an HBCU) passed a new dress code that includes a ban on women's clothing.

Meanwhile my alma mater has apparently been slowly removing some of the measures intended to make it a less unwelcoming place for minority students and got high ratings from conservatives as a result. On the other hand, I'm pleasantly shocked that an out genderqueer student won Homecoming Queen! (And, based on their failure to use the correct pronouns, apparently there's a writer and editor at the student newspaper with promising futures at the WaPo.) Maybe there's hope for the College yet...

DC AREA
Ben of Ben's Chili Bowl died at the age of 82.
FCPS is facing a huge budget shortfall and considering major cuts.
D.C. schools laid off almost 400 employees.

SCIENCE/COMPUTERS/ENVIRONMENT
Was a newly-explored site, the oldest submerged town in the world, the inspiration for the Atlantis myth?
Inability to avoid bright lights increases chances of depression.
Boy Genius Report: Snow Leopard randomly deleting user data.
Microsoft, B&Q and Pret a Manger have become the latest household names to join the 10:10 climate change campaign, joining 25,000 individuals, 1000 businesses and hundreds of schools, hospitals and other organizations that pledged to cut carbon emissions by 10% during 2010.
Composting is now mandatory in San Francisco (and citywide pick-up has been implemented to facilitate the process).

MASSIVE links post

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 04:18:43 GMT

To start out, I feel obligated to point out that there's currently natural disaster-caused death and destruction in Indonesia, the Philippines, Samoa and American Samoa. All other links are sorted by category and put behind relevant cuts for your convenience.

GENDER AND QUEER
The most obvious gender-related story is of course the obscene way in which people are defending child rape, a.k.a. much of Hollywood's "support" of Roman Polanski. eumelia already said most of what I would have ranted about. paper_crystals made the additional point that (certainly if Victor Salva's case is any indication) many fewer people in Hollywood would likely be defending Polanski if he had raped a boy rather than a girl. Thanks (much of) Hollywood for (once again) sending the message that female folk are here for men to do as they please. On that note, have an awesome sexual assault prevention guide. A couple highlights relevant to Polanski's victim:
- Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
- USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

In the meantime, Indonesia is apparently now stoning adulterers.

There's been bad news for G/L/B partner rights in Arizona and Florida, though Lithuania has 'em beat. Its parliament gave final approval to a bill banning "the propaganda of homosexuality [or] bisexuality" in schools or in media accessible by young people because Teh Gay is apparently a "detrimental factor on young people".

In happier gender/queer news, a court heard a gay divorce in Texas (of all places!), despite gay marriage being banned there (if I'm not mistaken it's like Virginia in the ban being in two or three ways/places)....
And an Arab lesbian magazine relaunched on the web!

EDUCATION (AKA MOSTLY JUST BRAGGING)
Now there's a web-based GLBT high school for kids who are getting seriously bullied but don't live in a Gay Mecca with a decent public high school option.
W&M does well in the ratings of public colleges and universities.
My high school was featured in The Washingtonian with the headline, "Why You Should Hate this High School". Way to show your lack of journalistic integrity there, folks. Actually, the article itself was pretty good, it's just the cover/headline that's...not professional, to say the least (do yourself a favor and skip the comments in the link).
And this isn't really education-related, but I don't have another category for it...Folks from my local school system, remember how vending machines had cookies and Skittles based on the reasoning that they meet a certain percentage of *something* that's required for the day (I think it was vitamin D and C, respectively)? Now those same guidelines are being applied even more widely to product labeling!

OTHER ISM'S
Kentucky parents upset that their football player son was baptised during a trip organized by the team's coach.
A new incarnation of the same old blend of colorism+capitalism
Race Fail, U.K.-style: Asylum seekers are to be subjected to DNA tests in an attempt to confirm their true nationalities.

ARCHAEOLOGY/HISTORY
Tests on skull fragment cast doubt on Adolf Hitler suicide story.
An unprecedented miniature portrait of a young, resolute, sexy Alexander the Great has emerged during excavations in Israel.
Huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard found.

SOLAR POWER
Chinese solar plant expected to be biggest in the world.
A new type of solar panel using human hair could provide the world with cheap, green electricity, its inventor believes.
A Japanese project seeks to build a giant solar-power generator in space within three decades and beam electricity to earth.

