CO Events

Finally, I have all the details on the stuff we’ll be doing in Colorado!

On October 9th, I’ll be speaking at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.

Where: MSCD Campus, Denver

When: Tuesday, October 9th, 1-3PM

then, in Boulder:

We’ll be part of the TRANSforming Gender 2007 Conference at the University of Colorado @ Boulder. More details about other speakers – including Matt Kailey (author of Just Add Hormones) & Julia Serano (author of Whipping Girl) – can be found on the conference’s website.

Where: Dennis Small Cultural Center, University Memorial Center Rm 457

When: Wednesday, October 10th

I’ll be doing a workshop on Queer Heterosexuals/Emerging Identities from 3:30-4:45

and then will be part of a panel with the other speakers from 5:15-6:30.

Both/all these events are open to the general public, so do come if you can.

Check In

i’ve had some time to be on the boards this weekend, despite the insanity around what’s going on in Burma & with ENDA – both of which occupied a lot of my time – and it’s nice to get a visit in.

teaching has kept me really busy, as has the commute. it’s really a full day that goes to travel: i leave here 1pm for my 2pm train, & i don’t get to Andover until about 8 PM. it’s a little shorter on the return, on Thursday, mostly because the train schedules work a little better.

& yes, as many people have predicted: i love teaching. love it. i asked on the first day if (1) any of them had ever thought about their gender, and (2) if any of them identified as feminists, and got no hands on either. that, plus the class being at 8am, were tall odds, i thought. but aside from the fact that i have to be prepared to frontload the class for the first half-hour while they’re all waking up, we’ve had interesting conversations about whether feminism is valid & what radfems mean when they say all sex is rape & about why most professional cooks are male.

september has gone by really quickly as a result, what with teaching & DO for a week & getting the details for the upcoming trip to CO & applying for a NYFA grant. i feel like i wake up & work on my to-do list & at some point i get on a train & find myself on a green, catholic college campus for a few days, kind of like it’s a dream, & then i’m home again & hanging out with betty & the kittoi until i get on a train again.

but i do enjoy the train time, even if i sometimes dread it the night before. i read a lot. i write some. i grade papers, even. or i just watch the world go by.

Banned Books Week

Yesterday was the start of Banned Books Week, so go out & buy one of the many books people objected to this year. Among them, the regulars: Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, two by Toni Morrison, and new ones on the list seem to have been chosen for having homosexual themes/characters: And Tango Makes Three, Gossip Girls, Athletic Shorts; and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

You can find a Banned Books Week event near you, or you can just go out & buy one of the Top Ten most challenged books of 2006.

Please Sign

Monks have already been beaten and several people have been killed. Please sign this petition to get the UN Security Council to help protect them, to enable them to peacably assemble, as they have done for the past few weeks.

They are raiding the monasteries and cutting off contact with the rest of the world:

“The big missing piece of the puzzle is what is going on in the minds of the senior leadership,” said Thant Myint-U, a former United Nations official who is the author of a book on Myanmar, formerly Burma, called River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma. “Nothing that they have said in the last 20 years would suggest that they will back down,” he said.

(Get his book if you want more background on what’s going on currently, or if you want to know more about Burma and the 8888 Uprising.)

I’m worried now we won’t hear anymore, or won’t hear much, unless & until the UN gets more involved. It is quite odd to see actual video footage of what’s going on in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) on television. That beautiful huge gold pagoda you may see in the background is Shwedagon Pagoda, and the gold is – the real thing. But the demonstrators have been gathering at the oldest pagoda in Yangon, Sule Pagoda, which is the center of the city.

Sign On

(1) If you’d like to be added to a letter being sent to HRC from the leaders of the transgender community asking them “for an unequivocal statement that HRC will oppose this new strategy and any bill that is not inclusive,” then send an email to Shannon Minter at sminter(at)nclrights(dot)org.

Do add any affiliations you have with trans groups, LGBT organizations and the like.

(2) NCTE & The Transgender Law Center have a petition directed to Nancy Pelosi up at iPetitions.com. You can have your name listed anonymously, so there’s no reason not to sign this one.

& Now the Bad News

House Democrats are taking out transgender inclusion for ENDA:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Reps. George Miller, D-Martinez, Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., believe that they lack the votes in the Democrat-controlled House to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act if it includes gender identity along with sexual orientation as a prohibited ground for firing an employee.

Frank and Baldwin are the only openly gay members of Congress.

“People now accept the fact that we just don’t have the votes for the transgender,” Frank said.

Nervous Democrats had been hearing about Republican amendments to the employment bill, Frank said, “that would talk about schoolteachers, and what happens when the kid comes back from summer vacation and teachers change gender. We just lost enough Democrats and we couldn’t be sure of the Republicans.

The move put a damper Thursday on what Democrats otherwise were hailing as a landmark day for gay rights.

Aurora the Inconsiderate

The funniest thing about Aurora is that she gets on your desk, as if to hang out with you, but then if you do anything – type, use your mouse, pet her – she attacks your hand.

 

 

Go Go Gowanus!

Betty & I are watching Law & Order SVU – of course that’s what we do when I get home – and we got to see a neighborhood right near us as they chased an ex-IRA hitman around the Gowanus Canal neighborhood. The SVU cops are coming in for him from either side, so he looks at the water, and one of the cops shouts, “Go ahead, jump in! You’ll die in a week.”

Ah. The polluted Gowanus Canal saves the day.

Passed!

from NCTE’s website:

Senate Passes Historic Hate Crimes Bill

The Hate Crimes Amendment to the Defense Authorization Act (S. 1105) was passed on a voice vote of the Senate today, September 27th.  Immediately prior to the voice vote, a cloture vote to end debate of the Amendment was passed 60-39 with bipartisan support.This amendment was already passed on May 3rd in the House by a vote of 237-180.   NCTE is calling on President Bush to sign the bill with this historic provision included.

Mara Keisling, NCTE Executive Director, says, “While transgender people still have many obstacles to overcome, we are overjoyed that the hard work of so many people is coming to fruition.”

The Hate Crimes Amendment extends the federal hate crimes law to include sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and disability.

Wonky Boards

Our message board are a bit wonky and that may be due to a server upgrade by our hosting company. In the meantime, our own DSL is down so Betty isn’t online.

So please hold tight, folks.