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Cho Fierce

Wow. Margaret Cho rightfully lost her shit & in so doing wrote us all a manifesta:

I grew up hard and am still hard and I don’t care. I did not choose this face or this body and I have learned to live with it and love it and celebrate it and adorn it with tremendous drawings from the greatest artists in the world and I feel good and powerful like a nation that has never been free and now after many hard won victories is finally fucking free. I am beautiful and I am finally fucking free.

I fly my flag of self-esteem for all those who have been told they were ugly and fat and hurt and shamed and violated and abused for the way they look and told time and time again that they were “different” and therefore unlovable. Come to me and I will tell you and show you how beautiful and loved you are and you will see it and feel it and know it and then look in the mirror and truly believe it. If you are offended by my anger and my might at defending my borders and my people you do not deserve entry into my beloved and magnificent country.

Read the whole thing at Jezebel or on Cho’s blog.

I am beautiful and I am finally fucking free.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re not pretty enough, that you curse too much, that you don’t like the right things, that you are “‘different’ and therefore unlovable”. They are only keeping you from your freedom.

It’s profoundly moving to see that someone like Margaret Cho – famous, funny, rude Margaret Cho – still needs to punch back so hard against someone who is telling her to be something other than what she is. Makes me feel an ounce better about having felt the need to do the same thing when I was told what I needed to do to fit in here. Sometimes I wonder if those of us who “grew up hard and am still hard” get read as a lot tougher than we are, & so people feel free to critique when they might not if a person were obviously vulnerable. Hrm.

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Obscenity Trial

On this day in 1928 police seized 800 copies of Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness. It would be put on trial as obscenity later in 1928 under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857; Virginia Woolf came to the trial but wasn’t allowed to provide testimony — nobody was.

Interestingly, 1928 was the same year women got the right to vote in the UK.

Coincidence?

(h/t to The Progressive’s “Hidden History” calendar, via FW)

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Shit Cis People Say to Trans People

You knew it was coming:

“You transgenders are so inspiring” is probably my fave.

That said: we have had plenty, PLENTY of trans women ask us if my partner has had “the surgery”, how we have sex exactly, and whether she is gay, was gay, and whether or not I was/am/have become a lesbian.

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Two Tune Tuesday: White Rabbits

Two drummers, goddammit, rhythms right out of Funboy 3’s best stuff, piano that sounds like it came off Rufus Wainwright’s first CD, and thumpy, sexy basslines. Honestly, they’re like an answer to a question I’ve been asking for 20 years.


Get a playlist! Standalone player Get Ringtones

Now they just have to add some local live dates, and I will start 2012 off exactly right.

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Local Politics

I will honestly say I’m flabbergasted. There is a local election coming up for the city’s Aldermen, and one of the men running, Tom Van Susteren, posted this on his Facebook page, which is public:

How on earth this could be considered appropriate for any politician’s Facebook page is beyond me. Really, I’m staggered by the bad judgment, the treatment of violence against women as funny, and the violence against a public figure as funny, plus torture as funny.

I understand that someone out there finds this entertaining, which horrifies me even more.

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Standing on the Shoulders Of

It’s been five months since my dad’s death and I can’t think of a better way to honor his memory today than to say: Go Giants!

(& He would have known full well what it cost me to say that, too.)

I miss him in ways those of you who haven’t lost parents couldn’t begin to understand – although some people, even without knowing, have been amazing and kind and present in ways that have blown my mind. Thank you, with as much graciousness as I can manage, to those of you who do understand, who have experienced this kind of loss before me, and who have had such helpful words.

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Transition-Related Care is Tax Deductible

How’s that for good news for an upcoming tax season?

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has affirmed that transgender people can deduct their hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery expenses. This announcement indicates that the IRS will follow the U.S. Tax Court’s 2010 ruling in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, which held that gender identity disorder (GID) is a medical condition, and transgender people receiving hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery as treatment for GID may deduct these costs as medical expenses.

NCTE has links to the .pdf of the IRS announcement as well as the tax trial that set the precedent.

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White People

“White people are so lame.” – Homer Simpson

It’s so excellent, and the vocals are spot-on.