OTHER SCIENCE
Scientists discovered a fossil skeleton of a human ancestor from a million years before Lucy, shaking things up a lot.
A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders recently went on display today at the NYC Natural History Museum.
Biologists have created a living computer that can solve complex mathematical problems.
UCLA researchers have discovered that a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and regular exercise can enable paralyzed rats to walk and even run again while supporting their full weight on a treadmill.
A new Darwin film is too controversial for the U.S.

links

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:13:24 GMT

QUEER
Trans woman murdered and another stabbed in D.C. (Last I checked) the police were avoiding the "trans" aspect of the crime victims despite the fact that the attack took place just two blocks from Transgender Health Empowerment.

Recently there's been a string of homophobic attacks in Rome. Most recently two letter bombs were thrown at a bar on Rome's "newly inducted gay HQ".

A new campaign is being launched to issue a posthumous official apology to famous mathematician Alan Turing. In 1952 he was prosecuted for gross indecency for having sex with a man and as a result was put on an experimental hormone treatment to reduce sex drive. The conviction ended his career and both that and the drugs being forced on him most likely contributed to his suicide in 1954. To quote eumelia's post on the subject, "An international treasure was lost due to bigotry and homophobia. These two blights of humanity are not gone, they still affect our lives and they have affected history. We do not know what Turing could have done in the years he did not live, we can only mourn the life of a man who was persecuted because he did not fit the cultural and societal norms and mores. As long as some people are considered more human than others, simply because they do not fit the little boxes deemed "appropriate", noise must be made about this".

When a Welsh trans woman was told she had to wait two years for gender reassignment surgery she decided she had no option but to do the job herself (note that some aspects of the article, like the male pronouns and the quote from the wife, are...not particularly respectful of this person's gender identity and by extension that of trans women generally).

A few weeks ago I mentioned a surprisingly inclusive dance group competing on America's Best Dance Crew. Unfortunately, the most recent week's episode features some seriously disrespectful commentary by the judges and editing by the producers. From what I can tell, the trans woman in the group is homesick and so isn't giving her all in rehearsal, and the other members of the group are upset. Unfortunately, in a minute and a half segment about that drama, the producers only include 3 clips of the woman in question and one of them is her walking out of rehearsal and another is her whining about her arms being tired. Can we say "perpetuating misogynistic stereotypes"?

Much more striking however, is one of the judges saying, "Your behavior is unacceptable...You have to remember your truth. You were born a man and you're becoming a woman. If you're going to become a woman act like a lady. Don't be a bird....It gets too crazy and it gets confusing. You're doing this for America. Even though you're the face for transgenders, you're the face for America right now with this group, and it's not about anybody else, it's about y'all. So, do it for the team. Do it for the team."
The judges are justified in calling any dancer out for acting like a brat in rehearsal. A comment about, "I get that you're homesick, but keep working hard for the team" would have been totally appropriate. Blaming bratiness on the dancer's gender identity, however, is seriously messed up. This judge's comment suggests that being transgendered is somehow not truthful, that gender nonconformity is "confusing" to others and therefore to exist in a mainstream environment trans people should, what, pretend to be genders they aren't? In the context of the rest of this comment choosing the word "crazy" is also messed up, but since it could theoretically refer to the effects of a performer's bratiness I'm going to let that one lie. Using "transgender" as a noun, however, definitely does add another layer to the dehumanization...Incidentally, I was also put off by some of the race/class dynamic going on with this group as a whole (both in how people are responding to them and in how they're presenting themselves), but because with those it's not a clear-cut case of one party harming another, I feel like it's a touchier subject.

While another judge's comment calling the dancer in question a queen made me want to pull out the Peter Outerbridge, given that he went on to refer to another team member as a prince I think he actually didn't intend it that way. Also, he started his comment (which came right after the one quoted above) by saying, "Everyone has a bad day. I get that. But what you do, you turn it on. And right there, that group turned it on." Of course, his bit about, "You can't be what you want to be, but you can be everything you can be." could easily be read as having some problematic subtext...

