Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
From my private messages on FetLife.com, wherein an anti-gay windbag, concerned for my well-being, (you know, that whopper lie these types tell themselves to NOT feel like hateful bigots) decided to try to save me directly rather than keep getting his ass handed to him in the forum he had been posting on.
This began because, like so many, I responded in the forum to his bile by using myself to deflate his "Only two sexes, nature says violating the opposite sex status quo is wrong yadda yadda" crap.
PurrrplePenny
PurrrplePenny 36IS
Surrey, British Columbia
written 1 day ago:
But you are indeed a huge flaming idiot. Having read your bile as it relates to dismissing the lives and loves of my friends here, which of course you insist is not hate or bigotry, (just like all ignorant bleating homophobes do), I'm afraid I must deflate that little bubble you live in.
First of all, there are most certainly NOT only two distinct sexes. I'm living proof of this troll boy. Go look at my pictures. I automatically just by existing prove you're mistaken and speaking out of your ass.
Second, homosexuality is VERY natural. It occurs in THOUSANDS of species, not just humans. It's a population control tool, when there are too damned many of something, Nature makes a small percentage gay, to curb breeding and provide extra care for the excess of offspring.
Third, "Love the sinner hate the sin" is the single biggest bullshit excuse folks like you use to hide your bigotry. Not only can I prove that the Bible is NOT NEARLY so anti-gay as folks like you want to claim, but it's a RELIGIOUS view, and religion, unlike homosexuality, is very much a choice. No one is born Christian, you have to be taught. But all credible research shows it is extremely unlikely that ANYONE chooses to be something so vilified that it risks getting them beaten to death every time they leave the house.
- A happily and very much legally MARRIED LESBIAN.
This got kudos from others in the forum, but he decided to then take it directly to my inbox.
Anon-dom
Anon-dom 49M
Beacon, New York
written 1 day ago:
I assure you that the attempts to justify same-sex sex will always be offensive nonsense.That something occurs in nature does not mean it is not deplorable or appalling.Your birth defect is unfortunate but not nearly as sad as your pretending it isn't.
If you DON'T "hate the sin",you're only PRETENDING to love the sinner...I'm not a religious person,I don't think the Bible is of divine origin,and I'm not advocating beating anyone to death.But to treat homosexual orientation as excusing homosexual activity is no better than telling an alcoholic to keep drinking until he dies...it's abandonment,not acceptance.There AREN'T any excuses for homosexual activity.
PurrrplePenny
PurrrplePenny 36IS
Surrey, British Columbia
written 1 day ago:
Offensive nonsense only to the small-minded and hateful like you dear boy, which thankfully there are fewer and fewer of every generation. Your kind is going the way of the dodo. People who AREN;'T ruled by outdated fear and bigotry accept us just fine. Facts are NOT on your side, the only kind of research that supporets your view is the Paul Cameron kind; discredited and laughed at by all credible research bodies, embraced wilfully by the ignorant.
There is no intrinsic harm in homosexual activity. Harm comes from being careless, same as with hetero sex.
You're still an ignorant deceitful bigot trying to hide your evil behind false compassion. There is nothing wrong with us, but a great deal wrong with you.
You still lose. Tata boyo, yours is a lost argument even before you speak it.
Anon-dom
Anon-dom 49M
Beacon, New York
written 1 day ago:
Trust me,I consider your arguments even weaker than you consider mine.Standards of conduct are not "bigotry",and the growth of a misconception's popularity doesn't make it true.
PurrrplePenny
PurrrplePenny 36IS
Surrey, British Columbia
written 1 day ago:
Oh I know you don't care about facts logic and proven science. I don't care if you don't care, you'll still never be RIGHT, and history will remember people like you in the same vein as Hitler or the KKK. THAT is a fact too. The only standard of conduct being violated is in your shallow tiny brain, the only misconceptions are yours and those like you. The truth is on the side of equality, what you espouse very much is hate and bigotry. Telling yourself you're being compassionate may ease your conscience, if you even have one, but it won't make it any less true that you're a bigot and a troll, and utterly worthless as a human being.
You have fun living in your little bubble of delusion, I garauntee you it will just keep getting smaller.
Toodles!
Anon-dom
Anon-dom 49M
Beacon, New York
written about 19 hours ago:
Facts and logic are on my side,not yours.That you seriously think that desire to engage in irrational behavior (same-sex sex?!) is anything like race,or that right and wrong are "equal",makes your school of thought the worthless one.And however big your "bubble of delusion" grows,it will never be anything else.
PurrrplePenny
PurrrplePenny 36IS
Surrey, British Columbia
written about 17 hours ago:
No dear, facts aren't on your side. I repeat, all reputable scientific and psychiatric agencies, peer-reviewed studies, and legitimate research prove you wrong. The only way to make it appear otherwise is to either cite thoroughly discredited researchers like Paul Cameron and the junk-science they use, or to take one tiny part of legitimate studies and intentionally distort it to make your case. There's a word for that; Lying. No matter what lies you tell, or how much you swear up and down it's the truth, your lies remain lies, and no proven credible research backs your side of the debate. You try to claim gay/lesbian sex is harmful. This is what is called a blanket exaggeration lie. Because SOME gay sex, such as careless unprotected sex, can have harmful results, (guess what? So can hetero sex), those like you will broadly claim ALL gay sex must therefore be harmful. This is another lie disproven by credible science. Gay sex, like straight sex, has equal risks and rewards, and safe sex negates a good chunk of those.
The bottom line is that you very much are a bigot and a troll, spouting disproven anti-gay rhetoric in a pathetic attempt to incite anger in complete strangers over the internet, most likely because your own life is so lacking in redeeming qualities that you're compelled to attack strangers whose private lives cause you absolutely no harm except in your own head, in order to stroke your own ego, and since you don't want to believe you're a bully or a bigot,. you lie even to yourself and cling to the lies you spout as "facts" when they've been repeatedly proven otherwise, and tell yourself you're trying to do a good thing by saving people from something no one needs to be saved FROM.
Canada is national proof that your side's rhetoric is a load of crap. Legal gay marriage has kept OUR economy afloat while yours is in the toilet. NO preachers have been arrested for still calling it sinful, and we've had openly gay soldiers in our military since 1994, and we're STILL the Military 9 times out of 10 that YOUR military calls to bail your asses out.
I know you'll basically stick your fingers in your ears and go LA LA LA at me. Bigots NEVER like admitting they might be wrong. Your arguments are no different than segregation arguments. Wrong is wrong, and no lie you tell, even to yourself, will change the facts.
But just because I know you're too ignorant and bigoted to risk acknowledging the REAL facts and admitting your mistakes won't stop me from utterly destroying your crap with the truth.
You go ahead and keep trying to lie to me if you like, I can outargue you til I die. The truth will NEVER validate YOU.
Toodles loser. That bubble is just going to keep on shrinking.
Anon-dom
Anon-dom 49M
Beacon, New York
new message
written about 17 hours ago:
Anything that tells you what you want to hear about this is nonsense.Browbeating the psychiatric community into giving up on trying to help you means they lose credibility,not that you gain it.Being same-sex makes same-sex sex wrong,just because the species has two sexes.Wrong doesn't have to mean illegal,but it does mean inferior,not "equal".
The comparison to segregation is insulting.Nobody gets up one day and decides,after a lifetime of never doing it,"I'm going to black today".The responsibility to never engage in same-sex sex,however,is equally binding on everyone,there's no exemption because you really want to.
The old rubber-glue line is tiresomely appropriate here...everything you say about my arguments only applies to yours.You're going to keep on claiming validation for your bad habits,and they'll never deserve it.
PurrrplePenny
PurrrplePenny 36IS
Surrey, British Columbia
new message
written less than a minute ago:
Nothing I say about your arguments applies to a single one of mine the boy. That's the beauty of it. I can easily provide peer-reviewed ratified research that backs up my argument, you cannot. So resorting to childish homilies to try (and again as always, FAIL) to deflate my arguments because you cannot EVER refute them using any real studies, facts or research, only further proves that deep down, YOU know that it's ME who is correct and has won. You have yet to provide me with anything but your own opinion and bigotry to validate your case, and even in that you've failed miserably. You don't give a rat's ass about people like me, and you're not "saving us" from some destructive life that exists only in the fevered minds of bigots. All you're doing is flailing in the wind, hoping if you can shame and guilt-trip us, a few folks with self-esteem issues might go waste thousands of dollars on Ex-Gay therapies that have been proven to never work and that cause serious psychological trauma. No one has bullied any scientific body into recognising our equality and validity, but those on your side frequently tried to bully them into rescinding those statements. Bullying is YOUR side's tactic, not ours. And when your side failed to intimidate valid legitimate institutes, you founded your own fraudulent ones to push your junk science.
There is no lie about homosexuality that you can tell that I cannot refute with truth and fact. You of course will continue to believe your sad old tired lies, because frankly you're a small minded idiot, I don't think you're even capable of opening your mind to truth, the lies are safer for your frail weak mind, more comfortable.
But as I've said, you believing in a proven lie, and repeating that lie ad nauseum to anyone who'll listen, will never make that lie true. I on the other hand just tell the truth, and telling the truth is the best way to defeat pompous lying windbags like you. There certainly is an inferior one here, but it isn't me or mine. Inferior is the mind so afraid of reality it will cling to a lie like a life preserver after your ship has begun to sink under the weight of it's own bullshit dear boy.
The problem with that is that you can only tread water for so long on a lie in the ocean of truth I have to drown you in before you too sink under the weight of your own bullshit.
*******************************
No reply since then yet, and he'll be booted off the site pretty soon, as FetLife staff are investigating the myriad of complaints against him for his bile.
The funny thing is that, as his profile on the kink social network reaches his list of his personal kinks and fetishes, it goes into perhaps the longest list I've ever seen of creepy disgusting fetishes, such as forcing his pet to engage in scatology by cleaning him up after bareback anal, and far worse ideas I won't even repeat here.
But of course those are all perfectly normal and healthy in his mind, so long as it's a man and a woman engaging in the literal shit-eating. But gays and lesbians just having normal healthy vanilla sex in a loving relationship? Oh HELL no, not on HIS watch!
I laughed my ass off at him for awhile..... until I realized he's probably Brian Fischer incognito. Or Matt Barber, or Porno Pete LaBarbera. God knows as obsessed as those three are with weird sexual fetishes that all us gays supposedly have, any one of them could be this guy and not blink. One of my FetLife friends posted this lovely message he had sent her.
"I see from your profile that you seem to be engaged in a relationship with another female. I see this all the time and it makes me sad because I know that you and also her have never found a real man that can hold your attention. Since lesbians don't exist and the relationships between the supposedly lesbian women are sexless I assume that you both do this for your protection or something? I'd like to talk further on this so here's my number xxx-xxx-xxxx. I'll anticipate your call soon."
Yeah, I think this MUST be one of the Wonk Triplets. The alternative is to believe there really are more idiots like Fischer, Barber and LaBarbera out there than I thought.
Goddess help us all.
11/26/2010
My Letter to my Member Of Parliament About Bill C-389
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
(I have just sent this to my district's Member of Parliament, Sukh Dhaliwal. I encourage all my fellow Canadians to do the same with their local MP's. As Mercedes on Pam's said, you can find the contact info for your local MP by typing in your Postal Code here.)
******************************************
As a member of your constituency here in Surrey, a voter, and a member of the trans community, I implore you to vote to pass Bill C-389. This bill, despite the lies and fearmongering that members of the religious right are engaging in, is not going to let "men put on dresses so they can rape women in bathrooms and claim they're really trans women". That is utterly reprehensible fearmongering invented by religious bigots who distort faith to justify inequality. What it will do is provide protection and dignity to a very beleaguered class. As you are a person of color, I KNOW you understand how bigotry for something you cannot change, in your case race, feels when the ignorant paint you with assumptions and broadstrokes. Trans women cannot change who they are. They do not go into bathrooms to harass women. We go into bathrooms to use the bathroom, same as everyone else. And Crossdressers are NOT trans women and do not use opposite sex bathrooms. Predators who would harm women tend to be very sexist insecure men, and are EXTREMELY unlikely to sacrifice their masculinity by dressing as women just to access women's spaces.
I was arrested and spent a night in jail this past January in PoCo because a security guard decided I didn't look womanly enough, called me a perverted faggot, and called the police. I was violently raped in juvey as a teenager and the entire night in jail I was wracked by flashbacks. The incident, despite being sorted out the next day when I showed the judge the F on my BCID, left me traumatized and afraid to so much as pee when out in public for months. I gave myself a goddamned kidney stone from holding my bladder til I got home rather than just use a restroom. The passage of Bill C-389 would ensure that women like me who are guilty of absolutely nothing except being born with our brains wired differently, (and yes, science HAS proven that MTF Transsexuals do in fact have the biological brain construction of a natal female), from having to risk this kind of humiliation at the hansds of bullies and bigots who mock and ridicule us just for having the courage to be ourselves.
Last weekend was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual day to remember trans women murdered the world over every year. Google Angie Zapata for an example of what women like me risk happening to us every single time we leave the house because we aren't protected under the law.
Imagine if your son or daughter came to you and told you this was who they really were, knowing the danger they will face just by being honest about that. And then remember that all of us, every trans woman, we too are someone's child. And like you, your family, like everyone else, we have the right to be protected by law, and to live with dignity, and to be free from bigotry and harassment just for being who we are.
I am asking you, not as a voter, or a trans woman, but simply as a human being.
Do the right thing. Ignore the fearmongering of religious bigots who bastardize their own faith to make excuses for hatred.
Vote yes on Bill C-389.
Thank you.
Penny Sautereau-Fife, Surrey BC.
(I have just sent this to my district's Member of Parliament, Sukh Dhaliwal. I encourage all my fellow Canadians to do the same with their local MP's. As Mercedes on Pam's said, you can find the contact info for your local MP by typing in your Postal Code here.)
******************************************
As a member of your constituency here in Surrey, a voter, and a member of the trans community, I implore you to vote to pass Bill C-389. This bill, despite the lies and fearmongering that members of the religious right are engaging in, is not going to let "men put on dresses so they can rape women in bathrooms and claim they're really trans women". That is utterly reprehensible fearmongering invented by religious bigots who distort faith to justify inequality. What it will do is provide protection and dignity to a very beleaguered class. As you are a person of color, I KNOW you understand how bigotry for something you cannot change, in your case race, feels when the ignorant paint you with assumptions and broadstrokes. Trans women cannot change who they are. They do not go into bathrooms to harass women. We go into bathrooms to use the bathroom, same as everyone else. And Crossdressers are NOT trans women and do not use opposite sex bathrooms. Predators who would harm women tend to be very sexist insecure men, and are EXTREMELY unlikely to sacrifice their masculinity by dressing as women just to access women's spaces.
I was arrested and spent a night in jail this past January in PoCo because a security guard decided I didn't look womanly enough, called me a perverted faggot, and called the police. I was violently raped in juvey as a teenager and the entire night in jail I was wracked by flashbacks. The incident, despite being sorted out the next day when I showed the judge the F on my BCID, left me traumatized and afraid to so much as pee when out in public for months. I gave myself a goddamned kidney stone from holding my bladder til I got home rather than just use a restroom. The passage of Bill C-389 would ensure that women like me who are guilty of absolutely nothing except being born with our brains wired differently, (and yes, science HAS proven that MTF Transsexuals do in fact have the biological brain construction of a natal female), from having to risk this kind of humiliation at the hansds of bullies and bigots who mock and ridicule us just for having the courage to be ourselves.
Last weekend was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual day to remember trans women murdered the world over every year. Google Angie Zapata for an example of what women like me risk happening to us every single time we leave the house because we aren't protected under the law.
Imagine if your son or daughter came to you and told you this was who they really were, knowing the danger they will face just by being honest about that. And then remember that all of us, every trans woman, we too are someone's child. And like you, your family, like everyone else, we have the right to be protected by law, and to live with dignity, and to be free from bigotry and harassment just for being who we are.
I am asking you, not as a voter, or a trans woman, but simply as a human being.
Do the right thing. Ignore the fearmongering of religious bigots who bastardize their own faith to make excuses for hatred.
Vote yes on Bill C-389.
Thank you.
Penny Sautereau-Fife, Surrey BC.
11/11/2010
9 Answers For Muslim-Hating "Christians"
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
Brace yourself in advance folks, as I'm about to go into full-on rant mode here, and it WILL get ugly, with trigger potential.
Every day I putter around the net, reading everything I can find about subjects that interest me. Last week in my random browsing I came across this cartoon.
