i've so far shied away from it...

the horrendous trans* phobic media mishandling of a detroit native's murder a week and a half ago.


i've talked to friends about it, we've hashed and rehashed, all the tragedy, the bullshit, the ignorance, the loss. frankly, the idea of blogging it gave me a twinge of the shudders.




as coverage increases, so do the number of bigots and insensitive comments. and so it has to be discussed, and where better than the blogosphere?

refusing to release the victim's name is simply harmful to the community. is the family ashamed that their relative may be trans*? are they trying to honor hir by keeping the name out of the press? perhaps they're angered (and rightly so) that the police are continuing to refer to a murder victim as 'a man in women's clothing?' ugh ugh ugh. until we get more information, we'll never know...



the bottom line is, SOMEONE WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD IN A PARKING LOT. what sie was wearing is not the focus. bringing hir killer to justice should be the goal.



RIP

into you like a train

if i had a dollar for every time i thought i could fall in love...

i'd still be poor.

but maybe i'd have enough for bus fare to get me the fuck out of here.

how much for a smile?

i've been giggling more in the past week than in the last year.

i melt for your smile and touch

that irrepressible flush that so often floods your cheeks

belieing your age.

i can't believe it's for me.

on second thought:

fuck the dollars...

i only need one.

dream interpretations, anyone? bueller... bueller?

i had this horrendous dream the other night, and i thought i'd share:




i'm in a car with a group of friends, all of whom happen to be lesbians. a straight white male cop pulls us over, and proceeds to make some homophobic and sexist remarks. (i can't recall what exactly he said.) so i'm apparently feeling brave, because i lean forward from the back seat and snarkily ask "could you repeat that? 'cause all i heard was lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit." guffaws and smirks abound... until he asks me to step out of the car. i climb out of the back seat. the cop grabs me, puts me in handcuffs and forces me to my knees in the snow. at this point, i'm somewhat out of view of my friends. the officer begins to fondle me and take off my clothes, telling me i shouldn't be hanging out with these dykes. i respond that i'm 'one of these dykes,' and he says he's gonna fuck the gay out of me. (side note: i've heard this phrase so many times, in real life, and it never ceases to scare the shit out of me.) he removes his clothes and begins to rape me. i scream, and in a strange dream perspective shift, i see all of the girls trying to get out of the car. somehow, another cop is there, holding them back at gunpoint. then i'm back in my own body, yet still watching myself. i'm crying, staring straight ahead and trying to think of what to do. the only thought that comes to me is to vomit, so i do, all over the man and myself. i hope it will make him stop, but it doesn't. the idea that now this man will have a roman shower fetish enters my head. i know that the officer is a serial rapist and his thirst for violence will only increase. it ends. i'm suddenly alone on my knees in the snow, covered in vomit. my friends run up to me, and i'm screaming and crying and won't let them touch me. i'm completely embarrassed, and begin throwing snow all over myself, to wash off the vomit, cum and blood that has been seeping from my nose and mouth. (at some point the officer had hit me in the face, i think after i threw up.) i become even more embarrassed as i'm rubbing the snow over me, because i realize i look completely insane, and i know they don't understand that the snow will make me clean, and that's why i'm covering myself with it. eventually, one of the girls picks me up and carries me to the car, totally vulnerable and exposed.





any takers on what this means? it was such a graphic and disturbing dream. i should also mention that the friends in the dream are all new. i met a whole crew through someone new that i'm dating. i think that's from where the apprehension and embarrassment stems. has anyone else had rape dreams?

national trans* day of remembrance

today is the day.

all this past weekend, i've been holding and comforting him. he's so young, and still, everyone looks to him for guidance. he doesn't want it, but obligation weighs too heavily. he hoists the worries, agitation and fears of the entire group onto his tiny shoulders, facilitating discussions he doesn't want to have, offering advice to those years further along in their journeys. i see the strength and wisdom within his large, dark eyes and understand why they turn to him. the man is barely two decades old, and yet so firm in who he is! he's a bridge for those younger and older, face of a child and voice of an adult ~ universally relatable. for all his efforts he's still lost, confined in a form that's not his own.





he comes to me worn and exhausted, silent except to say that he's tired. there's a world of meaning behind those few words. he gently places his cheek on my lap. i stroke his head and down his back, feel the binding that constricts his skin, and cannot wait 'til he is able to live in a skin that is truly his. it's true that the ones most deserving of justice often receive the least. so i do my best to help, and hope that he knows i'm here. i can't pretend to understand what he's going through, but there's a part of me that wants him to just let me share a bit of that burden. when he smiles, it melts me.




for all those mourning, today and everyday, please know that you're not alone. someone wants to care for you, people will listen. or, if you're too defeated to speak, can offer a hand, a shoulder, or maybe a good joke or two.




