Category: Sexuality & Gender

Off to Paul’s today

Going to help with packing and take us for a walk.

Wordle in 5, 1646 words on ‘The Instructor’ yesterday, with none expected today because of my errands. Lumosity one top score the rest abysmal dreck. I made myself coffee and toasted a sourdough muffin. I’m pretty well used to not keeping cream in the house any more, sigh; my liver has thanked me.

Bakhmut’s still under siege. Putin visited military headquarters in Kherson and Zelenskyy visited the front in Avdiivka.

China’s mediated the first progress in the Yemen war in years; Saudi Arabia and Iran may reopen embassies. Given that 60% of Yemeni deaths since 2015 are directly attributable to the war (via food insecurity and zero health care) and that a million people there have been affected by the cholera epidemic the faster peace comes the better and I don’t care who brokers it.

There’s a yummy beef and tomato and onions mix for wraps in the fridge and also a very nice lentil tofu stew. Sounds bland, but with turmeric, ginger, half a lime, cumin, black pepper, cayenne and plenty garlic it’s anything but. The tofu got cooked in a spice mix but it all ended up incorporated in the stew and it is quite yummy. A bit salty for the diet because for all the veggie ingredients leading one to think it’s vegan, I cooked it in chicken stock (I didn’t want it going bad in the fridge).

Twitter is being really weird and gross and they just took the bans off dead-naming trans people (using what they were named at birth rather than their chosen name for transition) and it’s OPEN SEASON on trans people in a way that was obvious enough before but is now a tidal wave of bigoted speech. Trust trans people to know their own gender enough that you do not need to question them about it.

seven percent of parents regret having children.

one percent of trans people regret transitioning.

IT’S A VERY SUCCESSFUL SOCIO-MEDICAL PROCEDURE, quit second guessing trans people and spending all your chocolate coin attention on the ‘poor parents’ who have been ‘cheated’ of the ‘child they were meant to have’ BLEUCH I hate people who think like that NONE OF US FUCKING GET THE KID WE WANT we get the kid we get and whining about it is rude to everyone and makes you look like a gurning nithing. (gur-ning nye-ðing aka a facepulling poltroon)

I slept GREAT but not ENOUGH so I imagine I’ll be napping this afternoon.

So tempted to write Elizabeth Holmes in jail and mock the living shit out of her but better people have more claim to my time LOL. She honestly believed that people like her can’t go to jail well just ask Martha Stewart she did five months and is still proclaiming her innocence.

I am still here

wordle in 3 a few lousy words Lumosity terrible again for three of them but the other two were a top score and a top five…. just don’t ask me to do any filing today unless it’s the trash.

My seasonal allergies are ridiculous right now (for me – it would be hardly noticeable for other people but my nose is being stupid and I can’t stop sneezing).

I support trans people, their existence, their rights and their happiness. Those who wish to outlaw and harass them are fascists, and they are numerous across the planet.

I am also against wanton snail murder

that is all

what the f

The couple in Totally Boned is comprised of an asexual man in a wheelchair because of nerve damage in his legs and an intersex man who’s sex averse but very affectionate. I am deliberately and specifically writing a romance / thriller that doesn’t have any sex in it. Both characters take a dim view of heteronormative pressures and at least one of them wouldn’t say the word ‘love’ if he was drowning in melted chocolate cherubs.

So it is with disgust bordering on hysteria that I present to you this article.

The idea of preventing asexual people from marrying is so heart crushing and so contrary to the idea that people should be able to form the pair bonds (and committed polyamorous marriages) they need to for their own happiness that I’m incapable of further representing my horror and resistance in words.

Speaking of disgust and hysteria, a brave Belarusian doctor has provided documentation of Lukashenko’s support of Putin. This story is a tough read. It includes xrays of injured Russian soldiers and evidence of the support the Belarusian government has freely offered, and the Belarusian people are reluctantly providing, and also shows how fighting-aged men are fleeing Belarus.

Jeff and I watched the first 2/3 of Bros, a gay rom-com. It was quite filled with dudity so parts of it are tough to watch (yes, despite my writing of gay fanfic? gay sex scenes, EVEN WITH LUKE MCFARLANE – one of the hottest men to ever show off his forearms – can be a tough watch – truth be told I’m having trouble watching ANY consensual sex scenes with persons of any gender these days and rape scenes make me ill) but the script is a sparkling coruscation of wit and humour and the procession and occasional inversion of rom com tropes is most entertaining. Also the bisexual representation is greatly appreciated and Debra Messing’s unhinged guest spot is eye-popping.