On another note, holy guacamole, how can anyone possibly dance in those heels?!

HEALTH CARE REFORM
Sometimes it's nice when other people do research that vindicates positions I'd already been advocating: "In customer satisfaction surveys, the Postal Service already scores higher than health insurers."
A small committee of doctors set the rates at which doctors are paid by insurance companies and Medicare throughout the U.S. The vast majority of those doctors are specialists, and unsurprisingly procedures with a high ratio of required-technical-skill to face-time are valued much more highly than those for which the reverse is true. For obvious reasons, this discourages new doctors from becoming internists/GPs, leading to the growing shortage of said doctors which in turn makes it harder for people to get preventive care and means that health care winds up being more expensive on average.
Here is a well-argued op-ed for government-run health care.
And here's an interesting piece that argues for a libertarian-with-socialist-supplements approach to health care. To give you a taste:
"The use of insurance to fund virtually all care is itself a major cause of health care’s high expense. Insurance is probably the most complex, costly, and distortional method of financing any activity; that’s why it is otherwise used to fund only rare, unexpected, and large costs. Imagine sending your weekly grocery bill to an insurance clerk for review, and having the grocer reimbursed by the insurer to whom you’ve paid your share... For every two doctors in the U.S., there is now one health-insurance employee—more than 470,000 in total. In 2006, it cost almost $500 per person just to administer health insurance....If the government took on the goal of better supporting consumers—by bringing greater transparency and competition to the health-care industry, and by directly subsidizing those who can’t afford care—we’d find that consumers could buy much more of their care directly than we might initially think, and that over time we’d see better care and better service, at lower cost, as a result."

OTHER
One prime example of what I was referring to when I said I don't want to have to deal with the Virginia legislature is now running for governor: his masters thesis (from Pat Robertson's Regent University) include such gems as:

Advocating character education programs in public schools to teach "traditional Judeo-Christian* values"
Saying that government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators"
Calling the legality of birth control for unmarried couples "illogical"
Criticizing federal tax credits for child care expenditures because they encouraged women to enter the workforce and saying that feminism is among the "real enemies of the traditional family"
Advocating adoption of a modified flat tax to replace the graduated income tax because having deductions and distributions based on need "is socialist"

And that's just in his thesis. The article has tons of examples about what he's done during his tenure as a public official.

Candidate for Idaho governor continues joke about shooting Obama. I think my favorite part is that his defense was, "Anyone who understands the law, knows I was just joking, because Idaho has no jurisdiction to issue hunting tags in Washington, D.C." Because CLEARLY suggesting that the president of the United States is an animal (and therefore having a hunting license would make it ok to shoot him) make everything better...

U.S. low wage workers, including the two-thirds who have documents to be in the country, are often cheated out of their promised pay (people of color overwhelming more so than whites).

Disney bought Marvel.

One Texas man created a business to build low-income housing from recycled materials. I don't really know enough about the efficacy of Habitat-for-Humanity-esque programs compared to other means of funding low-income housing to comment on that aspect, but I love the fact that he's been able to make construction with recycled materials commercially successful. As much as a 3rd of landfill waste is from construction/development, so programs like these are really a step in the right direction.

A (freaking spiffy!) new molecular imaging method shows the chemical bonds in a carbon nanotube.

Facelifts seem to help with debilitating chronic migraines.

* I think I've ranted before about how much I hate that term....

links

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:46:50 GMT

(Proof for) Yet another reason to dislike Rove.
US Air Force now trains more pilots for unmanned aircraft than for manned aircraft (flyboymike, consider this a vindication of going Navy :P).
Apparently I enjoy grammar vandalism more than the U.K....
An interesting piece on how U.S. road design is unsafe and improvements could save thousands of lives.
Good streets, by making walking more feasible, could also help with obesity, not to mention (by reducing pollution) cardiovascular disease.
Drug compound kills breast cancer stem cells.
Women who drink moderate amounts of beer may be strengthening their bones, according to Spanish researchers...The team added that plant hormones in the beer rather than the alcohol may be responsible for the effects...Experts urged caution, warning that drinking more than two units of alcohol a day was known to harm bone health.
Huge neolithic cathedral unearthed in the UK.