youth that need someone to just listen for a while, and help, can call:


Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Youth Support Line
800-850-8078


if you witness or experience a trans* hate crime :
Gay & Transgender Hate Crime Hotline
1-800-616-HATE



both of these numbers are toll-free in the us. and for all those we have lost, RIP. transgendered day of remembrance is a day we celebrate the lives of our friends, lovers, peers, both known and unknown to us. but it of course shouldn't be simply confined to one day. every day we keep those souls in our thoughts and hearts. a single day is hardly enough to hold all those victim to hate and bigotry. but it's a start.

how you can help celebrate ian benson's life

a big thank you to all who have linked to my site and given kind words of support re: the unfortunate passing of ian benson. friday night, a candlelight vigil was held in his honor at black river public school in holland, mi, where ian had attended the prior year. (he was home schooled beginning this year.) i lit my candle from home and quietly mourned the loss on my own. amazingly, the holland sentinel published a short piece on the event.

if you'd like to help celebrate ian's memory, and the memory of so many other trans* people whose lives ended much too prematurely, you can join in the amethyst ribbon campaign. donations/purchases can be made here.

**i officially changed ian's name from guarr to benson, per comments at questioning transphobia. ian was to have his name changed officially in the courts on the wednesday following his passing. RIP**

RIP Ian Guarr

sadly, i received this email this morning from triangle foundation, michigan's leading LGBTQ activist organization, and i thought i'd share:



Dear [name removed],

It is with a heavy heart that I share the tragic loss of one of our community's beautiful children. Ian Guarr, a 16-year old transgender young man from West Michigan, took his own life on Monday. The Guarr family have been staunch allies and good friends of Triangle Foundation from the beginning of their journey. Ian's mother Amy is a founder of TransYouth Family Advocates (http://imatyfa.org), a national organization addressing the issues facing transgender youth and a national partner of Triangle Foundation's Camping.OUT program.

Ian was one of my daughter Chloe's dearest friends. Ian was sensitive, thoughtful, brilliant, hilarious, and painfully shy. Our world is less bright without Ian's presence. Even with an amazingly supportive and loving family such as Ian had, the youth of our community face an incredibly difficult path. In the United States, every hour an LGBT youth commits suicide. The statistics for transgender youth are even more harrowing -- the attempted suicide rate is higher than 50%!

Ian's family did everything right. They loved, cared, and advocated for who Ian knew he really was –not just for who society wanted him to be. This community owes the Guarr family a debt of gratitude for all that they have done for Ian as well as for all transgender youth.

Triangle Foundation joins our friends at TransYouth Family Advocates and TransActive Education & Advocacy in once again renewing our commitment to working with and on behalf of transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual and questioning youth who, like Ian, are struggling with a society that is often unwilling to accept them for the unique and beautiful people they are. Our work will continue until no young person feels that suicide is their only option.

Please join Triangle Foundation in sending our loving thoughts to Ian's family, loved ones, and the community which joins them in mourning his loss.

Sincerely,

Colette Beighley and the Triangle Foundation family

PS. Please reply to this email if you would like Triangle Foundation to pass a message along to Ian's family.

If you are, or you know, a young person thinking of suicide, please know that you are not alone and help is available. Contact The Trevor Project immediately at 1-888-488-7386 or visit www.thetrevorproject.org for help and more information.

i don't normally do this, but...

my last post, which now is sitting in limbo in drafts, just wasn't sitting well with me. i chose to take it off the viewable page, and if anyone still wants to read it, please just let me know and i'll be glad to email it to you. it was bothering me, and i don't think it accurately represented what i wanted to say. i was asking for advice re: dating a trans person as a cisgendered lesbian. so if anyone has advice, i'll just keep it simple ~ lemme know in comments or via email, and we can go from there :)

so NOW who's joining dumbledore's army?

this story has me so excited today i can barely concentrate on my work (geekdom, thou hast won!) jk dropped this knowledge on a stunned audience at carnegie hall on sunday: albus dumbledore is gay.

