Premature accolades! The Pitcher will be back!
What should we talk about this session? Racism? Sexism? Homophobia? Eurocentricism? Second-generational privilege? Polyamory?
I’m gonna re-read everything and compile a list of Really Good Posts for people to re-chew.
To you who are reading:
Well, this has been an interesting experience.
As you probably have noticed, this community blog has not received much updating since December 2008. This is partly due to the fact that I had decided, some time in December, to let the project run its natural course by ceasing promotion.
I think it’s had a good run. It certainly has satisfied some (of my own) curiosity regarding the finer thoughts of the people who are around me. Needless to say, many important LGBTQ-related issues were addressed here.
Thank you, those of you who contributed.
Everything that was ever written will remain for archival purposes.
Yours sincerely,
Jade
(Also, before I forget:
Blog life duraion: August-December, 2008 (5 months)
Total views: 13,219
Posts: 88
Comments: 362
Categories: 8
Tags: 231
Contributors (regular): 26)
Cocky
I came across this clip of Julia Serano performing a spoken word piece on how her penis threatens to undo gender. It’s pretty good, even if I found her performance style to be rather annoying.
I read her book Whipping Girl a little while back. If you’re interested in a book on transgender issues and representation it seems pretty good. It’s not simple by any means, but it is aimed at people who don’t know too much about gender variance.
Post-Transgender Day Of Remembrance
So for those that didn’t know, Friday was Toronto’s Trans Day Of Remembrance, the day where us transfolk anually get together to mark the passing of some of our own. it usually happens on the 20th, but a scheduling problem at Buddies In Bad Times, the venue where it was held, happened and it was pushed back.
The event itself was pretty good. Some short stories and poems were read, some really good speeches were made, two lip-synched drag queen songs were performed and a nonsensical rant was mumbled. All followed by a reading of the names and a candlelight vigil in their honour.
But what did it mean to me?
Well, I think remembering a death is important and we should have these things be brought to our attention more often, but I’ve always been put off by things like TDOR. it seemed too much of a “community” thing to me and I never really liked specific days where I was obligated to feel sad about someone I’ve never even met and take part in a candlelight vigil on there behalf. I wouldn’t be in to it and although I’d take note to remember the deaths, I can’t say my heart would be in it.
But all of that changed on Friday. I met up with some friends and we went to the balcony and had our own fun little time, joking around and doing commentary on the performances (for those that went, you know what point in the night I’m talking about when I say that my entire group had asked “What the hell is she talking about?”). We sombered up for the names and the candlelight vigil (Although while outside my legs were freezing due to the weather and the dress I was wearing so I put some pants on in the middle of the crowd amidst the chuckles of my friends). We lit the candles, gave our moment of silence and then it was over and people started breaking off. We met up with a couple of other familiar people and we all decided to get something to eat at Fran’s (a lovely diner on Yonge/College that has been made the unofficial trans hangout for transfolk that don’t want to go to Goodhandy’s). There we talked about the night, our weeks and just what’s generally going on in our lives.
And it was then that I realized what TDOR really means to me. Here we were, a group of transfolk, sitting in a diner chatting about whatever the hell came to our mind with barely a care in the world. With no fear as to what anyone in the place thought of us.
If you were like me, you were bullied a lot as a child and you got to know the mentality of bullies. If a bully hits one kid, the entire class backs away so’s not to get hit. It’s a survival instinct. Well, here’s us, reading about different kinds of bullies who have killed someone just because of who they are. A lot of us could have backed down and stopped persuing transition. Maybe a few did. But the fact remains that most of us didn’t. We’re still here doing our own thing and there’s not a damn thing those people can do about it. We’re not standing together as one (because that would be cliche and impossible), but we are standing up for ourselves and living our lives how we want.
So I’m going to be going to the TDOR events every year from now on. I will be saddened by the deaths and, with my friends at my side, mark the day as a yearly reminder that we aren’t about to let that crap interfere in our lives.
P.S. don’t forget to send me some music! My birthday is coming up on Thursday and I want to hear more personal queer anthems! three more and I can make another post about it!
love letters that didn’t make it.
Davis,
Blind trust in a blind world, and all I can wish for you after tomorrow is all that you have so generously bestowed upon me. Love, loyalty and friendship, all bound into one ever-giving circle. Your heart, your crown, and your hands. But even though you are gone, even though you are now back in your city so familiar and yet so foreign to me, even though you are out of sight, you are most certainly not out of mind. I sit at home, in my empty room and wonder if years later, when I come back to this city, to this country, after I have moved on and discovered another life to live, will the trees where we laid down every summer morning remember us? Will they remember our story and whisper back to me through the wind, that our love has kept them alive over all these years? Will any of the old baristas at the coffee bistros still be there when I walk in? Will they recognize my face? A face weathered by time and loss, and remember the hours that we would spend in our corner, reading to one another, me in your arms and your hands in mine? Or will our days together be forgotten, scaled down to a few pages in the novel’s that are our lives, perhaps even shortened down into one small paragraph in an untitled chapter? Whatever happens, I know that I will remember. The places where the lines on your face met each other and the sound of your laugh will fade from recollection, but I will always recall the feeling that filled me up inside when I was with you, and I will hold onto that warmth, that soft, golden glow of a distant happiness, and know that for the past two months, I have lived all the life that I would ever need.
