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

how desperate do you have to be...

to disrespect someone's body in this way?



real life is NOT 'weekend at bernie's,' people. this story broke my heart and turned my stomach at the same time. who wheels a dead man's body down the street to cash their social security check? the audacity!



of course, the deceased man was a senior citizen (albeit a young one at 66.) yet another example of blantant disregard for mature people in this country. they're only good for their monthly checks.



i need another cup of coffee, and maybe a shotgun. *grumble grumble*

bride snatching: how lovely it's becoming more common

following a disturbing title (Bride-Snatching Involved in Half of All Marriages in Kyrgyzstan) on liveleak, i came across this video:




note the shaming guilt placed on the kidnapped wives and the ambivalent, entitled attitudes of the men interviewed for this video.




i can't believe this practice, called ala kachuu, goes on so regularly(or even at all.) also disturbing is the fact that the authorities officially state that wife-snatching is illegal, but that no one ever prosecutes. and of course the abducted women are considered unclean, impure, or tainted by muslim standards, and will be shunned by their families and society if fleeing their captors, especially once the marriage is consummated, aka rape, occurs. how's that for a horribly textbook description of double victimization? thank gods there are people like the woman in the video fighting for the victims' rights.




it's inconceivable that they have to teach students that stealing your bride is wrong, but i'm glad they're at least acknowledging that there's a problem with viewing women as chattel.




this practice of wife snatching is becoming more popular since the fall of the USSR, as the liberation of the area has caused many groups to harken back to ancient customs and traditions.




hiding behind cultural relativism in this case is a load of bs to me. kidnapping is a crime, no matter to which gods you do or do not pray. your religion does not entitle you to rape, demean, and abuse others.

why the eff is this so common?!?

a grey, ice-filled day greeted my feet this morning as i walked out the door on about 3 hours of drunken sleep. my hair's in a greasy side ponytail, and i dressed in the dark: dickies, pink chucks, a tattoo-printed tee and slim blue cardigan. makeup free and glasses-adorned, i am looking almost as great as i feel, lol. pathetic.





so i'm hunched over my computer, blearily staring at the screen, unable to focus on anything work-related. i start randomly surfing the net, something i haven't done much of lately, and i come across this article from texas. as if i couldn't feel any worse.





gods, this 21 year-old guy was a substitute teacher for THREE WEEKS, and was already busted for having sex with a 14 year-old girl in a parking lot! he went and pulled her out of class and lured her into his car to assault her! when the girl broke down in class the next week, they arrested him. he actually had the nerve to claim that the sex was consensual! the school system said he passed their background check. it really makes me wonder what kind of checks they do. i've never been a substitute teacher, so i haven't a clue. has anyone ever seen the criteria required? i'm guessing no felonies? anyone?





what really got to me, and maybe it's just exhaustion, but not really, is that this story is ridiculously common. so common, in fact, it probably hasn't surprised a single one of the people that read or heard of it. and that's disgusting. people put in charge of our children should not be utilizing their positions of authority in such an immoral way. and the poor girl, in typical guilt-ridden victim style, had to be convinced that it wasn't her fault!




the power differential is inherent in any student-teacher relationship. students listen to their teachers, look up to them, fear and respect them. yet these people justify sexual relations with them? it sickens me. i'm all for free love between two consenting adults. have fun, do it however and whenever you want. any fetish that can be imagined has likely been tried more than twice. but dammit, CHILDREN ARE OFF LIMITS!!!!!!!! that shouldn't be something that even needs to be mentioned, and yet, time and again, they're victimized, and then shamed into believing it's their fault. and teachers, the people that society trusts to mold and shape young minds, should be particularly cognizant of that.




okay, so now i need to go calm down. i can't wait to get out of work and jump into some comfy pajamas and decompress. maybe i'll finish knitting a scarf, and try to pretend for an evening that the world isn't all kinds of fucked.

