What the fuck?

As part of the current pattern of actions, this is quite alarming — it demonstrates that SUP/LJ now actively and openly disapproves of and targets specific groups.

If you use X to insult someone, you aren't just insulting that person — you are insulting X. You are saying that X is something worthy of being insulted. It doesn't matter if you think they are a horrible person. If you don't think that X is something horrible about them, then insult the reasons you do think they are horrible.

I've seen far too many homophobic, racist, misogynistic, misandristic, transphobic, sizeist, anti-disabled and anti-semitic slurs "justified" by assertions that person being insulted doesn't personally deserve respect or that they fit some bad stereotype. Use something as an insult and you are saying that it is something worth of admonishment. Your words can say a lot more about what you think than you intend them to.

Yesterday morning, purpleglitter and I got up early to pick up the two cutest English budgies. The rusty cage they were in sucked and there were two cats there were being allowed batting at their tail feathers, but the had each other and to their former owner's credit, they had insisted they not be separated in their craigslist ad. They are so obviously bonded, they are snuggled up against each other more often then they are not. We are calling them Statler and Waldorf.


( +1 )

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Statler and Waldorf home safe and sound, I had to head out to my endocrinology appointment, which went well. It is obvious that my endocrinologist is still not entirely comfortable with me being off psychiatric medication and not in therapy, even though it has been years and I'm doing fine. At least at this point she no longer suggests I go back to either. She did, however, suggest I see my primary care provider. I won't, I don't trust my pcp anymore. However, my endo let slip the name of a primary care doctor popular who is popular with her trannie patients that I'm going to check out switching to.

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After they got done taking my blood, I went over to see Ila. She has been teaching me Telugu script, though the words we've been going over have been Sanskrit. This week I need to practice writing conjunct consonants. I think the script is beautiful and am grateful for the opportunity to attempt to learn it. Ila seems to enjoy showing it to me — which is good, otherwise she probably wouldn't.

Dear Human Rights Campaign:

Congratulations on getting ENDA through the House of Representatives. I forgave you the last time you betrayed the transgender community. Many of us did. We believed that your organization had changed. We gave you the benefit of the doubt. We were wrong and we won't make that mistake again.

If by some chance you manage to get the trans-excluded ENDA through the senate, President Bush is almost guaranteed to veto it. You sold out the transgender community for nothing. Nothing. You are not going to get ENDA &mdash all your going to get is a split and angry queer community, a queer community in which many do not and cannot support you, a queer community in which many actively despise and oppose you. That is what you've won, enjoy your spoils.

By the way, I fixed your logo for you. You should really consider changing it:

Just for fun, I decided to look at the edits made from the United States Department of state using wikiscanner. I only looked at a fraction of the over 2,500 edits, but here are the ones I thought were interesting:

Laura Bush thinks Condi would be a great president

We're being invaded by Mexicans!!

"...the World Bank is one of the most highly-regarded financial institutions in the world..."

Tiawan is a pseudostate

"The statements about events in 2007 are clearly written by a Russian."

State Department predicts what issues will be contentious at the next Intergovernmental Conference of the European Union

The Department of State knows a lot about science and technology in China.

Somewhere in the world, humans can marry non-human animals

Delete – Who said the 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal? No one said that

Delete – You can't say that the U.S. officials should have know that Bin Laden would turn his attention to the west after the Soviets were out of the way

Delete – Text on the United States Interests Section in Havana

Delete – A large chunk of the Missouri United States Senate election, 2006 article

Delete – Part of the discussion on the Agent Orange talk page

Yesterday, sophiaserpentia commented that she had heard Domina at Club Choices was canceled, but indicated that she was unsure of the accuracy of what she heard. To confirm this I looked online, but could only find one source and wasn't sure who the source was or how accurate they were. I called the number on the flier and the person who answered (apparently it's the promoter's cell number) didn't know if the night was happening or not. She said she'd call someone else and find out. Victor called after I did and she told him it was not canceled. So, we went and it was canceled. In my opinion, if you're going to put your number on promotional material under "Call for more info:", then you should be in the loop about the night. The people running the night really need to get it together.