Go read that first. It's necessary to understand the context of what I have to say.
Now I really don't have any issues with that cartoon beyond finding it well-meaning, if a bit disingenuous at times. The cartoon's author has a few good points to make, if getting a little heavy-handed once or twice. And I fully expected to find a dueling bastion of "Praise Allah!/Fuck Allah!" in the comments. ANY time Islam becomes the centrepiece (FUCK you spellcheck, I'm Canadian, it's re not er you bastard!) of a conversation on the web, the one-note idiots come out in full force.
So I wasn't in the least inclined to care about the back and forth of one-dimensional bs flying about in the comments, as I thought that the cartoon, in spite of it's flaws, acheived the sentiment it was aiming for with a friendly warmth that's all too rare these days.
It was when I reached an out-of-place very long comment amongst the short back-and-forth that I felt compelled to add my voice to the discussion.
The comment in question was left by a guy identified by Disquss as "Don", a self-proclaimed "Nasty Bastard" according to his Disquss profile. The man has Tea Party written all over his comment. Again, I'll let you click the clicky and read his crap for yourself.
Throughout his whole rambling comment he attempts to come across as a rational voice shining a light of truth onto Islam, while subtly underlying it with the suggestion that Catholocism/Christianity is better or more right yadda yadda.
Let me preface the next part of this blog by pointing out that, as my written history has shown, I do not directly believe Islam or Christianity themselves as ideologies are inherently good or evil. I believe from reading the "Holy Books" of both that both espouse some very good messages, but also condone some very repugnant and deplorable things. I have several friends who belong to either faith, and those are of the camp of Muslims and Christians who live by the good messages of their faith while believing that the harmful messages are not valid or meaningful in today's world. I believe that there are also people on the flipside of that coin who intentionally twist and distort these books, who choose to live by the bad ideals in them, who are deplorable people NOT because of their choice of faith but because of how they so choose to employ it to cause others harm.
Keep this in mind as I use this moron's own words to paraphrase and dissect his vile and very targetted bigotry by turning it around on him.
And so my reply to this idiot, point by point.
********************************************************
Christianity is every bit as bad as Islam dear, it just hides it better behind a thin veil of respectability. So let's tackle YOUR bigoted assumptions shall we?
1) A woman enters a convent/nunnery of her own free will, a Muslim woman does not. At any time if the woman chooses she may leave the convent/order without penalty.
- Not true. A good majority of nuns were guilted or forced into the life by family members slut-shaming them, mostly over imagined promiscuity. Many who find the courage to leave convents do so in spite of intense psychological abuse, bullying, and being told they are damning themselves to hell, and a horrifying percentage of those who left were physically abused by older nuns. Willing nuns are highly outnumbered by the unwilling pressured into it, and abuse of all kinds is rampant.
2) Most Western women who choose to live at home and rear children are looked down upon and ridiculed by sneering left wing liberals who look at motherhood as an offensive form of enslavement.
- Common conservative bullshit. Liberals do not condemn stay-at-home moms. That's a statistic conservatives pulled out of their ass to vilify the competition. The only time a stay-at-home mom is chastised is when she does so because of religious pressure or she herself spreads the idea that it's the only acceptable role for a woman. I myself would happily be a stay-at-home mom were I fertile, but by my own choice, not because of religious dogma or spousal pressure, and nor would I demand all women choose likewise.
3) This link is to a typical Muslim student...listen to her as she speaks in admiration of Adolf Hitler....this is the sort of Muslim student that is most unwelcome, on campus or in North America.
- And THIS link provides a video of a Christian man spouting blatant and long disproven lies about homosexuality to sway a school-board AGAINST implementing a comprehensive anti-bullying program that would include homophobia education. Note all the old standbys like incest, pedophilia and disease being brought up just to add to the fire he's lighting in a crowded theatre.
4) Western children devout themselves to a particular subject or discipline for the betterment of medicine, technology, science, engineering and many other subjects. While it benefits the child, that devotion benefits Mankind and advances the human race.
- Timothy McVeigh. The Columbine 2. Ted Bundy. GOProud. Peter LaBarbera. Very often in Western society devoting oneself so young to a singular topic leads not to society's betterment, but to it's detriment. This is often fueled by extremist Christianity. It isn't Muslims murdering abortion doctors, blowing up clinics, driving teenagers to suicide or rigging elections through blatant lies and fearmongering in the USA. It's single-minded Christian extremists who devoted themselves to a particular subject.
5) There is no comparison to be made between defense of family and home and the hobbies of Muslim terrorists who dabble in all forms of terrorism and suicide bombing.
There is EVERY comparison to be made, since many of those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for exactly that; Defending their homes and families from invaders. And US soldiers have been caught raping and killing indigenous people for no justifiable reason. What you define as an American as to what is defending yourself and what construes terrorism? Reverse roles and it's the same to them. YOUR soldiers are THEIR terrorists, and the USA started this LONG before 9/11. There are indeed some horrible Muslim extremists, but most of the people over there just want the outsiders to leave THEIR homes and stop killing THEIR families.
6) Its Muslims and Islam that puts themselves on trial. When was the last time you heard a Muslim admit to murder without dragging Islam into it claiming he was directed to kill by Muhammad and the Koran. As for Jews, there are Israeli prisons filled with Zionist criminals....this is a fact.
- And how many times has the murder of an abortion doctor, a gay man, or a transsexual woman been justified with "I was doing God's work, it was my Christian duty to kill them because God says they are evil"? Have an answer for that one wiseass? As for your Jew argument, any Zionist prisoners in Israel are imprisoned not for their beliefs but for their criminal acts. And how many news reports in the last few years have there been about the Israelis breaking ceasefires in Gaza killing innocent people? Google the one about one of the recent group murders that included a PREGNANT PALESTINIAN WOMAN by a group believed to be rogue Hamas agents? Any argument you can make trying to vilify Islam alone while ignoring the blatant crimes of other faiths, I can destroy in seconds with proven fact. The truth is NOT on your side here.
7) The majority of this can be answered by reading my answer to # 4, but further to that: if sharia law is the proposed solution it is ignored as with sharia law the solution is much much worse than the problem....any solution that recommends stoning of women and advocates a father hacking away at his daughters vagina to satisfy some depraved sense of religious propriety is no solution at all.
- Do I really need to break out Bible Quotes here to point out your utter hypocrisy with this one? I can if you push the point. The Bible condones women as property. Rape victims must marry their rapists or be stoned to death. Men trade their teenage daughters for land. Children are stoned to death if they ever rebel in even the slightest. Moses was ordered by god to burn entire cities to the ground, murder all men, children and livestock, but keep any fertile women to be forced into marriage and raped in order to keep the numbers in his group high for when they reached the promised land so they would have enough men to overpower the Palestines when stealing the non-believer's land under God's orders. For fuck's sake man! The Bible commands you be put to death if you eat shrimp or wear a polyester/cotton mix shirt! The point the cartoonist is trying, if poorly, to make, is that, like the Bible, the Quran DOES contain some positive messages that can be helpful solutions in real everyday life, but just like the Quran, the good in the Bible can be easily overwhelmed by all the outright evil it endorses. It is NOT the religion itself that causes the problems, it's what each individual person chooses to take from it, good or bad.
8) Simply look at the world around you....Muslims have engaged in some of the most outrageous and murderous behavior and then when held to account for this behavior and these crimes they point to Islam and fall back on the demented psychopathic ravings and edicts of Muhammad to legitimize and excuse the same crimes and behavior.
- The Crusades. The Benediction. The Spanish Inquisition. The Dark Ages. Pedophile Priests. Throughout history there are FAR more documented cases of atrocities condoned and spearheaded by church doctrine than by Islam, for which the church always falls back on the demented psychopathic ravings and edicts of God Jehovah the Father to legitimize and excuse the same crimes and behavior. Not fun when your own hate can be so easily turned around on you by the truth is it?
9) For this answer simply read my previous answers to the 8 questions. The Koran is neither holy nor a solution. The Koran is the blueprint for the enslavement of the human race and the reversing of every possible advancement of the same. The Koran is a mandate for violence, death, terrorism and brutality and has no place in the 21st century. It belongs in a museum where we can marvel at the writings of madmen and mass murderers.
- And as the Quran and the old Testament are in fact the EXACT same book with only minimal locational differences, you're describing Catholicism/Christianity in the exact same breath. The Bible too is neither Holy nor a solution, but a book full of blueprints for a horrible, violent repressed society where white men rule and women and "lesser races" are all property existing only to serve white men. To paraphrase, once again, your own words, The BIBLE is the blueprint for the enslavement of the human race and the reversing of every possible advancement of the same. The BIBLE is a mandate for violence, death, terrorism and brutality and has no place in the 21st century. It belongs in a museum where we can marvel at the writings of madmen and mass murderers.
So for every bigoted, hateful answer you gave, I have used truth and fact to bring you back to the really REAL world where it's so easy to look at the people on the other side of the world who do exactly as we do, some good folks, some bad folks, and some true nutjobs, and chastise them for the exact same values because their exact same values come from a different book. The ONLY difference between Muslims and Christians is that most Christians are better at compartmentalizing the evils they believe in to protect their conscience.
To paraphrase your own words one last time.
Christianity is a political ideology that can not suffer the light of day nor truth itself.....when exposed to reality, Christianity crumbles and reveals itself for what it is......the murderous rhetoric of misogynist madmen for the ears of easily manipulated fools who happily accept easy fear over educating themselves.
************************************************************
Everyone of course has the right to say whatever ridiculous drivel they want to, even if stupidly attacking an opposing ideology through complete hypocrisy. Fortunately, there will always be someone with a far better grasp of the facts to stand up and dissect said drivel. In this case it was me. I and others like me will ALWAYS stand up to ignorant pseudo-intellectual bullies like this and shine the REAL light of Truth right in their lying weaselly faces.
Apologies to my Christian friends for using the negatives in the Bible without focusing much on it's positives in my rebuttal of this asswipe, but as the rebuttal needed to be context specific, and as my Christian friends generally openly accept and admit there IS in fact some really ugly stuff in there, I'm sure you'll forgive me this once.
Brace yourself in advance folks, as I'm about to go into full-on rant mode here, and it WILL get ugly, with trigger potential.
Every day I putter around the net, reading everything I can find about subjects that interest me. Last week in my random browsing I came across this cartoon.
Go read that first. It's necessary to understand the context of what I have to say.
Now I really don't have any issues with that cartoon beyond finding it well-meaning, if a bit disingenuous at times. The cartoon's author has a few good points to make, if getting a little heavy-handed once or twice. And I fully expected to find a dueling bastion of "Praise Allah!/Fuck Allah!" in the comments. ANY time Islam becomes the centrepiece (FUCK you spellcheck, I'm Canadian, it's re not er you bastard!) of a conversation on the web, the one-note idiots come out in full force.
So I wasn't in the least inclined to care about the back and forth of one-dimensional bs flying about in the comments, as I thought that the cartoon, in spite of it's flaws, acheived the sentiment it was aiming for with a friendly warmth that's all too rare these days.
It was when I reached an out-of-place very long comment amongst the short back-and-forth that I felt compelled to add my voice to the discussion.
The comment in question was left by a guy identified by Disquss as "Don", a self-proclaimed "Nasty Bastard" according to his Disquss profile. The man has Tea Party written all over his comment. Again, I'll let you click the clicky and read his crap for yourself.
Throughout his whole rambling comment he attempts to come across as a rational voice shining a light of truth onto Islam, while subtly underlying it with the suggestion that Catholocism/Christianity is better or more right yadda yadda.
Let me preface the next part of this blog by pointing out that, as my written history has shown, I do not directly believe Islam or Christianity themselves as ideologies are inherently good or evil. I believe from reading the "Holy Books" of both that both espouse some very good messages, but also condone some very repugnant and deplorable things. I have several friends who belong to either faith, and those are of the camp of Muslims and Christians who live by the good messages of their faith while believing that the harmful messages are not valid or meaningful in today's world. I believe that there are also people on the flipside of that coin who intentionally twist and distort these books, who choose to live by the bad ideals in them, who are deplorable people NOT because of their choice of faith but because of how they so choose to employ it to cause others harm.
Keep this in mind as I use this moron's own words to paraphrase and dissect his vile and very targetted bigotry by turning it around on him.
And so my reply to this idiot, point by point.
********************************************************
Christianity is every bit as bad as Islam dear, it just hides it better behind a thin veil of respectability. So let's tackle YOUR bigoted assumptions shall we?
1) A woman enters a convent/nunnery of her own free will, a Muslim woman does not. At any time if the woman chooses she may leave the convent/order without penalty.
- Not true. A good majority of nuns were guilted or forced into the life by family members slut-shaming them, mostly over imagined promiscuity. Many who find the courage to leave convents do so in spite of intense psychological abuse, bullying, and being told they are damning themselves to hell, and a horrifying percentage of those who left were physically abused by older nuns. Willing nuns are highly outnumbered by the unwilling pressured into it, and abuse of all kinds is rampant.
2) Most Western women who choose to live at home and rear children are looked down upon and ridiculed by sneering left wing liberals who look at motherhood as an offensive form of enslavement.
- Common conservative bullshit. Liberals do not condemn stay-at-home moms. That's a statistic conservatives pulled out of their ass to vilify the competition. The only time a stay-at-home mom is chastised is when she does so because of religious pressure or she herself spreads the idea that it's the only acceptable role for a woman. I myself would happily be a stay-at-home mom were I fertile, but by my own choice, not because of religious dogma or spousal pressure, and nor would I demand all women choose likewise.
3) This link is to a typical Muslim student...listen to her as she speaks in admiration of Adolf Hitler....this is the sort of Muslim student that is most unwelcome, on campus or in North America.
- And THIS link provides a video of a Christian man spouting blatant and long disproven lies about homosexuality to sway a school-board AGAINST implementing a comprehensive anti-bullying program that would include homophobia education. Note all the old standbys like incest, pedophilia and disease being brought up just to add to the fire he's lighting in a crowded theatre.
4) Western children devout themselves to a particular subject or discipline for the betterment of medicine, technology, science, engineering and many other subjects. While it benefits the child, that devotion benefits Mankind and advances the human race.
- Timothy McVeigh. The Columbine 2. Ted Bundy. GOProud. Peter LaBarbera. Very often in Western society devoting oneself so young to a singular topic leads not to society's betterment, but to it's detriment. This is often fueled by extremist Christianity. It isn't Muslims murdering abortion doctors, blowing up clinics, driving teenagers to suicide or rigging elections through blatant lies and fearmongering in the USA. It's single-minded Christian extremists who devoted themselves to a particular subject.
5) There is no comparison to be made between defense of family and home and the hobbies of Muslim terrorists who dabble in all forms of terrorism and suicide bombing.
There is EVERY comparison to be made, since many of those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for exactly that; Defending their homes and families from invaders. And US soldiers have been caught raping and killing indigenous people for no justifiable reason. What you define as an American as to what is defending yourself and what construes terrorism? Reverse roles and it's the same to them. YOUR soldiers are THEIR terrorists, and the USA started this LONG before 9/11. There are indeed some horrible Muslim extremists, but most of the people over there just want the outsiders to leave THEIR homes and stop killing THEIR families.
6) Its Muslims and Islam that puts themselves on trial. When was the last time you heard a Muslim admit to murder without dragging Islam into it claiming he was directed to kill by Muhammad and the Koran. As for Jews, there are Israeli prisons filled with Zionist criminals....this is a fact.
- And how many times has the murder of an abortion doctor, a gay man, or a transsexual woman been justified with "I was doing God's work, it was my Christian duty to kill them because God says they are evil"? Have an answer for that one wiseass? As for your Jew argument, any Zionist prisoners in Israel are imprisoned not for their beliefs but for their criminal acts. And how many news reports in the last few years have there been about the Israelis breaking ceasefires in Gaza killing innocent people? Google the one about one of the recent group murders that included a PREGNANT PALESTINIAN WOMAN by a group believed to be rogue Hamas agents? Any argument you can make trying to vilify Islam alone while ignoring the blatant crimes of other faiths, I can destroy in seconds with proven fact. The truth is NOT on your side here.
7) The majority of this can be answered by reading my answer to # 4, but further to that: if sharia law is the proposed solution it is ignored as with sharia law the solution is much much worse than the problem....any solution that recommends stoning of women and advocates a father hacking away at his daughters vagina to satisfy some depraved sense of religious propriety is no solution at all.
