Category: politics & causes

politics, both trans & otherwise

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Hard to Believe We’re All One Species, Sometimes

This, in a report about a 72 year old man who was beaten for being a homosexual:

Anthos, who was helping a wheel-chair-bound friend who was stuck in the snow, was struck with a metal pipe by a man he had been riding the bus with that evening.

Okay, now read that sentence again.

Isn’t it hard to believe those two men are the same species, sometimes? It reminds me of those lyrics from Family Affair by Sly & the Family Stone:

One child grows up to be
Somebody that just loves to learn
And another child grows up to be
Somebody you’d just love to burn

At the very least, they are going to prosecute the murderer for a hate crime, but you know, what about the friend in the wheelchair? Shouldn’t the murderer have to pay for the person to hire an attendant now that he’s taken his friend’s help from him? I think so.

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Pending Hatefulness

Legislators in Nigeria are trying to make homosexuality illegal:

This bill, titled the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill, includes penalties of five years imprisonment for any individual possessing or purchasing gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (GLBT) literature or film, subscribing or donating to a GLBT organization, attending GLBT events, or expressing any form of same-sex desire.

I expect that if AIDS is still stigmatized as a “homosexual disease” – as it still is here in the US, depending on who you talk to – this will make treating the disease that much harder, too. & That’s of course in addition to the arrests & harassment LGBT people would expect under a prohibitive ban like that. Imagine, owning my books would be grounds for five years in jail.

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Nawal al Saadawi

Nawal al Saadawi’s latest book, God Resigns in the Summit Meeting, was destroyed by her publisher. You might know her as a woman who spoke out about female genital mutilation, as both a doctor and victim. She was a political prisoner for many years. Complaints were made that the book was irreligious and offended religious sensibilities.

Simultaneously, she is talking to the general prosecutor in Egypt on behalf of her daughter, Dr. Mona Helmi, who suggested that children be named after their mothers & not their fathers, which resulted in her being accused of renouncing religion.

Not since Mary Wollstonecraft and Frankenstein author Mary Shelley have their been a mother-daughter pair like these two.

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Penultimate Family Values

Amazing, this:

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Innocenti Research Center released a report yesterday ranking the well-being of children in the world’s most economically advanced countries. Out of 21 countries, the United States came in second-to-last, at number 20.

The study focused on six areas: material well-being, health, education, relationships with peers and family members, risky behavior, and their own sense of happiness.

And damned embarrassing, too.

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No Love Lost

I’m really astonished at the remarks Tim Hardaway made, in public, as a public figure. I’m glad to hear he got canned from the All Star game as a result, but I’m just really surprised. I probably shouldn’t be: after all, it was the jocks who often made me nervous in high school because I was different. But I also knew a lot of jocks who were really cool guys & who used their status to stand up for people who were different.

But wow. Tim Hardaway is a bigot. For some reason, that’s always so much more disappointing when it comes from a woman or a person of color or whatever other form of minority. & Yet years ago, when I was working at City College, bell hooks told me she’d never teach a class about James Baldwin again because she was so horrified by the homophobia expressed by her (largely African-American) students. I hope she has, & does, anyway.

I hope someone sat him down to watch Brother Outsider by now, at least, and that John Amaechi sells a truckload of books and educates as many basketball fans as Hardaway represents.

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Getting Clocked

Three months from now, on May 15th Lambda Legal and other LGBT organizations will be “clocking in for equality” – dedicated a day to educating people and companies on workplace discrimination and diversity. They suggest people sign on to do something – wear a button, create a “safe zone” for LGBT employees, put aside a day to lobby on LGBT workplace issues – and I was thinking that this is exactly the kind of thing trans people & their allies should absolutely do, since the discrimination trans and gender variant people face is often brutal.

Maybe we can do something as a group? If you’re not a “joiner” I’m sure there’s still something you can do individually. Think about it: you’ve got three months.