Gender and sexuality-related links

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:06:35 GMT

This is a really great essay about gender privilege. A highlight:

There are men who will read this post and think, huffily, dismissively, that a person of color could write a post very much like this one about white people, about me. That's absolutely right. So could a lesbian, a gay man, a bisexual, an asexual. So could a trans or intersex person (which hardly makes a comprehensive list). I'm okay with that. I don't feel hated. I feel mistrusted—and I understand it; I respect it. It means, for me, I must be vigilant, must make myself trustworthy. Every day...My mistrust is not, as one might expect, primarily a result of the violent acts done on my body, nor the vicious humiliations done to my dignity. It is, instead, born of the multitude of mundane betrayals that mark my every relationship with a man—the casual rape joke, the use of a female slur, the careless demonization of the feminine in everyday conversation, the accusations of overreaction, the eyerolling and exasperated sighs in response to polite requests to please not use misogynist epithets in my presence or to please use non-gendered language ("humankind").

New Afghan law allows men to starve their wives.
Marriott claims a Connecticut woman was negligent in her own rape.
Speaking of stigmatizing "impure" women (and the men who choose to support them), Florida town official was fired for marrying a porn star.

The employer of a Philadelphia trans woman asked for a picture of her genitals as a condition for continuing employment.
There's a lot to be said about determination of "sex" for segregation in sports and the way people are responding to Caster Semenya, but for now I just want to express my dismay that one of the seminal 2nd wave feminists would not only fail to get how questioning the sex of athletes who do too well is problematic from a feminist perspective, but would blatantly dehumanize trans women in the process.
A lesbian couple was kicked out of restaurant in Silver Spring Maryland for one resting her head on the other's chest.
To end on a positive note, Lutherans are going to allow sexually active gays and lesbians as clergy.

more on health insurance

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:43:09 GMT

Given recent developments as well as some of the conversations that came out of my previous post about the U.S. health care debate, y'all get a bit more on the subject. My previous post was very much a response to the primary criticism that I've been seeing of the Obama administration's original plan, namely that having only private insurance (plus Medicare) is better for the health of United Statesians than a system that included a public health care option (whose criterion for eligibility isn't age). While there are many issues that should be addressed in any public health care option and it's possible that hastily-passed legislation won't address all of them, I think that almost any public option that passes would be an improvement on the current situation. Unfortunately, the White House is apparently poised to drop a public health care option despite the fact that the original idea for having a public health care option as part of a market that also includes private health insurance options comes from the Heritage Foundation, one of the leading ultra-right-wing think tanks.

To be more specific as to what problems with the current system I wish would be addressed, I think that there are three issues. One is the overconsumption of routine things that do more harm than good or are ineffective so waste resources. The second is the undercoverage of expensive things that do save lives (hence the bankruptcy statistics in my previous post). The third is that, largely due to the first, health coverage is really expensive and a lot of people have zero coverage even for things that do have benefit and should be routine for everyone.

Working my way backwards, there are certain basics of medical care that I think should be made available to all U.S. residents. When asked to provide an example of this, the first thing that came to mind was cavity fillings and other basic dental care. I'm sure that a ton of productivity/man hours are lost every year due to tooth pain that could have been prevented if regular dental check-ups was available. In addition, my economist-friend (and the poster on my dentist's walls) informs me that there's strong evidence that dental care is one of the lowest cost ways to improve health because it affects overall health and in particular reduces the risk of heart attack. Along similar lines, I think that basic vaccinations and STD screenings should be more readily available than they are now (while in many areas there are public clinics that will provide these for free or low cost, information about these clinics is spotty to say the least).

Lastly, record-keeping is currently a significant problem. I know of one (enabler of a) parent who would bring her child to a different hospital after each time the other parent committed abuse bad enough to require medical attention because if she brought him to the same place the authorities might have caught on. That shouldn't be possible. Even aside from cases of people abusing the lack of record-sharing, I'm sure a lot of time, money, and lives could be saved every year if doctors had a patient's full medical history. That's particularly relevant for the 50 million United Statesians who because they lack health insurance are likely to only get medical care in emergencies and therefore are also prone to going to a different urgent care, emergency room, or Minute Clinic every time. I'm in favor of any system that will facilitate a nationwide health record system, and based on their track record the private insurance companies lack either the inclination or the ability to make that happen.