- Do I really need to break out Bible Quotes here to point out your utter hypocrisy with this one? I can if you push the point. The Bible condones women as property. Rape victims must marry their rapists or be stoned to death. Men trade their teenage daughters for land. Children are stoned to death if they ever rebel in even the slightest. Moses was ordered by god to burn entire cities to the ground, murder all men, children and livestock, but keep any fertile women to be forced into marriage and raped in order to keep the numbers in his group high for when they reached the promised land so they would have enough men to overpower the Palestines when stealing the non-believer's land under God's orders. For fuck's sake man! The Bible commands you be put to death if you eat shrimp or wear a polyester/cotton mix shirt! The point the cartoonist is trying, if poorly, to make, is that, like the Bible, the Quran DOES contain some positive messages that can be helpful solutions in real everyday life, but just like the Quran, the good in the Bible can be easily overwhelmed by all the outright evil it endorses. It is NOT the religion itself that causes the problems, it's what each individual person chooses to take from it, good or bad.
8) Simply look at the world around you....Muslims have engaged in some of the most outrageous and murderous behavior and then when held to account for this behavior and these crimes they point to Islam and fall back on the demented psychopathic ravings and edicts of Muhammad to legitimize and excuse the same crimes and behavior.
- The Crusades. The Benediction. The Spanish Inquisition. The Dark Ages. Pedophile Priests. Throughout history there are FAR more documented cases of atrocities condoned and spearheaded by church doctrine than by Islam, for which the church always falls back on the demented psychopathic ravings and edicts of God Jehovah the Father to legitimize and excuse the same crimes and behavior. Not fun when your own hate can be so easily turned around on you by the truth is it?
9) For this answer simply read my previous answers to the 8 questions. The Koran is neither holy nor a solution. The Koran is the blueprint for the enslavement of the human race and the reversing of every possible advancement of the same. The Koran is a mandate for violence, death, terrorism and brutality and has no place in the 21st century. It belongs in a museum where we can marvel at the writings of madmen and mass murderers.
- And as the Quran and the old Testament are in fact the EXACT same book with only minimal locational differences, you're describing Catholicism/Christianity in the exact same breath. The Bible too is neither Holy nor a solution, but a book full of blueprints for a horrible, violent repressed society where white men rule and women and "lesser races" are all property existing only to serve white men. To paraphrase, once again, your own words, The BIBLE is the blueprint for the enslavement of the human race and the reversing of every possible advancement of the same. The BIBLE is a mandate for violence, death, terrorism and brutality and has no place in the 21st century. It belongs in a museum where we can marvel at the writings of madmen and mass murderers.
So for every bigoted, hateful answer you gave, I have used truth and fact to bring you back to the really REAL world where it's so easy to look at the people on the other side of the world who do exactly as we do, some good folks, some bad folks, and some true nutjobs, and chastise them for the exact same values because their exact same values come from a different book. The ONLY difference between Muslims and Christians is that most Christians are better at compartmentalizing the evils they believe in to protect their conscience.
To paraphrase your own words one last time.
Christianity is a political ideology that can not suffer the light of day nor truth itself.....when exposed to reality, Christianity crumbles and reveals itself for what it is......the murderous rhetoric of misogynist madmen for the ears of easily manipulated fools who happily accept easy fear over educating themselves.
************************************************************
Everyone of course has the right to say whatever ridiculous drivel they want to, even if stupidly attacking an opposing ideology through complete hypocrisy. Fortunately, there will always be someone with a far better grasp of the facts to stand up and dissect said drivel. In this case it was me. I and others like me will ALWAYS stand up to ignorant pseudo-intellectual bullies like this and shine the REAL light of Truth right in their lying weaselly faces.
Apologies to my Christian friends for using the negatives in the Bible without focusing much on it's positives in my rebuttal of this asswipe, but as the rebuttal needed to be context specific, and as my Christian friends generally openly accept and admit there IS in fact some really ugly stuff in there, I'm sure you'll forgive me this once.
11/02/2010
Message to the Tea Party - What took you so long to get angry?
Hat-Tip to Alvin at Holy Bullies & Headless Monsters. He has also cross-posted this on Pam's House Blend, where he and I both frequently crosspost. He's given me permission to share this here, as it is an utterly brilliant and brutally honest take-down of Tea Party "values".
As Alvin himself has pointed out, no one seems to know who actually authored the following message. On the off-chance that the auther stumbles across this and can prove authorship, please e-mail me at theaerie@shaw.ca and I will update this blog entry to give you your due credit.
- The brilliant anonymous message to the Tea Party in the USA;
You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq .
You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us. You didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.
You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq .
You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.
You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.
You didn't get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.
You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans drown.
You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in taxbreaks. You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.
You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.
You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.
No.....You finally got mad
When a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.
Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick...Oh, Hell No!!
As Alvin himself has pointed out, no one seems to know who actually authored the following message. On the off-chance that the auther stumbles across this and can prove authorship, please e-mail me at theaerie@shaw.ca and I will update this blog entry to give you your due credit.
- The brilliant anonymous message to the Tea Party in the USA;
You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq .
You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us. You didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.
You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq .
You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.
You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.
You didn't get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.
You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans drown.
You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in taxbreaks. You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.
You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.
You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.
No.....You finally got mad
When a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.
Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick...Oh, Hell No!!
11/01/2010
An Open Question To The Extreme Right
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
Morally bankrupt monsters like Matt Barber, Brian Fischer Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins and Peter LaBarbera, to name even just a handful of these deplorable people, have spent the past month at the absolute height of their reprehensible dishonest tactics. They and those like them, the soldiers fighting the evil homuh-seckshual agenda in God's name, (despite not a one of them actually having the first clue what the Bible actually says, using popularly distorted passages to justify their hate-we-swear-isn't-really-hate-honest-now-stop-picking-on-us), have been desperately bleating out excuse after excuse as to why they think there's no blood on their hands when gay or rumoured to be gay teenagers kill themselves.
These brain-hurtingly offensive and morally bankrupt excuses range from simple dishonest bullshit to utterly deplorable backpeddalling and buck-passing. They've blamed equality activists for it, (these confused kids only killed themselves because T3H G4YZ tried to convince them they were *GASP* normal!), and worse, the kids themselves, (These kids really knew deep down how sick and disgusting they were, so that's why they offed themselves!). ANYTHING to avoid accepting even the possibility that the hateful bigotry they bust their asses to spread at every opportunity could possibly be a big factor in the cause of the homophobic bullying these kids endured.All because they're so entrenched in their delusional hate-fuelled belief that being gay is ungodly, unnatural, and serves no positive function to society, that they refuse to ever allow room for debate in their own minds.
Sorry but no, homosexuality is hardly socially useless. It reduces over-rampant hetero breeding that overpopulates a world that CANNOT sustain so many humans, and provides nurturing parental options for all the abandoned children that irresponsible self-absorbed hetero people give up because they had no interest in being parents but couldn't be assed to use condoms.
(That is not a knock against those who are poor or otherwise unable to keep a child they actually do want and give them up for adoption hoping their child has a better life than they can provide. To THOSE people my heart goes out to.)
What, however, truly DOES have absolutely no constructive value to society is hatred, bigotry, homophobia and lying in the name of God. Because these things cause only harm, leading to people being beaten, crippled nd murdered, or young people driven to suicide, because they're different, and for no other reason BUT that.
So here is an open challenge to those liars and killers on the extreme religious right, who very much DO have blood on their hands. I want all of you, especially the extra slimey ones like Porno Pete and Bamm Bamm Barber, to close your eyes, and imagine the following. If you can find any actual morality in your shriveled evil hearts, try to do so with a completely open mind.
Imagine that you have a teenage son, and that son is gay. He of course hasn't told you so because every day he hears your hurtful abusive dishonest anti-gay preaching and he internalizes it. Your son is miserable and unhappy, not because he's gay, but because you make him feel like there's something wrong with him. You make him feel like he's sick somehow, so he does all he can to bury it, hoping it will go away. He dates girls carelessly, fucking girls at random trying to man himself up, to chase the gay away, but with every girl he beds, inside he dies a little, because deep down it's still his football buddies that he thinks about.
But you just keep preaching that gays are sick and unnatural, and your son hates himself even more. And then one day at school, someone spots him looking at a boy for just a few seconds too long, and the rumours start. And because idiots like you keep teaching kids that gay people are diseased and sick, kids at school, with no proof your son IS gay, but based solely on those new rumours, start taunting him, ostracising him, even beating him up after school calling him faggot. And after that harassment and abuse at school he still has to come home to your garbage, reinforcing his feelings of self-loathing, cementing in his mind that he's a worthless deviant. And no matter how hard he tries to be straight, the gay feelings never go away.
And one day you come home from work and you find your son, dead on your kitchen floor after cutting his wrists open, because he felt so sick and worthless and abused that he finally decided being dead was better than living, that suicide was his best option.
All because of the kind of ignorant hate you and those like you spread.
YOUR son. Not someone else's. Not some poor kid you read about in the news and want to evangelize for your pet bigotry causes. YOURS.
YOUR son. This is very important. Imagine it's YOUR son laying there dead, YOUR son who ended his own life.
Don't deflect the question by insisting you'd never have a gay son, or by claiming that it's only gay activists convincing him he's fine as is that would cause him so much turmoil. We both know that's a cop-out, an excuse bigots use to avoid admitting to the harm they cause. Don't whine your bullshit about how your faith is being persecuted, we both know you don't actually have any. Don't sidestep the question by misquoting the bible or by distorting legitimate studies whose authors have publicly chastised you for distorting their work. It's cheap and cowardly and will only further prove your deplorability.
Just go look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly.
If you had a son and that son killed himself directly because the kind of hate you preach made him feel like death was his best option..... could you really live with that? Would you really tell yourself this was what God wanted? Would you accept any blame at all for your part in making him feel so worthless he had no better choice than to die?
Any of you among the Extreme Right who can answer anything except a plain simple "No" best enjoy your empty hate-filled lives while you can, because whenever your time comes, there's only one place your souls are booked for, and it's going to be awfully hot down there.
Morally bankrupt monsters like Matt Barber, Brian Fischer Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins and Peter LaBarbera, to name even just a handful of these deplorable people, have spent the past month at the absolute height of their reprehensible dishonest tactics. They and those like them, the soldiers fighting the evil homuh-seckshual agenda in God's name, (despite not a one of them actually having the first clue what the Bible actually says, using popularly distorted passages to justify their hate-we-swear-isn't-really-hate-honest-now-stop-picking-on-us), have been desperately bleating out excuse after excuse as to why they think there's no blood on their hands when gay or rumoured to be gay teenagers kill themselves.
These brain-hurtingly offensive and morally bankrupt excuses range from simple dishonest bullshit to utterly deplorable backpeddalling and buck-passing. They've blamed equality activists for it, (these confused kids only killed themselves because T3H G4YZ tried to convince them they were *GASP* normal!), and worse, the kids themselves, (These kids really knew deep down how sick and disgusting they were, so that's why they offed themselves!). ANYTHING to avoid accepting even the possibility that the hateful bigotry they bust their asses to spread at every opportunity could possibly be a big factor in the cause of the homophobic bullying these kids endured.All because they're so entrenched in their delusional hate-fuelled belief that being gay is ungodly, unnatural, and serves no positive function to society, that they refuse to ever allow room for debate in their own minds.
Sorry but no, homosexuality is hardly socially useless. It reduces over-rampant hetero breeding that overpopulates a world that CANNOT sustain so many humans, and provides nurturing parental options for all the abandoned children that irresponsible self-absorbed hetero people give up because they had no interest in being parents but couldn't be assed to use condoms.
(That is not a knock against those who are poor or otherwise unable to keep a child they actually do want and give them up for adoption hoping their child has a better life than they can provide. To THOSE people my heart goes out to.)
What, however, truly DOES have absolutely no constructive value to society is hatred, bigotry, homophobia and lying in the name of God. Because these things cause only harm, leading to people being beaten, crippled nd murdered, or young people driven to suicide, because they're different, and for no other reason BUT that.
So here is an open challenge to those liars and killers on the extreme religious right, who very much DO have blood on their hands. I want all of you, especially the extra slimey ones like Porno Pete and Bamm Bamm Barber, to close your eyes, and imagine the following. If you can find any actual morality in your shriveled evil hearts, try to do so with a completely open mind.
Imagine that you have a teenage son, and that son is gay. He of course hasn't told you so because every day he hears your hurtful abusive dishonest anti-gay preaching and he internalizes it. Your son is miserable and unhappy, not because he's gay, but because you make him feel like there's something wrong with him. You make him feel like he's sick somehow, so he does all he can to bury it, hoping it will go away. He dates girls carelessly, fucking girls at random trying to man himself up, to chase the gay away, but with every girl he beds, inside he dies a little, because deep down it's still his football buddies that he thinks about.
But you just keep preaching that gays are sick and unnatural, and your son hates himself even more. And then one day at school, someone spots him looking at a boy for just a few seconds too long, and the rumours start. And because idiots like you keep teaching kids that gay people are diseased and sick, kids at school, with no proof your son IS gay, but based solely on those new rumours, start taunting him, ostracising him, even beating him up after school calling him faggot. And after that harassment and abuse at school he still has to come home to your garbage, reinforcing his feelings of self-loathing, cementing in his mind that he's a worthless deviant. And no matter how hard he tries to be straight, the gay feelings never go away.
And one day you come home from work and you find your son, dead on your kitchen floor after cutting his wrists open, because he felt so sick and worthless and abused that he finally decided being dead was better than living, that suicide was his best option.
All because of the kind of ignorant hate you and those like you spread.
YOUR son. Not someone else's. Not some poor kid you read about in the news and want to evangelize for your pet bigotry causes. YOURS.
YOUR son. This is very important. Imagine it's YOUR son laying there dead, YOUR son who ended his own life.
Don't deflect the question by insisting you'd never have a gay son, or by claiming that it's only gay activists convincing him he's fine as is that would cause him so much turmoil. We both know that's a cop-out, an excuse bigots use to avoid admitting to the harm they cause. Don't whine your bullshit about how your faith is being persecuted, we both know you don't actually have any. Don't sidestep the question by misquoting the bible or by distorting legitimate studies whose authors have publicly chastised you for distorting their work. It's cheap and cowardly and will only further prove your deplorability.
Just go look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly.
If you had a son and that son killed himself directly because the kind of hate you preach made him feel like death was his best option..... could you really live with that? Would you really tell yourself this was what God wanted? Would you accept any blame at all for your part in making him feel so worthless he had no better choice than to die?
Any of you among the Extreme Right who can answer anything except a plain simple "No" best enjoy your empty hate-filled lives while you can, because whenever your time comes, there's only one place your souls are booked for, and it's going to be awfully hot down there.
10/22/2010
Every So Often, the System DOES Work!
Cross-posted on Pam's House Blend
I was just woken up by an unexpected phone call.
Normally, this would be extremely irritating as you can imagine. I barely get much sleep, so being woken up when I actually was passed out is a pet peeve.
This however, was a wake-up I can definitely forgive, as it was the BC Supreme Court Crown Counsel calling me.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with my legal battle with Safeway Co. Ltd. please direct your attention here, here, and here.
Why would Crown call me less than a week before my final court date? To inform me that, as the man whose job it is to prove I'm guilty of the crime I'm charged with and convict me, he has, after two months of investigation into the testimony and evidence presented during the first part of my trial in August, determined that Safeway's case is so full of gaping holes and blatant transphobia that it is not even worth the Court's time to persue it further.
I no longer have to law awake at night fearing the system won't care about the transphobic bullying I endured by Safeway employees that lead to the false shoplifting charges, or hope I may be found not guilty because proof and justice were on my side.
Because the Crown decided Safeway's bullshit was so mind-numbingly obvious he COMPLETELY DISMISSED THE CHARGES!!!!
Apparently, inasmuch as he was willing or able to tell me, his attempts to procure interviews with the abusive security guard who the arresting guard was forced at my first hearing to admit WAS there and had been suspiciously left out of his report completely, he determined my version of events was clearly the accurate one and that the security guard who testified had a vested interest in trying to pretend otherwise.
I don't know if I have the energy after a year and a half of my life has been chewed up by this to actually SUE Safeway, but I'm damned sure going to Ask them to reimburse me for the items I had paid good money for which the security guards confiscated wrongly as stolen property.
Today, I am a happy kitty. Sometimes, the system DOES work for us.
I was just woken up by an unexpected phone call.
Normally, this would be extremely irritating as you can imagine. I barely get much sleep, so being woken up when I actually was passed out is a pet peeve.
This however, was a wake-up I can definitely forgive, as it was the BC Supreme Court Crown Counsel calling me.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with my legal battle with Safeway Co. Ltd. please direct your attention here, here, and here.
