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Feh.

I’ve never had a week go by faster. Betty’s on a plane, already, returning to New York, & so, another month without her begins.

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Definitions

I was once again poking around about how the law may or may not try to define “woman” when it comes to marriage, but instead the only governmental definition I found defines “woman” viz child-bearing. According to the Senate version(s) of the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (of 2005, 2006, &2007):

(6) WOMAN- The term `woman’ means a female human being who is capable of becoming pregnant, whether or not she has reached the age of majority.

That is just damned scary. For starters, they precisely don’t mention women who have passed child-bearing age, or women who are for one reason or another unable to become pregnant, or women for whom getting pregnant could cause their death. That is, lots of kinds of women are left out of that definition. Yet I think there’s going to be more of this essentialism as the same sex marriage debate comes into contact with the anti-Choice crowd.

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Nashua

The New Hampshire paper The Nashua Telegraph has been running a series on transgender people which apparently lost the paper some readers. That said, a NH grandma liked the series:

I am a heterosexual grandmother, who hopes that my grandchildren will learn to respect and understand all human beings who are leading legal, moral and, ultimately, happy lives.

What a nutty goal. You can let the paper know it’s an important series, not trash, by responding to a poll on the first page of the website (toward the bottom).

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Too Many

There is a lot on the news about the shootings at NIU that left too many students dead. It’s too sad a story, and sadly familiar as well.

But there are two other stories of young people who have died that are barely being reported, and are just as important:

As confusing and frustrating as the NIU shooting is, these other two deaths were entirely preventable: if only we could give kids a little more room to be who they are, while ALSO educating people that gender diversity is not immoral, unnatural, or dangerous.

Still, it frustrates me to see that the deaths of these other children are barely being reported, once again confirming the idea that gender diverse people’s lives are worth a little less.