Friday Cat Blogging, for those of you who don’t know, has become a tradition of the lefty blogosphere.
Some notables of the lefty blogosphere:
Atrios
Kos
Talking Points Memo
Friday Cat Blogging began with Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly, after he heard the news about Iraq and looked to his cat, but it only become a “thing” later.
I think it’s a good way to start a weekend, myself.
Betty with our big, sweet boy Endymion (weighing in at nearly 20 lbs). (I don’t know what Betty weighs.)
Victoria's Dirty Secret
It seems the folks at ForestEthics have discovered that Victoria’s Secret uses old-growth forest for the umpteen million catalogs.
C’mon, trannies, this isn’t cool. Write to them and tell them to cut it out.
Here’s a sample letter:
Right now, Victoria’s Secret is no angel when it comes to forest destruction. It is shocking that Victoria’s Secret sends out over a million catalogs a day – 395 million per year! And it is not very sexy to know that Victoria’s Secret catalogs contain paper made from the endangered forests of the Canadian Boreal, one of the largest wilderness areas in the world, or that its paper use threatens the forests in the Southern US, one of our country’s biological treasures.
In order to be a responsible corporation, Victoria’s Secret must stop sending endangered forests to our mailboxes and:
* End purchases from any company that is not identifying and halting logging in endangered forests in the Canadian Boreal
* Maximize post-consumer recycled content in catalogs (achieve 50% post-consumer recycled in five years);
* Ensure that all suppliers are shifting to Forest Stewardship Council certification;
* End the use of any forest products sourced from other endangered forests, such as key areas of the Southern U.S.
Victoria’s Secret must change now. We hope you will see that when it comes to our last remaining endangered forests, less is not more.
SAMHSA Stonewall
A few counselors who intended to present a workshop at an upcoming SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) on suicide prevention in GLBT communities were asked to remove “GLBT” from the title of the workshop. Instead of the title being “Suicide Prevention in GLBT Communities” the suggested title is “Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Communities.”
Likewise, any mention of “gender identity” was removed from the workshop’s description (although “sexual orientation” was allowed to remain).
Workshops with the previous title had been given at two other SAMHSA Conferences, but both before our last presidential election.
Currently there’s stonewalling going on, where the counsellors are being told it was all a “misunderstanding,” but no-one has said the original wording is now okay. The counsellors will be speaking to some members of the media about this tomorrow, and hopefully, they will take the lead.
In the meantime, there are few representatives you can contact to lodge a complaint. Please see the MHB forums for further information.
Women & Activism
I’m very excited that while we’re up in Burlington at the University of Vermont, I’ll also be doing an event for UVM’s “Women’s History Month” series. Their theme this year is “Women & Activism” and I’ll be hosting a roundtable on feminism and transness.
The event will take place at UVM’s Women’s Center on March 4th, sometime around noon.
It is, need I say, a great pleasure to be able to do an event for Women’s History Month, and especially one that focuses on women and activism.
Harvard President Summers
With President Summers’ actual statements still unknown, and while he continues to withhold transcripts of what he actually said, we are all left to guess as to what was controversial enough to make a Harvard graduate and female scientist walk out of his lecture in disgust.
What I think it’s important to keep in mind is that there are trends in science as elsewhere; what might be the hot thing today turns out to be absurd tomorrow.
Biological essentialism has its day every few decades, usually as a result of political/social progress. The anti-black science (a la “The Bell Curve”) that came out a few years ago was well-timed: the black middle class was making real inroads.
Likewise, biological essentialism vis a vis women became all the rage when we were trying to return those newly-liberated WWII female factory workers to their homes. It happened again after the 2nd wave of feminism in the 70s. John Gray didn’t come from nowhere; his bullshit is exactly the answer to so many people’s anxieties about the changes in gender roles.
Aside from that, there’s funding. During this presidency, which has proved itself willing to fund only research that it finds politically expedient, we have to see where the money is coming from.
Most theories can seem rational without proof. Interesting and worthy of research, too. But it doesn’t make them right – and until proven otherwise, I think Summers was talking out of his ass.
As trannies, you all are going to have to keep track of this stuff, too. You can’t be surprised when a sodomy law gets taken down, backlash happens – and it happens in all industries and cultures – even that untouchable behemoth we like to call science. One of the things you start to figure out as a minority is that the hotshots of science hobnob with the same legislators that won’t approve trans-friendly legislation. Everyone has politics, but some hide them behind their impressive degrees.