file this under wtf

okay. so any relief, regardless of how small, that may have been expressed at the final release of mychal bell from jail is now stricken. AP published this article after bell was brought in to court for what should've been a routine hearing on an unrelated case. this case shouldn't've had anything to do with the jena 6 proceedings, and it is true that it was never mentioned, but judge jp mauffrey was obviously sending a very clear, and very hate-mongering message when doling out an unwarranted 18 months incarceration for a probation violation. mauffrey is awe-inspiring in his steadfast pursuit of punishment to young black men that dare to challenge his skewed view of justice. i realize he's gotta be pissed that he was called out by the nation for his hatred, and he's apparently obsessed with sticking to his guns. keep punishing these boys, judge, and hopefully, you'll keep getting shot down. as for bell, let's hope this trumped-up scapegoat bullshit can FINALLY come to an end... sigh.

panic, mania, depression, etc.

depression and anxiety have had me locked away from here for the past few weeks. blogging should not induce panic attacks, but then again, panic attacks aren't about reality and rational fears. most of the time, i'm basically regurgitating news clips anyway, nothing too personal or putting my reputation at stake, and yet...

i've tried to post about 50 times since my last quick blurb, only to either run from my keyboard, avoiding my computer altogether, or begin entries that would freeze me mid-sentence and cause a heart-pounding, head-lightening freakout. ideas would be bursting out of me and then suddenly crash. i'm sure if i looked at my drafts right now, i'd cry.
anyone out there had panic attacks or manic seizes? anxiety attacks tend to begin without warning (known 'triggers' excluded.)

simultaneously trapped within and disconnected from your corporal body, it's surreal and extremely frightening to have to fight for breaths and control of your limbs. hyperventilating is common, but so is that heavy 'i'm gonna pass out or fall asleep right here' feeling. the need to hold on to something arises. you're a helium balloon tentatively tied to a toddler's wrist. beating the air, pulling away, torn back down. at the mercy of the environment, you sway and bounce. the ebb and flow isn't the calm, rhythmic motion of the sea, but an errant toss and jerk, sans direction or purpose. you can't forget to breathe, but it becomes harder to remember as your head grows heavier and the ground seems to tilt. why is one side of your body suddenly a paperweight, while the other half is lighter than air? being vertical seems an impossible feat! how do people do it? as these thoughts burn the edges of your brain, other thoughts are battling for the forefront of your mind, racing at dragstrip speed through your head. everything that could go wrong is currently occurring and you have no way to stop anything. you get over the strangely euphoric, terrible and seductive sensations and are abruptly torn back to reality... a reality in which you're shaking, sweating, tight-chested and nauseated. the tympani of your heart's pound is orchestral in your ears, and that memory of breath suddenly becomes all you want, but cannot have. you'd do anything just to get some air into your lungs, but it suddenly can't go. you try to focus, but all you can manage are shallow gasps for air ~ the rest of you is just too preoccupied with the plethora of problems it's having. you've shattered, and sweeping up the remains is a seemingly endless and daunting task. you don't seem to have a center. there's nothing there to hold you in; you're a million autonomous units that have no operator. you're screaming inside to grab that broom, to reach out, to rally the troops and focus as a whole again. you reach and reach and after an eternity of stretching: you manage. a mantra begins to repeat in your mind: you're gonna be okay, just breathe, just breathe, breathe, breathe.... tentatively, your body responds. your head straightens slowly where it had been tilting more and more to the side. (it no longer seems to weigh SO much.) you're sweating less, your eyes switch into focus. you're still shaking, but you can actually see your hands enough to realize what they've been doing. control of your legs and the sensation of them touching the ground reinstates. blinking a couple of times, you take that one slow deep breath that actually seems to somewhat fill your body. and it's over.

manic moments are different. ideas flow like lava, the world is suddenly within your grasp, ridiculously easy to wield and weld to your command. how do people not get it? you want to share your secret with everyone everywhere ~ they all must know! you rush to tell the universe, or maybe just the person next to you. you're warm, your face is flush, eyes bright and wide with intensity. you begin to speak, but speech is too slow for the fire in your brain. or perhaps you're typing. fingers can't work fast enough for all that's pouring forth. you skip entire words, sentences, paragraphs and ideas, convinced that you're waxing poetic and doing the world a great service. people tell you to slow down as you excitedly meander through ideas on every conceivable subject, topic or issue. vaguely, you notice their raised eyebrow and condescending smile. you stumble on the outpour and are jerked back down from your excitement. why can't people understand you? why doesn't what you just typed make sense? only moments ago you held the skeleton key to life's secrets and it was all too simple! paranoia strikes. you delete sentences, paragraphs, eventually the whole of what you've created out of the knowledge that it's worthless. and not only that, but YOU'RE worthless! how could you possibly have believed you know anything at all? that your creative outpour is anything but garbage? you have no ability or capacity to finish anything, achieve anything. you're a loser. why try. turn off the computer and shut the fuck up. retreat.

