Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
I wish these sorts of things didn’t entertain me, but they do.
Make sure you scroll over the boxes, since they tell you things, like my masculinity score (ha), my extrovert score, & best of all, my trust score.
Like I said, entertaining. Click on the “Reserved Inventor” text to go take it yourself.
(thanks to the newly-found blog of java for the link.)
(I took it twice.)
Update – here’s Betty’s:
(which explains, at least to me, why we work together so well.)
I came back from visiting Betty upstate to find out that there is a huge mess involving Seal Press (my publishers) which came right on the heels of BFP’s departure last week.
So without pointing out every phrase and person involved, I’ll just say a few things as a white feminist who really only consciously became a feminist after reading Michele Wallace, and who, for nearly 10 years, worked for author Walter Mosley, who has written and talked about the absence of POC in the publishing industry, specifically.
The under representation of WOC in publishing has been a problem for a long time. The under representation of POC has been as well, in general. It’s not just chronic; it’s really fucking awful. Continue reading “Fuck Seal Press?”
I heard Jasmyne Cannick speak at the Bodies of Knowledge conference at USC Upstate, and the focus of her talk was race and the LGBT community. She made a couple of important points about the failures of the white LGBT set in dealing with black LGBT people. I use “black” because she did; she mentioned that she dislikes the phrase “people of color” but didn’t explain why exactly.
One of her main issues was that minorities are often used to trump up “diversity” numbers for primarily white LGBT organizations but aren’t then given any real power to choose issues within those organizations. Gay marriage in particular was way down on her list of priorities, after things like universal healthcare, jobs, access to education, immigration, access to power/politicians, and other issues of poverty. Her point was that in LA, it’s the white LGBT who live in West Hollywood, but that black LGBT people tend to live in their neighborhoods of birth: Compton, East LA, etc., exactly because of the issues of dicrimination and access.
As she put it: “Just because someone doesn’t agree with you that gay marriage is the most important issue doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be at the table.” Continue reading “Race + LGBT”
It looks like that homophobe Sally Kern is going to have to fight to keep her seat. It’s such a good thing to see when the whole idea of democracy actually works: you don’t like what someone has to say, you run against her.
Hopefully Marlett will win. My guess is that he will get significant LGBT funding if he manages this right.
(thanks to Caprice for the story.)
If the killing of Lawrence King wasn’t sad enough, there are too many other stories — all murders of trans POC that took place this year.
This article from The Root has a list.
And this murder, committed a little while back, has recently come to more widespread attention, as has the murder of Simmie Williams.
My students have asked, because they’re reading Stone Butch Blues, if the violence against gender diverse people is still as bad as it was then. And what can I say? Ask Lawrence King? Ask Adolphus Simmons? Ask Sanesha Stewart? We can’t. They’ve all been killed as a result of trans/homophobic violence. The daily threat might not feel so great for many of us. But that doesn’t mean people who don’t conform to gender norms aren’t at greater risk.
I so long for a new president who will get gender identity included in Federal Hate Crimes protection, whether it does any good or not. What I want is to see articles written about people like Sanesha Stewart that at least respect their choice of pronouns, as well as articles that don’t ask what the person was doing at the time – as if what a person is doing at the time she’s murdered makes it more acceptable for her to have been murdered! When are the powers-that-be going to understand is that sometimes all you have to “do” is be queer to be killed?!
The news also came through this week that Gabrielle Pickett, twin sister of Chanelle Pickett, was killed during the summer of 2003. Chanelle was killed in 1996.
I’m just tired this week. Tired of counting the dead. Tired of feeling so sullen and leaden with grief.
Over the weekend I discovered a fantastic resource – Zagria’s Gender Variant Biographies Blog. What remarkable work! I’ve been scanning the entries for the past year or so, and so far, this one about a photo subject of WeeGee’s is my favorite.
Do go check it out, & from here on in you’ll also find a link to it in my Trans Resources blogroll.
(courtesy of www.unitedhollywood.blogspot.com)
& If you haven’t seen The Front, now’s the time to do it. & There are more speechless shorts, featuring the likes of Tim Robbins, Alan Cumming.
& Go here to sign a petition to tell the FCC we don’t want more media consolidation. You only have until Tuesday, 12/11, to sign it, so go do it now.