Why would Crown call me less than a week before my final court date? To inform me that, as the man whose job it is to prove I'm guilty of the crime I'm charged with and convict me, he has, after two months of investigation into the testimony and evidence presented during the first part of my trial in August, determined that Safeway's case is so full of gaping holes and blatant transphobia that it is not even worth the Court's time to persue it further.
I no longer have to law awake at night fearing the system won't care about the transphobic bullying I endured by Safeway employees that lead to the false shoplifting charges, or hope I may be found not guilty because proof and justice were on my side.
Because the Crown decided Safeway's bullshit was so mind-numbingly obvious he COMPLETELY DISMISSED THE CHARGES!!!!
Apparently, inasmuch as he was willing or able to tell me, his attempts to procure interviews with the abusive security guard who the arresting guard was forced at my first hearing to admit WAS there and had been suspiciously left out of his report completely, he determined my version of events was clearly the accurate one and that the security guard who testified had a vested interest in trying to pretend otherwise.
I don't know if I have the energy after a year and a half of my life has been chewed up by this to actually SUE Safeway, but I'm damned sure going to Ask them to reimburse me for the items I had paid good money for which the security guards confiscated wrongly as stolen property.
Today, I am a happy kitty. Sometimes, the system DOES work for us.
10/20/2010
I Am Purple Every Day
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
It's no secret to those that know me that I'm a tad obsessed with purple. I own a lot of purple clothing, a fair chunk of my digital art is purple, and I've had my hair dyed purple more than once.
What very few people know is why. And since a well-meaning campaign has declared today Spirit Day and encouraging people to wear purple to raise awareness of teenage GLBT suicides, now seems as good a time as any to tell you all why.
I've seen several examples today on Twitter alone of trans youth being ignored, ungendered, or lumped in unfairly with gay youth and ignoring the different struggles they face. I know gay kids go through a lot of bullshit, yes, but Trans kids have several completely different struggles on top of those, so before I begin, let me remind you, honor EVERY kid in turmoil today. Do NOT gayjack or ungender trans kids by lumping everyone together as if one universal solution will fix everyone's problems.
When I was young, my femininity was not exactly subtle. I knew at age 3 something was wrong. I knew I was supposed to be a girl. I didn't know I actually WAS a girl surgically jiggered at birth. But I knew I was supposed to BE a girl. And every time I expressed femininity I got beaten up.
If I asked to see a Barbie doll at recess, I got beat up.
If I didn't want to join in at sports or play War or Tackle Tag, I got beat up.
If I said I actually liked cooking my own breakfast, I got beat up.
Anything I expressed interest in that the boys saw as even bordering on stereotypically girly, I got beat up.
I ended up suspended from Grade 3 for a week because I admitted to liking Jem and the Holograms, and when the teacher pulled the bullies off of me and said I should expect to get beat up if I was going to be a sissy and not like GI Joe instead, I told him to go fuck himself. I got beat up and yet it was ME who got suspended, because I stood up to a teacher reinforcing stereotypes and condoning the bullying.
When I started to grow breasts, I got beat up.
When I tried to resist my rapists in Juvey, I got beat up.
And every time I got beat up, I waited til the next day. And the next day, when the bruises formed, I saw my only friend, Purple.
Purple, who appeared on my skin to remind me I was different and had to fight to survive.
Purple, who reassured me I had survived another hate fuelled beating.
Purple, who told me I was still alive, that they hadn't broken me.
I love purple. Purple tells me I'm alive. That I'm strong enough to survive the abuse. Purple tells me I'm allowed to be me.
I admire the girl who came up with the idea of a Spirit Day. It's a noble thought, even if some idiots are already distorting her noble idea to ungender trans kids. I wish there were less such idiots and more kids like Brittany McMillan who want to do something positive.
But I'm purple every day of my life. And so should all of us be. Every day should be a day we talk about and support young GLBT folks. ALL of them.
I love purple.
It's no secret to those that know me that I'm a tad obsessed with purple. I own a lot of purple clothing, a fair chunk of my digital art is purple, and I've had my hair dyed purple more than once.
What very few people know is why. And since a well-meaning campaign has declared today Spirit Day and encouraging people to wear purple to raise awareness of teenage GLBT suicides, now seems as good a time as any to tell you all why.
I've seen several examples today on Twitter alone of trans youth being ignored, ungendered, or lumped in unfairly with gay youth and ignoring the different struggles they face. I know gay kids go through a lot of bullshit, yes, but Trans kids have several completely different struggles on top of those, so before I begin, let me remind you, honor EVERY kid in turmoil today. Do NOT gayjack or ungender trans kids by lumping everyone together as if one universal solution will fix everyone's problems.
When I was young, my femininity was not exactly subtle. I knew at age 3 something was wrong. I knew I was supposed to be a girl. I didn't know I actually WAS a girl surgically jiggered at birth. But I knew I was supposed to BE a girl. And every time I expressed femininity I got beaten up.
If I asked to see a Barbie doll at recess, I got beat up.
If I didn't want to join in at sports or play War or Tackle Tag, I got beat up.
If I said I actually liked cooking my own breakfast, I got beat up.
Anything I expressed interest in that the boys saw as even bordering on stereotypically girly, I got beat up.
I ended up suspended from Grade 3 for a week because I admitted to liking Jem and the Holograms, and when the teacher pulled the bullies off of me and said I should expect to get beat up if I was going to be a sissy and not like GI Joe instead, I told him to go fuck himself. I got beat up and yet it was ME who got suspended, because I stood up to a teacher reinforcing stereotypes and condoning the bullying.
When I started to grow breasts, I got beat up.
When I tried to resist my rapists in Juvey, I got beat up.
And every time I got beat up, I waited til the next day. And the next day, when the bruises formed, I saw my only friend, Purple.
Purple, who appeared on my skin to remind me I was different and had to fight to survive.
Purple, who reassured me I had survived another hate fuelled beating.
Purple, who told me I was still alive, that they hadn't broken me.
I love purple. Purple tells me I'm alive. That I'm strong enough to survive the abuse. Purple tells me I'm allowed to be me.
I admire the girl who came up with the idea of a Spirit Day. It's a noble thought, even if some idiots are already distorting her noble idea to ungender trans kids. I wish there were less such idiots and more kids like Brittany McMillan who want to do something positive.
But I'm purple every day of my life. And so should all of us be. Every day should be a day we talk about and support young GLBT folks. ALL of them.
I love purple.
10/06/2010
Women Like Me
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
Women like me are called “it” on the radio, on television, in the news, and by politician wanting to undermine our rights. Just ask Sally Kern's supporters.
We are murdered at a staggering rate. 1 in 8 will be murdered, according to a Harvey Milk institute study. And chances are, 9 times out of 10, no one will cover it except angry trans/is bloggers like me.
Raping us is not yet a crime. Oh sure rape is still technically illegal, but if the victim is a woman like me? Most courts, if it ever even gets to court, dismiss the plaintiffs as deviants who left themselves vulnerable, therefore it's our own fault.
Murdering us is considered justifiable. The victory in Angie Zapata's murder trial was a rupugnantly rare exception where we got justice. The rule is generally "Oh she was a dude? I understand, you're freev to go sir." And that's if it ever reaches trial. Police don't genewrally put much manpower into hunting down some guy who killed another tranny, she was probably a prostitute anyway amirite?
Also generally considered to be perfectly acceptable by society in general are spontaneous public beatings, often by police. Especially in New York where there are at least 3 publicized incidents in the last 10 years of cops standing with a crowd watching and laughing and doing nothing as a transwoman got beaten.
Police often rape us, prior to fabricating charges of soliciting. They know in a their word against ours situation, not even gay and lesbian advocates will believe us over police. Because all trannies are hookers, everyone knows that. We must be, it's not like anyone will give us a real job.
We are openly taunted and demeaned in the media using the most hateful language. If you don't believe me, just Google "Memphis Trans Murders" and see how the media portrays us when we're murdered.
So called “LGBT” activists lie to us to take our meager dollars at fundraisers, then abandon us as beneath them when we need their voices to stand up for us. HRC is a frequent offender, and Joe Solmonese couldn't give a rat's ass about actually including Tran folk. He actively tried to push a trans-exclusive ENDA because he knew them there Gay Fellers would get approval easier if they threw us under the bus. AFTER taking donations from us and promising they'd fight for us of course. LGBT newspapers like Bay Windows and the Washington Blade call for our exclusion from basic rights legislation.
Our unemployment rate is staggeringly high. Even where our kind are supposedly protected from job discrimination, there's always a reason why we're "not right for the job". No employer has to actually say he isn't hiring us because we're trannies, he just has to make up any flimsy excuse and he'll get away with it. I've been passed over because 120 words per minute was "too speedy for office needs".
Because we are often incarcerated in male prisons with exaggerated sentences. I was in juvey for punching a group home worker for calling me a little faggot. I was gang-raped in a shower. The guards denied me medical attention and their reply to my story was "yeah yeah sure queer, back to your cell". That is a verbatim quote as they dragged me back to my cell while my ass was STILL BLEEDING.
Because it is still considered OK to deny us basic medical care, and to excoriate us in the media for seeking it. Just ask the trans woman who in August went to emergency with her wife and daughter because she was coughing up blood and was sniggered at by staff who ignored her id, then had her sanity questioned instead of treated for her illness, then ultimately refused treatment because of her "condition". Not her actual medical condition mind you. They meant her being a "transvestite".
Or as Tyra Hunter found out, to be tortured with naltrexone injections in the last moments of her life, while being taunted for who she was as she lay dying on the pavement, because the EMT found a penis in her panties and refused to touch her afterward. As far as I can find on Google searches, he was never punished.
“Feminists” still call for our exclusion from basic human dignities and protections, such as restrooms and DV shelters, because we're just "men trying to infiltrate female dynamics". (Google "The Transsexual Empire" by Janice Raymond for reference to this crock mentality).
We are effectively barred from attending womens colleges, as well as many women only venues. I personally received 14 death threats by e-mail after I said on my old now-defunct LiveJournal account that I planned to attend the Vancouver Dyke March 6 years ago and speak onstage about tg issues. I was afraid to attend though, as they were so descriptive and specific in their threats. The police of course did nothing.
And finally, because all too many women will ignore this post “because it doesn’t affect them,” or because of their own issues with women like me.
Women like me are standing up and telling the rest of you; We exist. You will not ignore us. You will not pretend we aren't there. You will address us as we live, not by our genitals. You will respect our identities. You will not shrug if someone murders us. You will nott exclude us from equality legislation for the sake of expediance swearing you'll "come back for us, honest".
Women like me, ARE women.
Get used to it. We will not quietly go away, and every new generation of us gets louder and louder.
Women like me are called “it” on the radio, on television, in the news, and by politician wanting to undermine our rights. Just ask Sally Kern's supporters.
We are murdered at a staggering rate. 1 in 8 will be murdered, according to a Harvey Milk institute study. And chances are, 9 times out of 10, no one will cover it except angry trans/is bloggers like me.
Raping us is not yet a crime. Oh sure rape is still technically illegal, but if the victim is a woman like me? Most courts, if it ever even gets to court, dismiss the plaintiffs as deviants who left themselves vulnerable, therefore it's our own fault.
Murdering us is considered justifiable. The victory in Angie Zapata's murder trial was a rupugnantly rare exception where we got justice. The rule is generally "Oh she was a dude? I understand, you're freev to go sir." And that's if it ever reaches trial. Police don't genewrally put much manpower into hunting down some guy who killed another tranny, she was probably a prostitute anyway amirite?
Also generally considered to be perfectly acceptable by society in general are spontaneous public beatings, often by police. Especially in New York where there are at least 3 publicized incidents in the last 10 years of cops standing with a crowd watching and laughing and doing nothing as a transwoman got beaten.
Police often rape us, prior to fabricating charges of soliciting. They know in a their word against ours situation, not even gay and lesbian advocates will believe us over police. Because all trannies are hookers, everyone knows that. We must be, it's not like anyone will give us a real job.
We are openly taunted and demeaned in the media using the most hateful language. If you don't believe me, just Google "Memphis Trans Murders" and see how the media portrays us when we're murdered.
So called “LGBT” activists lie to us to take our meager dollars at fundraisers, then abandon us as beneath them when we need their voices to stand up for us. HRC is a frequent offender, and Joe Solmonese couldn't give a rat's ass about actually including Tran folk. He actively tried to push a trans-exclusive ENDA because he knew them there Gay Fellers would get approval easier if they threw us under the bus. AFTER taking donations from us and promising they'd fight for us of course. LGBT newspapers like Bay Windows and the Washington Blade call for our exclusion from basic rights legislation.
Our unemployment rate is staggeringly high. Even where our kind are supposedly protected from job discrimination, there's always a reason why we're "not right for the job". No employer has to actually say he isn't hiring us because we're trannies, he just has to make up any flimsy excuse and he'll get away with it. I've been passed over because 120 words per minute was "too speedy for office needs".
Because we are often incarcerated in male prisons with exaggerated sentences. I was in juvey for punching a group home worker for calling me a little faggot. I was gang-raped in a shower. The guards denied me medical attention and their reply to my story was "yeah yeah sure queer, back to your cell". That is a verbatim quote as they dragged me back to my cell while my ass was STILL BLEEDING.
Because it is still considered OK to deny us basic medical care, and to excoriate us in the media for seeking it. Just ask the trans woman who in August went to emergency with her wife and daughter because she was coughing up blood and was sniggered at by staff who ignored her id, then had her sanity questioned instead of treated for her illness, then ultimately refused treatment because of her "condition". Not her actual medical condition mind you. They meant her being a "transvestite".
Or as Tyra Hunter found out, to be tortured with naltrexone injections in the last moments of her life, while being taunted for who she was as she lay dying on the pavement, because the EMT found a penis in her panties and refused to touch her afterward. As far as I can find on Google searches, he was never punished.
“Feminists” still call for our exclusion from basic human dignities and protections, such as restrooms and DV shelters, because we're just "men trying to infiltrate female dynamics". (Google "The Transsexual Empire" by Janice Raymond for reference to this crock mentality).
We are effectively barred from attending womens colleges, as well as many women only venues. I personally received 14 death threats by e-mail after I said on my old now-defunct LiveJournal account that I planned to attend the Vancouver Dyke March 6 years ago and speak onstage about tg issues. I was afraid to attend though, as they were so descriptive and specific in their threats. The police of course did nothing.
And finally, because all too many women will ignore this post “because it doesn’t affect them,” or because of their own issues with women like me.
Women like me are standing up and telling the rest of you; We exist. You will not ignore us. You will not pretend we aren't there. You will address us as we live, not by our genitals. You will respect our identities. You will not shrug if someone murders us. You will nott exclude us from equality legislation for the sake of expediance swearing you'll "come back for us, honest".
Women like me, ARE women.
Get used to it. We will not quietly go away, and every new generation of us gets louder and louder.
10/02/2010
When A Stupid Choice Outweighs A Deplorable Crime
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
I'm very sad and angry about the recent spate of gay teen suicides. Two 13 year old boys and one 15 year old boy in the past two weeks have killed themselves because of relentless homophobic bullying. These poor young boys were abused to ridiculous extremes not only by hateful classmates, but by school officials who did absolutely nothing fearing conservative reprisals.
These were children, who, regardless of their actual sexuality, (two were openly gay, one had never said he was or wasn't, and his misguided mother seems more concerned that people are told he wasn't than with fighting what drove him to kill himself), were abused and threatened and harassed and made to feel worthless until death felt like the only option for peace. These are tradgedies, crimes against vcompassion and humanity. They deserve what media coverage they're getting, because homophobic bullying in American schools is an epidemic that has lethal consequences.
While the so-called and extremely erroneously defined "family values" wingnut groups like Focus on the Family and the American Family Association constantly oppose every effort to address homophobic bullying, pulling all sorts of bullshit out of their ass to explain why they are perfectly content to let innocent children die as long as "the homuh-seckshuals" don't get a foothold in schools, these suicides should be a wake-up call to anyone with actual morals and compassion that things need to change in the USA. Once again, it deeply disturbs me that I can brag about Canada's superiority to the USA in yet another area, when our countries should be on par.
As a Canadian, I'm proud that Canada is light years ahead of the States in regard to things like same-sex marriage, gays in the military, equality under the law, and anti-bullying programs in our schools. Things that, to a rational, thinking fair-minded society should be no-brainers. As someone with family and dearly beloved friends in the USA, I'm ashamed of just how far ahead of you my country is.