The one thing transwomen especially have to keep in mind – and which they may have no experience in – is understanding that a strong objection (like Hopkins’) isn’t usually about nothing. Find out who is objecting, and why, instead of dismissing a person’s compaints for being too sensitive, or being “politically correct.” Discrimination is a difficult thing to prove but terrifically oppressive to the people living with it. As transfolks, you know what oppression is, and if you’re not going to be accused of “crying wolf” when someone treats you like crap, learn how to give other kinds of objectors the benefit of the doubt before dismissing them.
Summers may be a scientist, but he’s also a man with a lot of power. Power is deafening to those who have it, and unbearably loud for those who don’t.
Dr. King
This year’s celebrations and memorials in honor of Dr. King are likely to gloss over one important fact of his activism: his belief in peace.
This column by Nation writer John Nichols makes a good case in point.
Another column found on the Working Assets site focuses on the Dr. King lost in all our memorials.
And I’d like for all of us in the GLBTQ community to remember that the famous March On Washington was organized by one Bayard Rustin: Quaker, and Queer. The Gay and Lesbian Task Force celebrated Dr. King while also acknowledging what his friendship with Rustin means to us all.
But it’s his Letter from Birmingham Jail that is still the piece that invites us all to look at what social justice is, and what needs to be done to achieve it.
A peaceful day to all,
Helen
Subordinate
Here’s some depressing news from The New York Times:
“A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.”
(The entire article can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/opinion/13dowd.html?oref=login&hp)
I doubt this is going to be big news to any women out there, but it’s kind of frightening that it’s actually supported by a survey.
The implications?
Men choose women who are subordinate to them for marriage.
If you look at it one way, the man with an IQ of 150 who makes $100k a year is most likely to marry a woman who has an IQ of less than 150 and earns less than $100k.
Which also means that a woman with an IQ of 150 who makes $100k a year is either going to end up single or marrying a man who has an IQ that is higher than her own and who makes more money – because the men in this study ARE CHOOSING TO MARRY WOMEN WHO ARE SUBORDINATE.
I’m sure plenty of powerful women are dating younger, less powerful hotties. But that’s not the point. The point is that when those hotties choose to get married, they’re going to marry a woman who is subordinate to them, too.
If this trend continues, every single one of my nieces is going to have two choices: to marry a man more powerful than her or to marry a man more powerful than her (or being single, or a lesbian, I suppose).
The study also indicates that it is also unlikely that the guy even pick someone who is an equal in these regards.
To me, it’s like playing any game or sport you’re good at. The guys in this survey are basically saying that they always want to play with someone they’re superior to. The intimation is that they are stacking the odds in their own favor.
One of the researchers, Dr. Stephanie Brown, is quoted as saying: “Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.”
Men are choosing subordinate partners because they are insecure around powerful women. They are concerned that strong, smart, salaried women might not be faithful. Imagine if women did that: no one would ever get married, both sides standing off to the sides waiting to be the more “dominant” partner.
This report is sickening & depressing to me. Deeply. Because I do have ten nieces, and I thought the world had changed a lot more since when I was a kid, but this survey – and the report about it – pretty much shows that girls are in the same shitty position they’ve always been in: either be okay with being subordinate and married, or be single. Or marry a tranny, I guess.
Since the study was done on undergraduates, I can only that eventually men do wise up – maybe once they’re dating more in their 20s and 30s, and maybe they come to appreciate having an equal, challenging partner.
Still in all, depressing news.
Board Betty
As some of you may know, Betty was being considered for membership on the board of a nation trans organization.
Tonight, we met with NCTE Director Mara Keisling who confirmed that Betty will indeed be one of the NCTE’s Board Members. NCTE (National Center for Transgender Equality) “is a social justice organization dedicated to advancing the equality of transgender people through advocacy, collaboration and empowerment.” So says their website. We’ve met with Mara Keisling a few times and have been continually impressed by her dedication, political savvy, and her wit.
Please do go check out their website, read more about them, and if you can – make a donation! (Tell them Helen & Betty sent you, too!)