Aurora is not very interested in the mHB boards, though she does allow me to view them while she’s sleeping on my desk. Sometimes. Unless I’m typing or moving the mouse, for which I get swatted. Or she starts in with what I call The Tail of Annoyance and flicks items on my desk to the floor.
& A very happy birthday to Ian (& his mom) today!
This list was compiled by Chuck Laird from information he found at Wiki.
Algeria – A Fine to 3 Years in Prison
Angola – Labor Camps
Antigua and Barbuda – 15 Years in Prison
Bahrain – A Fine to 10 Years in Prison
Bangladesh – 10 Years to Life in Prison
Barbados – Life in Prison
Belize – 10 Years in Prison
Benin – 3 Years in Prison
Bhutan – 1 Month to 1 Year in Prison
Botswana – A Fine to 7 Years in Prison
Brunei – A Fine to 10 Years in Prison
Cameroon – A Fine to 5 Years in Prison
Cook Islands – A Fine to 14 Years in Prison
Djibouti – 10 to 12 Years in Prison
Dominica – 10 Years in Prison
Egypt – 5 Years in Prison
Eritrea – 3 to 10 Years in Prison
Ethiopia – 10 Days to 3 Years in Prison
Gambia – A Fine to 14 Years in Prison
Ghana – Not Known
Grenada – 10 Years in Prison
Guinea – 6 Months to 3 Years in Prison
Guinea Bissau – Labor Camps
India – A Fine to Life in Prison
Iran – Death
Jamaica – 10 Years Hard Labor
Kenya – A Fine to 14 Years in Prison
Kiribati – A Fine to 14 Years in Prison
Kuwait – A Fine to 7 Years in Prison
Lebanon – A Fine to 1 Year in Prison
Lesotho – Not Known
Liberia – A Fine
Libya – A Fine to 5 Years in Prison
Malawi – A Fine to 14 Years in Prison
Malaysia – A Fine to 20 Years in Prison
Mauritania – Death
Mauritius – A Fine to 5 Years in Prison
Morocco – 6 Months to 3 Years in Prison
Mozambique – Labor Camps
Myanmar/Burma – 10 Years to Life in Prison
Namibia – Not Known
Nauru – 14 Years Hard Labor
Nepal – A Fine to 1 Year in Prison
Nicaragua – 1 to 3 Years in Prison
Nigeria – 5 Years in Prison to Death
Niue – A Fine to 10 Years in Prison
Oman – A Fine to 3 Years in Prison
Pakistan – 2 Years to Life in Prison
Palau – A Fine to 10 Years in Prison
Palestine – A Fine to 10 Years in Prison
Papua New Guinea – A Fine to 14 Years in Prison
Qatar – A Fine to 5 Years in Prison
Saint Kitts and Nevis – 10 Years in Prison
Saint Lucia – A Fine to 10 Years in Prison
Saint Vincent and Grenadines – A Fine to 10 Years in Prison
Samoa – A Fine to 7 Years in Prison
Sao Tome and Principe – Labor Camps
Saudi Arabia – Death
Senegal – 1 Month to 5 Years in Prison
Seychelles – A Fine to 2 Years in Prison
Sierra Leone – Life in Prison
Singapore – 2 Years in Prison
Solomon Islands – A Fine to 14 Years in Prison
Somalia – 3 Months in Prison to Death
Sri Lanka – A Fine to 10 Years in Prison
Sudan – 5 Years in Prison to Death
Swaziland – A Fine
Syria – A Fine to 3 Years in Prison
Tanzania – A Fine to 25 Years in Prison
Togo – A Fine to 3 Years in Prison
Tokelau – A Fine to 10 Years in Prison
Trinidad and Tobago – 25 Years in Prison
Tunisia – A Fine to 3 Years in Prison
Turkmenistan – A Fine to 2 Years in Prison
Tuvalu – A Fine to 14 Years in Prison
Uganda – A Fine to Life in Prison
United Arab Emirates – Death
Uzbekistan – A Fine to 3 Years in Prison
Yemen – Flogging to Death
Zambia – A Fine to 14 Years in Prison
Zimbabwe – A Fine to 1 Year in Prison
For more reading about ENDA than you might ever want, I’ve put together a bunch of the articles, essays, & blog posts on the topic since it was introduced in April, below the break: