Category: Sexuality & Gender

Humour is ever so much better than violence

Prop 8 takes one in the goolies.

The cats, each in his own way, mourn Jeff’s absence; one by pissing copiously all over the chair he normally occupies in the kitchen, I’ve already Feliway’d it, and the other by voluntarily sitting in my lap for the first time in six months.  Gizmo was sitting in my lap when Eddie started howling piteously at the back door (the wind is rattling the doors and windows) so I had to stand up and push him off my lap.  He sat in the kitchen doorway, tail switching and with a miffed look.  He let Eddie have a cuff on the way by for good measure.

Transphobia

Quoted from today’s tyee.ca:

 

Ten Signs of Transphobia in Our Culture, by Christopher A. Shelley

 

  1. Denial that the problem exists in the first place. 

     

  2. Inability to distinguish between categories such as queer, gay, lesbian, and trans. 

     

  3. Lack of meaningful discussion in educational and workplace settings. 

     

  4. Anxiety over not being able to tell if a person is male or female. 

     

  5. Crude jokes directed towards trans people or with trans-related content. 

     

  6. Refusal to accept trans people as one’s own teacher, doctor, politician, dentist, etc. 

     

  7. Thinking that being trans is OK but also dismissing the idea of ever dating a transperson. 

     

  8. Reducing trans to being merely and solely a psychiatric category. 

     

  9. Trivialization and media spectacles centred on trans-ness as an object of ‘fascination.’ 

     

  10. Refusing the fundamental claims of transpeople as being genuinely mis-sexed.

 

Book launch for Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing. Event begins at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 25, at Little Sister’s bookstore, 1238 Davie St., Vancouver. RSVP to awilson@utpress.utoronto.ca.

How bigotry plays out in the courts

Transgender vs Library….

I had met one transgender person in my life before the welcoming congregation process at the U*U church.  Then I met two and it was quite startling.  There’s no one standard transgender person.  You can SAY all women are alike, but you know they’re not.  You can SAY all black people are alike, and that’s another damned lie.  I can understand the hiring authority being confused, but not staying confused…..

Anyway, it’s a good article and quite thought provoking.

Satidday roundup

Two hundred thirty seven reasons to have sex.  Guess I am going to have to read the original research to get the list. This was forwarded to me – but I won’t say by whom….

How will you know when the housing market has bottomed out?  A handy formula. 

A canonical list of “They do it” one liners.  Definitely some giggles in there.

Brian Kiely goes to Kenya in February for the UU movement, and reports back.  I’ve seen him deliver a couple of sermons and the guy is fracking awesome, and he’s also the only minister I’ve ever seen who incorporated Chet Baker music into a service.  By way of sidestream comment, has anybody else besides me had a conversation about genocide in Canada recently?  The existence, the possibility?

I asked my brother for advice about a haircut and after a blank stare, he said, “Uh, not a brush cut,” which now concludes my attempts to ever ask him appearance related questions again.

Since some of my readers will be progenizing shortly, and some have progenized and like getting reminders of how traumatizing it was (sample conversation with my mother.  “Remember when I here insert description of frankly horrid and unsafe and at best unsanitary teenage behaviour?”  “No.” “Well one of us is luckier than the other.”)  So I am providing a link to an interesting list of things new moms should know.  When I read it I nodded a lot, and I also went hunh?? a couple of times too.

The science behind monster waves.

Rational atheism.

Interesting green blog. Obviously it exists to sell things, but there’s cool stuff in there too. 

I LOVE THESE PICTURES.  The expression on the young man’s face, the poses, the clothing that he’s wearing.  And he was hanged. I just think of Deadwood, and melt.

Maybe it’s not a safe place to put money, but it’s an interesting place.

Young and coordinated.

And now… a dancing walrus.

Life on line…. death on line.

Your opinion?  I poop on it!

Finally, a joke.  What’s Australian foreplay?  “Brace yerself, Sheila!”

Royal Vancouver Pornographic Society

Yes, I can has invite!!!! I will be going to one of their by invitation only events on Thursday. Strictly for research purposes, of course.

And for those of you who can’t deal with porn, herewith Crying baby and Howling dog.

Baby cries. Dog howls, most affectedly and musically. Baby shuts up to watch the dog. Dog shuts up because baby has stopped crying. Baby starts crying again. Rinse, repeat. A classic demonstration of a feedback loop.

God bless France. 

And may god bless Hugh Laurie. 

God is a capricious lover

Sometimes you text him twenty times and he doesn’t answer and sometimes he expects you to do all the work and sometimes he comes on so big and so mean.  Other times he seems way more interested in other girls, and right in front of you.  Sometimes he comments that you really aren’t doing it for him anymore.

Okay, lightning will strike me but hopefully after I deliver my homily this morning.

Why would somebody ask for ‘more ranting’?

Tonight I would like to rant about the lack of menstruation rituals in our culture. Tonight I’m going to take the man’s view, as the woman’s view about it isn’t nearly transgressive enough for me ce soir la. Jeez, where’s an accent grave when I need one…
If I was a man, I would want rituals and predictive patterns in young women’s lives that preserved their fertility for their true purpose, namely, making babies with me and not with other men. Having some kind of ceremony where it was drilled into the girl’s head that she had one shot at the childbearing game and if she slept with the wrong guy it was game the fuck over would be useful if my strategy for access to childbearing women meant I was employed and civil. Mind you, if my strategy is to just rape the shit out of her and hope for a lucky plug, it’s still better than if she was really trying to save it for the right guy. Her body may betray her and pop an egg for me. I’d be the ‘wrong guy’ – but I’d still be first. Now, the sperm competition theory of fucking, which holds that guys enjoy sharing girls because if you’re second (or later) you come way harder (your sperm will ‘wash away’ that of your, uh, competitor/buddy), so if you let your buddy go first, because you don’t really care if you get her pregnant, and you’d prefer to come harder because of your wiring, you’ve more or less dropped out of the discussion about breeding. You’ve actually given some consideration to the notion, which is why you’re wearing a condom while all of these shenanigans are going on. I mean, it’s still rape, but there’s a different angle. You get it now? All different styles of thinking about ‘the breeding thing’ lead to different results in terms of how it affects the woman’s life. Oh, sorry, I’ve gone back into the women’s way of thinking about this, ‘scuse me all to hell.

So mOm, did I make you laugh really hard on the phone tonight, or what?

Back to the subject at hand. Women should have menstruation rites so that they actually have two whole chunks of time to think about fertility without having to do any work. That is, in part, what rituals are all about. It’s about the whole “stop working and start thinking” thing that has made humanity what it is. Having enough excess capacity in your life to be able to stop and think is what makes for civil life. Having the spare time to develop morality makes morality. Leisure, in short, makes ethical life possible. But don’t worry, in the end it’s all about sex. Yeehaw. Hurry hurry love.
Did I ever say why it was I refer to my mother as mOm? It’s because when I spell her title that way, it is the “Kilroy was here” or “Clem” sign. See his hands, on either side of his head? Te he. But I also do it because of where I got the idea of it, pOp – which is a clown face with a big nose in the middle. Squint and you’ll see.