VICTORY

Maeve's final paper brought to you by the letter 'inappropriate gifs'

Paperzzzzz

Here's the somewhat more finalized version

First draft

Here we go

I like a boy in uniform

This is just such an amazing image, i couldnt help but post it. i knew a boy who became a marine...he hated it. he's a psychology major now, i think.
We've been hearing so much about DADT in class and on the news, but maybe we could think of another part of military policy for a while. What do people feel about women serving in the military? Actually, what do people know about women serving in the military, because i'm woefully uninformed. I'm under the impression, though, that women are not allowed to serve in open combat. Am i right? Hmm. well if anyone knows better than me, certainly correct me. But if we are to assume that i am right, what do people think about that? fair, unfair? based on what?
Personally i find it reassuring, given the fact that i am in face female. I feel the same way about DADT, to be honest. I recognize, though, that for people who want to serve their country it shouldn't matter what race, sex, orientation, or religion they are. What is the military rational for these limits? we shall see we shall see.

Actually, this brings me to a much more interesting question. I'm bored of the old one. Why is it that military rights are more of a talked about issue in the news than marriage rights? Why is it easier to get the right to hurt people than it is to get the right to love?

'nuff said.


(also props to anyone who knows the title of this post)

More Books

So I havent actually read this book myself, but a friend recommended it to me and i figured it seemed appropriate for this class. it's called Misfortune: A Novel by Wesley Stace



The story follows Rose Old, a boy who was abandoned as an infant and then raised as a girl by a rich man whose own daughter had died. The interesting part begins when, as one reviewer puts it:

Inevitably, the young Rose reaches adolescence and suddenly doesn't look or feel ladylike any more. As greedy relatives circle in their attempt to wrest control of the estate from Lord Loveall, Rose discovers his true gender and adoptive status. When he reveals himself as a male to society at large and to his predatory relatives, he causes a scandal that jeopardizes the legitimacy of his inheritance. He does not feel at home in his male body and continues to wear dresses, even while sporting a fine mustache. After Lord Loveall dies, his survivors struggle to keep their claim to the Loveall fortune while Rose sets out to discover his roots... and himself.
-Eileen Rieback

This book seems particularly interesting, both because of the issue of transgendered identities, but also the way the author treats the main character's identity. it is not a historical analysis of transgendered issues in 19th century London, it is a story about one person's adventure. Thus it must treat Rose's gender identity, not flippantly, but as an integral part of her without being a big deal. The concept reminds me a lot of Emma, the hermaphrodite in Fausto-Sterling's The Five Sexes, who appeared "to be quite content and even happy" (Young in Fausto-Sterling 70) during a time when the medical establishment viewed hermaphrodites as being automatically unhealthy and unhappy.

Lets bring this to some vaguely academic close: it is one thing for a journal on the subject of sex, written by someone who has done a lot of research and previous writings on the subject, to put forward the concept of gender loosing it's binary opposites in society. It is another, however, for a novel, written for people who may not have the same academic background as the people who would be reading a journal about gender, to have a main character with such a fluid gender orientation. do you think this is an indication of changing sentiments? an island of change in an otherwise unrelenting sea of tradition? nothing you would ever care about? talk to me.

The Kid

Lets talk about books!

So anyone from the Pacific Northwest should know the name of Dan Savage. If you dont just...just got find a respectable newspaper and read him or something, because i dont even want to describe how deprived your life must be. If you're not from the Pacific Northwest and you still know Dan Savage, good job.

ANYWAYS, mini bio, Dan Savage is an author and newspaper editor who i know mainly from his column Savage Love, which answers readers questions about sex in a very frank and humorous way. Dan has always concerned his writing with politics, culture, and homosexuality (i dont know if there's a genre for what he writes...it's not satire, but it's not political analysis either). He's a pretty controversial character, even in the gay community, but i adore him (my friends and i also stalk him around seattle coffee shops. good times.)

