Check this out:
LOL! I'm so easily amused.
Lt. Dan Choi Arrested
The whole story is here at Towleroad. (Refresh the page at the link, as the story is still being updated.)
The long and the short of it is Lt. Choi and Captain Jim Pietrangelo chained themselves to the White House fence today in protest of DADT and were, after a time, arrested by the Secret Service.
The protest began this afternoon when Lt. Choi requested persmission to speak at a Kathy Griffin/Human Rights Campaign "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rally. HRC President Joe Solmonese nixed the idea, saying the event was "Kathy Griffin's rally."
Griffin, who is, to the best of my knowledge, neither gay nor in the military, let Choi take the stage anyway.
Choi and Pietrangelo then led a about a hundred or so fellow protesters to the White House fence where they chained themselves. About an hour later the two were arrested.
Blog Note
Liss took a little time this morning to take care of some personal business. Now it looks like that is going to take all day. Expect her back tomorrow, Shakers.
This is a real thing in the world.
(Mildly NSFW, more after the jump.)
Oral Sex Light. "Don't go down without it!"
I guess if it helps you get the job done, and you don't mind looking like a Time-Life operator, give it a whirl. Could double as a book light too, in a pinch. Personally, I prefer a miner's helmet, myself.
Today in Post-Racial America
Sunday evening at a suburban Wal-mart in New Jersey, someone took control of the store's PA and calmly announced "Attention Wal-Mart customers: All black people leave the store now."
Wal-Mart officials said they're reviewing security tapes to find out who made the announcement. Washington Township police, with the assistance of the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office, are investigating the episode as a possible hate crime.
A company spokesperson called the incident "unacceptable," according to the AP, and "the retailer is looking to prevent it from happening in the future."
If only Wal-mart could end racism in America so easily.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Phledge: What's your favorite excuse?
I'm going to have to call it a tie between "I was delayed; I was waylaid—an emergency stop, I smelled the last ten seconds of life. I crashed down on the crossbar, and the pain was enough to make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder." and "I was on the moon. With Steve!"
(Mozza and Izzard. I'm nothing if not predictable.)
Nuns to Bishops: STFU
I may be paraphrasing slightly:
A group of Catholic nuns is urging Congress to pass health care reform, breaking ranks with bishops who say the current bill does not do enough to block federal money from being used to fund abortions.Interesting, that.
"We write to urge you to cast a life-affirming 'yes' vote when the Senate health care bill (H.R. 3590) comes to the floor of the House for a vote as early as this week," a group of nuns wrote in a letter to members of Congress released Wednesday by NETWORK, progressive Catholic advocacy organization.
NETWORK said the 55 signatories represent tens of thousands of Catholic nuns in the United States.
The letter argues that the legislation "will make crucial investments in community health centers that largely serve poor women and children."
"And despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions," the letter reads. "It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments – $250 million – in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it."
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning.]
"Mr. Wood, I found you not guilty, so I can't sentence you as a defendant in any crimes, but earlier today, I sentenced you to life married to her."—Baltimore County Judge Darrell Russell, who performed a marriage ceremony, at the request of domestic violence suspect Frederick Wood, between Wood and his alleged victim so she could take the stand and invoke marital privilege. "Nowhere on the recording of the proceeding could the I-Team hear the judge ask the alleged victim if she wanted to get married. Ordinarily, couples have to wait 48 hours between getting a license and actually getting married. A different judge agreed to waive that requirement in this case, [I-Team lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller] reported."
The judge has been reassigned.
[H/T to Shaker Carrie.]
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of Deeky's Lostversations with His Totes Boyfriend Sawyer.
Recommended Reading:
Anji: Fifteenth Carnival of Feminists and Tenth Carnival of Feminist Parenting
Andy: Dallas Jail Guard Fired for Saying 'All Gays Should Be Annihilated'
Cara: RIP Juanita W. Goggins
Sady: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Studies Department: The Boys of Summer
Pilgrim Soul: Nicholas Sparks is a Parody of Himself
And Happy Blogiversary to Marcella!
Leave your links in comments...
Mass Resistance made me mad enough to vomit.
by C.L. Minou, who blogs about trans and feminist issues for such esteemed locales as The Second Awakening, Below the Belt, and Tiger Beatdown, when she is not destroying the fabric of America by spending a weekend at a hotel in New England.
First Event is an annual conference held in January by the Tiffany Club of New England, a transgender support group. Like any conference, it consists of workshops, cocktail parties, and banquets with awards ceremonies and occasionally pompous keynote addresses. About the only difference between it and, say, a Linux convention is that there will be slightly more trans people at First Event. (There may also be more computer engineers, for that matter.)
