Louis CK on Doctor’s Advice for 40 Year Olds
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This is exactly the kind of advice I’ve gotten about my PTT (posterior tibial tendonitis), & everyone else who is aorund my age and older knows it’s true. The clip is form the show we saw him do in Milwaukee this past year. In the meantime: Am I the only one who thinks he is ridiculously hot?
Whose Surgery?
Here’s some interesting news about health insurance companies covering transition-related costs according to Joanne Herman at HuffPo (although I do wish the word “transgender” weren’t used when “transsexual” is the more accurate term. Plenty of transgender people don’t want or require medical intervention, like genderqueer people and crossdressers and the many transgender people who don’t want different genitals (for a variety of reasons).
It becomes more & more difficult to be inclusive of the wide range of transgender people when an article by a transsexual person about transsexual people uses the term transgender, i.e. for the people who do not medically transition. I worry that many people who live as one gender but who have no issue with the genitals they were born with are going to face that much more pressure to have surgery they don’t want & can’t afford.
British Sea Power
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned them here yet, but I’ve just been turned onto British Sea Power, & The Onion’s AV Club has a live stream of their new stuff, called Valhalla Dance Hall, & it is good.
As if that weren’t enough, new Wire.
Just Norrie
I know Norrie (formerly Norrie May Welby) drives a lot of traditional transsexual people batshit, but still, I think she’s pretty groovy. I definitely like “spansexual” instead of “transsexual” to describe him, too.
As long as people understand this is a very different trans experience than the “usual” transition narrative, and that transitioned people can still get the gender marker of their choice, I’m glad she gets to be who she wants legally and otherwise.
More genders, no gender, please. “NS” for “not specified” seems like a good third gender/no gender option for ID.
Savage Love Podcast Up
My Dan Savage podcast is up! Lots of gender-y stuff in it: not just a woman dating a crossdresser, but a gay man who is dealing with others’ assumptions that he’s trans. I’m Episode 220, starts at around 12:50.
If you’ve come here as a result of the podcast, welcome! Feel free to look around, comment, and ask questions.
Liberal Tea Drinkers Unite!
Chris Hitchens, you are the man.
It is already virtually impossible in the United States, unless you undertake the job yourself, to get a cup or pot of tea that tastes remotely as it ought to. It’s quite common to be served a cup or a pot of water, well off the boil, with the tea bags lying on an adjacent cold plate. Then comes the ridiculous business of pouring the tepid water, dunking the bag until some change in color occurs, and eventually finding some way of disposing of the resulting and dispiriting tampon surrogate.
Aside from actual directions all Americans should read on how to prepare a cup of tea, delicious writing:
Finally, a decent cylindrical mug will preserve the needful heat and flavor for longer than will a shallow and wide-mouthed—how often those attributes seem to go together—teacup.
Shallow & wide-mouthed, ha! I do love him, despite everything. I would add that chamomile or whatever other fruity business is not tea, per se. Tea is a plant, actually a bush. It is not any damn thing in a bag that you put in water to make the water a different flavor. Those things are infusions, not tea (although tea is a type of infusion).
I hope that helps, my fellow Americans. We’d be hella more civilized if we could make a decent cup of tea in this country. I so miss being in a place where there are people from tea-drinking countries (India, China, England, Scotland) around & in great numbers.
& Don’t get me started on this Tea Party business representing these right wing assholes, either.
Winter Term
Today is the first day of Lawrence’s winter term, and I’m pretty pleased to be back to teaching: this term, Freshman Studies 101 and Feminist Theory 200. I look forward to meeting new students, seeing old ones, and getting back into the thick of things.
In the meantime, it’s snowing and the river is frozen again.
It Wasn’t Just Me? Oh No, 2010 Sucked.
Sing it, Dodai. Jesus H. is her rant right on target, except I need to add one: fuck you Dodai, for reprinting those photos of the animals destroyed by BP’s criminal destruction of the Gulf.
(Please don’t bother to read her piece if you’re offended by the creative and lugubrious use of the F word.)
Free Speech, Assange, & Espionage
Robert Meerpoll is the youngest son of Julius & Ethyl Rosenberg. His parents were legally executed for espionage under The Espionage Act of 1917, which is the same law that may be used to indict Julian Assange. The Espionage Act has been used to stifle dissent throughout American history. Meerpoll writes:
The 1917 Act has a notorious history. It originally served to squelch opposition to World War I. It criminalized criticism of the war effort, and sent hundreds of dissenters to jail just for voicing their opinions. It transformed dissent into treason.
Many who attacked the law noted that the framers of the Constitution had specifically limited what constituted treason by writing it into the Constituton: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort” (Article III, section 3). The framers felt this narrow definition was necessary to prevent treason from becoming what some called “the weapon of a political faction.” Furthermore, in their discussions at the Constitutional Convention they agreed that spoken opposition was protected by the First Amendment and could never be considered treason.
It appears obvious that the Espionage Act is unconstitutional because it does exactly what the Constitution prohibits. It is, in other words, an effort to make an end run around the Treason Clause of the Constitution. Not surprisingly, however, as we’ve seen in times of political stress, the Supreme Court upheld its validity in a 5-4 decision. Although later decisions seemed to criticize and limit its scope, the Espionage Act of 1917 has never been declared unconstitutional. To this day, with a few notable exceptions that include my parents’ case, it has been a dormant sword of Damocles, awaiting the right political moment and an authoritarian Supreme Court to spring to life and slash at dissenters.
Whether or not it’s unconstitutional is not mine to decide, but there is a very scary line of free speech being broached in this case. What a way to start the year.