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

————————-

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.

Looking at the huge image above, one can only be amazed at the extensiveness of gender-bender works in Japanese ACG (animation, comic, games). And that’s only MTF characters in the list there. A list of FTM characters found in other works are just as extensive.

If one googles for English essays or blog posts regarding this subject, no doubt the first returns will return a slew of results discussing the subject of “traps” and “reverse-traps”, yet few discuss beyond the current response of the North American context of to whether accept it or not, and how some fans hope to continue seeing it or hope that their souls may forever burn in hell for “being gay for Bridget/Jun/*insert character here*”.

So how does one begin to tackle such a difficult subject? While I am no professional historian for anime (or an otaku who is really that deep into the swamp), I will do my best in creating a narrative by tracing a geneology in this subject. Forgive my ignorance if FTM characters are somewhat less mentioned in this article, and any corrections or addenda upon my fellow readers is appreciated.

To my observations, I can divide this subgenre into three periods of development until this day: Gender-bender slapstick dominant themes on primarily paper media in the late 20th century; fetishization of transgendered/gender-errant looking characterizations in experimental game grounds around 2002 entering more general categories in a Moé context; and gender-bending as a developed subculture of Moé and proper facing up to trans issues in reality from 2006 to the present of 2008.

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!

While they ponder over their breakfast cereal…

…I can’t make up my mind whether I want to be a boy or a girl.

News Story

I thought this may be something that all of you might want to read.

It is not as common anymore but the hatred does still happen and come out in clear view.

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/534469

I’m thinking : Three cheers for the gender ambiguous youth.

Four cheers for those who don’t even try to be!

Image is ©Maya Klein, 2007, from http://www.bentkey.net/art/birl.jpg

 

 

mix tapes, mixed feelings

Girls are my kryptonite and that’s no lie.

I adore them but they are my weakness and they leave me helpless and foolish.

I’m sure I am not alone feeling such conditions, but yes, being around girls that I’m attracted to leave me pathetic and inclined to act inept in every way possible.

However, I like music and that’s a fact! Unlike the effects of most girls, music keeps me sane.

I may not listen to what everyone listens to or may not be in tuned with the most popular bands out there, but like most people–I like what I like.

I am like any other person, I like good beats and rhythm to music, but with an addition of good lyrics that help me evoke certain feelings in me makes my listening experience, the better.

So how do my anxiety of girls and my love for music correlate?

Answer: I make stupid mix-tapes to express my feelings.

You are all either thinking it is all cute and stuff or you’re thinking it is rather juvenile.

Quite frankly, I personally think it’s very high school-ish, but at the same time I think it is one of those old-fashioned romantic gestures that I like doing.

I do not hide this certain fact about myself.

I make girls who I like silly mix-tapes (not an actual tape, but rather an online one), or sometimes I would actually go out of my way to burn them CDs (which I don’t do anymore). It’s a sad pattern, but through a compilation of songs I express my feelings and hopefully they’ll just understand what I am trying to convey.

Earlier, I was looking through my bookmark page on my web-browser and I came across a link to an online mix-tape I once made for a girl. I hesitated to click on it at first because I feared old emotions might erupt, but being self-defiant–I clicked on it.

My first impression of seeing the page after all these months gave me the shudders because simply looking at the title I had given it was cringe-worthy. Imaginary neon signs such as dork, corny, soppy, and oh my god, what a fool all flashed before my head. For amusement sake, I continued on to play the damn thing.

Certain realization came into mind:

1) I am so soppy—it’s ridiculous!

2) I like the compilation I made, so kudos to me.

3) What a waste of good music for someone who really didn’t deserve it.

AND

4) I will keep making mix-tapes in the future for people I like, and hopefully next time the recipient is worthy of my ridiculousness and my rather old-fashioned romantic gestures.

For now though, I made a compilation to occupy my minor insomnia. At the moment I’m idealistic and a pessimistic, both at the same time. So to my fellow cynics and romantics; to the jaded and to the sentimental comrades—I hope you like it.

Click here if you’re insomniac.