this has been my MO for the past couple of weeks. sorry to toss it all out like some tacky salad, but i think it's made me feel a little better. erin, you yelled at me to just 'do it,' and so i did. hurray to a doctor's visit next week.

if you haven't already...

i'm just gonna assume that you already know about this case, and that it would be redundant to rehash all of its painful details. click on the picture to sign a petition urging a fair and detailed civil rights investigation into the case.

pride & prejudice, sans jane austen, pt 2

so i'll continue the saga...

after telling the uk court story, i ask bob if he can see the correllation between the two situations. he responds that the poor foster girl is a victim, and that the judge was wrong, but that the reason he was wrong is merely because she's a child. to him, the two dads that had begun our discussion are adults, and therefore cannot be victims. they have the ability to choose their license plate, and to him, shouldn't, because they're asking for trouble.

yep, those women and gays, they're just asking for it, by doing crazy things like buying vanity plates and wearing frilly underwear. they're just tempting those innocent hate-mongers to do something horrid to them. how dare they?!?

from there, the discussion quickly spiralled drainwards. i ask him how he can say that gays are asking for trouble by being themselves? he responds with a comment to which i must first add a little backstory.

a few years ago, joe & dan, aforementioned couple, came out to a party with a group of girls in our neighborhood. said party was fairly lame, so we all decided to trek the two blocks back to my apartment to hang out on our own. while walking back, an SUV stopped in the middle of the street and two large men jumped out, yelled they were 'looking for' joe & dan, and proceeded to assault them, unprovoked, on the sidewalk. it was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and i can't even begin to understand how much more difficult it was for them. neither of them had ever even been in a fight before, let alone the victims of violent gay bashing. discrimination prevailed every step they took, from the attitude of the police, who insisted joe & dan must've done something to provoke the attack, to the hours in the er, where we were shoved into a private holding room (we were told the blood was scaring the other people in the waiting area), to the fact that my witness statement was the only one counted as testimony, and later the reduction of sentencing to probation by the judge due to an incompetent public defender. never mind the fact that dan's mother is a lawyer and refused to help, and my (former) girlfriend's father asked us what they were doing to incite an attack ('were they holding hands?' he asked before proceeding to tell us to let that be a lesson to us to be careful and discreet in public.) not that it matters, but they weren't even walking next to one another. their only 'crime' was being gay on the sidewalk at 1 or so in the morning.

so this event is obviously one which had a great impact on my life, as well as mary's, as she was one of the people out with the crowd that evening, and has been friends with the two of them even longer than me. bob, having only known us for a short time, dares to respond to my statement about gays asking for trouble by saying

well, look what happened to . they got attacked for nothing. it just proves my point that gays need to watch out.

this was too much for me. i really felt he overstepped boundaries. i mean, how dare he blame two innocent people for getting beaten by some homophobic neanderthals? joe's nose was broken, and dan just missed going blind from a hit and cut right above his eye! and the whole time, mary just sat there, completely refusing to stick up for people she calls her best friends, all in the name of a steady piece of ass. i hit my limit. i excused myself, apologized for not being able to discuss it anymore, and walked out of the restaurant.

i haven't talked to bob since, and when i called mary a week later, she dared to tell me i should apologize to him because i left the restaurant! i told her i left because i was so hurt, and i didn't want them to see me cry. (which i did.) then i added that i couldn't believe she didn't at least stand up for joe & dan, because what bob was saying was wrong, and his thinking was total watercooler discrimination & homophobia. to which she promptly hung up on me.