EDITED TO ADD: I don't think that details of every visit to the doctor's office needs to be covered and doing so not only is a waste of time and therefore money but also, as was mentioned in the comments, raises significant privacy issues. I would, however, like to see a nationwide system that keeps a very general record of all emergency room visits and that automatically checks that any new medicine won't cause problems with those prescribed recently (whether in an emergency room or at a routine check-up) or with allergies.

Moving on to the second issue (undercoverage of expensive things that do save lives), I think that's pretty well addressed in my previous post on this subject. There's only one additional aspect of this issue that I do want to mention. For many conditions there are a variety of treatments. If two work similarly, insurance companies often mandate that only the less expensive will be covered. Unfortunately, similarly is not identically and body chemistry varies, so for some people the less expensive doesn't work while the more expensive option does. I'll address along with the "first issue" below.

I think that the first issue, overconsumption of routine things that do more harm than good or are ineffective so waste resources, is the most contentious. To give an example of what I'm talking about, routine prostate checks are covered by most insurance plans in the U.S. despite the fact that studies show no statistical difference in prostate cancer death rates between men who had the screening and those who don't, yet the screening exposes patients to aggressive and unnecessary treatments that can leave them impotent and incontinent.

Personally, I would like to see a system in which there's a list of prescriptions that have been scientifically shown to help with a particular condition, and initially only the least expensive ones (that aren't contra-indicated) are covered, but if they prove ineffective the others on the list are fair game at the doctor's discretion. With life-threatening conditions excluded*, it's reasonable for this system to have a spending cap that's tied to the severity of the condition (i.e. minor headaches only get $1000/yr spent on them maximum but disabling migraines can get $10,000/year maximum spent to fix them). The last aspect of my "ideal system" I'd like to address is that in cases where the necessity of care can't be determined until after the care is provided (like the ambulance example in comments in the previous post on this subject), I think that having a small co-pay for all patients is reasonable (with "small" being either a flat rate of $5-10 or a sliding scale). Unfortunately, even if I were president, I doubt I could get Congress to approve the implementation of this system...

* I understand that one reason this cap includes life-threatening conditions in some countries with socialized medicine is to prevent taxpayers from providing treatment that will only extend the life of someone who's terminally ill by a small amount. Honestly, I'm pretty okay with that cap. But I'm concerned that it could be implemented in a way that is a death sentence for people who aren't terminally ill but require expensive treatments for their chronic conditions in order to stay alive. On the other hand, Stephen Hawking seems pretty happy with the treatment he gets from the British system, so it seems that there's a way to do it well.

health care and miscellaneous other stuff

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:09:48 GMT

HEALTH CARE
As debate about Obama's health care plan has been roiling in the States, I feel I should say something about it....

Those complaining about government officials "deciding who lives and who dies" must never have had occassion to need to use their private health insurance for a life-threatening condition. Private insurance companies already make such decisions. Their record is abysmal - according to a recent study in the American Journal of Medicine, almost 40% of people filing for bankruptcy in 2007 did so as a result of medical expenses because their private insurance failed to adequately cover treatment for their conditions. The majority of these people were middle class before their medical issues arose.

As poorly-covered as most insured people in the U.S. are, being uninsured is of course even worse, and in the last year nearly 5 million U.S. adults have lost health insurance. When one is getting primary care from overburdened clinics and emergency rooms, treatments options are limited and wait times are long if you can even get in to see a doctor at all. One of the few anti-"Obamacare" claims that actually has some basis in empirical evidence seems to be that wait times in countries with socialized medicine are longer than they are for insured people in the U.S. (assuming, of course, that the insurance actually covers a particular treatment). Government health care may equalize the wait time between the poor and the middle class, and because of the intersection of race and class in the U.S. I think that explains some of the opposition, particularly the swastika painted on the door of a black Democratic congressmember's office.