8783 words on part II.

 

Robot Chicken and Alex Jones

  1. after years of saying we would, Jeff and I are finally rewatching Robot Chicken to make a goodies reel. Jeff, we need to include the danceoff, I changed my mind.
  2. Picture if you will a man who lies for a living. After 9/11, he fused the internet as we mostly now know it to lies about how 9/11 was a ‘false flag’ operation. Many people mostly on the right decided that there was no way 9/11 could have happened UNLESS high government officials and the standard issue global cabal had CAUSED it to happen; this man made money selling dietary supplements (which are also bunkum) to the people who took comfort in this worldview. Many millions of dollars of income later, he said that the shooting deaths of a bunch of children in a school shooting (Sandy Hook) was a false flag operation. That those kids didn’t die. Now, those kids did die, and even though the man who lies for a living knew they didn’t die, and said they didn’t die because people who are against the right to carry guns wanted to change the laws, his attitude toward the truth was not all that great, so the parents sued him for defamation.
  3. he lost. Total amounts owing along the lines of $50 million. Two more lawsuits in a similar vein are coming. His total net worth is in the vicinity of $150 Mil.
  4. perhaps he lost but he’s still very popular, as per “What does the Internet Think” website. 
  5. and in case you think this is bullshit, I give you Lee Pace’s results from the same website, BECAUSE NO ONE IS INDIFFERENT TO LEE PACE (ALSO I DO NOT APPEAR ON THIS WEBSITE LOL I CHECKED):
  6. while he was losing his lawyer’s employee accidentally (OR DID SHE LOL) sent two years’ worth of text and email messages from his phone to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. The lawyers promptly asked the January 6 committee if they wanted the messages, which was truly inconvenient for the man who lies for a living.
  7. and his ex wife Kelly probably will be getting them too. She is – quite rightly – in a custody battle, and now his utter unfitness to have access to his children will soon be a matter of public record. She calls him “truly mentally ill” and a danger to society but what the hell else can you expect from an ex wife hunh?
  8. to recap, Alex Jones is a foam-flecked liar, and now he will be paying for it. It won’t stop him, and he’ll fundraise on it, but at least someone slowed him down for two seconds and between his wife, his involvement with the January 6 traitors and the Sandy Hook parents his wealth will get a shellacking.
  9. Watched ‘Prey’ which is a new film in the Predator franchise GODDAMN I LOVED IT. It’s set in Comanche territory in 1719. The French are the bad guys, just like life’s supposed to be (this is a family joke, not reality.)
  10. That dog was not trained. They had to use that dog because it’s very close to what an Indigenous dog would have looked like at the time, so holy shit the director had to put up with a lot from that dog.
  11. A version completely in Comanche is available.
  12. Watched the new Minions movie. It had a few good laughs and was about standard for the franchise.
  13. I’m feeling quite a bit better, but the weather’s gone hot again so the next couple of days will probably be uncomfortable.
  14. There’s a cat rescue outfit in Vancouver which would rather EUTHANIZE a cat that adopt it out to a transgender person. Infuriating, like it’s a REASON.
  15. 1207 words on new section, still going very slow also worked on fanfic ‘landslide’
  16. Watched the Frontline about the people living in Kharkiv for the first three months after the Russian invasion. Very scary, moving and the people there seem admirable in their resolve. The impact of the war on the elderly and disabled is just gross.
  17. For settler saturday consider a donation to Indigenous language revitalization.

Private post

I just posted something privately to my blog complaining about a life situation that isn’t mine to talk about publicly but that is wrecking me. mOm knows, Jeff knows, I’m not alone but I have many yuccccky feelings.

I owe various people phone calls and wish they’d call me for a change but it’s easily fixed.

I can’t find an online obituary for a friend of mine who died back in 2004/5. So that was depressing.

Today I learned that acrylic nails aren’t just for show. I just learned that a small but vocal subset of acrylic nail wearers USE THEM to help control their OCD, self-picking and trichotillomania symptoms. (They literally can’t pick at their scalps, eyelashes, eyebrows, etc. if they’re wearing them.)  I hate them because I think they’re hideously ugly but now Billie Eilish wearing 7 cm nails all the time makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE and I’m going to stop commenting on this aspect of other women’s appearance. Thank you Reddit.

