California’s Assembly voted Thursday to approve a bill that would prevent people from practicing “ex gay” therapy on minors.
About damn time. & Way to go, California.
RIP Shulasmith Firestone
Shulasmith Firestone, author of The Dialectic of Sex, has died at the age of 67. It’s an amazing piece of radical feminism, Freud meets Engels meets deBeauvoir.
“I’ve arranged the thingies into a pretty glass vase for now”
Oh, wow. Bic made pens For Women. Women (and men, as far as we know) have completely lambasted them for doing so with these very, very clever reviews.
Father says not to ask questions because it might give me wrinkles, indeed.
Trans in Academia, Pt. 2
Another good article by Rachel McKinnon about being trans in academia – this one more focused on the job market than on teaching per se.
Props to CHE for publishing these, too.
Trans United for Obama Congratulates Transgender Delegates
WASHINGTON, August 28 – As Democrats from all over convene in Charlotte, NC to nominate Barack Obama for reelection as President, there will be at least 11 transgender people in official roles.
Delegates and Committee members are equally divided between male and female and, under the Democratic National Committee’s rules, should demographically reflect the Democratic electorate in each state. In 2008, each state was mandated to set a goal for LGBT delegates. Each State has their own procedure in electing and appointing delegates. The DNC Chair appoints 25 at-large Standing Committee members to each committee, including the 2 co-chairs and 4 vice chairs. Each jurisdiction also sends its allotted number of committee members.
In 2000, Jane Fee of Minnesota was the first transgender delegate to the Democratic National Convention. In 2004, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas sent transgender people in their delegation to Boston. In 2008, “gender identity” was included in the Democratic platform at the Denver National Convention and Arizona, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Texas sent delegates. Now, in 2012, we have our largest and most diverse contingent of openly transgender delegates.
In 2009, the DNC added “Gender Identity” as a characteristic of full inclusion within the party. The language of the 2012 Democratic Platform will be fully inclusive of transgender people’s civil rights.
The 2012 transgender Americans who are part of official DNC Convention are:
- Barbra Casbar Siperstein of New Jersey, Super Delegate (member of the Executive Committee of the DNC)
- Dana Beyer, M.D. of Maryland (Credentials Committee)
- Kylar William Broadus of Missouri (Platform Committee)
- Janice Covington of North Carolina (Delegate, 8th Cong. Dist.)
- Cris Land of Oregon (Delegate, 1st Cong. Dist)
- Daria Lynn Lohman of Arizona (Delegate Alternate for AZ)
- Marisa Richmond of Tennessee (At Large Delegate for TN)
- Diego Miguel Sanchez of Massachusetts (At Large Delegate for MA)
- Jamie Dianne Shiner of Wisconsin (Delegate, 8th Cong. Dist.)
- Melissa Sklarz of New York (Credentials Committee)
- Meghan Stabler of Texas (Delegate, 5th Cong. Dist.)
You can see all of their photos and statements at the delegates page of the Trans United for Obama website. Continue reading “Trans United for Obama Congratulates Transgender Delegates”
Kinky Boots: The Musical
The movie Kinky Boots is being made into a musical: music by Cyndi Lauper, book by Harvey Fierstein, direction & choreography by Jerry Mitchell.
It opens in Chicago in October, then in New York, on Broadway, in April 2013.
Wicked Ad
Oh, you now I love this:
What I don’t like is that apparently American audiences have been deemed unready (unworthy?) as it’s not being shown here.
(h/t to the irreplaceable Diane Frank)
Still Vanilla
Jezebel has compiled the 10 worst “BDSM” suggestions made by Cosmo, and, um, I’d like to know what exactly is kinky about sticking your finger in someone’s mouth & ordering him to suck it. Is it because you’re ordering and not asking, or suggesting coyly, or whatever non-kink version of a similar scenario Cosmo might recommend? Or is it somehow kinky just to penetrate your male partner & not the other way around? I don’t know. I have lost track of how tepid people have sex, and I thank my lucky stars for that.
Honestly, I’m not sure if it gives me a headache or amuses me greatly to think of the crazy awkward scenes happening in bedrooms across America because of those fifty shades of goofy. Just, um, make sure you have the key to the handcuffs FIRST, don’t draw blood, and um, maybe remember that most of us have day jobs we have to sit at desks to do. (Although a day of uncomfortable sitting can be a lovely reminder of what went on the night before.)
& Honestly, leave the utensils in the kitchen where they belong. Except the slatted spoons: those things really sting.
Seriously, try Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide to Rough Sex, instead.
Not a Drag Queen
I wish when people wrote stories about gender they actually knew something about gender.
The new Barbie is what’s called a Faux Queen. Not a drag queen, not a crossdresser. She doesn’t have to be male-bodied to be a queen, nor does she have to be in order to be fabulous. She could, as well, be high femme.
Catholics Against Ryan
From Maureen Dowd’s column this past week:
Even Catholic bishops, who had to be dragged toward compassion in the pedophilia scandal, were dismayed at how uncompassionate Ryan’s budget was.
Mitt Romney expects his running mate to help deliver the Catholic vote and smooth over any discomfort among Catholics about Mormonism. (This is the first major-party ticket to go Protestant-less.) Yet after Ryan claimed his budget was shaped by his faith, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops deemed it immoral.
“A just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons,” the bishops wrote in a letter to Congress.
The Jesuits were even more tart, with one group writing to Ryan that “Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The nuns-on-the-bus also rapped the knuckles of the former altar boy who now takes his three kids to Mass. As Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the Catholic social justice group Network, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, it’s sad that a Catholic doesn’t understand that “we need to have each other’s backs. Only wealthy people can ever begin to pretend that they can live in a gated community all by themselves.”
Even Ryan’s former parish priest in Janesville weighed in. Father Stephen Umhoefer told the Center for Media and Democracy, “You can’t tell somebody that in 10 years your economic situation is going to be just wonderful because meanwhile your kids may starve to death.”
Oh, & um, Ayn Rand was an atheist. Can we get that news out to the Christian Right, please?