Another article about First Event, in the local Burlington Union: Props to Jodi Blase for doing a better Trans 101 for her readers than most I’ve read.
First Event Coverage
Ethan Jacobs of Bay Windows did a great job summarizing my keynote speech at First Event. Thanks to him for the coverage and to all of you who stayed to listen.
Why I’m Pro Choice
Today is Blog for Choice Day.
There is one reason and one reason only: because if abortion is illegal, women with money & power & connections will be able to have them still, and poor women with no power & access to pay for blackmarket services will not. While there are significant disparities of access and care with abortion legal, it is nothing like what it would be if it weren’t legal.
Abortion will not go away. It has always been with us. That said, holding men/boys responsible for children they father would be a good start. Getting honest sex education to teenagers and adults would be great. Free and easily-accessible birth control would go a long way toward preventing abortions. Dealing with the fact that people have sex – priceless.
White Guilt
I made a cool & unusual discovery the other day: the channel that broadcasts a lot of sports & specifically the Yankees’ games, called the YES (Yankees Entertainment and Sports) Network, also shows old episodes of the show White Shadow at 1am NY time. You folks who are as old or older than me remember it, don’t you? I loved it when I was a kid, but I was kind of surprised to hear it first ran when I was age nine until I was 12. Did I see it in reruns, or did I just not understand a bunch of the jokes?
It’s dated in certain ways – tight, short shorts on basketball players – but it’s a lot better than a lot of crap that’s on now. Little did I know, but it was the first ensemble drama on TV that had a predominantly African-American cast. Only one other show (Showtime’s Soul Food) with a predominantly African-American cast aired for longer, but the current show The Wire is only now about to beat them both.
& That’s pretty damned shocking, imho: only three dramas with African-American casts that had more than a couple of seasons since 1978? That’s just messed up.
Blog for Choice Day is 1/22
& Yes, I’ll be participating!Gawked!
Well look at that! I’ve been Gawked!
Brother Outsider NYC Screening
The Brecht Forum & the War Resisters League here in NYC are screening Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin this Friday, 1/19, 8PM.
I’ll be in Boston or I’d be there. I cannot recommend this film highly enough. Bayard Rustin was one of the organizers of the March on Washington, but was asked to take a public backseat as he was a known homosexual (& a communist, but that’s a whole other story). He was a really remarkable individual & the film is an excellent chronicle of his life.
There’s a bunch of other cool political films (though i’m sad to have missed the one about Dorothy Day, who is a hero of mine).
http://www.warresisters.org/filmfestival.htm for all the info.
Stop the Cat Box
There’s a Singular commercial that shows two guys listening to The Clash’s Rock the Casbah who can’t understand the lyrics,and who come up with the sheep don’t like it / stop the cat box / stop the cat box (the correct lyrics are the shareef don’t like it / rocking the casbah) and every time I see it I wonder if a guy I knew in junior high & high school ever thinks of me when he sees it. I made him a tape of the Combat Rock album when we were in maybe 8th grade biology together. I have no idea where he is now, or what he’s doing, but I think of him every single time I see that commercial. He was always a nice guy, even when I went full-on punkrock and he was something like captain of the football team. So, wherever he is – hello, Mike.
Wrap-Ups
Tristan Taormino has a column up about the best sex of 2006, including awards for “The Creepiest Sex Scene on Television” and “The Man Most Persecuted by PayPal.”
Jake Anderson-Minshall wrote a year-end wrap-up of trans rights and interests, as well as a column about what’s coming up in the trans arena in 2007.
UNICEF Reports: Equal Women Raise Better Children
Okay, that’s not exactly what they reported, but to my mind, it pretty much is:
“Gender equality and the well-being of children are inextricably linked,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman. “When women are empowered to lead full and productive lives, children and families prosper.”
For some people I guess the idea that women need to be equals and to make important decisions about family resources still needs to be made, and for them, UNICEF has created a report that delineates exactly how and why:
The State of the World’s Children 2007 report finds that equality of women produces a “double dividend,” allowing empowered and healthy women to have empowered and healthy children, according to the report (PDF).
I think I can safely add that the opposite is also true: people who prefer women not to be equal are not “pro child.” Somewhere in here I think I can also conclude: feminists are actually the real “family values” set!