Dan and his (now husband, then boyfriend) Terry adopted a son in the early 2000s, and Dan chose to write a book about the experience. It's called The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant.



It's a very small book, and an easy read, which is why i would recommend it to anyone who is interested in adoption, gay marriage, legal rights of gay couples, lesbians, children, homeless teens, or just good memoirs. just go read the book.

The book is dedicated to his husband, Terry, but the whole thing is written as if his child were one day to read it. It's very sweet, and it gets into a lot of the controversy behind gay couples adopting. He talks about the fear of homosexuals and pedophilia, gay marriage, adoption policies (even pertaining to straight couples) and a whole slew of other issues. the really interesting part of the book is that it is not a book meant to educate; it's just one guy, writing because he has a word count to fill for his editor, talking about what his personal experiences have been. It's a very personal book (so personal that, at times, i felt like i was unfairly invading his life and i wanted to put the book down) but that's its charm.
This puts a face and a voice to the issue of the 'gay family', which is something a lot of political argument is missing. Opponents of gay rights talk about 'those gay people' and all 'their habits'. It's been observed, though, that many people are opposed to gay rights as a sort of default; they arent gay, they dont know anyone gay, so it doesnt really apply to them. If 'those gays' dont get to marry, who cares? it doesnt apply to them!
It has been observed, though, that when ambivalent opponents to gay rights meet gay people and talk to them or, better yet, realize someone they've known all their life is gay, their opinions change pretty fast. it's no longer 'those gay people' as a generalization, it's individual voices and lives. This book is just one of those voices, and its greatest quality is the humanity it brings to these issues.


go read it.

Lets Laugh at Liberals

What amazes me is that, to people watching this on Fox news, this clip probably shows how laughably immoral and wrong proponents of homosexuality are. Personally, watching this shows just how horrendously pig-headed and cruel a TV personality is allowed to be on public television. The fact that they showed this on their own channel, however, means that they clearly think this successfully caters to their like-minded audience. I know any situation can have multiple interpretations, but i don't think I've ever been hit in the face with that fact so much before.

I'm not sure how much of a thoughtful analysis i can do of this, please just watch it yourselves and maybe comment for discussion. hmm.

Bieber Bashing

Trust me, this relates to our class more than it related to Justin Bieber. Sort of. If you look at it sideways and with one eye closed. The reason i'm linking this is not to follow the life and times of a young canadian boy, it's actually because of the language two popular radio personalities use to demean said boy. I feel like it would be odd to just post the video with no explanation, so follow this link for both the video and some peripheral information:

Canadian Radio Host Calls Justin Bieber a Transsexual

There are so many levels of pathetic these men sink to. I cant really tell what's more offensive, the repeated implications that he is homosexual (which is, of course, bad), or their bashing of transsexuals, or the fact that 40 year old men with no sense of proper radio hosting are being paid to spend 10 minutes of air time bashing a 15 year old child. Or, alternately, the fact that i just wasted ten minutes of my life listening to all that happen. Hmm.

There has of course been backlash to this but, as this article says, "It's unclear whether the punishment means a fine, or just some tersely worded paperwork."

Again, trying to bring this away from Bieber himself, it amazes me that people who think this sort of slander is in any way appropriate are still hired to positions in radio and other media. What is a 'shock jock' if not a person who makes their living being constantly insulting to at least one group of people? Now, i acknowledge that Southpark constructs its entire show from being constantly insulting to as many groups as possible, but there is also a difference between satire and honest bigotry. Southpark goes so far over the line of inappropriate that it makes clear where that line is (and subsequently takes a piss out of it). The sort of 'jokes' this radio personality engaged in were clearly not meant to be so far over the line they were satirical - he couldnt even define that line.

i dont know how successfully i made my point clear, but it's there in my head! i swear!

(Also, by the way, Justin Beiber's fans make up 3% of all traffic on twitter, which i think is hysterical and sort of creepy)

Born Gay?