And while I know a lot of you are going to be seriously pissed off at me for what I'm going to say next, it's the truth, and it bloody well needs to be addressed.
There's one more way that Canada trumps the USA, and it's the one that sickens me the most. Our GLBT groups and our media actually acknowledge the T equally, with fairness and equal standing. When a trans woman is murdered here it makes the news, and the victim is almost never ungendered in said reports, because our media follows the trans guidelines in the AP style book, and our GLBT organizations stand up for the T. Gay men, lesbian women, and straight folks of all kinds came out in proud support of trans women during the Lu's Pharmacy debacle. Trans people are protected under national law, and trans surgeries are for the most part covered in Canada.
Why am I bringing this up because of gay teen suicides in the USA? Because the suicide getting the most coverage is the one that deserves it the least, and all the massive coverage it's getting is repulsively shameful when compared to the almost non-existant coverage of the murder of a trans woman of colour that happened less than 30 miles away only two weeks before.
Seth Walsh, Asher Brown and Billy Lucas were children. They were constantly harassed, occasionally assaulted, and no one was helping them. They felt trapped and alone and lost, and they were desperate to escape. They deserve the media coverage, their deaths are tradgedies, part of an epidemic of bullying.
Victoria Carmen White was a post-op trans woman of colour, young, vibrant, attending college, and living her life. The ONLY local news report that addressed her murder did so thusly;
"Sept. 13, 2010
Newark – On Sunday, Sept. 12 at approximately 5 a.m. Victoria Carmen White, 28, of Newark was fatally shot at a private residence located at 159 Jacoby Street in Maplewood. Information released immediately following the shooting identified the victim as James White.
The victim’s legal name is Victoria Carmen White. Following an examination by the Medical Examiner and further investigation, it has been confirmed that the victim was a post-operative transgender female having undergone sex reassignment surgery. The victim’s birth certificate was legally changed to identify her as Victoria Carmen White.
The case is under active investigation. No other information is currently available."
Post-op, full legal documentation, and STILL the police and the media felt a need to ungender her post-mortum. And this is the ONLY media coverage she's gotten at all not counting a few dedicated bloggers like TransGriot and Questioning Transphobia who've tried to give her a voice in death. Like the three young boys, she too deserves massive media coverage that she's not getting anywhere, to bring to light another epidemic in this country.
Which brings me to Tyler Clementi, and the part that will likely piss people off but is nontheless true.
I feel genuinely sad for his family for their loss. And it does sadden me that another gay man is dead because straight people were idiots. But all available reports, accounts, and evidence shows that Tyler wasn't routinely bullied or harassed like the kids were. He was never relentlessly abused, or made to feel worthless by all his peers while school officials sat on their hands. Tyler Clementi had low self-esteem because his parents were reportedly deeply Catholic, and likely he himself felt conflicted about his sexuality, but the facts are he wasn't routinely bullied or harassed like the kids were.
Tyler was simply the victim of an admittedly cruel and tasteless prank, not of constant homophobic bullying. Tyler was an adult, not a child. Tyler was not trapped in a hopeless ceaseless cycle of abuse, he was embarassed by a video that invaded his privacy. And all evidence suggests Tyler killed himself because he was embarassed at being on public display.
And media across the country is harping on him as if he was the next Matthew Shepard. Gay Rights groups like HRC are loudly publicly demanding his roommate be charged with manslaughter because the video drove him to suicide. They are pushing his story past the three kids now. In most stories currently Tyler is the focal point of discussing the teen gay suicide/homophobic bullying epidemic, and Billy, Asher and Seth end up as footnotes and afterthoughts, mentioned mostly to show there were more than one suicide, while the authors focus on Tyler.
And Victoria? They don't mention her at all. Joe Solmonese isn't loudly calling for her killer to be brought to justice. GLBT groups aren't crying out for more attention to be paid to trans murders. While gay groups demand blood for Tyler, who made a stupid choice because someone embarassed him with a cruel prank, (which at best is worthy of a mischief charge under the law and doesn't qualify for manslaughter, or even criminally negligent homicide), no one is demanding Victoria's killer be found except a few angry bloogers.
An actual murderer is running around free and anonymous with a police force under absolutely NO pressure from ANYONE to track him down and arrest him, but a dead gay white man overreacts to being embarassed and people are calling for blood from an idiot douchebag who played a really stupid prank, who certainly deserves to be expelled from college but is NOT a murderer.
I'm sorry, but the truth is, the biggest tradgedy here is the subtle racism, trans-phobia and complete trans-erasure that has not only relegated three children's deaths to the background to focus on an adult white gay man who made a stupid choice while being nowhere near as beleagred as the three children were, but a black trans woman's murder goes ignored and forgotten completely because hey! A gay white man killed himself because a douchebag broadcast his sex life! That's way more important than some black tranny being FUCKING SHOT TO DEATH IN HER OWN FUCKING HOME!!!!!
Priorities. Canada has them. You folks don't. Give Tyler a rest. Put the focus back on Seth, Asher and Billy. And give Victoria the respect she deserves. Talk about HER death.
And people wonder why Trans folk don't trust white gay men when they want our money and swear they won't throw us under the bus again like they did with ENDA. Fuck you HRC. You don't give a shit about us.
Hat-tip to Gemma Catherine Seymour, as I'd never heard of Victoria's case until someone linked to her blog.
I'm very sad and angry about the recent spate of gay teen suicides. Two 13 year old boys and one 15 year old boy in the past two weeks have killed themselves because of relentless homophobic bullying. These poor young boys were abused to ridiculous extremes not only by hateful classmates, but by school officials who did absolutely nothing fearing conservative reprisals.
These were children, who, regardless of their actual sexuality, (two were openly gay, one had never said he was or wasn't, and his misguided mother seems more concerned that people are told he wasn't than with fighting what drove him to kill himself), were abused and threatened and harassed and made to feel worthless until death felt like the only option for peace. These are tradgedies, crimes against vcompassion and humanity. They deserve what media coverage they're getting, because homophobic bullying in American schools is an epidemic that has lethal consequences.
While the so-called and extremely erroneously defined "family values" wingnut groups like Focus on the Family and the American Family Association constantly oppose every effort to address homophobic bullying, pulling all sorts of bullshit out of their ass to explain why they are perfectly content to let innocent children die as long as "the homuh-seckshuals" don't get a foothold in schools, these suicides should be a wake-up call to anyone with actual morals and compassion that things need to change in the USA. Once again, it deeply disturbs me that I can brag about Canada's superiority to the USA in yet another area, when our countries should be on par.
As a Canadian, I'm proud that Canada is light years ahead of the States in regard to things like same-sex marriage, gays in the military, equality under the law, and anti-bullying programs in our schools. Things that, to a rational, thinking fair-minded society should be no-brainers. As someone with family and dearly beloved friends in the USA, I'm ashamed of just how far ahead of you my country is.
And while I know a lot of you are going to be seriously pissed off at me for what I'm going to say next, it's the truth, and it bloody well needs to be addressed.
There's one more way that Canada trumps the USA, and it's the one that sickens me the most. Our GLBT groups and our media actually acknowledge the T equally, with fairness and equal standing. When a trans woman is murdered here it makes the news, and the victim is almost never ungendered in said reports, because our media follows the trans guidelines in the AP style book, and our GLBT organizations stand up for the T. Gay men, lesbian women, and straight folks of all kinds came out in proud support of trans women during the Lu's Pharmacy debacle. Trans people are protected under national law, and trans surgeries are for the most part covered in Canada.
Why am I bringing this up because of gay teen suicides in the USA? Because the suicide getting the most coverage is the one that deserves it the least, and all the massive coverage it's getting is repulsively shameful when compared to the almost non-existant coverage of the murder of a trans woman of colour that happened less than 30 miles away only two weeks before.
Seth Walsh, Asher Brown and Billy Lucas were children. They were constantly harassed, occasionally assaulted, and no one was helping them. They felt trapped and alone and lost, and they were desperate to escape. They deserve the media coverage, their deaths are tradgedies, part of an epidemic of bullying.
Victoria Carmen White was a post-op trans woman of colour, young, vibrant, attending college, and living her life. The ONLY local news report that addressed her murder did so thusly;
"Sept. 13, 2010
Newark – On Sunday, Sept. 12 at approximately 5 a.m. Victoria Carmen White, 28, of Newark was fatally shot at a private residence located at 159 Jacoby Street in Maplewood. Information released immediately following the shooting identified the victim as James White.
The victim’s legal name is Victoria Carmen White. Following an examination by the Medical Examiner and further investigation, it has been confirmed that the victim was a post-operative transgender female having undergone sex reassignment surgery. The victim’s birth certificate was legally changed to identify her as Victoria Carmen White.
The case is under active investigation. No other information is currently available."
Post-op, full legal documentation, and STILL the police and the media felt a need to ungender her post-mortum. And this is the ONLY media coverage she's gotten at all not counting a few dedicated bloggers like TransGriot and Questioning Transphobia who've tried to give her a voice in death. Like the three young boys, she too deserves massive media coverage that she's not getting anywhere, to bring to light another epidemic in this country.
Which brings me to Tyler Clementi, and the part that will likely piss people off but is nontheless true.
I feel genuinely sad for his family for their loss. And it does sadden me that another gay man is dead because straight people were idiots. But all available reports, accounts, and evidence shows that Tyler wasn't routinely bullied or harassed like the kids were. He was never relentlessly abused, or made to feel worthless by all his peers while school officials sat on their hands. Tyler Clementi had low self-esteem because his parents were reportedly deeply Catholic, and likely he himself felt conflicted about his sexuality, but the facts are he wasn't routinely bullied or harassed like the kids were.
Tyler was simply the victim of an admittedly cruel and tasteless prank, not of constant homophobic bullying. Tyler was an adult, not a child. Tyler was not trapped in a hopeless ceaseless cycle of abuse, he was embarassed by a video that invaded his privacy. And all evidence suggests Tyler killed himself because he was embarassed at being on public display.
And media across the country is harping on him as if he was the next Matthew Shepard. Gay Rights groups like HRC are loudly publicly demanding his roommate be charged with manslaughter because the video drove him to suicide. They are pushing his story past the three kids now. In most stories currently Tyler is the focal point of discussing the teen gay suicide/homophobic bullying epidemic, and Billy, Asher and Seth end up as footnotes and afterthoughts, mentioned mostly to show there were more than one suicide, while the authors focus on Tyler.
And Victoria? They don't mention her at all. Joe Solmonese isn't loudly calling for her killer to be brought to justice. GLBT groups aren't crying out for more attention to be paid to trans murders. While gay groups demand blood for Tyler, who made a stupid choice because someone embarassed him with a cruel prank, (which at best is worthy of a mischief charge under the law and doesn't qualify for manslaughter, or even criminally negligent homicide), no one is demanding Victoria's killer be found except a few angry bloogers.
An actual murderer is running around free and anonymous with a police force under absolutely NO pressure from ANYONE to track him down and arrest him, but a dead gay white man overreacts to being embarassed and people are calling for blood from an idiot douchebag who played a really stupid prank, who certainly deserves to be expelled from college but is NOT a murderer.
I'm sorry, but the truth is, the biggest tradgedy here is the subtle racism, trans-phobia and complete trans-erasure that has not only relegated three children's deaths to the background to focus on an adult white gay man who made a stupid choice while being nowhere near as beleagred as the three children were, but a black trans woman's murder goes ignored and forgotten completely because hey! A gay white man killed himself because a douchebag broadcast his sex life! That's way more important than some black tranny being FUCKING SHOT TO DEATH IN HER OWN FUCKING HOME!!!!!
Priorities. Canada has them. You folks don't. Give Tyler a rest. Put the focus back on Seth, Asher and Billy. And give Victoria the respect she deserves. Talk about HER death.
And people wonder why Trans folk don't trust white gay men when they want our money and swear they won't throw us under the bus again like they did with ENDA. Fuck you HRC. You don't give a shit about us.
Hat-tip to Gemma Catherine Seymour, as I'd never heard of Victoria's case until someone linked to her blog.
9/29/2010
Katy Perry Wears Eye-Rapingly Ugly Dress for Elmo, Christian Wingnuts Whine
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! You'll all be happy to know my breasts are mostly healed, though the scars will require some time to fade. Anyway, onto the ranting.
So Sesame Street decided not to air a skit on television wherein marginally bearable pop tart Katy Perry sings a PBS-ized kiddie version of Hot And Cold on a playdate with Elmo while wearing the buttfuck ugliest wedding dress I've ever seen outside of Mimi on Drew Carey.
The reason for this cancellation? Christian/Catholic parents groups who watched the advance preview on YouTube were outraged by Ms. Perry's ugly dress. Not because it was ugly but becausae they found it to be too racy for their poor impressionable children's eyes. Because an ugly dress will of course always make 4 year olds ask about hardcore sex.
This story was broken in the Wall Street Journal, but that's not where I discovered it. I learned of this mindfuckingly brainhurting idiocy through the Huffington Post's link to this whackadoodle Catholic blog. The ignorance in the comments is, while in no way surprising coming from these sorts, staggering in the level of willful miseducation about simple facts.
The first few comments were applauding the censorship, but then someone pointed out something truly evil about the woman interviewing Perry in this YouTube video.
That video was embedded on the blog entry, presumably in a futile effort to make Perry terrifying to Christians, when she already terrifies sane people everywhere.
But the true isidiousness railed against in the comments, is that the interviewer is.... *GASP!!!* wearing inverted cross earrings.
I'm in way too much pain to day to let sleeping braind lie, so I posted the following as a comment. I got a little ranty of course, as I am often wont to do, but hey, there is immense joy in teaching deeply religious people just how little they actually know about their faith.
***
Um..... you people are blitheringly brain-hurtingly misinformed. About a great many things. First of all, complaining about Katy Perry's ugly as all hell but hardly racy or revealing dress makes you look so prudish even the Pope would tell you to relax a bit.
Secondly, all of you twonks whining about the interviewer wearing inverted cross earrings? Guess what folks?
THAT IS NOT A SATANIC SYMBOL!!!
If any of you people had paid attention in Sunday school, you would probably realize that the inverted cross is actually the personal trademark of Saint Peter, the first Pope, and one of the most revered figures in Catholic lore. When Peter was martyred by crucifixion he was said to have requested to be crucified upside down because he didn't feel worthy of dying the same way as Jesus. As a result, many dyed-in-the-wool Catholics actually consider the inverted cross to be a more acceptable thing to attach to your tacky jewelry than a regular right-way-up one. By wearing an upside-down cross, Satanists are unwittingly showing humility and unworthiness before Christ. That makes about as much sense as a neo-Nazi sticking it to the Jews by swearing off pork for life.
This is the biggest problem with idiots like you whining and crying in Jesus' name about how awful this that or the other thing is; NONE OF YOU can apparently be bothered to actually READ and LEARN the actual historical and Biblical facts you use to justify ridiculously insane moral outrage.
For example, so many of you cling to the Leviticus quote, "If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20:13), to justify hating gay people. But there are two serious flaws in this logic. First of all, at the time the Bible was first translated into English, the words "lie" and "lay" were NOT interchangable. Lay meant only to lay down, lie meant ONLY to lie, to be dishonest. Lie did not come to have it's double-meaning until the Great Depression when street slang became the popular vernacular. This is not opinion or conjecture, it is proven historical fact. Therefore the quote is about dishonesty. Remembering that women were considered property and not people, the quote is basically the Bible version of "bros before hos".
Second of all, and more important, while so many falsely adhere fervantly to this misinformed idea of what that Leviticus quote means, they completely ignore several others as if they don't exist. For example.
"For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20:9)
How many of you have murdered your children for telling you to buzz off when they hit their tennage rebellious phase? Show of hands? Anyone? Yeah that's what I thought.
"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property." (Leviticus 25:44-45)
That folks, is the exact quote white folks once used to insist slavery was a God-Given right that Lincoln had no business revoking. But none of you would DARE demand it be adhered to today. At least not publicly.
"Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard." (Leviticus 19:27)
Any of you men out there beg God's forgiveness for daring to realize sideburns just do NOT look good?
"...and the swine, though it divides the hoof, having cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud, is unclean to you." (Leviticus 11:7)
How many of you had bacon this morning? Yep, you're going straight to hell heathen.
"...do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear material woven of two kinds of material." (Leviticus 19:19)
Check the labels on your clothing. Chances are you violated this Biblical law without even knowing.
Oh but wait, here's the best one. Any of you like eating shrimp or scallops? Lobster or crab on special occasions? Guess what folks, if gays are going to hell for being gay, you're going to hell for eating at Long John Silver's.