This is a photograph of UK soldiers from WWII interrupted during rehearsals for a drag show to SHOOT AT NAZIS.

WWII soldiers interrupt rehearsal of drag show to shoot Nazis

 

lovely laid back day

Supper was delivery from White Spot; the milkshakes were so recently made that despite the heat and the travails of delivery they were simply fantastic, a lovely end to a tasty meal.

We mostly took it easy for Jeff’s b-day and watched tv in the cool of the aircon. Jeff went for a walk in the morning, as he did this morning

Wordle in 3, quite by accident.

1156 words. I AM STRUGGLING so I’m just going to fallow for a while.

Watching a twitter fight in a marginalized group when you can understand how everyone feels but wish they’d behave better is kind of my look these days. I want to get involved, but I’m not trans.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how my interest in trans lives and rights might be an indication that I’m trans myself, but I’m just not. When trans women talk about the dysphoria they sometimes still feel and almost always did feel when they were young I feel like I’m listening to a piece of music I don’t understand. I’ve always felt right in my body. I’ve envied men their ease in walking through the world, but that isn’t dysphoria. So I consider myself an ally; I want to understand trans experiences as part of the human panoply but I don’t want to own them or police them or rank order them or gatekeep them by commenting on them; none of that is mine and I’m good with it.

But it’s sad watching a trans man and a trans woman that I follow slag each other on twitter; I am so fond of them in a parasocial way for being human in front of me, and for always having something worth saying.

We are all part of the system, we all contribute, and we all negate our humanity in trying to stay alive under capitalism. In the particular case I mention, a trans person who is a writer tried to fundraise getting a book published, offended somebody (I think I would have been disgusted, not vengeful, had I learned of it in the same way), and got doxxed. In the course of being doxxed the world learned they were both trans and working for Lougheed Martin in such a fashion that one could draw a straight line between their employment and children being murdered from drone strikes — so let’s just be glad we’re not at the concussion point of that dispute while remembering that the overwhelming majority of trans people on this earth don’t get jobs with decent medical coverage while assisting the US with its imperial ambitions.

Have something less contentious:::

Image

Kaossilator ip ip ip

  • Brief walk and lovely sit in the sunshine with Paul. He had a good time on the Island and Jim being in better shape really put the heart back into him. Paul’s at his volunteer job today.
  • Dragged him into the music room and made him listen to what the Kaossilator sounds like when the battery is dying
  • HEY pOp RYERSON CHANGED ITS NAME TO Toronto Metropolitan University. Given that he was a colonizer who thought Indigenous people are scum I’m cool with that.
  • MUST go to the bank today, I still haven’t paid Keith back.
  • Otto back tomorrow or the day after, that’s good.
  • President Biden is apparently going to declare a climate emergency. Don’t be too happy; those parts that are useful will be turned into money making opportunities for big Democrat donors and when the next president is a Republican it will all be swept away anyway
  • The gay mayor of a town in Oklahoma has been assaulted and frightened so much that after five years of service as Councilman and Mayor he’s resigning. I spend a lot of time in fanfic talking about states where you can’t be out in public and Kansas and Oklahoma are definitely two places where it’s as much as your life is worth to be openly gay, especially outside of places like Lawrence.
  • The entire world with the exception of New Zealand and parts of China is wandering into the seventh wave like a bunch of fools. ERs are crashing and apart from the people who visit them and work at them nobody cares.
  • Despite a century of doctors and health care professionals wearing masks, the far right and the ignorant are still claiming that wearing a mask makes for ‘too much CO2, you’ll choke.’ Showing them pictures of your pulseox before and after masks is ‘fake news.’ Now I’m not saying people deserve to die, but some will die, with belief systems like that. And it will be the young, the elderly and the disabled who pay most dearly, just like fucking usual.
  • I predict that people between forty and eighty will just ‘start dropping dead’ as the effects of multiple undiagnosed COVID infections spread out through the population. Since these deaths won’t get added to the COVID total (no active COVID infection??? CAN’T be COVID!!), the ignorant will claim that it’s the ‘stress of lockdown when it was unnecessary’, ‘drugs’, ‘chemtrails’, ‘the heat’ and ‘the government’ that’s causing these unusual deaths.
  • If you don’t have a will please make one. I have a will, it’s out of date. After all, I no longer have any assets except my intellectual property, which is LOLOLOL completely worthless except to about 3 people. But I still have to change the will so the intellectual property is specifically called out.
  • Apparently the CME is pretty much missing us but check for nice aurorae tonight in western Canada if skies are clear.
  • Don’t blame me, the wordle of the day is ‘angry’
  • 393 words on Part II