So, in the absence of any bathroom-related scandals recently (or maybe i just haven't been looking hard enough, heaven knows they're there) lets talk about something else. I'm winging this, i haven't done any proper research, i have nothing to present, disclaimer disclaimer. Really, i would love it if you would all make use of blogger's fabulous comment option and we can get a conversation going about this.

Question: are people born gay? can they be? are genetics even involved? is it always a biological trait? can it be changed?

Answer: lets figure that out.

I'll start off the discussion. Personally, i think that there can be no set answer. In the same way that we cant say biology determines gender 100% of the time, i don't think it's right to assume one answer for every person in relation to orientation either. I think we aren't born with sexual orientations, but we may be born with certain predispositions. Some people are predisposed to only ever like members of the opposite sex, some only members of the same. I think the vast majority, however, have the capacity to go either way. Society and surroundings, as well as your relationships themselves, then shape that capacity for going either way. Sexual orientation, then, is less like a continuum and more like a multi-laned highway: you can stay in any number of structured lanes, or you can swerve wildly between them at will.
I think I've answered most of my own questions by now....I'm really curious to hear what other people have to say, so go at it!

(also, hyperlink time. This site has some cool information on the topic of biological sexual orientation, both the pro and the con side. very interesting, good for debates)

I know why I never get off the computer now

(can someone else please blog so I can stop feeling like our CSP's degenerated into reading maeve's diary time?)
Regardless, I've found an article about ME, this is amazing. Double the amazing, it's about me and it's short. Mercy of mercies, I'm sure.

The Conflation of Asexual and Sexless

"One of the more interesting but less notorious stereotypes/misconceptions about asexuality is that of the conflation of being asexual, in not experiencing sexual attraction, and being sexless or somehow neuter. I’ve never encountered this directly, but I have seen others note it, particularly one user on AVEN who identifies as a (cis)woman and is (rightfully) frustrated when people assume that she must identity as somehow agender or neutrois upon hearing that she is asexual, as if lacking sexual attraction makes having a gender identity redundant or superfluous."

Okay I dont know how to analyze this properly without it just being a really personal diary entry, because this is me. As part of my school's GSA, GLAM (which stood for Gay, Lesbian, And More), every spring we taught a class for sixth graders on the basic terms surrounding LGBTQ issues. We brought them hand outs and information and links and generally all the things we could find that a sixth grader questioning their sexuality or gender could want but not want to ask about. Part of our presentation, in the name of the unabashed honesty GLAM promotes, was telling the class about our own sexuality or gender expression.
Personally, I usually classify myself as bisexual. I dont classify myself as pansexual because gender does actually play a big role in my attraction to others (many pansexuals claim to be gender-blind or otherwise disregarding of gender and, while I'm not entirely sure that's the true heart of pansexuality, I'd rather just stick with bisexuality and not muddy waters already stagnant and oxygen deprived from over expansion of the terms), even if I find attraction in any gender, and the term has never really spoken to me.
Yes. I did just shamelessly indulge in that massive run-on.
Still, I've always wanted to call myself asexual but haven't for exactly the reasons outlined in the article. When I say asexual, people automatically assume that means I have no attraction to anything. Quite the contrary, I have quite a lot of attraction to people in a way that has nothing to do with sexual contact (in my paper, I wrote that 'bodies are temples to be worshiped uninhabited', to which Professor Buckmire asked 'but dont bodies have souls in them?'. To me, that is rather important. Physical bodies and spiritual minds are two different things, and I appreciate them in two very different ways). While agoraphobia and misanthropy definitely play a role in my sexuality, asexuality is definitely a separate concept. I find myself associating with all three.

Upon rereading this article, I've realized it might actually have nothing at all to do with what I've been blathering about for this whole article. Still, on it's own it has some interesting points. Read it anyways, maybe don't bother thinking of it while you read this blog (or the other way around).

I can't actually focus on the screen anymore, I think this is a bad sign.
Maeve's sleep deprived diary entry out.