...

can you believe it? dumbledore's gay?!? no wonder his grindelwald disdain was so tainted with hurt and emotion. he threw his genius heart to the only person with the potential to match him, only to realize that the object of his affection had such an evil side. how bittersweet and tortuous to have to fight and defeat his love. could there have ever been a more suitable match for albus? suddenly, his self-ostracism, sacrifice, and the way in which he threw himself into his work makes so much more sense. holing himself up in hogwart's, turning down the ministry of magic position, delving exclusively into his work: confusion and eventually acceptance of his sexuality would've been preying on his mind throughout everything he did.


so i can't WAIT for the evangelical christian backlash on this one. they already condemn potter and the entire series for the wicked, wicked use of witchcraft, potions, spells and the like. i mean, i wasn't allowed to watch the smurfs as a child because the church said the spell casting was evil! so can you imagine adding the evils of HOMOSEXUALITY to their profuse hatred of all things rowling? i can't wait... and i tip my pink hat to albus dumbledore.

and to add to that one...

the DA has dropped all charges and decided not to prosecute the SRLP, where last night members were celebrating their 5th anniversary. cops violently arrested two people without provocation and pepper sprayed others. welcome home ileana and reggie.

lesbian pirates... for a change?!?

in honor of international talk like a pirate day (huzzah!), i figured i'd join in the spirit and link to a few articles celebrating the (constestably sexual) relationship between anne bonny and mary read.

two of the most famous pirates in history, they fight, fought and fucked like pirates, alternately dressing as men and women, and pleading whichever gender suited them to the particular moment. how very androgynous of them. hot.

there is much speculation as to whether or not the relationship was actual, implied, or invented, mostly hotly debated by 35 year old male history geeks that still live in their mom's basements and eat cap'n crunch for dinner in their bathrobes.

this one believes the relationship to be actual, and this article opposes it.

as for me, especially the beer swilling, swash-buckling, eye-patch wearing, homosexual leaning types. Ahoy!

in addition, let me just add that it's hella annoying how trendy pirates are right now. i've pretty much been a pirate since before i was caught taking my little brother's eyepatches at the age of 6. (he had sight issues, okay? and he kept flushing his patches down the toilet ~ i was doing him and our plumbing a favor by taking them off his hands!)

bloody XOXO in love and thievery

Victoria Violence, Corsair Extraordinaire

whatever happened to julie ruin?

lately i've been feeling nostalgic for the riot grrls of yesteryear.

queercore is practically mainstream nowadays, and it kinda takes the fun and subversive nature out of gay punk/indie music. queer punk is suffering from the same downfall of original punk music... with notoriety and publicity comes a sort of grudging recognition and acceptance. which is exactly what punk tries NOT to achieve. rebelling ceases to exist when it's done en masse. don't get me wrong, i'm not saying it's a bad thing that queer rock has made its mark, it's fantastic! that's a central goal (among others, of course) of the marginalized, right? to get your voice heard, make some changes, stir up issues, shift the current ways of thinking? it makes me smile to turn on a radio station and hear, say, tegan & sara.

BUT I WANT MORE.

it's queer-lite nowadays, if you will. what next? where has the spark gone? issues haven't quelled, but the diy spirit kinda has. sure, there are some great groups out there today, such as scream club, boyskout, girl in a coma and the dead betties. but they don't come around here. hiding in the safeland of the west coast and vancouver, if they tour, they skip right over detroit and hide away in nyc.

NOT VERY SUBVERSIVE OF YOU.

those little 80s/90s homocore pioneers traveled all over and would play wherever to just get heard. groups today have it much easier and seem to only be playing where it's comfortable. how un-punk.

and how unfair to these groups that fought for you to even get gigs. i want some riotous, angry, fun, tongue-in-cheek, black eye-inducing, laugh-out-loud, fuck your mother, 'recruit them all' queer kind of music! and i know i'm not alone. where are the pansy divisions, bikini kills, hedwigs, team dresches, and vaginal creme davises of today? staying away from the midwest, for sure... my little homo heart is aching for some REVOLUTION! and if you're one of these groups scared of big, bad michigan ~ you can all crash at my place, i'll book you and show you it's not so bad.

let me end this short little rant with the lyrics from classic bikini kill song by ms julie ruin herself, kathleen hanna. this track is called 'i like fucking':

Hey! do you believe there's anything

Beyond troll guy reality?

I do, I do, I do

It gets so hard

Just to be okay

Sometimes being happy baby

Is what I'm most afraid of

Baby, you know,

It gets so hard for me to fight

I don't know how

I guess I never did

Why don't you show me how

How to lose control?

She's so very, 'I don't care'

Just cuz my world, sweet sister

Is so fucking goddamn full of rape

Does that mean my body must always be

a source of pain?

No, no, no

She's so very 'I don't care.'

Just cuz I named it right here sweet Chickadee

Don't mean for a minute you should think

I'm opposite of anything

But if you wanna know for sure I'll tell you

We're not gonna prove nothing nothing

Sittin around watching each other starve

What we need is action/strategy

I want, I want, I want

I want it now

I believe in the radical possibilities of pleasure, babe

I do, I do, I do

since when does being gay equal being easy?

hello all.

i have a problem. (apparently.)

whenever i go out to the bar, or meet a new couple, inevitably, for some reason, i get propositioned. and not just sleazy come-ons from drunken idiots. i'm talking REALLY sleazy come-ons from drunken (and sometimes sober) idiots.

no, really. i can't remember the last time i went out to the bar and WASN'T asked to have sex with a couple.