Despite the wait-time issue, I have a hard time imagining how it could possibly reduced the disgusting level of treatment currently provided by private insurance companies. That's not to say that private health care doesn't allow the extremely wealthy, who can afford to hire experts to ensure that their health insurance doesn't have the loopholes, exceptions, and deductables that ravage the middle class, to get the best care in the world. But frankly, average U.S. citizens with terminal conditions are never going to get all the care received by multi-millionaires*. The only question is whether decisions about the care we receive are made by companies accountable to their shareholders or government officials accountable to voters.

Healthcare is largely an inelastic good for which the demand will always be high, and as such the free market can only do so much to produce an optimal product. As a result, critiquing Obama's health care plan based on general faith in the Free Market over Big Government really doesn't make a lot of sense. Incidentally, the strongest opposition to the plan is actually from people who already have socialized health care coverage - those old enough to be eligible for Medicare.

CULTURE
A preview for Chris Rock's new movie called Good Hair, a humorous look at the racial overtones of standards for African-American beauty.
On a related note, the Washington Post did an interesting piece about the ongoing relevance of the Miss Black USA pageant.
This cool group in the America's Best Dance Crew competition is a nice counter to the America's Got Talent story I posted last week (thanks to Phil for the link):

SCIENCE
Sleeping in too hot (or a very cold) room makes for bad sleep.
A high fat diet may impact muscles' ability to use oxygen and short-term memory even in terms of short-term effects.
Redheads are apparently more sensitive to pain than others.
Galapagos wildlife is at risk from mosquitos being accidentally imported by tourists.
A new study shows that fluency in a second language is related to how the speaker wishes to be viewed by the majority group. I can't help but laugh at that because (as I think I've mentioned before) while my Hebrew accent is distinctly non-Israeli, it's also definitely not an American accent. So...I want to be perceived as the (unidentifiable) Other?

* As inhuman as it is to put a cost on human life, this is one of the less dogmatic pieces I've seen that argues in favor of rationing health care.
EDITED TO ADD: I realize that "inhuman" is rather harsh. That being said, some of the highly-utilitarian arguments for not covering certain types of health care are basically a death sentence for people I care about if applied to the conditions they have, and murdering my friends certainly feels inhuman even if done for the greater good (namely to free up resources to provide basic care to a larger portion of the population).

another links post - queer stuff not about the TA shooting

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:57:39 GMT

The "America's Got Talent" judge Piers Morgan acted like an utter bigot, but unfortunately Feministing missed what, exactly, the problem was. It wasn't homophobia or racism, it was transphobia, though he tried to deflect from his transphobia by suggesting that he's racially enlightened in that "Obama is okay now why can't those ghetto-rats all act like him" asshole racist way. I don't know which is more disappointing, the fail on national broadcast television or the willful ignorance of a website that claims to be progressive on gender. Oh, right, and just for added measure, the judge whose comments feministing framed positively they misquoted. She didn't say that the act was fabulous, she said that it was fabulously camp, thereby perpetuating the notion of gender trangressive entertainers as there for novelty for straight folks rather than because of their talent.

Massachusetts performed a survey of GLBT health. Some low-lights:
Nearly 31% of transgender respondents reported that they considered attempting suicide in the past year – a far greater percentage than heterosexual (2%), gay or lesbian (4%) or bisexual (7%) respondents.
Respondents were asked if they had ever been threatened with physical violence by an intimate partner. Among heterosexuals (12.3%) reported a lifetime history of being threatened with intimate partner violence victimization, compared to gay men and lesbians (14.0%), bisexuals (18.4%). Transgender persons (34.6%) were more likely to report being threatened with physical violence by an intimate partner than non‐transgender persons (13.6%).
There was a four percent difference among lesbian, heterosexual and bisexual women on reporting whether they had ever had a pap smear during their lives, with 90% of lesbians saying they had been screened as compared to 94% for heterosexual and bisexual women.

There were some problems with the study, most notably, as mentioned by angrychihuahua that people were expected to choose either G/L/B or T, and that all trans folk were lumped together despite the massive differences in issues faced by, say, FtM, MtF, and genderqueer people. In addition to those, I think that they probably should have divided the "bisexual" group by gender (cis men, cis women, FtM, MtF, and genderqueer) because the form of stigma faced by each is different and that may impact the health issues they face. Lastly, I'm curious as to if/how they controlled for age because I would guess that older generations are less comfortable identifying as bi. or trans. than younger ones and if that's the case the age disparity between the different groups could impact the results.