"But all in the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they are an abomination to you." (Leviticus 11:10)
"They (shellfish) shall be an abomination to you; you shall not eat their flesh, but you shall regard their carcasses as an abomination." (Leviticus 11:11)
"Whatever in the water does not have fins or scales; that shall be an abomination to you." (Leviticus 11:12)
Katy Perry's dress is a non-issue to anyone mature and intelligent enough to realize kids are generally NOT idiots until you teach them to be. And all the complaints about the inverted cross earrings prove how painfully uneducated about your own bloody religion you folks are. Do yourselves a favor. Actually sit down and READ THE BIBLE. Not just selected passages, but the entire book, front to back, every page, every word. You might be terribly surprised by the reality of it. And if you pick and choose which rules you follow and which you ignore, you are a hypocrite, plain and simple.
So how about instead of whining about Katy Perry's ugly dress, go do something worthwhile, like volunteer at a soup kitchen.
***
And no my dear ones, I'm not naive enough to believe this lesson in actual fact will affect any of the idiots, nor that my comment will even last an hour at most before being deleted, but sometimes when I'm having really bad Fibromyalgia flareups and want to curl up sobbing, it's cathaqrtic and helps me cope with the pain to shake their trees a little. With apologies to Sir Peter Gabriel.
And it worked, I certainly do feel a little better knowing that once again, a fat hermaqphrodite Pagaen sex magick Shaman knows more about Christianity/Catholicism than the loud wannabe Christians/Catholics who bellow hate and ignorance making the REAL ones who live and let live, educate themselves, and accept me just fine as I am look bad by association.
I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! You'll all be happy to know my breasts are mostly healed, though the scars will require some time to fade. Anyway, onto the ranting.
So Sesame Street decided not to air a skit on television wherein marginally bearable pop tart Katy Perry sings a PBS-ized kiddie version of Hot And Cold on a playdate with Elmo while wearing the buttfuck ugliest wedding dress I've ever seen outside of Mimi on Drew Carey.
The reason for this cancellation? Christian/Catholic parents groups who watched the advance preview on YouTube were outraged by Ms. Perry's ugly dress. Not because it was ugly but becausae they found it to be too racy for their poor impressionable children's eyes. Because an ugly dress will of course always make 4 year olds ask about hardcore sex.
This story was broken in the Wall Street Journal, but that's not where I discovered it. I learned of this mindfuckingly brainhurting idiocy through the Huffington Post's link to this whackadoodle Catholic blog. The ignorance in the comments is, while in no way surprising coming from these sorts, staggering in the level of willful miseducation about simple facts.
The first few comments were applauding the censorship, but then someone pointed out something truly evil about the woman interviewing Perry in this YouTube video.
That video was embedded on the blog entry, presumably in a futile effort to make Perry terrifying to Christians, when she already terrifies sane people everywhere.
But the true isidiousness railed against in the comments, is that the interviewer is.... *GASP!!!* wearing inverted cross earrings.
I'm in way too much pain to day to let sleeping braind lie, so I posted the following as a comment. I got a little ranty of course, as I am often wont to do, but hey, there is immense joy in teaching deeply religious people just how little they actually know about their faith.
***
Um..... you people are blitheringly brain-hurtingly misinformed. About a great many things. First of all, complaining about Katy Perry's ugly as all hell but hardly racy or revealing dress makes you look so prudish even the Pope would tell you to relax a bit.
Secondly, all of you twonks whining about the interviewer wearing inverted cross earrings? Guess what folks?
THAT IS NOT A SATANIC SYMBOL!!!
If any of you people had paid attention in Sunday school, you would probably realize that the inverted cross is actually the personal trademark of Saint Peter, the first Pope, and one of the most revered figures in Catholic lore. When Peter was martyred by crucifixion he was said to have requested to be crucified upside down because he didn't feel worthy of dying the same way as Jesus. As a result, many dyed-in-the-wool Catholics actually consider the inverted cross to be a more acceptable thing to attach to your tacky jewelry than a regular right-way-up one. By wearing an upside-down cross, Satanists are unwittingly showing humility and unworthiness before Christ. That makes about as much sense as a neo-Nazi sticking it to the Jews by swearing off pork for life.
This is the biggest problem with idiots like you whining and crying in Jesus' name about how awful this that or the other thing is; NONE OF YOU can apparently be bothered to actually READ and LEARN the actual historical and Biblical facts you use to justify ridiculously insane moral outrage.
For example, so many of you cling to the Leviticus quote, "If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20:13), to justify hating gay people. But there are two serious flaws in this logic. First of all, at the time the Bible was first translated into English, the words "lie" and "lay" were NOT interchangable. Lay meant only to lay down, lie meant ONLY to lie, to be dishonest. Lie did not come to have it's double-meaning until the Great Depression when street slang became the popular vernacular. This is not opinion or conjecture, it is proven historical fact. Therefore the quote is about dishonesty. Remembering that women were considered property and not people, the quote is basically the Bible version of "bros before hos".
Second of all, and more important, while so many falsely adhere fervantly to this misinformed idea of what that Leviticus quote means, they completely ignore several others as if they don't exist. For example.
"For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20:9)
How many of you have murdered your children for telling you to buzz off when they hit their tennage rebellious phase? Show of hands? Anyone? Yeah that's what I thought.
"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property." (Leviticus 25:44-45)
That folks, is the exact quote white folks once used to insist slavery was a God-Given right that Lincoln had no business revoking. But none of you would DARE demand it be adhered to today. At least not publicly.
"Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard." (Leviticus 19:27)
Any of you men out there beg God's forgiveness for daring to realize sideburns just do NOT look good?
"...and the swine, though it divides the hoof, having cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud, is unclean to you." (Leviticus 11:7)
How many of you had bacon this morning? Yep, you're going straight to hell heathen.
"...do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear material woven of two kinds of material." (Leviticus 19:19)
Check the labels on your clothing. Chances are you violated this Biblical law without even knowing.
Oh but wait, here's the best one. Any of you like eating shrimp or scallops? Lobster or crab on special occasions? Guess what folks, if gays are going to hell for being gay, you're going to hell for eating at Long John Silver's.
"But all in the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they are an abomination to you." (Leviticus 11:10)
"They (shellfish) shall be an abomination to you; you shall not eat their flesh, but you shall regard their carcasses as an abomination." (Leviticus 11:11)
"Whatever in the water does not have fins or scales; that shall be an abomination to you." (Leviticus 11:12)
Katy Perry's dress is a non-issue to anyone mature and intelligent enough to realize kids are generally NOT idiots until you teach them to be. And all the complaints about the inverted cross earrings prove how painfully uneducated about your own bloody religion you folks are. Do yourselves a favor. Actually sit down and READ THE BIBLE. Not just selected passages, but the entire book, front to back, every page, every word. You might be terribly surprised by the reality of it. And if you pick and choose which rules you follow and which you ignore, you are a hypocrite, plain and simple.
So how about instead of whining about Katy Perry's ugly dress, go do something worthwhile, like volunteer at a soup kitchen.
***
And no my dear ones, I'm not naive enough to believe this lesson in actual fact will affect any of the idiots, nor that my comment will even last an hour at most before being deleted, but sometimes when I'm having really bad Fibromyalgia flareups and want to curl up sobbing, it's cathaqrtic and helps me cope with the pain to shake their trees a little. With apologies to Sir Peter Gabriel.
And it worked, I certainly do feel a little better knowing that once again, a fat hermaqphrodite Pagaen sex magick Shaman knows more about Christianity/Catholicism than the loud wannabe Christians/Catholics who bellow hate and ignorance making the REAL ones who live and let live, educate themselves, and accept me just fine as I am look bad by association.
8/25/2010
Time Off To Heal
TRIGGER WARNING!!!
I won't be posting diaries for awhile folks. I had an incident last night while I was out getting Fran some smoke and I need some healing time.
A little teenage punk ran past me last night, screamed "Fat fucking dyke!!!", slashed at my boobs then ran off laughing.
Left Breast
Right Breast
And no, I did not bother with either the hospital or the police. My local hospital, Surrey Memorial, has NEVER treated me seriously or respectfully and I've no faith in prompt treatment, and the local police did sweet fuck all on Halloween '08 when I was sexually assaulted so I doubt they'd do sweet fuck all now. Fran has been keeping them clean, disinfected and bandaged with the med supplies left over from last year's pilonidal cyst removal, so I'll be fine, but I need a few days to just veg.
If it makes anyone feel better, the punk didn't get far before the local hookers Fran and I look out for intercepted him and beat him up for me, so justice was served. Moreso than the police'd have ever done.
Cheers all!
I won't be posting diaries for awhile folks. I had an incident last night while I was out getting Fran some smoke and I need some healing time.
A little teenage punk ran past me last night, screamed "Fat fucking dyke!!!", slashed at my boobs then ran off laughing.
Left Breast
Right Breast
And no, I did not bother with either the hospital or the police. My local hospital, Surrey Memorial, has NEVER treated me seriously or respectfully and I've no faith in prompt treatment, and the local police did sweet fuck all on Halloween '08 when I was sexually assaulted so I doubt they'd do sweet fuck all now. Fran has been keeping them clean, disinfected and bandaged with the med supplies left over from last year's pilonidal cyst removal, so I'll be fine, but I need a few days to just veg.
If it makes anyone feel better, the punk didn't get far before the local hookers Fran and I look out for intercepted him and beat him up for me, so justice was served. Moreso than the police'd have ever done.
Cheers all!
8/20/2010
Feeling a Little Hopeful At Last
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
Before I begin, please read these older blogs I wrote in January for some background on my ongoing legal drama.
Consider Me Reminded
Giving Up Is Sometimes Survival
Now, after I had written both of those, I found out at my preliminary hearing I was in fact by LAW in Canada, NOT allowed to enter a Guilty plea if I did not believe I was in any way guilty of the crime I was charged with. After telling the Duty Counsel and the Justice Of The Peace my story and why I was pleading guilty, they informed me that by admitting that I did not feel I actually WAS guilty they refused to accept my plea. They understood why I wanted to, but assured me that Jail Time was NEVER a likely sentence for a minor shoplifting offense and that it would be tantamount to lying under oath. In tears I plead Not Guilty at the reccommendation of a judge and an agent of the crown whose job it was to prosecute criminals.
So yesterday, August 19th, was my trial date. I was apprehensive. My treatment at the Port Coquitlam court in January had not left me feeling terribly reassured in the fairness of the Legal System, and I had still been unable to re-locate my witnesses from the Safeway Parking lot.
And then the Judge called me Miss. He made it a point to clarify with me what titles and pronouns were appropriate for me, and on the rare occasion he fucked up a pronoun he caught himself and immediately apologised. While he did at times seem a little condescending in his need to explain every single procedure to me, he was otherwise bending over backwards to be accepting and supportive.
That alone gave me hope. But that's not all.
Only one of the security gaurds involved in the original incident in June of 09 showed up. The one who made the transphobic statements didn't attend, and the one who did had gone out of his way to exclude any mention of him from his official report.
And the gentleman who DID show up stumbled badly. He had trouble remembering details without his notes. He fumbled badly at EVERY turn. And I caught him in BLATANT lies that even the Judge scolded him for. Among the biggest lies was, when asked by the crown about my emotional state, he claimed I was neither emotional nor upset nor crying, but he felt I was angry and wanted to hurt him.
There was just one problem with that claim. And when it came time for me to cross-examine him with my own questions, (I can't afford a lawyer nor do petty shoplifting offenses qualify for legal aid), I nailed him with his own evidence.
This is the photo the LPO took the day of the false arrest. It was submitted into evidence months before the trial. Holding my copy of it, I asked Iyer, the LPO, to confirm his contention that I was neither crying nor emotional but simply angry I'd been "caught". He stuck to his story.
So I asked the Judge to look at my eyes in the photo and tell me what he saw.
The Judge said he saw, as this close-up shows, "Red puffy eyes, clear evidence of recent or current crying, and tears visible on my cheek. As it's a scan of a photocopy of a print-out the tears may not be fully visible here, but the Judge saw them clearly enough on his copy.
When the Judge asked him to explain why his own photographic evidence contradicted his memory of events, Iyer was at a loss, and hung his head mumbling a vague excuse about not remembering.
The trial ran long and the Court neared closing time, so I unfortunately had to have an adjournment until October, the earliest possible date in which the Crown Prosecutor could be free to resume trying my case. So sadly the ordeal isn't over yet.
However while I'm not going to jinx anything by saying this might be a slam-dunk, I AM very hopeful right now for a number of reasons.
- Iyer was caught in enough inconsistancies and outright lies that even the Judge scolded him.
- Despite my best efforts to maintain my composure while explaining my juvey rapes to the court as my reason for going out of my way to NOT break the law as I would rather die than go through that ever again, the Judge could see the tears and emotion I was fighting to NOT show and expressed sensitivity and understanding to it.
- The Crown, whose job it is to prosecute and convict me, when going over the adjournment with me and asking me about my dumpster-diving for restaurant leftovers, expressed far more concern about whether there were aid resources I could look into to survive better than garbage food than about any details of the case.
Get that last one folks? The GUY WHOSE JOB IT IS TO CONVICT ME was more concerned about my health and living situation than about discussing the actual trial.
As I said, I won't jinx anything by garaunteeing an outcome, but I feel very hopeful right now. Things SEEM to be leaning in my favour. And it gives me hope that there are places in the legal system where a trans/is woman like me can and will be respected, treated kindly, and taken seriously.
And hope is a very wonderful feeling. And I feel it so rarely that I need to share it. I hope that the hope I'm feeling right now might creep into the hearts of all my Trans Sisters and brothers. Hope that sometimes, people in Authority ARE capable of accepting and respecting us, and sometimes, just sometimes, the truth actually matters when it comes to our lives.
I'd rather share hope than misery. So the buffet is open brothers and sisters! Help yourselves! And wish me luck come October that this thing will finally end and I can move on with my life.
Before I begin, please read these older blogs I wrote in January for some background on my ongoing legal drama.
Consider Me Reminded
Giving Up Is Sometimes Survival
Now, after I had written both of those, I found out at my preliminary hearing I was in fact by LAW in Canada, NOT allowed to enter a Guilty plea if I did not believe I was in any way guilty of the crime I was charged with. After telling the Duty Counsel and the Justice Of The Peace my story and why I was pleading guilty, they informed me that by admitting that I did not feel I actually WAS guilty they refused to accept my plea. They understood why I wanted to, but assured me that Jail Time was NEVER a likely sentence for a minor shoplifting offense and that it would be tantamount to lying under oath. In tears I plead Not Guilty at the reccommendation of a judge and an agent of the crown whose job it was to prosecute criminals.
So yesterday, August 19th, was my trial date. I was apprehensive. My treatment at the Port Coquitlam court in January had not left me feeling terribly reassured in the fairness of the Legal System, and I had still been unable to re-locate my witnesses from the Safeway Parking lot.
And then the Judge called me Miss. He made it a point to clarify with me what titles and pronouns were appropriate for me, and on the rare occasion he fucked up a pronoun he caught himself and immediately apologised. While he did at times seem a little condescending in his need to explain every single procedure to me, he was otherwise bending over backwards to be accepting and supportive.
That alone gave me hope. But that's not all.
Only one of the security gaurds involved in the original incident in June of 09 showed up. The one who made the transphobic statements didn't attend, and the one who did had gone out of his way to exclude any mention of him from his official report.
And the gentleman who DID show up stumbled badly. He had trouble remembering details without his notes. He fumbled badly at EVERY turn. And I caught him in BLATANT lies that even the Judge scolded him for. Among the biggest lies was, when asked by the crown about my emotional state, he claimed I was neither emotional nor upset nor crying, but he felt I was angry and wanted to hurt him.
There was just one problem with that claim. And when it came time for me to cross-examine him with my own questions, (I can't afford a lawyer nor do petty shoplifting offenses qualify for legal aid), I nailed him with his own evidence.
This is the photo the LPO took the day of the false arrest. It was submitted into evidence months before the trial. Holding my copy of it, I asked Iyer, the LPO, to confirm his contention that I was neither crying nor emotional but simply angry I'd been "caught". He stuck to his story.
So I asked the Judge to look at my eyes in the photo and tell me what he saw.
The Judge said he saw, as this close-up shows, "Red puffy eyes, clear evidence of recent or current crying, and tears visible on my cheek. As it's a scan of a photocopy of a print-out the tears may not be fully visible here, but the Judge saw them clearly enough on his copy.
When the Judge asked him to explain why his own photographic evidence contradicted his memory of events, Iyer was at a loss, and hung his head mumbling a vague excuse about not remembering.
The trial ran long and the Court neared closing time, so I unfortunately had to have an adjournment until October, the earliest possible date in which the Crown Prosecutor could be free to resume trying my case. So sadly the ordeal isn't over yet.
However while I'm not going to jinx anything by saying this might be a slam-dunk, I AM very hopeful right now for a number of reasons.
- Iyer was caught in enough inconsistancies and outright lies that even the Judge scolded him.
- Despite my best efforts to maintain my composure while explaining my juvey rapes to the court as my reason for going out of my way to NOT break the law as I would rather die than go through that ever again, the Judge could see the tears and emotion I was fighting to NOT show and expressed sensitivity and understanding to it.
- The Crown, whose job it is to prosecute and convict me, when going over the adjournment with me and asking me about my dumpster-diving for restaurant leftovers, expressed far more concern about whether there were aid resources I could look into to survive better than garbage food than about any details of the case.
Get that last one folks? The GUY WHOSE JOB IT IS TO CONVICT ME was more concerned about my health and living situation than about discussing the actual trial.
As I said, I won't jinx anything by garaunteeing an outcome, but I feel very hopeful right now. Things SEEM to be leaning in my favour. And it gives me hope that there are places in the legal system where a trans/is woman like me can and will be respected, treated kindly, and taken seriously.
And hope is a very wonderful feeling. And I feel it so rarely that I need to share it. I hope that the hope I'm feeling right now might creep into the hearts of all my Trans Sisters and brothers. Hope that sometimes, people in Authority ARE capable of accepting and respecting us, and sometimes, just sometimes, the truth actually matters when it comes to our lives.
I'd rather share hope than misery. So the buffet is open brothers and sisters! Help yourselves! And wish me luck come October that this thing will finally end and I can move on with my life.
8/15/2010
Pondering Heartbreak
I made a choice this week to end what was becoming a ceaseless source of drama in my life that was beginning to directly harm my health. Unfortunately, polyamoury comes with significant risk of hurt. And given I'm so broken down I can't even provide physically or sexually for my wife, I'm highly unlikely to allow myself any future possibilities for it in daily life. Those I love online will be quite enough now.
*blows Katie a kiss*
So I'm going to open up personally and deeply here. If that might be an issue stop reading now. Real names will, of course, not be used. **** will be referred to as May and her girlfriend as April.
May met me 2 months too late. When she met me, on Tagged.com, she was instantly attracted to me, Goddess knows why. She flirted with me, though I failed to immediately see it. Under any other circumstances she could've been the mythical "Third" Fran and I had one day hoped to meet, though to be fair, more I than Fran.
Except she'd already met and been with April for a bit over two months. At first her girlfriend seemed fine, and Fran and I were only meeting them as new friends. I hadn't noticed that my new friend had been flirting with me online, and, being my usual thick-skulled self, failed to notice further flirting when we all met at McDonald's. Fran did. Fran actually at first kind of liked April.
To keep this from spiralling into a short novel, I'll skip right into the next week when May admitted for reasons I choose to keep private that she wanted me. We decided to spend more time with them to get to know them.
I really should have trusted Fran's gut and kept my distance at this point. Fran liked May well enough, and we loved May's kids, but we'd both observed that April was a childish irresponsible self-absorbed twat. She was constantly swearing and flashing her chest and genitals in the presence of the children. She had shown them porn to see how they'd react. She never got up to help clean up. She was constantly wasting money that should've been keeping the fridge full on frivolous things, and flirting with Fran in VERY inappropriate aggressive ways with the kids watching.
By her own admission, May knew the kids loved us instantly, whereas two months in the elder two had only just gotten used to April and the youngest still avoided her. The youngest, at three, still wasn't potty-trained, and April was doing nothing to help. After Fran and I both admitted we weren't attracted to April, April suddenly became very neurotic. To a point this was understandable, as she feared losing May to me. But she was offered EVERY chance, asked POINT BLANK if she wanted May and I to NOT get involved.
In the ONLY example April has EVER shown of putting someone else first, she kept insisting she wanted May to be happy and was okay with it, but guilt-tripped us every time we somuch as hugged. Fran had feelings for May too but refused to risk her heart while April was still in the picture, and I decided to take the high road and be just friends with May.
Unfortunately this was too little too late. April knew May was in love with me and continued to guilt-trip us any time we showed each other even slight affection. We tried, for the sake of not causing drama, to tolerate it. Eventually we just stopped visiting them regularly.
This past week May asked us to take her kids for a few days. As April had repeatedly ignored advice to stop getting new pets, (at last count they were up to 5 cats, a rabbit, 5 guinea pigs, three mice and four rats), they had a serious flea infestation, and needed the kids out while they fumigated.
While in our custody we noticed that the youngest had a huge bruise on his leg. When we asked the kids about the bruising, they told us that April "likes to hurt them".
I had bitten my tongue about April's lazy irresponsibility and even about May putting keeping April happy often before the kids' well-being. My conscience wouldn't let me ignore this. So I told May.
Long story short, huge drama. April denied it, May and I ended up fighting over it, and the kids started changing their story.
April messaged me on Facebook to whine in defense of the accusation. I tried to ignore her and not get into it with her, but she kept whining, and the self-absorbed "Oh Poor Me" bullshit was the last straw. She didn't ONCE mention worrying about the kids, or if they were okay, it was all me this and me that. Once again all she cared about was herself.
So I fired off on her telling her to get her shit together and put the kids first before they get taken away by the social worker who's already breathing down May's neck. Then I blocked her.
May bitched at me for flipping out on April. She said if we didn't stop bickering she'd kick BOTH of us out of her life. Since I actually gave a shit about May and her kids, I told her I could live with losing her if it meant April was gone and the kids were safe.
More drama ensued and Fran I decided enough is enough. We both love May, we both love the kids, but as long as May was going to sit by being spineless while April was screwing up the kids' lives, we were washing our hands of it.
I took the kids home, told May to have a nice life but to leave us the hell alone because the Drama was killing me.
I then blocked her phone number, and blocked and deleted her online. The only way she can talk to me now is commenting here or coming to my house. And I doubt she'll do either. I DO wonder if she feels any sadness over losing me, but in the end it isn't my problem. Until she puts her kids above all else and throws April out on her lazy worthless self-absorbed ass, she has no place in our lives. And sadly I think it'll take losing her kids again for her to realize how destructive April is.
Fran says if she ever wises up and loses April she'll happily talkj to MaY again, and that she can be with us where she always should've been. Me? I hope I never see her again. May knows how to manipulate me. May knows my weaknesses. May could have me at her knees in a heartbeat if she really wanted to. But right now May doesn't deserve me.
I chose to walk away. So I know it's my own fault my heart hurts. I just wish she didn't still own a piece of it.
*blows Katie a kiss*
So I'm going to open up personally and deeply here. If that might be an issue stop reading now. Real names will, of course, not be used. **** will be referred to as May and her girlfriend as April.
May met me 2 months too late. When she met me, on Tagged.com, she was instantly attracted to me, Goddess knows why. She flirted with me, though I failed to immediately see it. Under any other circumstances she could've been the mythical "Third" Fran and I had one day hoped to meet, though to be fair, more I than Fran.
Except she'd already met and been with April for a bit over two months. At first her girlfriend seemed fine, and Fran and I were only meeting them as new friends. I hadn't noticed that my new friend had been flirting with me online, and, being my usual thick-skulled self, failed to notice further flirting when we all met at McDonald's. Fran did. Fran actually at first kind of liked April.
To keep this from spiralling into a short novel, I'll skip right into the next week when May admitted for reasons I choose to keep private that she wanted me. We decided to spend more time with them to get to know them.
I really should have trusted Fran's gut and kept my distance at this point. Fran liked May well enough, and we loved May's kids, but we'd both observed that April was a childish irresponsible self-absorbed twat. She was constantly swearing and flashing her chest and genitals in the presence of the children. She had shown them porn to see how they'd react. She never got up to help clean up. She was constantly wasting money that should've been keeping the fridge full on frivolous things, and flirting with Fran in VERY inappropriate aggressive ways with the kids watching.
By her own admission, May knew the kids loved us instantly, whereas two months in the elder two had only just gotten used to April and the youngest still avoided her. The youngest, at three, still wasn't potty-trained, and April was doing nothing to help. After Fran and I both admitted we weren't attracted to April, April suddenly became very neurotic. To a point this was understandable, as she feared losing May to me. But she was offered EVERY chance, asked POINT BLANK if she wanted May and I to NOT get involved.
In the ONLY example April has EVER shown of putting someone else first, she kept insisting she wanted May to be happy and was okay with it, but guilt-tripped us every time we somuch as hugged. Fran had feelings for May too but refused to risk her heart while April was still in the picture, and I decided to take the high road and be just friends with May.
Unfortunately this was too little too late. April knew May was in love with me and continued to guilt-trip us any time we showed each other even slight affection. We tried, for the sake of not causing drama, to tolerate it. Eventually we just stopped visiting them regularly.
This past week May asked us to take her kids for a few days. As April had repeatedly ignored advice to stop getting new pets, (at last count they were up to 5 cats, a rabbit, 5 guinea pigs, three mice and four rats), they had a serious flea infestation, and needed the kids out while they fumigated.
While in our custody we noticed that the youngest had a huge bruise on his leg. When we asked the kids about the bruising, they told us that April "likes to hurt them".
I had bitten my tongue about April's lazy irresponsibility and even about May putting keeping April happy often before the kids' well-being. My conscience wouldn't let me ignore this. So I told May.
Long story short, huge drama. April denied it, May and I ended up fighting over it, and the kids started changing their story.
April messaged me on Facebook to whine in defense of the accusation. I tried to ignore her and not get into it with her, but she kept whining, and the self-absorbed "Oh Poor Me" bullshit was the last straw. She didn't ONCE mention worrying about the kids, or if they were okay, it was all me this and me that. Once again all she cared about was herself.
So I fired off on her telling her to get her shit together and put the kids first before they get taken away by the social worker who's already breathing down May's neck. Then I blocked her.
May bitched at me for flipping out on April. She said if we didn't stop bickering she'd kick BOTH of us out of her life. Since I actually gave a shit about May and her kids, I told her I could live with losing her if it meant April was gone and the kids were safe.
More drama ensued and Fran I decided enough is enough. We both love May, we both love the kids, but as long as May was going to sit by being spineless while April was screwing up the kids' lives, we were washing our hands of it.
I took the kids home, told May to have a nice life but to leave us the hell alone because the Drama was killing me.
I then blocked her phone number, and blocked and deleted her online. The only way she can talk to me now is commenting here or coming to my house. And I doubt she'll do either. I DO wonder if she feels any sadness over losing me, but in the end it isn't my problem. Until she puts her kids above all else and throws April out on her lazy worthless self-absorbed ass, she has no place in our lives. And sadly I think it'll take losing her kids again for her to realize how destructive April is.
Fran says if she ever wises up and loses April she'll happily talkj to MaY again, and that she can be with us where she always should've been. Me? I hope I never see her again. May knows how to manipulate me. May knows my weaknesses. May could have me at her knees in a heartbeat if she really wanted to. But right now May doesn't deserve me.
I chose to walk away. So I know it's my own fault my heart hurts. I just wish she didn't still own a piece of it.
8/13/2010
Tranny, Nigger, Faggot and Other Things Bigots Say
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
So apparently, to the surprise of absolutely no one who's been paying attention for the last 20 years, Doctor Laura Schlessinger is a flaming racist. She has of course, issued a half-assed non-apology since then for saying "Nigger nigger nigger" on her radio show, claiming she meant no racism but was only trying to illustrate the double standard of the word.
The sad part is that, while her way of going about was indeed blatantly racist and boneheaded, she has a valid point. There IS a very sad double-standard on Hate Words, one that only succeeds in perpetuating them.
So I'm going to take a look at some of the most "popular" hate words, and why the obvious problems of common usage are actually outweighed by the less obvious but more devastating problems caused by sanctioned use.
Nigger is, of course, the vile word most often used as a hate word by the white supremist crowd. It's derived from the word Negro and any white person stupid enough to say it, even in jest, around black folks ought not be surprised when he's shitting shoe polish the next day. Faggot, which was originally a word that meant the lighting end of a straw torch once it was lit, and eventually became, (and in the UK still is) British slang for a cigarette, is the most common and vulger slur against homosexual men. Tranny, which Aunty Kate Bornstein assures me began as a positive term used in Australia's trans community 40 years ago, has become the de facto porno term most people think of when dealing with a trans woman, and I can personally confirm most trans woman are offended when non-trans folk say it.
There are of course other hate words for every race. But these are the three I hear most often, so thanks to Doctor Laura's tirade, I'm going to examine the real destructive potential of each.
Nigger is obviously the worst of the three. The malice behind the word nigger is the same malice behind Segregation, The Jim Crow Laws, Seperate But Equal, and Martin Luther King's assassination. Google any of those things and you'll see a plethora of horror stories about the brutal cowardly abuse black people in America have suffered at the hands of cowardly ignorant white folks. But if you Google the word "Nigger" itself, you'll as likely get as many websites for song lyrics as White Supremist websites.
Why? Because damn near every black rapper on earth uses it in their rap. The obstensble reasoning behind this is, supposedly, "Reclaiming the word".
The concept behing reclaiming a hate word is that the group the word is meant to hurt, uses the word freely to disarm it, to nueter it's ability to hurt. And I suppose it's a well-meaning ideal.
Or would be if it came even CLOSE to working.
But we all know it doesn't. If it did, no black people would ever be offended when a non-black person says it. They'd shrug it off as if they'd said "Ice cream" or "Sunshine". But they don't. The word, in the hands of any non-black person, still offends and hurts black people. And what makes it worse is the fact that a huge chunk of the hip-hop audience are middle to upper-class WHITE KIDS, too young to remember the civil rights struggles, who hear Nigga this and nigga that in their favorite music and think the word is cool.
How do I know this? By listening to the white teenagers I see every day at the bus loop greeting each other by saying "Wassap mah nigga?" with absolutely NO trace of irony or awareness.
The same goes for Faggot and Tranny. I know a lot of queer men who loudly call themselves proud faggots, but who get justifiably upset when they hear it from Fred Phelps and his inbred horde. And I've had more than one argument with Kate Bornstein over the use of the word Tranny in her work.
The common logic is that if you are PART of the group a particular work targets, it is perfectly okay for YOU to use it hile anyone else is forbidden.
This is where Doctor Laura and I differ on the double standard.
Where Doctor Laura's argument was that EVERYONE should be free to say nigger and not get any grief, I believe NO ONE should be perpetuating any of these words. I myself am intersexed/trans AND part Japanese, so I have, technically, the right to say Tranny, hermy, and Jap all I like. But I don't for one moment believe I SHOULD.
Black people, gay people and Trans people self-applying these words make the words seem okay to those NOT in the affected group. And reclaiming these words is a bullshit excuse for self-applying them because reclaiming never works. When the word is used OUTSIDE the target group it will ALWAYS have a high likelihood of causing harm and offense. And Doctor Laura proves the double standard. As long as rappers say Nigga every 5 words, idiots like Doctor Laura will be there to say "Well THEY say it so why can't I?" and be completely oblivious to the obvious answer.
17 years ago in high school, I lived in a small town called Vernon here in BC. There was LITERALLY only ONE black family in town, in a population of about 50'000. The elder child of the family was my friend, and because he thought I was one of the cool people being from big cities and not wrapped in small-town mentality, insisted it was okay for me to greet him and refer to him as "My nigga". I had his permission to be racist for lack of a better term. He actually got angry with me for refusing to do so. He took OFFENSE that I wouldn't call him Nigga. It actually ended up ruining our friendship, but I refused to perpetuate the word even with his approval, because I knew other kids would hear it and think "Well if she can say it then I can too" and things would've gotten ugly.
In the last few years I've asked black folks I've become friends with online about that incident. I asked if he was right to be angry at my refusal or if I was right to voice my discomfort and decline his "permission". Some said "It's just a word, if it bothered him he wouldn't have asked you to", but most have pretty much universally agreed that I was in the right to refuse, both because the word is bad itself, and because they think it was unfair of him to put me on the spot and not respecting my discomfort.
So while Doctor Laura did in fact have a point about the double-standard, she got it completely backwards.
NO ONE should flagrantly or flippantly use hatewords, LEAST OF ALL those they're directed at. It's destructive to make them seem okay when it's impossible to use them without causing harm. I didn't even like having to use them in this blog to illustrate my point, and this blog is the only time you're likely to see me ever use them, because they are destructive words.