We ended up going to Queeraoke at the Ramrod. I'd never been to the Ramrod before, but like anywhere I've gone with Victor he seemed to know everyone. I actually got up and sang, only the second time I've done karaoke. Unlike when I went as Phil to Glitterswitch Drag Karaoke at Club Hollywood many years ago, I wasn't absolutely horrible. I'm sure I wasn't memorably good by any stretch of the imagination, but at least this time I wasn't memorably bad.

Found via recoiling:



Just when you thought Fox News couldn't get any worse, they turn themselves into the televised version of the Weekly World News.

By the way, the "lesbian gang" sent to prison in New York was actually 4 women who dared fight back against a man who attacked them.

Instead of going to pride, I had my pussy shaved.







Paddington did not like getting shaved at Doggie Styles (yes, that was the actual name of the groomers), but she was quite matty and really needed it. She'll be happier in the summer weather, too.

The recent horrific massacres of 32 students at Virgina Tech by Cho Seung-Hui has sparked a lot of political discussion. Here is my opinion...

Psychiatry

The pro-psychiatry people were quick to make some points about the need for coercing people into treatment. Even the revelation that Cho Seung-Hui was receiving treatment and was on psychiatric medication has not silence the "control the crazies" crowd. I cannot see how he could have been controlled any further without permanently locking up anyone displaying moderate mental illness - and that comes with it's own problems, principle people hiding problematic thoughts and feelings at all, and processing them internally with no outside checks or influence.

Gun Control

The anti-gun lobby sees events like these as political gold. Obviously guns are evil and vile and nasty and wrong. But I firmly believe if just two of the people at Norris Hall beside the shooter had guns, a lot less people would have been killed. The problem isn't a surplus of guns, the problem is a lack of guns. If more citizens had the ability to defend themselves against this kind of massacre, this scale of massacre by a lone gunman couldn't happen.

Westboro Baptist Church

Fred Phelps and his gang have been protesting at funerals of queer people and queer supporters for over a decade. Most of America didn't care one lick. A couple years ago he started protesting military funerals. That really pissed people off, because unlike (known) gay people, those people mattered. Avoiding the political pitfalls of banning protests at the funerals of the filthy gays, congress passed a law banning political protests at military funerals only.

Last year, the Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to protest at the funerals for the victims of the Amish school house massacre in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. These people were definitely not loathsome queers. FOX News gave a couple representatives from the Westboro Baptist Church an hour of uninterrupted air time on their news radio station in exchange for WBC cancelling the protest.

What will come of their planned protests of these victims funerals, I do not know. Will FOX News give them more air time? Will the law banning protests at military funerals be extended? Who knows?

Answers to yesterday questions:

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It improved until last year. However in the last year, even with a lot of great additions, it seems to have quality and growth seems to have stagnated.

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We are many and one. I estimate that there are between 10 and 20 quasidistinct individuals. You might check out these entries, keeping in mind that most of my entries from 2001 to 2004 have not yet been tag, and that was my most prolific period writing on the subject.

2.71828
I can and most others I know can. However, it is not universal and there are a significant minority that can't.

687
I would simply say they are getting different.

893254
They are separate forces and each exist in their own right. What influence there is flows both way.

People don't like to discuss who was killed in the holocaust. People don't like to discuss the fact that a higher percentage of European Roma were killed than of Jews. So thorough was the extermination of the Roma people of Bohemia that the Bohemian Romani dialect went extinct. People don't like to discuss that the gas chambers were originally designed for and operated in mental hospitals as a way of getting rid of the most undesirable undesirables: the mentally ill. People don't like to discuss that gays, "social deviants", Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, Freemasons, and the disabled were all sent to the death camps.

When you include Soviet POWs, political dissidents, various Slavic peoples, and members of "non-Aryan" races and you include the Serbs kill by the Nazi-puppet regime in Croatia – Jewish deaths, while still numbering higher than any one other group, account for a third or less of the holocaust victims. 6 million is the most cited number of holocaust deaths and it is an horrific number on its own, but it only represents the number of Jews killed. The total number of holocaust victims will never be exactly known, detailed records simply don't exist. But when taking into account all the victims, that number is in the neighborhood of 18 to 20 million.