Following the trend..

Because I just couldnt resist adding another bathroom-themed post to my repertoire, D.C. Starbucks' are making their bathrooms gender neutral.

While one response may be, "woopty freakin' doo, they're single room bathrooms anyways, who cares what the door sign says?", that's not the point here. For people who fit pretty comfortably into a gender, me included, changing the signs on two doors you already used interchangeably isnt too big a deal. For transgendered people, however, who spend every day of their lives being forced to choose between two signs that dont represent them (and who disallow them in both cases) this is really a great step forward.

That said, another big 'woopty freakin' doo' for the fact that this has been four years in the making. In 2006, the D.C. council passed regulations requiring that all public accommodations would be 'accessible to transgendered people'. Pretty much, that boils down to gender neutral bathrooms (no such thing as gender-specific stairs, I guess).

Four years. And now Starbucks is finally getting around to it, and only in their D.C. shops (admittedly, that's still 52 locations).

So, all in all, pat on the back for Starbucks for actually doing anything, but we're holding out the really big pat until someone makes anything more than a perfunctory (and actually legally required) change.

Men In Skirts

I didn't know anyone did this outside of Seattle. Men in skirts time. While this is really just an attempt to legitimize the ridiculous amount of time i spend on the internet, anyone in this class and interested in fashion might enjoy this fusion of subjects.

This article features a whole list of designers and other various famous people who have been campaigning (or simply going about) skirts for men. Thus the image of Sean Connery in traditional dress. It also includes some examples of traditional clothing for men featuring skirts, again see above.

After the historical informational bit, the author goes into some very interesting commentary on several different photo shoots featuring men in dresses. Things i hadn't even thought about when considering photographic composition were brought up, as well as what the images themselves meant. I hadn't really considered how fashion shoots with women entirely naked could be feminist, but I'm reconsidering now.

"The tradition of men wearing skirts may have been brought about by culture or religion passed through the generations. But for others for whom men wearing skirts is not the norm, the practice has been wielded as a political weapon.

Women can wear suits and pants and command the power of a man, but men can not do the same.


The man becomes vulnerable by looking awkward in a dress. He is rendered powerless by a woman who also wears feminine garb, because masculinity has been humiliated and diminished by its inflexibility"

I'd definitely urge people to check this out, if nothing else at least there are some fun pictures.
(the site is image heavy though, so if you have a slow connection i might steer clear)

An undynamic post about a very dynamic figure

Is Lady Gaga a feminist icon?

None could name any other major pop star, or pop culture personality right now, who they could say the same about – any other artist who could stand accused on the grounds that they were just too impossibly inventive

Camille Paglia has already been to work on some of these questions in a piece in the Sunday Times last weekend...And what seemed to irk her most was what she considers Gaga's fundamental lack of sex appeal. "Gaga isn't sexy at all," she wrote. "She's like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? . . . Marlene and Madonna gave the impression, true or false, of being pansexual. Gaga, for all her writhing and posturing, is asexual."

What was interesting about Paglia's article was its implication that, in order to be a star – and particularly a female star – you have to be sexually appealing. All of which apparently ignored the fact that, for her fans, one of Gaga's key attractions is precisely her dismissal of traditional, feminine sex appeal, of the need to be charming, of the values and aesthetic of other female singers: the ripe, pert bodies, the pretty, familiar costumes.

She has often been compared with a drag queen and, in many ways, this seems apt. Part of the brilliance and beauty of drag, of course, is that it can potentially expose sex roles – most often femininity – as a performance. A drag queen in enormous false eyelashes, teetering heels, a tight dress, heavy makeup, a voluminous wig, talon-like nails, is mimicking a woman, while underlining that what's expected of women is in no way natural. With her increasingly bizarre getups, Gaga does the same."