the people vs. the press

Despite the overwhelming hatred and bigotry being expressed in the daily papers in the UK against trans people, one in four Britons is reporting that they know a trans person and the majority of people surveyed don’t agree with their rights and health care being stripped away. I could bang on about the basic decency of people but I won’t. I’ll just say that it’s possible people are more resistant to Nazi propaganda than you often give them credit for.

A woman in my neighbourhood published a photo of a bus creep on NextDoor (which is candidly the last fucking place on earth I’d expect to see such a thing) and it didn’t take very long before two men bounced on her hard to tell her she ought not to publicly shame people. Ie women shouldn’t complain about men. Then a bunch of other people came out to flail on the misogynists including other men.

I JUST FUCKING LOVE HOW WHITE MEN ENJOY TELLING WOMEN OF COLOUR TO CALL THE COPS ON A MAN OF COLOUR. Because that was the reaction of the naysayers WHY DINCHA CALL THE COPS.

“OH YOU SHOULDN’T DO THAT TO THE POOR MAN, EXPOSE HIM TO PUBLIC SHAME… NOPE you should call the cops.” WHY should a woman of colour (Arabic 1st and last name, for all I know she’s as pink as me but I’m not betting on it) call the RCMP on a Chinese guy? If she’s a Syrian immigrant (spitballing here) what the fuck would lead anyone to believe that she trusts the cops over local direct action? Given how the local cops’ (VPD, RCMP) treat men having mental health issues in public, one might refrain from calling them for assistance when one feels threatened just so one doesn’t have a death on one’s conscience. The VPD shot dead a man having mental health issues at Clarke and Broadway and the RCMP are no better, I assure you. I mean, it’s never been proven, but I’ve seen lots of evidence that the RCMP on the Island shot an Indigenous man who was having mental health issues and WAS UNARMED in the head WHILE HE WAS KNEELING. THAT COP IS STILL SERVING.

Fuckin’ wild I’m telling you. SURE, call the cops. You’ll never regret it.

toasted sesame seed bagel, smoked wild-caught salmon, roasted garlic cream cheese, capers and red onion for brekky… Jeff’s response was a literal ‘nom nom nom’

I made coffee but Jeff’s just going to ignore that part. We have to end eating pizza before it ends Jeff’s end.

19300 words. I chug, I chug, I chug along.

I’m going to listen to Eminence Front (the Who) ON BLAST

Ghislaine Maxwell says she needs lenience in sentencing because she had a terrible childhood. NOPE

Zahn McLarnon in Dark Winds is AMAZING and the writing is 100%

I saw Ryker yesterday when I helped Katie with a Costco shop and he was crabby and nobody was wearing a mask who was under 50. FML. Katie doesn’t wear a mask in public because Ryker goes snake when she does.

 

Trolls come out to play

Boy Howdy if you want to get shat on in subreddits ? supporting trans people is def the way to do it.

Still very sore in my muscles but the walkways look great LOL. Weather today involves rude amounts of wind, so charge your devices.

Tiny bits of writing.

Made a really nice bean stew / sorta chili last night. Forgot to seal the instant pot but it cooked up okay anyway. (after enlivening Jeff’s evening. IT HISSETH MOST SCARILY)

One can Heinz veggie beans, two cans diced tomatoes, one can black beans, one cup frozen corn, one can garbanzos, one can red kidney beans. Half teaspoon of cayenne, teaspoon of cumin, many many many shakes of garlic powder, a shake of black pepper, and no added salt.

The astronomers are watching a star blow up in real time, and it sounds really cool, although the event itself is rather warm.

 

It’s International Polyamory Day!