Some words simply CANNOT be disarmed or reclaimed. And self-perpetuation only aggrivates the problem. I would implore everyone to erase these words from the English language if it were possible.
Hate words will always BE hate words. No matter who is using them.
So apparently, to the surprise of absolutely no one who's been paying attention for the last 20 years, Doctor Laura Schlessinger is a flaming racist. She has of course, issued a half-assed non-apology since then for saying "Nigger nigger nigger" on her radio show, claiming she meant no racism but was only trying to illustrate the double standard of the word.
The sad part is that, while her way of going about was indeed blatantly racist and boneheaded, she has a valid point. There IS a very sad double-standard on Hate Words, one that only succeeds in perpetuating them.
So I'm going to take a look at some of the most "popular" hate words, and why the obvious problems of common usage are actually outweighed by the less obvious but more devastating problems caused by sanctioned use.
Nigger is, of course, the vile word most often used as a hate word by the white supremist crowd. It's derived from the word Negro and any white person stupid enough to say it, even in jest, around black folks ought not be surprised when he's shitting shoe polish the next day. Faggot, which was originally a word that meant the lighting end of a straw torch once it was lit, and eventually became, (and in the UK still is) British slang for a cigarette, is the most common and vulger slur against homosexual men. Tranny, which Aunty Kate Bornstein assures me began as a positive term used in Australia's trans community 40 years ago, has become the de facto porno term most people think of when dealing with a trans woman, and I can personally confirm most trans woman are offended when non-trans folk say it.
There are of course other hate words for every race. But these are the three I hear most often, so thanks to Doctor Laura's tirade, I'm going to examine the real destructive potential of each.
Nigger is obviously the worst of the three. The malice behind the word nigger is the same malice behind Segregation, The Jim Crow Laws, Seperate But Equal, and Martin Luther King's assassination. Google any of those things and you'll see a plethora of horror stories about the brutal cowardly abuse black people in America have suffered at the hands of cowardly ignorant white folks. But if you Google the word "Nigger" itself, you'll as likely get as many websites for song lyrics as White Supremist websites.
Why? Because damn near every black rapper on earth uses it in their rap. The obstensble reasoning behind this is, supposedly, "Reclaiming the word".
The concept behing reclaiming a hate word is that the group the word is meant to hurt, uses the word freely to disarm it, to nueter it's ability to hurt. And I suppose it's a well-meaning ideal.
Or would be if it came even CLOSE to working.
But we all know it doesn't. If it did, no black people would ever be offended when a non-black person says it. They'd shrug it off as if they'd said "Ice cream" or "Sunshine". But they don't. The word, in the hands of any non-black person, still offends and hurts black people. And what makes it worse is the fact that a huge chunk of the hip-hop audience are middle to upper-class WHITE KIDS, too young to remember the civil rights struggles, who hear Nigga this and nigga that in their favorite music and think the word is cool.
How do I know this? By listening to the white teenagers I see every day at the bus loop greeting each other by saying "Wassap mah nigga?" with absolutely NO trace of irony or awareness.
The same goes for Faggot and Tranny. I know a lot of queer men who loudly call themselves proud faggots, but who get justifiably upset when they hear it from Fred Phelps and his inbred horde. And I've had more than one argument with Kate Bornstein over the use of the word Tranny in her work.
The common logic is that if you are PART of the group a particular work targets, it is perfectly okay for YOU to use it hile anyone else is forbidden.
This is where Doctor Laura and I differ on the double standard.
Where Doctor Laura's argument was that EVERYONE should be free to say nigger and not get any grief, I believe NO ONE should be perpetuating any of these words. I myself am intersexed/trans AND part Japanese, so I have, technically, the right to say Tranny, hermy, and Jap all I like. But I don't for one moment believe I SHOULD.
Black people, gay people and Trans people self-applying these words make the words seem okay to those NOT in the affected group. And reclaiming these words is a bullshit excuse for self-applying them because reclaiming never works. When the word is used OUTSIDE the target group it will ALWAYS have a high likelihood of causing harm and offense. And Doctor Laura proves the double standard. As long as rappers say Nigga every 5 words, idiots like Doctor Laura will be there to say "Well THEY say it so why can't I?" and be completely oblivious to the obvious answer.
17 years ago in high school, I lived in a small town called Vernon here in BC. There was LITERALLY only ONE black family in town, in a population of about 50'000. The elder child of the family was my friend, and because he thought I was one of the cool people being from big cities and not wrapped in small-town mentality, insisted it was okay for me to greet him and refer to him as "My nigga". I had his permission to be racist for lack of a better term. He actually got angry with me for refusing to do so. He took OFFENSE that I wouldn't call him Nigga. It actually ended up ruining our friendship, but I refused to perpetuate the word even with his approval, because I knew other kids would hear it and think "Well if she can say it then I can too" and things would've gotten ugly.
In the last few years I've asked black folks I've become friends with online about that incident. I asked if he was right to be angry at my refusal or if I was right to voice my discomfort and decline his "permission". Some said "It's just a word, if it bothered him he wouldn't have asked you to", but most have pretty much universally agreed that I was in the right to refuse, both because the word is bad itself, and because they think it was unfair of him to put me on the spot and not respecting my discomfort.
So while Doctor Laura did in fact have a point about the double-standard, she got it completely backwards.
NO ONE should flagrantly or flippantly use hatewords, LEAST OF ALL those they're directed at. It's destructive to make them seem okay when it's impossible to use them without causing harm. I didn't even like having to use them in this blog to illustrate my point, and this blog is the only time you're likely to see me ever use them, because they are destructive words.
Some words simply CANNOT be disarmed or reclaimed. And self-perpetuation only aggrivates the problem. I would implore everyone to erase these words from the English language if it were possible.
Hate words will always BE hate words. No matter who is using them.
8/12/2010
Bigotry Is Bigotry, No Matter The Source Or The Target
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
This is hard for me to write, seeing as the motivation for doing so is the loss of a friendship. I am a terminally honest person and I refuse to lie for any reason, even to spare someone's feelings. Unfortunately, when the truth hurts, you find out who your real friends are.
I know, as we all do, several Christians that complete pieces of shit. But I ALSO know, as I hope most do, several Christians who are good decent people who fight for equality right alongside us. These are PEOPLE, and they act based on their own religious choices.
Christianity itself is neither evil nor good. It has equal elements of both, but as a religious philosophy it is in itself nuetral. Evil or good taken FROM Christianity is the responsibility of each individual Christian, or the Churches that interpret it. Christianity itself CANNOT be good or evil, only what people choose to do with it.
So when a friend of mine today was blanket bashing Christianity as evil, and hurting and offending some of my Christian friends who fight for our equality, I stood up to her and took her to task for it.
Bigotry IS bigotry. Regardless of the source or the target. My friend assumed that being a Trans Woman who was forced into a trans version of a NARTH-like camp gave her impunity to bash all Christianity as ever she sees fit. This is utter bullshit. A bad experience NEVER gives you the right to shit on other people.
I myself have been hospitalized by a group of teenagers screaming that god hated my faggot tranny ass. I choose not to blame all Christianity for 7 idiots with an axe to grind.
So let me illustrate this point as bluntly as I can.
"I think homosexuality is evil but I don't hate all homosexuals!"
Sound familar? Of course it does. We hear it from NOM every day.
"Christianity is evil, but I don't hate every Christian."
A quote from my Twitter friend. See the parallel there?
When I meet an idiot Christian bigot tring to condemn my existance, I calmly point out to them the facts about the Bible and Homosexuality, since the truth does not justify the bigotry. I don't blame the religion itself because some idiot read the Bible wrong and uses it to excuse their bigotry.
And by that same token, I won't stand by while someone uses a bad experience to justify bigotry TOWARDS Christianity. ALL bigotry is wrong.
Sadly my now former friend didn't want to believe she was being no better than Maggie Gallagher. Her own words proved her bigotry. She even acknowledged she knew she SOUNDED like a bigot but swore she wasn't. And just like Maggie, my friend resorted to calling me a liar and accusing me of libellous insults rather than believe even the possibility that she might have bigotry in her heart. She resorted to lamenting how I had surrendered to "insanity and delusion" by lying about her and defending the evil Christianity.
The delusion of course, is hers. And she was the only one lobbing insults. I expect the blunt honest truth from my friends and they know to expect such from me.
Bigotry is bigotry. When even the bigot has to acknowledge that what they say might SOUND like bigotry (but fer sure honest totally isn't, I swear!), it's a sad lack of a grip on reality to be in such deep denial of it.
This is why I attack what people like the NOM folks say and do, not their religious faith. I attack their ABUSE of faith, not the faith itself.
Bigotry is bigotry no matter what coat it wears, and all bigotry is wrong. And I will not back down or lie about it to spare someone's feelings. I'm sorry that bigots feel hurt and insulted when they are called bigots. I will NEVER be sorry for telling them truthfully that they ARE bigots.
Even if the truth hurts, lies hurt worse.
This is hard for me to write, seeing as the motivation for doing so is the loss of a friendship. I am a terminally honest person and I refuse to lie for any reason, even to spare someone's feelings. Unfortunately, when the truth hurts, you find out who your real friends are.
I know, as we all do, several Christians that complete pieces of shit. But I ALSO know, as I hope most do, several Christians who are good decent people who fight for equality right alongside us. These are PEOPLE, and they act based on their own religious choices.
Christianity itself is neither evil nor good. It has equal elements of both, but as a religious philosophy it is in itself nuetral. Evil or good taken FROM Christianity is the responsibility of each individual Christian, or the Churches that interpret it. Christianity itself CANNOT be good or evil, only what people choose to do with it.
So when a friend of mine today was blanket bashing Christianity as evil, and hurting and offending some of my Christian friends who fight for our equality, I stood up to her and took her to task for it.
Bigotry IS bigotry. Regardless of the source or the target. My friend assumed that being a Trans Woman who was forced into a trans version of a NARTH-like camp gave her impunity to bash all Christianity as ever she sees fit. This is utter bullshit. A bad experience NEVER gives you the right to shit on other people.
I myself have been hospitalized by a group of teenagers screaming that god hated my faggot tranny ass. I choose not to blame all Christianity for 7 idiots with an axe to grind.
So let me illustrate this point as bluntly as I can.
"I think homosexuality is evil but I don't hate all homosexuals!"
Sound familar? Of course it does. We hear it from NOM every day.
"Christianity is evil, but I don't hate every Christian."
A quote from my Twitter friend. See the parallel there?
When I meet an idiot Christian bigot tring to condemn my existance, I calmly point out to them the facts about the Bible and Homosexuality, since the truth does not justify the bigotry. I don't blame the religion itself because some idiot read the Bible wrong and uses it to excuse their bigotry.
And by that same token, I won't stand by while someone uses a bad experience to justify bigotry TOWARDS Christianity. ALL bigotry is wrong.
Sadly my now former friend didn't want to believe she was being no better than Maggie Gallagher. Her own words proved her bigotry. She even acknowledged she knew she SOUNDED like a bigot but swore she wasn't. And just like Maggie, my friend resorted to calling me a liar and accusing me of libellous insults rather than believe even the possibility that she might have bigotry in her heart. She resorted to lamenting how I had surrendered to "insanity and delusion" by lying about her and defending the evil Christianity.
The delusion of course, is hers. And she was the only one lobbing insults. I expect the blunt honest truth from my friends and they know to expect such from me.
Bigotry is bigotry. When even the bigot has to acknowledge that what they say might SOUND like bigotry (but fer sure honest totally isn't, I swear!), it's a sad lack of a grip on reality to be in such deep denial of it.
This is why I attack what people like the NOM folks say and do, not their religious faith. I attack their ABUSE of faith, not the faith itself.
Bigotry is bigotry no matter what coat it wears, and all bigotry is wrong. And I will not back down or lie about it to spare someone's feelings. I'm sorry that bigots feel hurt and insulted when they are called bigots. I will NEVER be sorry for telling them truthfully that they ARE bigots.
Even if the truth hurts, lies hurt worse.
8/06/2010
A Scary Idea
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
Listening to the Right Wing Hordes of Evil whine so much this week about the activist judge stealing Californians right to vote has me thinking. And watching Maggie Gallagher publicly contradict herself on the subject made it very clear. I know how we can expose the Religious Right's huge appalling hypocrisy in a way that they can't weasel out of. And it's a terrifying idea with dangerous risks, but it would show their arguments about voters right to be backpeddalling semantic bullshit.
Introduce a bill to limit the freedoms of Arab-Americans.
Scary idea right? Of course it is. And no such bill should ever be tabled. But think about what would happen if it were.
Racism in America is a lot more prevalant than most people want to admit. Especially in a still raw after nearly a decade post-9/11 America. While obviously many people would, at least publicly, decry and denounce such a bill, in the voting booth, no one can see which box you tick.
And all the evidence in America with the pervasive attitudes on display tell me that a majority of voters would tick Yes, no matter their public opinion.
And the much-balleyhooed "Will of the People" will have violated America's constitution and stripped a minority of it's basic garaunteed human right to full equality.
Why did this scary horrifying idea cross my mind? I don't hate Muslims and I'd fight against such a bill if it ever came to pass. But Maggie Gallagher double-stepped on Cooper's show this week. When the minority in question was gay people, Maggie said no judge has any business or right to overturn the popular vote, because the will of the people had spoken against gay equality.
But then just a few minutes later, Cooper pointed out to Maggie that in the 60s, if giving BLACK people equal rights had been put to a popular vote, the "will of the people" would have said no, because racists still outnumbered non-racists, and statistics showed as much. And Cooper asked Maggie what if the popular vote had stripped black people of basic equal rights? And Maggie said the Supreme Court would overturn such a vote because equality can't be voted on.
No, I'm not advocating any bill that would strip ANY minorities rights. What I'm suggesting is a hypothetical example that would force Maggie to admit she and her kind have absolutely NO right to vote any minority into second-class status. Especially considering her husband is Hindu, which to many among the more ignorant in America is interchangable with Muslim; A scary foreign faith they don't understand and don't want mingling with the Baby Jesus.
The USA Constitution garauntees Freedom and equality for all. And NO ONE has any right to vote on someone else's human rights.
So no Rightwing Nutcakes, it isn't the Judge's decision on Prop 8 that violated the Constitution. It was putting Prop 8 on the ballot to begin with.
Listening to the Right Wing Hordes of Evil whine so much this week about the activist judge stealing Californians right to vote has me thinking. And watching Maggie Gallagher publicly contradict herself on the subject made it very clear. I know how we can expose the Religious Right's huge appalling hypocrisy in a way that they can't weasel out of. And it's a terrifying idea with dangerous risks, but it would show their arguments about voters right to be backpeddalling semantic bullshit.
Introduce a bill to limit the freedoms of Arab-Americans.
Scary idea right? Of course it is. And no such bill should ever be tabled. But think about what would happen if it were.
Racism in America is a lot more prevalant than most people want to admit. Especially in a still raw after nearly a decade post-9/11 America. While obviously many people would, at least publicly, decry and denounce such a bill, in the voting booth, no one can see which box you tick.
And all the evidence in America with the pervasive attitudes on display tell me that a majority of voters would tick Yes, no matter their public opinion.
And the much-balleyhooed "Will of the People" will have violated America's constitution and stripped a minority of it's basic garaunteed human right to full equality.
Why did this scary horrifying idea cross my mind? I don't hate Muslims and I'd fight against such a bill if it ever came to pass. But Maggie Gallagher double-stepped on Cooper's show this week. When the minority in question was gay people, Maggie said no judge has any business or right to overturn the popular vote, because the will of the people had spoken against gay equality.
But then just a few minutes later, Cooper pointed out to Maggie that in the 60s, if giving BLACK people equal rights had been put to a popular vote, the "will of the people" would have said no, because racists still outnumbered non-racists, and statistics showed as much. And Cooper asked Maggie what if the popular vote had stripped black people of basic equal rights? And Maggie said the Supreme Court would overturn such a vote because equality can't be voted on.
No, I'm not advocating any bill that would strip ANY minorities rights. What I'm suggesting is a hypothetical example that would force Maggie to admit she and her kind have absolutely NO right to vote any minority into second-class status. Especially considering her husband is Hindu, which to many among the more ignorant in America is interchangable with Muslim; A scary foreign faith they don't understand and don't want mingling with the Baby Jesus.
The USA Constitution garauntees Freedom and equality for all. And NO ONE has any right to vote on someone else's human rights.
So no Rightwing Nutcakes, it isn't the Judge's decision on Prop 8 that violated the Constitution. It was putting Prop 8 on the ballot to begin with.
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