This article is rather enormous, but presents some pretty interesting ideas about what Lady Gaga's various wacky wardrobes represent (if you have rhotacism, that sentence was awesome). I always saw her as a feminist (hell, i saw her as an everything-right-there-is-to-stand-for-ist) but this is a cool breakdown of the many ways in which she is. It also points out several ways what most people would dismiss as 'fashion' or 'wardrobe malfunctions' actually make a strong but subtle point. Sometimes people don't look past the shock value of a clothing style or an action to see what it really means; after all, to cause shock at all, something must violently break social norms. By figuring out what shocks us, we can trace our way back to what we consider 'normal'. Sometimes, those things need challenging (for example, what does it mean about our society if the mere image of a woman on a toilet shocks and offends us? Once again i've found my way back to bathrooms. read the article to know what i'm talking about)

Yay for Canada

Canada's prostitution laws struck down

"A Toronto judge has struck down Canada’s prostitution laws, saying provisions meant to protect women and residential neighbourhoods are endangering sex workers’ lives.

If Justice Susan Himel’s decision stands, prostitutes will be able to communicate freely with customers on the street, conduct business in their homes or brothels and hire bodyguards and accountants without exposing them to the risk of criminal sanctions.

“How am I going to celebrate? I’m going to spank some ass,” Bedford, cracking a riding whip, told reporters.

Scott said the decision means sex workers no longer have to “worry about being raped, robbed or murdered.”

Federal lawyers maintained that prostitution is inherently risky whether it is practised indoors or outdoors and that decriminalizing it would be out of sync with the moral values of most Canadians.
Scott said sex workers want to work with municipalities and be responsible business owners and neighbours.
Citizens shouldn’t worry about a brothel opening up next door, she added.
“There is no reason to be afraid. Lightening bolts won’t hit the sidewalk,” said Scott. “There won’t be frogs all over.'"

Good news abounds this morning. While this bill has been given a 30 day suspension while rich, white, upper class, male congressmen hem and haw over protecting the safety of ALL their citizens, the fact that it even got signed into existence gives me great hope.
Sex workers have been around forever - even the bible, that ineffable tome which so many rich, white, upper class, male congressmen seem to be enamored with, features prostitutes and 'sinful women' who help the Lord along his ineffable plan (Joshua 6:17–25, Luke 7:36–50). I just proved that the bible can be used to prove anything, but that's really not what I'm trying to prove at the moment. Sex workers have been around a long time, and it's unlikely they will ever not be around. After all, sex is an integral part of almost all life forms (barring of course asexual reproducers and hermaphroditic reproducers, but most of those live in the sea) and humans have made it into rather an art. Thus, denouncing sex workers as immoral or unworthy of legal protection is not a practical political stance; really, it's just an externalization of white, upper class, male congressman guilt.
Prostitutes exist. They will and they have. They are citizens (we're not going to get into human trafficking and immigration business right now, I have to go to class too soon for that) and deserve all the protections therein. Why is prostitution such a dangerous job? Because they are not getting the full protection they deserve and, frankly, that they need. Why is so much violence perpetrated against sex workers? Because of that lack of protection. Why is no one protecting these women AND men? Rich, white, upper class, male congressmen (and, to be fair, rich, white, upper class, females) with their collective heads in collectively unsavory locations.
Have I ranted enough for this morning? Maybe. I'll be keeping tabs on this. More to come, surely.
(also, come talk to me if you think I'm totally insane, I don't bite particularly hard and I'd love to discuss it)

(p.s. yay for canada)

And Another..