The crimes of the Nazis against the Jews should not be forgotten, nor should they be downplayed. However, the crimes of the Nazis were not only against Jews — they were crimes against humanity.

The holocaust did not begin with the Jews or gays or the Roma peoples or even the political dissidents. The holocaust began in the psychiatric institutions. The first gas chambers installed by the Nazis were in the "hospitals". The skills that would in later years be used against other groups were developed in those institutions. It was under the auspices of psychiatry that it began.

The politics of psychiatry are dangerous, and recent history shows the appetite for forced psychiatry has not abated. Mental patients are one of the most vulnerable groups. "Normal" people fear the mad. They feel they need to be protected from us. We need to be controlled. And of course - they always know best for us.

I've heard people who would cringe at the oppression of any other group casually declare "Why would I care about a bunch of crazy people?". When people take the attitude that something needs to be done to "help" the mentally ill, they usually take the NAMI/TAC approach of forced drugging/electroconvulsive therapy/imprisonment. These approaches are not really about helping the mad, only about shutting us up. The website of the NAMI affiliated Treatment Advocacy Center , which purports to be about helping mental patients, instead relies almost entirely on fearmongering — the evil crazy people are coming to kill your cops and throw you under a train. They must be controlled.

In my more optimistic moments I hope that "sane" people figure out that what is now done to us may effect them also. The realm of psychiatry is expanding, more and more of who were once considered "sane" are being given the label "insane". The expansion of who is insane is aimed at anyone who isn't happy and productive and non-questioning of the standard paradigm. No one is "safe" from being redefined, and if you find yourself in mourning for longer than two weeks when you most dear loved one dies, you may be joining the rest of crazies who may have at one time been called human.

I saw my endocrinologist today. As normal, she renewed my prescription and had my blood drawn. As part of the exam, she asked if I had any leg swelling. I mentioned the oddness behind the backs of my right knee and elbow and that my primary care nurse thought they were lipomas, but that I was doubting that assessment. She took a look at my knee and agreed that there was not a lipoma there. She suggested they might be ganglion cysts, but wasn't so sure because they appeared too lateral in form.

She suggested that I see a rheumatologist for a more specific diagnosis, but that my primary care nurse would have to give me a referral. I told her that I doubted my primary care nurse would, as she doesn't believe anything I say; to which my endocrinologist replied "She'll believe me.". At least I'm getting someone to believe something health related isn't in my head.

Rev. Ted Haggard, the head of the National Association of Evangelicals he only hired the prostitute for a "massage" and did not actually have sex. This sounds like very Clintonian evasion, I have to wonder what exactly he got "massaged".

He also claims he bought meth from the prostitute, which he claims he threw out instead of using. "I didn't inhale." anyone? Clinton couldn't even pull that one off, and he is the master. Give it up, Haggard: You're no Clinton.

I'm rethinking the rant I wrote about a month ago rejecting labeling myself "feminist". Perhaps it is not a label I should so hastily reject. This brings to mind the question: "Why is a feminist?".

Yes, I've heard the simplistic answer many times: "a feminist is someone who believes women are people too" or any variation on that theme. But that dissolves quickly when one starts talking issues. The abortion, the rabid warthog of issues, easily breaks the illusion. Many pro-choice feminists declare that pro-life feminism is an oxymoron, and that legal unqualified abortion is the only true path of feminism. This clearly is an affront to pro-life feminists, who will inevitably tell you that they believe unborn women are people too. Whether or not pro-life feminism is valid, this conflict alone shows that a simple definition is not going to suffice in defining what feminism is.

Perhaps asking "what is feminism" is a bit like asking "what is goth" on alt.gothic (is that still regularly asked?). Done over and over again, there is no real definition. It is a political orientation, the same way socialist and populist are. If it simply a political orientation, why should I reject it just because some fanatical organizations such as the MWMF claim it as well? Perhaps it is just a word, perhaps my gesture has no real meaning, but I might just call myself a feminist again.