Trans/plant/portation

I was once a Savage Love reader, sure. I’ve known the definition of GGG pretty much since Dan Savage invented it, although I never realized until tonight that he came up with it and all of his acronyms just to save type space. Which makes sense, and is something that may fade away as newspapers trudge toward extinction. Almost a decade ago I read Skipping Towards Gommorah, and if there were big problems on the bigotry front, I missed them. And I laughed when Savage invented a new definition for “santorum” so much, I worked it into one of my novels-in-progress.

However, there came a day—I have no idea when—that I read his column and flinched. In giving some answer to a reader’s question he was too harsh, used a dose too strong of mockery, enacted an assumption that led inextricably to a position that I couldn’t abide. Like snowflakes at the leading edge of a cloud these added up over time, and eventually I stopped reading his column, and didn’t bother to spend time reading whatever was his next book. Read More…

A few days ago a trans woman was attacked just outside of a women’s rest room at a Baltimore area McDonald’s. Two nontrans women, one of them a minor, beat her until she was curled into a fetal position on the floor, and then kicked her in her back, head, and neck. The terrible video, captured by a McDonald’s employee who did nothing to aid or defend her, was quickly posted on YouTube, whereupon some ignoble comments were added to the physical injuries already sustained. The violence lasted around 3 minutes, and the Internet erupted, all over again, with vitriol, calls for quick arrests and/or vengeance, and a whole lot of assumptions about transfolk, people of color, and the McDonald’s anti-discrimination policy.

It is, as is the case so often, a lot to sort through. Read More…

After all of the insider politics and hurt feelings, Maryland’s House Bill 235 was sent back to committee yesterday, an ignoble death at the end of their legislative session. Trouble had begun with the public accommodations clause of the bill was removed, leaving employment, education, and housing protections, but not covering transgender people in some of the most vulnerable situations they may face. Activists put pressure on Equality Maryland, one of the main organizations lobbying for the bill, and the sponsoring Delegate, Ms. Pena-Melnyk, and surprisingly, the activists were quickly dismissed as adversaries, and when they posted comments on Equality Maryland’s Web site and Facebook page, their comments were deleted, their accounts banned from future posting.

This development, unsurprisingly, did not go over well. Read More…

Walla Walla, as far as electoral politics go, is conservative. In the last Presidential election, the county went 58 percent for McCain. Culturally, it’s also a right-leaning place, as I’ve written about in this blog before—the handing out of scripture at the Christmas parade, the strong Seventh Day Adventist presence, the many evangelical people who go door-to-door selling their church’s services—it can feel intimidating to a bleeding heart liberal, especially when the conservative presence is coupled with angry sentiment. It’s a bad economy that doesn’t feel any better to people even as the latest unemployment numbers show a one percent improvement. I understand this anger; I’m frustrated too.

But I don’t wish death on my fellow human beings. Read More…

Let me come out right at the start and say that I have worked for the government. The Federal Government, in fact, in the vast civil servant system. No question, it took some getting used to. First, there was the 2-day orientation, explaining the protocols, policies, and guidelines for working as a Federal employee, for working in this particular agency, and within that, for this specific team. I was fingerprinted and had a background check, because people with criminal records are generally not eligible for employment from Uncle Sam. So I’ll put that another way—rather than being the scourge of the American pool of workers, they must meet relatively elevated expectations. I’m not saying that American workers in the private sector suck; I’m saying that government workers also excel. Even the intake procedures for hiring them are designed with citizens’ interests in mind.

Does this mean that every government employee is a shining, stellar example of excellence? Of course not. But examine any office environment, anywhere in the United States. Is everyone there amazing? No. Why do we buy into the concept that some crappy civil servants mean all of them suck? Why is it open season to ridicule “the government” and public employees? Well, possibly because Americans have long entertained such stereotypes as true. Read More…

A joke made its way around the interwebs a couple of weeks ago:

A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across, takes 11 cookies, looks at the Tea Partier, and says, “Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.”

It was worth a chuckle, I suppose, but I found it tough to laugh, because this wrangling over scraps is too commonplace in our trying times. I wish it were only about credit default swaps, mortgages, and job opportunities, but it isn’t. The battle for scarce resources is also taking place on the civil rights front. Read More…

ter•ror•ism: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. —Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Let’s take a closer look at this. The goal of the terrorist is to change the operations, lifestyles, and structures of a society through fear and the use and threat of violence. The IRA hoped to “secure the independence” of Ireland by getting the populace to reject England’s rule and later, to take back Northern Ireland. Blowing up buses and assassinating royalty did change life in Great Britain, creating an entire industry dedicated to preventing damage from hand-set bombs, changing subway and roadway infrastructure, and policing. Read More…

This was supposed to be my last 2-hour writing stint at my favorite Seattle coffee house before I returned to packing for our move to Walla Walla. And then the Internet exploded with the story of an apparent political assassination—the youngest woman ever elected to the House, Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat from Arizona, was shot point-blank at a meet the representative-type event in Tuscon, along with a dozen people who had come out to hear her and interact with her as their Congresswoman. Read More…

When I was a project manager, I loved the three hours after winning a new contract. Nothing had been sullied; the project lived only in my brain, free from reality, bad decision making, a change in funding, or the soul-crushing realization that a lot of computer work is boring, especially when it’s on behalf of a government project. Before all of that would inevitably occur, I could take a wee snatch of time to smile, knowing others had seen fit to approve the project I and others had outlined. It was a lovely spot of validation, and no fools had yet rushed in. Read More…

I was once on the steering committee of the Syracuse University Women’s Studies Department, so sure, I hestitatingly crashed the afternoon plenary given by Chandra Mohanty (who is now the chair of that same department) and M. Jacqui Alexander. They spoke about pedagogy and collaborative writing, but this was a front, really, for reframing global-wide heteronormative, misogynist, xenophobic neocolonialism. For it has been a few epochs now since a sizable portion of the world’s population lived free from borders. Mohanty and Alexander would like to push back against the conservative movement that has created a whiplash since the tragedy of 9/11, capturing “immigrants,” “terrorists,” and “citizens,” and redefining America in a way that is too narrow to sustain itself. Read More…