A jury put Cemia “Ce Ce” Dove’s murderer in prison for 15 years. (In previous articles she was referred to as Cemia or CiCi Acoff and/or Dove.)
(The article isn’t great on the pronouns – but justice, at least.)
Mental Illness Isn’t Cancer
I found this short reflection on the difference in experience for a family when first the mom/wife went through breast cancer, and later a daughter went through addiction treatment and recovery.
Because of course, addition is an illness, as are mental health issues. But we don’t treat it, or them, as if they were.
When the wife had cancer, people brought casseroles.
Maggie was disciplined by her college for breaking the drug and alcohol rules. She began an outpatient recovery program. She took a medical leave from school. She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, diagnosed, released. She began years of counseling, recovery meetings, and intensive outpatient rehabilitation. She lived in a recovery house, relapsed, then spent seven weeks in a drug and alcohol addiction treatment center.
No soup, no homemade loaves of bread.
When the daughter was fighting addiction, people brought none.
I have often wondered how sane a world it would be to live in one where we helped people with an illness instead of criminalizing them. Nutty, I know. But we persist in thinking of addiction as a moral failure, a failure of discipline.
Renisha McBride
So what the fuck is going on in this country? A woman’s car dies so she stops in a suburb (of Detroit) and knocks on a door for help and is shot in the back of the head when she turned to leave.
Her body is found nearby, except nope, it wasn’t, it was found on the front steps of this house.
I’m assuming I don’t have to tell you the suburb was white & the woman was black.
Horrifying, sickening, frustrating, and saddening. I’m tired of these stories, tired of people resolving everything with guns and violence.
& Ugh, her poor family.
Transphobia, Attraction, & The Right to Say No
& Then she write a column for Bilerico discussing whether or not she can be “on the same activism level as a trans person.”
At first I wanted argue. I wanted to list all the things that proved him wrong. But I paused. What if I asked questions rather than asserted myself? As I thought of his assertion that I wasn’t a true ally, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it is even fair for a cisgender person to believe herself to be on the same activism level as a trans person.
And I read this & think: what the hell does that have to do with it? The issue of being cis in the world of trans activism (or het in queer activism, or a white anti-racist, etc.) has nothing to do with her not wanting to date the guy, but I have to admit that she actually questioned her commitment to her own activism makes me wonder if she decided not to date him because he’s trans.
Because that would be transphobic.
& Her response – not to argue, not to list or justify, but instead to ask questions of herself, is a good one. Why did I make that choice? Why don’t I like him? Do I subconsciously consider him female? Because I think all of those things could be true, and often are, to be honest.
But that said: not dating the dude because he’s trans is entirely different from not dating the guy because he’s not her cup of tea, is what I mean. Women turn down dates from men all the time. Sometimes people like you back & sometimes they don’t. BUTT in a ciscentric world, it is important to know if you actually think of trans women as women and trans men as men to the point that you would or could date or have sex with them *as such*.
Honestly, his response to her “no” tells me there were good reasons she didn’t want to date him: way to get turned down absolutely ungraciously.
But this issue of whether she can be “on the same activism level as a trans person” is a whole other issue, for another time and post.
ENDA Keeps On
Happy Birthday Adam
Happy 59th Birthday, Adam.
59, honestly, & he’s still the most beautiful man who ever lived.
Clothing Privilege
This piece by John Scalzi about why he can wear generic clothes (mostly) says a lot about privilege in a very tangible way:
My systematic and personal advantages mean that nearly all disadvantages posed by someone judging me on my appearance are temporary and light. This is also why I find it amusing to post deeply unflattering pictures of myself online (see the one to the right as an example); I don’t have to worry about the negative side-effects of doing so. People who actually are judged on their appearance, and for whom that judgment will have a material effect on their life, don’t have the same luxury to be unconcerned as I do. What’s interesting and amusing to me is a matter of stress and anxiety for others.
which, coupled with this piece about poor people and brand-name clothes, really does explain a great deal of why people dress the way they do:
I do not know how much my mother spent on her camel colored cape or knee-high boots but I know that whatever she paid it returned in hard-to-measure dividends. How do you put a price on the double-take of a clerk at the welfare office who decides you might not be like those other trifling women in the waiting room and provides an extra bit of information about completing a form that you would not have known to ask about? What is the retail value of a school principal who defers a bit more to your child because your mother’s presentation of self signals that she might unleash the bureaucratic savvy of middle class parents to advocate for her child? I don’t know the price of these critical engagements with organizations and gatekeepers relative to our poverty when I was growing up. But, I am living proof of its investment yield.
Makes you think about your own clothing choices, and even how they change: at work, around friends and family.
So how is all of this gendered?
Happy Halloween!
Happy Halloween!
ENDA Again?
So it looks like ENDA may come to a vote early next week – according to Harry Reid.
The bill is unlikely to gain much traction in the Republican controlled House, but could provide Democrats with another opportunity to paint the GOP as out of step with most Americans by obstructing a bill aimed at ending workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.