Us Vs. Them
About a decade ago, I went to a forum about the cultural differences & rifts between African-Americans and Caribbean Americans. The first part of the forum was presented by a panel, very intellectual & cross-referenced; the second half was a Q&A, where tempers flared but remained polite. The basic issue was that Caribbean Americans hated being mistaken for African-Americans for various reasons, and the African-Americans hated being mistaken for Caribbean Americans.
I remember sitting there thinking, “My brother would call you all n******.”
But what that forum clarified for me was not the actual experience of Caribbean or African-Americans; it was the stereotypes of both that offended both groups. The Caribbean blacks hated people thinking they were African-American exactly because of what people think of African-Americans (that they’re all on welfare, etc) & vice versa. Some of these prejudices were based on truths or half-truths, like that Caribbean Americans all had AIDS. (At the time, Haitians could not donate blood because of heightened concerns about HIV infection). So you’ve got a group of African-Americans hating the fact that they were mistaken for having HIV, because they believed a lot of Caribbean Americans had AIDS, when of course it wasn’t all Caribbean Americans but only Haitians, and in fact Haitians had a higher incidence of HIV due to things that had nothing to do with their behavior, anyway (it turned out, instead, that it was linked with higher previous infections of TB in the Haitian population). Of course, too, no-one wanted to be mistaken for someone with HIV, either, because HIV had already been demonized as happening to people because of sexual conduct and/or needle drug use.
In effect, you had two groups of people who were both oppressed because of the shared color of their skin who spent an entire evening focusing on what they didn’t have in common instead of fighting the prejudices they faced because of their skin color.
I’ve come to about the same conclusion with the arguments between hsts “transkids” and other transsexuals. (I say “other” and not AGP or “late-transitioning” or “secondary” because I don’t think there are only two types of transsexuals). The hsts set doesn’t want to be told they’re paraphilic because that’s what the Blanchard-Bailey junta says about non-hsts transsexuals. The other transsexuals resent being both forced into a box they don’t fit and being told their motivation is sexual in some way or another.
So you’ve got the hsts set not wanting anyone to think they’re “perverts” or nutjobs because transitioning, for them, is about “practical” issues like social and sexual success in life. On the other hand, you’ve got the rest of the transsexuals – the non-hsts type – who don’t want to be told they’re not really transsexuals, or that they are somehow lesser, less real, secondary, or transitioning for some other than “practical” reasons.
And I have to say, my brother would still call you all “n******.”
Really, a lot of people might see hsts transsexuals as self-hating gay men who can’t deal with the homophobia and misogyny within and without the gay community, and who sidestep those issues by becoming women. A lot of people see the non-hsts transsexuals as deviants, perverts, mentally ill and selfish freaks.
Why it seems reasonable for any group to empower themselves by demonizing another group is foreign to me. Why any group would align themselves with a so-called scientist who has been known to abuse the power of his position in order to sleep with his subjects (even while they complain about the power and access other transsexuals have and use in order to educate the public about transsexualism) is also foreign to me. Why any transsexuals go out of their way to “out,” demonize, or work against another group of transsexuals as some kind of “strategy” is also beyond me.
That each of these self-identified groups has differences, to me, is cause only for each group to watch out for and protect their own. That I understand. If one group is neglecting the needs of a subset of their own population, then it stands to reason that that subset has got to be vocal about what they need – and failing help from the larger group – has got to figure out a way to provide their services to the population that needs it.
Instead, transkids are getting kicked out of their homes while other transsexuals are losing their jobs, and people are online fighting about which group is “right.” Essays are written, emails exchanged, posts added to message boards or newsgroups, and my brother is still calling you all “n******.”
So I’m gonna go listen to Leadbelly. I don’t know where he was from, or where he was raised, but he was one damn great musician, and to me, that’s all that ever matters.
Continue reading “Us Vs. Them”
What I Wish
As it turns out, the U.S. government has pledged less money to aid those desperate folks in South Asia than we’re planning on spending on the inauguration.
What I wish:
* that we had a president I’d be happy about inaugurating.
* that I could go to South Asia and work to help make things better.
* that we’d all call off all the freaking wars and killing going on to help clean up the whole area, clean the water tables, and set up a system to warn people of disasters like this, so they can at least survive with their families & a set of clothes, if nothing else.
Some days it feels like the planet herself is trying to let us know that we’re jackasses, and we keep not listening.
But you can urge Pres. Bush to up the U.S.’ contribution.
A tired and sad,
Helen