Blog for Choice Day

Blog for Choice Day

This year, the organizers of Blog for Choice have asked us all why we vote pro-Choice.

I grew up Catholic, as many know, & my first opinion on abortion – once I realized I should have one – was to be Pro Life. I was already against the death penalty, & in this instance, the Church’s rulings – against human beings messing with life & death – seemed consistent to me.

It was only later that I became a feminist and realized that pregnancy is often considered only a woman’s problem, that men are barely even expected to use birth control when they have sex, and that not only do we preach – as a culture – that women have to be sexy, but that it’s bad that they are. There’s a certain ‘head in the sand’ quality to the way we deal with these issues, and when, a few years ago, a pro life friend told me women should just keep their knees together – she wasn’t kidding, either – I’d had enough of the double standard.

So that’s why I vote pro-choice.

If people find others who are blogging for choice, do link to them here.

Lawrence Lecture

I’ll be speaking at Lawrence University on Monday, February 18th, at 7PM, in 102 Science. Mark your calendars. Betty will be with me.

NH DMV Petition

There are people up in New Hampshire trying to convince the DMV to change their surgery requirement for gender marker change on licenses. In order to show how much support there would be for such changes, they’ve started an online petition.

Requiring surgery as a condition of ID change is both medically and economically discriminatory.

Do sign it.

‘Nipply’ Is An Understatement

Today it’s supposed to be -12 degrees F here in Appleton. The high? 1 degree.

Sunday it’ll be between 3 degrees and -4 degrees F.

Monday? Between 11 degrees and 0.

& It just keeps snowing.

They told me I arrived during a warm streak. Apparently. Who knew freezing could be “warm,” relatively speaking?

But I love it, I have to admit.

Bookish

I still have moments of looking at the LGBT bookshelves in bookstores feeling sheepish – sometimes because I feel like I’m not “queer enough” to be doing so, or because people are clocking me as queer, that you must be queer if you’re browsing the LGBT section of a bookstore.

What’s funny to me is that I’ve stood in front of 200 people & talked about strapping it on, yet strangers in bookstores looking at me looking at books can still make me shy.

Tristan Does 200

Congratulations to Tristan Taormino on her 200th “Pucker Up” column for The Village Voice. She’s been writing that column since 1999, and even mentions the column about The Queer Heterosexual that I cited in My Husband Betty. (She also wrote a column about My Husband Betty, which did the book a world of good).

So congrats Tristan, and keep on putting your nose (or whichever parts you choose) into other people’s sex lives – with their consent, of course.