Endocrine Disrupters are causing my genderqueer-ness
http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2002
This article was interesting. I used to do a lot of work around awareness of toxic chemicals and their effect on health. That’s over. Now my focus is on sexuality and gender.
Although I can see the article from both sides, I still felt uncomfortable with it. Why? Here’s what I came up with so far:
- although it states that there is nothing wrong with transgender-ism itself, the article presents it as something negative
- lesbian seagulls and transgender crabs are mentioned but the studies this information came from are not -> the article does not question whether they have always existed but perhaps not been discovered/recorded until recently
- implies to reader that queerness is caused by chemicals/toxins -> not natural (opposing view is presented in article)
-there is no mention of gender as a social construct -> the article assumes gender is natural to biological sex
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I don’t feel like going into a deep analysis of the article right now, but I feel like one is needed.
Anyway, in essence I just wanted to know what people thought about the article.
lovesick and loving it.
Why am I still single?
I couldn’t answer that question if I tried. I could give possible suggestions, but that would just result in a long list of my own undesirable traits, which would then lead me into some drunken, depressing, stupor of self-pity. But really, who knows? Who has the time to try and know, unless you’re desperate?
Well, guess what?
I am.
Desperate.
Pathetic, right?
I spend my days occasionally dream up clandestine meetings between my future husband and me. We meet on some random street, both of our hands reaching out to grab the same vintage leather messenger bag or asparagus bunch, and the two of us look up and catch one another’s eyes, only to laugh and turn away in slight embarrassment when we notice the awkwardness of our fingers touching and our eyes gazing. And from that point on, our lives take a leap off of cliff into a waterfall of romance, crashing through wonderful sex and breakfast in beds, only to have it all torn apart two months later by an angry ex-lover.
Or an expired visa.
Or cancer.
What has Hollywood done to me?
Yet even though I know how fruitless and emotionally damaging it is to constantly fantasize about these, well, fantasies, I can’t help be re-live and re-write the rom-com movie in my mind because to be honest, that’s all I know! I’m addicted to my imagination, and sometimes I wonder, am I addicted because I’m a pathetic human being, or am I addicted because my imagination is just far too wonderful for real life?
I sit in a unique, fair-trade coffee shop and the Boy Behind the Counter (BBC) is taking orders. I watch him make drinks, take in cash, greet each customer with a smile and he does all of it with such grace. He steams that low-fat-soy with all of his soul, and he hands that change back to his customer with all of his heart, working that counter like a rehearsed dance, the dance of the cute-fair-trade-coffee-dealing-barista-extraordinaire that he is. And as I think about this, I smile because in a month, I’ll be waking up in his apartment to brew some organic fair trade coffee while he scrambles some eggs. I’ll pour him his cup while he butters my toast and he’ll kiss me goodbye when he leaves for work. We’ll spend rainy Sundays inside, cuddled up on our couch, legs intertwined, reading Shakespeare to each other and in two years, after he gets his Ph.D and I make partner at Corporate and Corporate, we’ll get married and buy a loft in downtown Toronto and live happily, ever after.
My friends tell me to stop dreaming, and that I shouldn’t worry because it will happen when it happens, and it will only happen when I least expect it. But how can you not expect it? How can you not wonder if tonight is the night where you meet your true love? I refuse to stop having these fantasies. Call me deluded, call me silly, but I would much rather walk around with the soundtrack from Knotting Hill playing in my head than to walk around with no soundtrack at all. Life is far to painful as it is to be realistic, 24/7.
Transgendered Characterizations in early 21st Century Japanese ACG
This is but a fraction of what's to come.
Go ‘head Miss Wanda Sykes! Congrats …
Go ‘head Miss Wanda Sykes!
Congrats on your recent marriage, but more importantly thanks for coming out publically. I’m sure Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Missy Elliott and others are quaking in their boots, but props to you for being an out black dyke in Hollywood. You made the right choice, and perhaps folks in certain corners can stop blaming the passing of Prop 8 on black people.
gay marriage: the matters of the heart; it’s a question of love
i believe love is love. WATCH THE VIDEO– it’s a tear jerker!