But that's not all. According to Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group Mass Resistance, First Event is what America will look like in the horrifying post-Homosexual Agenda™ world soon to be imposed upon the honest, godfearing citizens of These United.
And to prove their point, they made a video.
[Paraphrase of video by Liss: Shitty video footage of people minding their own business, doing things like walking, using the restroom, and entering elevators. The various clips are labeled with alarmist language such as "The following clip shows a young girl entering an elevator with a man dressed as a woman." The entire thing is prefaced with the dire warning: "This is what you will see across America unless this radical movement is stopped." OH NOES!]
Yes, friends, thrill to the horrors you soon must endure! Tall people wearing short skirts! People playing punk rock while wearing bras! People eating bland food! People dancing! And, most horrifying of all, people riding elevators.
Wait...don't people do all those things now, you might ask? Don't tall people go to the bathroom, play in bands, and ride elevators?
But you see, those people aren't transgendered. That's the issue here. (The author reserves judgment on whether or not Mass Resistance considers trans people, well, people, mostly because her digestion is of a delicate nature and not up to the task of visiting their website.)
Now, I will admit, watching this video made me mad. Not mad enough to spit, but mad enough to vomit. I mean, legally there's probably nothing to prevent them from doing this, but morally? It's a phenomenal invasion of privacy, not to mention potentially dangerous to the livelihoods and even lives of the conference attendees who may not be out or generally public about their transness. (First Event tends to attract a higher proportion of crossdressing or questioning trans folk.) A conference like First Event offers people who might not normally get a chance to express their full gender a safe space to enjoy themselves with dignity and freedom from the disapproval of most of the people around them.
And, you know, the chance to grab a pint at the sports bar and play a game of pool in a cocktail dress. That's not a chance most people get every day.
The video is a primer on how to do trans hate. First, mock everyone's appearance, including, bizarrely, their height. (I have a theory: there were undoubtedly trans women there for whom the only clue that they might be trans would be their height; this so terrified the Mass Ignorance folks that they obsessively watched anyone taller than Dr. Ruth.) Second, show a bunch of perfectly ordinary activities that are now made sick and disgusting because they are being done by people...who might not look like the gender they were assigned at birth. Third, flog the old bathroom libel with its breathless "threat" that evil awful men will invade the sanctity of the Ladies' Room. Which of course would never happen unless godless civil rights laws are passed. Oh and fourth: What About the Children? (Although, think about it: isn't it likely that the little girl in that clip was the daughter of the trans person waiting with her? Ferfoooksakes?)
More than that, though: this video demonstrates exactly why trans, gay, and lesbian rights must remain part of the same movement. Because this is being used as a wedge issue: the unspeakable horrors of people enjoying a weekend at a rather pedestrian hotel north of Boston are the club they'll use to fight back gay marriage, housing and job discrimination legislation, and even hate crimes laws. They hope that enough people—even, I am sad to say, some gay and lesbian people—will find the sight of crossdressers so distressing that people will oppose all the other parts of bills like ENDA. Which ultimately will hurt gay and lesbian people, because there are many of them—despite the protestations of HRC—whose gender presentation is variant enough to earn them discrimination.
Now, as it turns out I've actually been to First Event. Like a lot of trans events, the hotel usually requested that the trans folk only used a designated ladies' or men's room. (I'll admit, that was often more observed in the breach, but there you have it.) And I'm sure they didn't tell any other guests, any more than the hotel I stayed at one time when I was in Texas to get some electro done warned me that an evangelical convention was being held in the hotel. (And honey, I was in a lot more danger from them than anybody in Peabody was from the First Event folks.) But do you know what the biggest irony about this whole hateful, awful charade from Mass Resistance is?
It's this: the organizers of First Event ask people to indicate on their name badge if they mind being photographed. Because they want to respect their privacy.
But of course privacy is a straight privilege.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Random Realization
Last night, I was shopping online for dinner plates and ran across this image*:
We've probably all seen similar descriptions before, but sometimes I am struck by how many times, in so many little ways, people of color are reminded that "white," in terms of race, is presumed to be the default or that white people are presumed not to "have" race in the same ways that we are.
We are "other" and the constant reinforcement of that is tiring.
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*The image is of two bride-and-groom ornaments. The first, depicting a white couple, is labeled "Bride and Groom Ornament." The second, depicting a black couple, is labeled "African American Bride and Groom Ornament."
A Story About Social Anxiety and Magic
I'm pretty sure the most uncomfortable I've ever been in my life was when a card trick magician approached me at a pizza parlor. I am possibly the worst person to be a magician's assistant in the world.
He couldn't have known that, but that's the problem with wrangling strangers into your public magic act.
