Verification

Yes I'm still alive, well sort of. The task for today is to verify my website

Pinterest Verification

ACTION ALERT

 [Re-posted from Gender Queer Revolution]

Everyone,

Call the Senate Judiciary Committee --today, tomorrow, and Monday--at 1-866-940-2439 to oppose all amendments against protections for transgender asylum seekers, refugees, and immigration detainees and to support amendment #2 that stops putting LGBT immigrants in solitary confinement. Say: "Hello, my name is _____ and I am calling to urge Senator ___ to OPPOSE Senator Graham's Amendment #1, Senator Sessions' amendment 12, and ALL Senator Grassley's amendments on asylum, refugees, and detention of S.744. I further urge you to SUPPORT Senator Blumenthal's amendment 2. This amendment addresses reform of the immigration detention system."
Senate Judiciary Committee
Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) DC: (202) 224-4242
Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA) DC: (202) 224-3841
Senator Charles Schumer (NY) DC: (202) 224-6542
Senator Dick Durbin (IL) DC: (202) 224-2152
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) DC: 202-224-2921
Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN) DC: (202) 224-3244
Senator Al Franken (MN) DC: (202) 224-5641
Senator Christopher A. Coons (DE) DC: (202) 224-5042
Senator Richard Blumenthal (CT) DC: (202) 224-2823
Senator Mazie K. Hirono (HI) DC: (202) 224-6361
Senator Orrin Hatch (UT) DC: (202) 224-5251
Senator Lindsey Graham (SC) DC: (202) 224-5972
Senator John Cornyn (TX) DC: (202) 224-2934
Senator Jeff Flake (AZ) DC: (202) 224-4521

Warmly,
Levi

Rabbi Levi Alter
President, FTM International, Inc.

The Bitch Is Back!

Oh since I've been away from blogging for a while I felt a little music might be in order to mark my return.



What, you expected Elton John? Well OK we can do that one to.

Another Reason I'm Glad I'm A Trans Woman

"Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran." Senior Bush Official, May 2003

Yes Ten years ago having screwed up Iraq and killed thousands of Iraqis the Bush administration was already thinking of plunge yet another country into chaos and misery. But of course they were "Real Men" not a gender queer trans woman like me. I am not a "Real Man" at all and thought invading Iraq was a very bad idea and that invading Iran was a even worse idea. Interestingly even Bush II thought invading Iran was a bad idea and refused to authorize it. Meanwhile the "Real Men" are still advocating bombing the hell out of Iran at a minimum. Isn't about time we kicked the "Real Men" out of office and gave we queers a chance? It would be damn hard for us to do worse.

Pride and Art

I am proud to be transgender and proud to be gender queer. I also love art so I decided to combine these two things.


All my tattoos are done by Pat Fish in Santa Barbara. Not only is she a superb tattooist but she is queer and trans gender friendly. Visit her web site at www.luckyfish.com if you are even contemplating getting a Tatto.

Gender Queer and Me

So I say I'm a gender queer trans woman but what does that mean?

I was assigned male at birth (AMAB) but I am a woman so I am transgender and damn proud of it. I love being femme, I love jewelry, feminine clothes and shoes but I present in a somewhat butch way. I don't wear dresses or high heals and wear fairly minimum makeup. I'm old and bald and so am almost always read as male. But none of this is what makes me gender queer.

I am gender queer because there are times when I have no sense of gender at all, I am nutrois. There are times when I'm male, a very femme male but still male. There are times when my sense of gender has no words to describe it. If medical science was advanced enough the body I would want would have fully functional male and female reproductive organs. I would have the ability to regulate my endocrine system so it would only produce a minimum amount of testosterone except in certain circumstances, I love what estrogen does for me.

So my gender is not a fixed thing though even at my most male I'm still femme, stone femme in fact. Now that I think of it maybe that's my gender, femme.

Cop Killer

I grew up in Los Angeles and this seems like a reasonable reaction to the Los Angeles Police Department



As Ice T says Fuck Police Brutality

A Few Relevant Quotes From Frederick Douglass

Those fighting for social justice and THLG rights would do well to read some frederick Douglass. A few very relevant quotes;

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

That is probably his best known quote but there are others

 Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

And more

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

This is relevant to my ongoing discusion of willful ignorance

 A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

And finaly this

 America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

So follow the example of a very successful activist and get out there and cause some trouble.  

 

Stupid Conservative Memes

One of the most persistent of conservative memes is that Obama is a Marxist. No he isn't, I wrote about this back brfore the 2008 election. Here for your elucidation is that post'

Is Obama a Marxist?

Short answer, not even close, for a longer answer let’s look at Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. I actually have a copy and have read it more then once unlike the people who are making the charges and obviously have never read it at all. Marx near then end of the manifesto lays out a ten point program so let’s look at it and see how Obama measures up shall we?

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

After the disaster that was the Soviet Union no one is proposing something even vaguely close to this so Obama strikes out here

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Well since neither candidate has proposed a flat tax but both have proposed tax cuts so this one is a wash.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

Ah nope Obama misses this one to.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

Not really relevant here and another one that Obama does not propose

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

Gasp! Bush and Paulson are Communists! Well it Makes more sense than singling out Obama on this one as McCain voted for the bailout to.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

There is centralization all right but hardly in the hands of the State. Again Obama misses out on being a good Marxist.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the brining into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

Say what? Again no one is going for this sort of thing, most certainly not Obama.

8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

Another non-starter and another miss for Obama.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

So Archer Daniel Midlands are Communists what with factory farms and all? But again not Obama.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

Since Bush pushed No Child Left Behind to supposedly improve public schools I guess he again is the true Communist here. To be fair since neither Obama or McCain are calling for the abolition of public education they can both be called out as communist here.

Really given some of his domestic proposals it would make as much sense to call the old cold warrior Nixon a Communist as Obama.

I so want his election to be over.

Stuff

Bleah, not enough sleep last night so just some random observations this time.

I see Paul Ryan is being his usually evasive self on weather he would vote for ENDA. Ryan did vote for ENDA last time it came to the floor but only after he convinced Barney Frank to remove gender identity from the bill. Fuck'm both.

On the subject of ENDA, we have a state version of ENDA here in New Mexico but trans women are still getting fired for who they are. A law is only as effective as it's enforcement mechanism.

The fourth industrial revolution will be bio tech. One that that will bring eventual is the tech to allow trans people to have fully functional genitalia of their choice. I want to live long enough to see thast just to watch all the theocrats get apoplexy,  .

Willful Ignorance

We are all ignorant of most things, there is simply too much to know. We all have blind spots, things and experiences so unfamiliar to us that we have a very hard time learning them. It was hard for me to learn that yes I did have unacknowledged white privilege but I finally did learn that. There is no shame in being ignorant if you are willing to learn.

There is shame in willful ignorance though, the refusal to even try to learn something. Unfortunately there are far too many people in the world who are willfully ignorant. People who use religion, dogma, or pseudo science to support their prejudices. They want to believe in creationism, the protocols of the elders of Zion, homeopathy or that Obama is a Marxist and refuse to consider any inconvenient facts. They would rather remain ignorant then change their beliefs, they are willfully ignorant. The theocrats, the men's rights advocates, the climate change denialist they all are willfully ignorant.

Update: Frank Schaffer has a excellent essay highlighting just how toxic willfull ignorance is to our culture and nation.

Sunday Musings

Being Sunday even my thoughts turn to football though Arsenal F.C. Is my club. My thoughts also turn to the toxic rape culture that seems part and parcel of U.S. football at all levels. At the high school level you have the horrific gang rape of a 16year old girl in Steubenville, Ohio. At he collage level you have the Pennsylvania governor suing the NCAA because he thinks that the penalties the NCAA levied against Penn state for covering up years of child rape are too severe. In the pros you have serial abuser Jovan Belcher murdering his girlfriend and killing himself and now she is being blamed for triggering her own murder. And that is just the lase few months. In all these cases people are making excuses for these privileged thugs and blaming the victims. This is merely one of the uglier manifestations of the misogynistic rape culture of this country. 

Some Sleep Deprived Thoughts

So thinking about how the controversy in the atheist movement since 'Elevatorgate' has proved that religion has no monopoly on self entitled, self righteous misogynistic wankers who revel in rape culture. There really is no difference in language or attitude between the religious and atheist wankers. The only difference is the self serving justifications they use. In both religion and movement atheism the more decent leaders fall back on the 'It's a few bad apples' excuse to get their movements off the hook.

I am not saying movement atheism is as bad as say the Catholic Church which is a criminal organization. I am saying that thw atheist/secularist movement as just as many vile hateful wankers as any religious organization of comparable size. For me it's simple, I'll oppose vile wankers wherever they come from. It doesn't matter what creed or lack of creed you profess you're scum and all you'll get from me is my spit in your eye.

Another Late Night

So what shall I talk about tonight? My mind seems to be just random fragments at the moment, no coherence at all. My cat just brought me one of his foam soccer balls to throw so he can chase it. My husky could care less about fetch, it seems even my pets are a bit queer. I like being queer myself but do much queer culture just seems to be too CIS-normative for words. The straight cis* hetro-normative culture we grew up in just seems to cling to us old gum to a shoe. This is too depressing so I'm going to sleep now.

More Random Thoughts

My aging brain still seems to be working so some stream of consciousness writing. I'm going through one of my periodic 'I should just give up and de-transition' moods. It's not a serious one this time, I know I can't give up estrogen. But still the pressures of life in a cis centric, hetro-normative world  means that the thought of de-transitioning is always in the background of my mind. It's always there even though I know that it would lead to suicidal depression. It isn't easy being trans but it sure beats the alternatives.

A New Year And A New Cycle

So a new year begins and we dodged the Mayan Apocalypse. Or did we? The Mayans did not perdict an apocalypse, they were saying that December 21st marked the end of one cycle and the beginning of another cycle. I find this a rather hopeful thought.

There are other signs beside Mayan calendars that a new cycle is beginning. The modern nation state which has help sway in Europe since 1648 and has come to dominate the world is disintegrating. This started in the late 70's with the rise of the transnational corporations and has accelerated with the emergence of NGO's like Doctors Without Borders and Al Quieda. While these trends certainly have their bad side, just ask workers making iPhones in China, there are tremendous opportunities to compleatly remake the world order. These trends herald a change as profound as the collapse of feudalism and the begging of the industrial revolution in the 17th and 18th centuries.

While things could descend into a bleak corporate dominated tyranny there is just as much chance for the emergence of a new and more just post capitalist world. This may seem like a long shot but we live in a time when a few dedicated people can change the course of history. We have seen movements started by a handful of people have grown to sweep away entrenched governments. While these movements have not always resulted in great improvements they have shown the  vulnerability of existing power structures.

So I see a chance for profound changes for the better if we are willing to really fight for them. We need to stop working within the old systems and instead work to smash them and create better systems in their place. I think this is a profoundly hopeful and exciting time when we may set a whole new cycle of world history in motion.