EDITED TO ADD: Conveniently enough, the annual U.S. LGBTI Health Summit will be held in Chicago next week (Aug. 14-18).

The Quaker, risking their relationship with the U.K. government, are considering performing gay marriages.
Israel's National Insurance Institute (in a striking contrast to the situation in the U.S.) recently began urging queer spouses to file for survivors' benefits.
The 2010 U.S. Census, unlike the previous one, won't discount same-sex couples.
And here are a couple of cute resources to help make people aware of hetero. privilege - a questionaire and a video of an exercise.

a links post on everything that isn't Here or queer

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:08:19 GMT

Yes, y'all get a post about something other than Saturday's attack.

WORLD NEWS
Aquino, Philipina championess of non-violent mass movements, died.
Britain to put CCTV cameras inside private homes.

MORE SCIENCE, SORT OF
A snarky piece about the negative environmental impact of the U.S.'s border barrier.
Scientists produced a live mouse from stem cells that were derived from skin tissue (read: non-embryonic).
The last remaining giant tortoise of its kind may finally produce offspring.
Company denies that its robots feed on the dead.

OTHER
This is old, but it was news to me so I figured I'd share:
American Apparel is an extremely sexist company.

And lastly, I think this video might just be the cutest thing ever.

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:49:56 GMT

There was a shooting tonight at Tel Aviv's GLBT center during a meeting of the teen/youth group. 10 people were injured, six seriously, and two more were killed.
Hebrew: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3755393,00.html
English: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3755400,00.html

And I can't stop wondering if some of those kids are more worried about their parents finding out they're queer than they are about their injuries.

International Blog Against Racism Week: July 27-Aug. 2

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:59:02 GMT

How to participate (from the organizers' instructions):
Announce the week in your blog.

Post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of color, portrayals of race in fiction, review a book on the subject, etc. (Linking back here is highly appreciated!) The optional theme this year is "global."

Let us know by bookmarking your post on Delicious with "for:ibarw," or comment with a link to your post in one of the link collecting posts.

For inspiration, here are the previous years' IBARW posts and last year's POC in SF Carnival IBARW edition. You can also check out this post or delicioused recommended reading for further resources.

For my own entries from last year just clink on the ibarw tag.

Fluff

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:05:14 GMT

Yes, there are at least 3 posts that I want to make in the next couple days, but why should I let that stop me from posting a meme? :P

BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - x
6 The Bible - I've read the Torah but not the whole xtian Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman-
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -

Sub-total: 4-5

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - x
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare –
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien –
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - x
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -

Sub-total: 3

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - x
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -

Sub-total: 3

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - x
34 Emma-Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis - x (redundant much?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - x

Sub-total: 3

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -

Sub-total: 3

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - x (cute book, but how is this on the list?!)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -

Sub-total: 1

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck – x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - x (I got about 150 pages in before wondering why I was subjecting myself)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - x (I got about 50 pages in before deciding I just wasn't that interested)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -

Sub-total: 3 (ish)

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno – Dante - x
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackery -

Sub-total: 2

80 Possession - AS Byatt -
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Sub-total: 3

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad – x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - x (again, this is redundant with the Complete Works above...)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - (I got about 50 pages in before deciding I just wasn't that interested)

Sub-total: 6

Total: 32

EDITED TO ADD: Apparently this list originated with the Guardian asking people to name books they couldn't live without. I'm not sure where the "only six" bit came in.

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:43:25 GMT

Sixty years ago today, out of the belated recognition that black service members had put their lives on the line just like their white counterparts, the U.S. armed forces were desegregated*. I think that the connection to the rest of this post should be obvious, but if not, a picture speaks a thousand words.

Just under a month ago, in one of the most highly publicized cases of The Fail that is Don't Ask Don't Tell, a military panel recommended that Lt. Daniel Choi be discharged because he refuses to be closeted. That, apparently, is more important than what he could contribute to the U.S. armed forces as an Arabic linguist, Iraq combat veteran, and West Point graduate.