No, no, NO i will NOT sleep with you and your girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, lover, best friend. no, i won't bang your girlfriend while you watch, and no you can't videotape the session to watch later. just because YOU'RE attracted to me does not mean that I'M easy. i've gotten this even from people i know well.

i'm sorry, but fulfilling your fantasy is not my prerogative. if i'm into you, you'll know it. if i wanted to sleep with more than one person at a time, it's certainly not gonna be with a couple. not that i'm opposed to others doing what they want in a healthy, mutually satisfying way, it's just not my thing. to my taste, it just invites drama, especially among friends. i don't sleep with men, and i don't sleep with straight women. period. and buying me shots to get me even more liquored up is not gonna help. i happen to feel that my sexual experiences are mine, and i'm not about to give that to someone else. it's my body, and my business. it doesn't get me hot.

in fact, this comes up so much that i can usually spot it well before it happens, but i really don't know how to go about combatting it. the other night, i'm at my usual watering hole, and of course, the inevitable situation occurs. i'm polite, but firm in my denial, trying my best not to roll my eyes, screaming on the inside. they walk away, and my friend turns to me and asks why this always happens to me. i wish i knew. i rant that i guess i'm just the token male-friendly lesbian. not that this excuses any of it away. i'm not about to feed into some chasing amy scenario. fuck that.

but then, someone on the other side of me says, it's not that i'm some male-friendly lesbian, it's that i'm hot. and that i should just get over it.

um, what?

just because someone thinks i'm hot, that suddenly makes it okay to pester me about having sex? i guess i'm asking to be hit on, because you're attracted to me? makes perfect sense. it's just another attempt for straight males to assert their dominance and enter what is a hands-off zone for them. apparently, i'm some sort of easy conquest or perceived open door to infiltrate, objectify and destroy lesbian structures. i'm sorry, that's not flattering to me.

fuckers.

i guess the real reason i'm typing this entry today, besides the chance to rant a bit, is because i haven't met other lesbians that have this happen to them on a regular basis. do any of you women have to deal with this? how do you view it? i really am just so tired of it all.

it's friday... guess it's time to rate my blog!

Mingle² - Online Dating

i find it interesting that 'lesbian' was tagged as one the reasons for my blog rating, while 'queer' was not. guess i have to keep working for those nc-17 tags.

maybe i should lighten up, but...

i'm sorry, but i really don't find this funny. i just don't.

blogebrity & christenings of several types ~ welcome!

inspiration

so a big fattie thanks are in order to mrb for getting me prepped to stop basking in my 'i'm such a loser and not doing anything viable for the world at large' whining and actually start taking action. the other night we discussed various feminist issues and websites to which he frequents, as well as his new blog. it's going great, sir! i adore the fact that the biggest feminist i know is a tall, heterosexual, middle class, white male (in no particular order.) *grin* i need an outlet as well. and while i don't really care either way whether or not people read this, i do need to get it all out. maybe for self-justification, maybe to stroke my ego, but definitely to keep me (perhaps?!) a little more sane.



and so, this morning, at work, instead of actually getting shit done (as i should also be doing now, lol,) i went to feministing to check out what the blogebrity (my newly created word of the day!) jessica valenti had to report. and is there a hot plate today! the article in question , is one that i had no idea people felt so strongly about. silly me!



i was truly unaware that women are being required to jump through so many hoops about taking or not taking a surname. i really don't believe that my name should be in legal question, decided by the courts. if one partner wants to take the other's name, or combine them somehow, or keep their birth names, who cares?!? names are a very personal thing, and individuals have every right, just as they have the right to choose first names, to keep or discard them at will. signing paperwork and making things official should not be more or less depending on your gender.



the idea here is to GIVE PEOPLE THEIR OWN RIGHT TO CHOOSE. the commentary on valenti's relatively short post astounded me. i was amazed at the amount of people getting so touchy about being expected to side permanently either way. (ie to change or not to change)



here's how i see it:

if you tell women they should change their names out of respect to their spouse, that's not right. similarly, if you tell women they should keep their names out of respect to themselves, that's not right either. decisions are personal. and although they affect us all, they must be made. it's your RIGHT to choose whatever name you would like. and you shouldn't be made to go through extra bullshit or criticized, whichever way you lean, to make that decision, as long as it's not expressly hurting yourself or anyone else.



(how's that for the definition of liberal , lol.)

and just because i REALLY need to get back to work, i won't even start on the fact that as a queer woman, i don't even quite factor into this debate, as i don't even receive the right (thanks, dear government) to marry and worry about taking (or not taking/adjusting) my surname.