you don't have to be throwing bricks through windows and beating random strangers to have prejudice. you don't have to be screaming nigger, faggot, slut, or kike to be discriminatory or putting others down for being who they are. hatred is not always obvious, in fact, it's usually just the opposite. it's ingrained in the straight, white, classist patriarchy of our society, and it's up to us to fish it out, identify, and eradicate it. is requires us each to look in the mirror and find that ugliness that may be glossed over and buried under layers of polite, politically correct ideals. it isn't nice, pretty, or simple. i'm losing close friends over this, but honestly, it's making me reevaluate my friendships in general. i'm not happy about it, but...

i just can't 'sit nice and be quiet' anymore.

pride and prejudice, sans jane austen, part one

okay, i'll get to it. i've been hella busy these last couple of weeks and haven't updated my blog in practically a millenium (re: two weeks.) but i must be honest and let y'all know i've been avoiding it. avoiding my own emotional turmoil over an incident that happened when i was at dinner the other night with a couple of friends. but it's been long enough now, and i hope i've gathered enough distance to recount the story accurately and without getting too upset by it. so here's what happened:
the three of us are at dinner, discussing our weeks, lives, etc. ~ average friendly dinner convo. now the other two, bob** and maryanne**, are coworkers that have upped the ante from close friends to dating (dangerous, i know, but that's a totally different tale.) they're still in that obnoxious lovey-dovey stage, and it's kinda cute in a nauseating way. so maryanne is talking about her parents and what they do for a living and she mentions that her mother works for an adoption agency. we talk about that a bit, and i ask about whether or not they approve gay adoptions. this obviously leads to a turn in topics, and bob mentions that he'd recently seen a minivan with a vanity plate that read: '2 dads.' i smiled and said that was awesome, and remarked that i was glad people were proud to state such things. the conversation then went (roughly) as such:

bob: i don't know....
me: you don't know what?
bob: it made me uncomfortable.
me: what made you uncomfortable?
bob: i don't know. i mean, i'm okay with gays and all, but i just don't think they should be so obvious.
me: how do you mean, obvious?
bob: well, people get beat up for stuff like that. i just think they should be careful. they're kind of asking to get beat up by being so obvious.
me: so you're saying gay people should hide.
bob: no
me: then what are you saying?
bob: i just think that there are a lot of people out there that don't like gays. someone could come along and see that and get really upset.
me: but if you say things like that, then you're basically saying that gay people should hide and not be who they are. we need people to do things like have pro-gay vanity plates to emphasize that it is okay to be gat parents. in fact, it's GREAT to be gay parents, and there's nothing wrong with that. saying those men shouldn't have those vanity plates is saying that what they're doing is wrong. that who they ARE is wrong. do you not see where that line of thinking progresses? it promotes homophobia and intolerance.
bob: but i'm not homophobic. i'm friends with you and joe** & dan**
me: 'but some of my best friends are black' is NOT a valid argument. society has the problem, not gay folk. you can't blame a victim, and when you say things like that, it's what you're doing.
bob: but society's not gonna change.
me: you really think that civil rights for gays aren't going to progress? blacks and women didn't have the right to vote, but now they do. i believe that in my lifetime we'll see progress and the furthering of gay rights, don't you?
bob: no. i think the country is going in the opposite direction.
me: and you're okay with that?
bob: uh...well...no...but...

the conversation escalated from there, with me reiterating the same points over and over again, and him continuing to state that gays will be beat up if they're too obvious.
~~ note that mary is extremely quiet during this whole discussion. mary's bisexual, and has had long term relationships with men and women, and has not piped up once, despite my repeated attempts to bring her into the discussion. she refused to state an opinion either way, because she was too scared to offend her new beau. ~~
i tried to take the entire conversation and put a similar situation into a different context. i began to discuss this court case that cara brought up last month at the curvature that made me cry with rage. i thought that by discussing that what a young girl is wearing and her background is no excuse for rape would resonate as discriminatory. i told him that the asshole judge in the case was blaming the girl for her attack, and that shaming gays into hiding who they are skirts the same thought lines.

i have to leave work now, so i'll publish the rest tomorrow

**not their real names