I have to admit, I didn't write about this a month ago because frankly it doesn't particularly feel like my problem if the U.S. military wants to shoot itself in the foot** (assuming of course that doesn't negatively impact the bodily integrity of any of my friends on active duty...). Furthermore, for all that the cases highlighted by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) tend to be well-educated white folks***, they aren't particularly representative of the almost 13,000 people who have been discharged under DADT. I'm more likely to advocate against the policy than I am to write about one of the high-profile cases involving it because from what I can tell the bulk of the people discharged under DADT have a lot more to lose than the people who tend to make the headlines.

Speaking of opposition to DADT (or the lack thereof), in June the Obama administration's representative said that the bar on gays serving openly is "rationally related to the government's legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion." This not only contradicts Obama's campaign promise to work to change DADT but the wishes of the majority of United Statesians, including conservatives, who want to see the end of DADT. Now, DADT was created by law rather than by executive order, so Obama can't single-handedly overturn it. And he has enough other issues to worry about it that I don't really expect him to expend political capital working to get Congress to do so. But he could issue an executive order preventing discharges based on it, and his administration could sure as heck avoid condoning the policy as in the quote above. (For the U.S.ians) If you'd like to urge him to do so or urge your congressmember to work to repeal DADT, check out SLDN's advocacy page.

I do feel the need to point out that doing so is very much a matter of G/L/B (but not necessarily T) equal rights. Even if gays had been formally allowed to serve openly in 1993, it wouldn't have done a darned thing for a friend of mine who was told that if he chose to pursue top surgery and testosterone treatment (which certainly wasn't going to be covered under the military's health insurance policy), he would be discharged (and forfeit his Academy degree). Thankfully he has a supportive family and was able to be true to himself, though obviously it's set back his academic plans and changed his career plans. The worst part of it is, he's actually one of the
lucky ones not just because of his family but because he wasn't (so far as I know) told that if he pursued medical care he would have to pay the military back for the money it invested in his training.

To end on a positive note, an openly gay civilian recently joined the U.S. Air Force advisory board.

* While the executive order that did so was a huge step, the process actually began a few years earlier in 1944 when, with manpower needs becoming more urgent, training camps, military recreation, and transport were desegregated.

** Since the military seems to have a nasty habit of letting people serve a tour of duty in a war zone and only worrying about DADT once they return home, perhaps this characterization isn't entirely justified... Though given that white extremists are apparently increasingly using the U.S. military to get training on how to kill people, perhaps I should be worried about anything that increases the U.S. military's need for people and therefore it's willingness to overlook minor details (like membership in terrorist groups) in potential recruits...

*** From what I've seen of SLDN I tend to believe that this disparity isn't a problematic decision on their part but rather a reflection of the disparities in U.S. society that tends to leave well-educated white people better able to articulate their position and advocate for it than others.

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:44:46 GMT

I know I'm currently overdue for posts on other topics, but I wanted to get some links out there, so for now that's what y'all get.

QUEER
Apparently U.S. Trans Activist Leaders are not so good about the racial privilege.
A trans woman died in a vodoo "cleansing" ritual in New Jersey. So far as I can tell from the article, this may just be a case of crazy cult-ness rather than an awful result of transphobia, but still...
A new study by Transgender Europe (TGEU) and the multilingual online magazine Liminalis shows that the murder of a trans person is reported every 3rd day.
Apparently HRC has once again demonstrated its lack of concern for the less "traditional" parts of the queer alphabet soup, this time in terms of bi. erasure.

SCIENCE
In honor of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, a variation of GoogleEarth, Google Moon, was created.
An article about a healthier approach to healthy weight.
Scientists Present First Genetic Evidence For Why Placebos Work.
Unraveling how children become bilingual so easily.
The wound that ultimately killed a Neandertal man between 50,000 and 75,000 years was most likely caused by a thrown spear, the kind modern humans used but Neandertals did not, according to Duke University-led research.

MISCELLANEOUS
Amateur legislators with internet connections and good Portuguese are invited to draft Portugal a new constitution, as part of a new experiment encouraging Web users to edit the document as if it were a Wikipedia entry.
Now that Walter Kronkite has died, Jon Stewart is the most trusted newscaster in the U.S.