As of, oh TODAY, same sex marriage is now legal in Conneticut.. YAY. All preexisting civil unions will automatically be changed to marriages, which is great for the LGBTQ community there, but I wonder about the straight opponents to ending civil unions. I'm not talking about bigots who don't like the idea of two boys kissing, no one particularly cares about them. The people I'm wondering about are the straight couples who have civil unions, for any of the many reasons they do (to preserve their inheritance, to oppose the institution of marriage, etc.) and what will now happen to them. Will they be able to change their marriage back? Will they loose the benefits of the civil union? (I'm thinking most now about older people who have ex-spouses inheritance because they have not remarried. What will they do in their old age?)
This bears some looking into but, for now, one more state with equal marriage! yay!
(Also, sexting is now illegal)

Urinary Segregation

I'm starting to sense a trend....is my brain just constantly in the toilet? Oh gracious, let's not think about it, shall we?
Slightly different take on gendered bathrooms:

Urinary Segregation

"When I was 25 years old I was in New York’s Guggenheim Museum. As I started walking into the women’s bathroom, a security officer put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Hold on there a minute, you (expletive) pervert, you can’t go in there' ...I literally had to go to the security office to convince him not to throw me out of the museum.
This sort of gender policing is extreme, but at a daily level, many people find going to the bathroom a similar ordeal....public bathrooms, a product of modern technologies and anxieties, are no longer built to withstand our postmodern blurring of binaries.
We should remember that urinary segregation is not just a site of oppression, but a site of privilege and people with privilege will fight to keep it. If we look at urinary segregation as symbolic violence, we can see that it will take a lot more than legal arguments to take it away. By insisting that all bodies must divide into “Men” or “Women,” “Gentlemen” or “Ladies,” or even “Dudes” and Dudettes,” public toilets are able to erase the messiness of bodies and gender.
Whenever I bring up urinary segregation in my gender class, white women will say “rape.” When I point out that their bathrooms at home are not segregated by gender and that sexual violence is far more likely to be committed by people we know, they resort to “but men are gross.”"

All my life, I've used the bathrooms of both genders with impunity (hey, it's more efficient) and that, combined with being both biologically and personally female, has resulted in me never even thinking about the choices people have to make when they choose bathrooms, or the reactions they receive.

The section about the female reaction to mixed gender bathrooms, however, was fascinating. Relating back to my earlier bathroom-related post (why can I even claim authorship of two), there is a view expressed (mostly by heterosexual women, as far as I can tell) that male is equivalent to violence, and violence equivalent to rape, and when males are in bathrooms they get violent and rape is the outcome. In no way do I want to discount the very real danger of rape in public restrooms, it's a risk and one everyone should be mindful of, but there is also the danger of associating all men with danger all the time.

The coffee shop down the street from my high school wins points, not only for being awesome, but for their gender neutral bathrooms. I couldn't find a picture online, but but their bathroom signs feature Ken and Barbie dolls with a twist: Kenneth is wearing an extravagantly lacy red tank top, offset by his fabulous turquoise man-purse and floral jeans. Barb has a black tux and hot pink sneakers. Anyone can go into any bathroom. I don't know how either of my bathroom-writers would react to these signs (I'm sure you could have another year long discussion about how the exaggerated differences are non-representative of the behavior of actual gender-neutral people), but I personally love them.

I'll leave you with the lovely Andrea Gibson and her piece, Swing Set:

"Then of course there’s always the somehow not-quite-bright enough fluorescent light of the public restroom, “Sir! Sir, do you realize this is the ladies’ room?” “Yes, ma’am, I do, it’s just that I didn’t feel comfortable sticking this tampon up my penis in the men’s room.”"

Who's a family?

Who's a family? Some say pets in, same-sex couples out

"in 2006, when asked if gay couples and pets count as family, 30 percent[of poll participants] said pets count but not gay couples.
"The sheer idea that gay couples are given less status than pets should give us pause," Powell said in an interview.
Even though five states and the District of Columbia now allow same-sex marriages, the federal government doesn't recognize them. The Census Bureau definition of "family" remains traditional: "A family is a group of two people or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together."
Many religious conservatives hope the government sticks by that definition, even in the face of shifts in public opinion.
"Same-sex marriage is a dangerous social experiment," said Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies for Focus on the Family. "A lesbian couple who legally married in Massachusetts — are they family? We would say, 'Absolutely not.'"