The tune. When I wrote it in 2012 I whined about how I can’t stop writing songs in 3/4 time, but now I understand it’s a very white time signature (percussionists loathe it, so says the filk circle LOL), so it’s okay. Is it not hilarious how out of date this song is already?

Here are the lyrics:

Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
I won’t force you into a pair
Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
Your talent’s exceedingly rare
Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
I tell you, for I truly care
Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
A skillset like yours should be shared

In this life there’s a bias for binary thoughtless
It starts with your left hand and right
Couple Up and De-Couple!
sells novels, moves clickbait with
Tropes that are tragic and trite.
Whatever your naughty bits com-mu-ni-ca-tion
is key to affairs of the heart
so when delineating polyamory
that is the place that I start

Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
I won’t force you into a pair
Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
Your talent’s exceedingly rare
Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
I tell you, for I truly care
Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
A skillset like yours should be shared

You don’t make assumptions or fail to do check-ins
When you’re angry you use your words
You try not to judge, but when something goes ‘squick’
you are quick to say that’s for the birds
You rarely make promises, but you will keep them
on that your friends may be assured
and you’re made out of action, instead of excuses
a life style choice I much prefer

Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
I won’t force you into a pair
Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
Your talent’s exceedingly rare
Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
I tell you for I truly care
Be mine, be mine, and be somebody else’s
A skillset like yours should be shared

But only if you you really want to….

The old lady and her memories

Today I was reminded that many many years ago I was the volunteer coordinator for childcare for a Toronto Pride, back in the 90s.

There’s a fight ‘in the community’ right now about Pride, all across the western world. Not so much in the parts of the world where being openly gay gets you beaten and murdered and being openly lesbian gets you ‘correctively’ raped. Anyway this first world fight is about ‘children at Pride’ and how a substantial minority of gay people who support Pride want the leather daddies and bondage enthusiasts and folks who whatever they sport amidships aren’t long on clothing to just…. cover up for Pride.

Now I think I established, with my childcare cred, that I do indeed care about children and want them to be safe while their parental units or some fraction thereof want to partay on the streets of the city; I also know that Pride started when among the most marginalized of the rainbow community, black transgender women, decided that they were tired of being subjected to raids and police harassment every fucking weekend, and started throwing bricks at the cops.

So for all the shrinking violets who have finished their days of LGBTQA+ activism and thus want all the rest of us to behave like tv housewives, this is le extended middle finger de moi.

For all the parents who want the leather daddies to cover up, fuck ya.

For all the parents who want to take their kids to pride, how about memorizing some easy answers about the costumes …. and lack of them?

The event is for ADULTS. Children are to be expected, and allowed for, and cared for in context of the parade and events, but they aren’t to be CATERED to. No more than the fucking cops or beer companies.

Having cops at Pride is bad. Having kids at pride is not. Having bigots try to tell activists how to dress is bad. Having bigots publicly struck hard in their rhetorical goolies is good.

It’s international asexuality day!

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network defines an asexual as “someone who does not experience sexual attraction” and stated, “[a]nother small minority will think of themselves as asexual for a brief period of time while exploring and questioning their own sexuality” and that “[t]here is no litmus test to determine if someone is asexual. Asexuality is like any other identity — at its core, it’s just a word that people use to help figure themselves out. If at any point someone finds the word asexual useful to describe themselves, we encourage them to use it for as long as it makes sense to do so.” (From Wikipedia)

According to various surveys, some of which had quite large data sets, one person in a hundred never feels sexual attraction to anyone. Asexuals can have sex out of curiosity or to please a partner, so lack of sexual activity is not in itself the criterion.  More info is here.

 

From Audrey to Zappa

It’s interesting to compare and contrast (lightly) the doccos about Audrey Hepburn and Frank Zappa. Both of them were financed / directed / driven by surviving family members; both are … er …. hagiographic.

One can argue that Zappa is the greater artist, that he gave more to the world, but he was a raging dick, he hurt his wife and kids with his endless groupie groping and his ineffable attitude of perpetual superiority must have been absolutely hateful to live with.

Whereas Hepburn was a delightful actress who brought the things she’d survived into every role, and really I think the world’s happier for having had her in it. Was Zappa a genius? Arguably no; a fine technician yes, but he did not expand the limits of music, he merely explored them with more deftness than your average Frank. Was Hepburn a genius? Nope. but we love her anyway.

To change the subject. When your kid asks this question: