sundries

[rm]

Patty and I have not been having the best luck this week with feeling well, tolerating the heat, etc. But the heat has broken and today will be different. I'm working early to finish early and yesterday pretty much taxed me out on the Internet for the week, I think. So y'all get to talk amongst yourselves while we try to be productive and have quality time before we leave on our respective trips.

Did I really see an ad on my way to my morning tasks for a film called: Dogs and Cats: The Revenge of Kitty Galore????!?!?!? Yes, apparently I did. (Warning for Patty: contains creepy hairless cat).

A new high school and some oysters may be the key to saving New York's waterways.

Italy is fighting in European court a ban on crucifixes in its classrooms.

Soon same-sex partners will be eligible for bereavement leave in NYS. How depressing is it that there needs to be a law or shit won't happen?

Meanwhile, this made me cry in a good way. Repentance and reconciliation at Pride and probably not in the way you'd expect. via pecunium.

Apparently, a doctor is treating pregnant women in Florida with hormones to prevent the possibility that their daughters with be lesbian or bisexual and/or display habits and career interests that are deemed too masculine.

In case you missed that, let me say this again: pregnant women are being treated with experimental drugs to prevent birth defects such as homosexuality and non-traditional gender roles.

I feel unsafe. The steps from the desire to prevent to the desire to eradicate what's already here are very small.

As Dan Savage notes: "Gay people have been stressing out about a day arriving when scientists developed treatments to prevent homosexuality ... well, here we are—the day appears to have arrived. Now what are we going to do about it?"

Comments

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

So, the "scourge" of tomboys is being "treated" by this twit, while folks are dying from cancer, or living lives burdened with chronic pain, etc.

Oh, and in Florida no less... What, were they feeling upstaged by Arizona and South Carolina?

I am assuming that you are also following the media hyperventilating of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt's scandalously short hair, love of wearing pants, and eschewing of all things pink and sparkly? Gender police going apeshit over a kid who's age is in the single digits...

This quote had me both rolling my eyes and shuddering:

"That's not fair, as Hanna Rosin at Slate will shortly point out. Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New—of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University—isn't just trying to prevent lesbianism by treating pregnant women with an experimental hormone. She's also trying to prevent the births of girls who display an "abnormal" disinterest in babies, don't want to play with girls' toys or become mothers, and whose "career preferences" are deemed too "masculine."

1) Not interested in kids? Check.

2) Had more Legos, Hot wheels cars, and Playmobil toys than Barbies? Check. (Although my sister and I had a small herd of My Little Ponies)

I've always suspected that I was regarded as a freak of nature by more conservative types... the vindication, while chilling, does settle a few things. As I get older, I am starting to realize what a blessing it was to be born in the "Free to Be You and Me" Era, and just how fleeting that time was.

Is this Dr. New even *vaguely* aware of the Nuremberg Trials? Is she willing to hand over her driver's license, any bank accounts that she has in her own name, her medical degree, and refrain from voting in all future elections? If so, why not?

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt's scandalously short hair,

I hadn't explicitly followed it, though ONTD does appear on my friendsfriends and so I'd by happenstance caught a picture of her in her tomboy mode. I thought little Shiloh rocked the look, and I was happy she was being given the freedom to exercise it. I didn't look at the comments, precisely because of the risk of gender-policing fail as you mention.

I once built a miniature tank (more like an APC, since it didn't have a gun) out of Lego, and I wasn't criticized for masculinity so much as for glorifying violence.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

Oh, in some circles it is a vast smorgasboard of fail. People Magazine ran a story on the issue where they quoted a professional pearl clutcher from one of those American Family Something or other group to speak in dire tones on the subject. Besides which, have these folks ever had to sit a squirmy child down and untangle their hair?

I'm with you; the kid looks happy, and really don't see the point of clothing battles with a kid that young beyond "is it cold out?"