While this article's hook is enough to keep you thinking for a while ("straight people with cats are families but gay people with cats, dogs, and two kids aren't? hmm...") it also has a nice overview of current feelings around marriage, families, and adoption issues. The interests of many groups, gay or straight, are brought to light in a pretty well rounded way, which i appreciate.

Quite often the debate in America is over how 'marriage' should be defined, but this article also brings up how the definition of 'family' ties into that debate. People opposed to the idea of same sex marriages, for example, oppose not only the change in the definition of 'marriage' but the change in the formulation of a traditional 'family' (the 'think of the children!' card is played rather often, despite multiple research studies).

This article also mentions a whole book on the subject, and I do love book links.

Upcoming Conference on Alternative Sexualities 9/23/10 in San Francisco

Have your secretary pencil it in...

Upcoming Conference on Alternative Sexualities 9/23/10 in San Francisco

"One of the biggest difficulties queer, kinky, and/or polyamorous people face when looking for therapists or other mental health support is that professionals get very little training about any kind of sex, much less “alternative” sexualities. Despite the lack of any real correlation between being kinky (for example) and having mental health issues, many therapists assume that BDSM players are also abuse survivors. Of course, many kinky folks are, simply because there are a lot of survivors in the world, but if sexual assault caused kink, there’d be even more kinky folks. Similar attitudes about queers and polyamorous folks are also pretty common.

So it’s really great that the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities is hosting the 3rd Annual Alternative Sexualities Conference on September 23 at the LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market St. in San Francisco.

You don’t need to be a professional to attend, so students and others with an interest in the topic are definitely welcome."

Just an event I thought I should put out there, in case anyone is interested and would like to go. Even if no one is, it's still great that people are working to inform the current mental health education about a group of people that has been rather unrepresented and improperly researched.

If you would like to go, there's a link to the registration form in the article.

"Fag Bashing & Slut Shaming"

Fag Bashing & Slut Shaming: It’s About Policing Gender Roles

"I’m not going to argue that there aren’t any general trends in gender differences, although I do think that many things that we usually consider masculine or feminine are culturally based. Even for the things that show a statistically-significant difference between men and women, there are still plenty of people who have characteristics that are less common for people of their sex. People are not bell curves.

This is why we need to make room for gender diversity. Not only isn’t gender an either/or, it’s not even on a spectrum. The spectrum model, while allowing for more possibilities, still presents it as a zero-sum experience. It makes it seem as if, the more you have of one, the less you must have of the other. That approach reifies and reinforces the idea that there’s an opposition."

This is a view of an old issue - the ever present slut/sexy double standard for women - with a new twist that includes gender identities. I've heard a lot of people arguing over the issue, or simply grumbling about it, but mostly the conversation was about sex and not gender.

Thinking of it now, the topic of gender identity has always been lurking under the surface. It's integral to the debate of how we view and label the sexuality of others based on their sex and, now that I realize it, their gender identity.

The article also has some pictures along the way which I think are books dealing with similar topics, so if you're absolutely captivated you'll know where to go.

Things To Read: Changes

Cross blogging will come to an end soon, I promise.


I'm not even going to lie. I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fangirl. I am also embarrassingly nerdy when it comes to language. I have a huge hard on for books and paper and font type. I can, and will, talk to you forever about page layouts if you'd like.

So what happens when you get a short story by Neil Gaiman, about the way words change in society, printed in sexy font on real paper? Essentially an inanimate wet dream for Maeve.
The Important Bit

"Changes", by Neil Gaiman, is a very short story about a man who, by inventing a cure for cancer, inadvertently discovers a way to change ones sex over night. While this premise may sound too fantastical for your usual fare, read it anyways. What I took away from it was the way language morphs in society, to the point where what we consider a common, acceptable word ("change") acquires new and forbidden connotations.

When you're done agreeing with me, read this short review for an entirely different take on the story: the way the author handles the concepts of gender, sex, and sexuality from the perspective of a trans reader.

Then come talk to me about it if you like. I think this is a worthwhile (and non time-consuming) addition to any day.