sundries

[rm]

Ho, ho, Chicago vacation approved, which means when Patty and I are in Chicago, I'm actually off the clock, as opposed to working from the hotel and calling in sick to go to a wedding.

Sleeping with the eye-mask is life-changing. Like, when I found out I had celiac disease and stopped eating gluten life-changing. I've always had very bright bedrooms. And now, suddenly I dream, or at least remember them. Oh.

Fun at graduate_maria continues. More items going up tonight! And I'll do a listing of things with one and no bids tomorrow. Check it out, she still really needs our help. Right now we've given her some hope, but the problem really is not solved.

kyburg posts about a legal immigrant who may be deported because of a paperwork snafu and needs a whole lot of help.

So, German with Rosetta Stone continues.

I worry about my ability to retain information. The lessons last night were mostly easy (and I did all of them, pictures, just spoken, practicing my own pronunciation, writing), but then when I tried to tell Patty about them later, I could explain the grammar things I'd figured out (how "ein Junge" seems to become "einem Jungen" when something happens to the boy and how it looks like "ein Madchen" even though you'd think "girl" would be feminine, because kids are gender neutral and therefore default to masculine), but couldn't remember the word for horse or airplane. Although when I woke up this morning I had those back ("ein Pferd" and "ein Flugzeug").

Meanwhile, my pronunciation is way better than my French, right off. I think both because I hear a lot of German and because the sounds I have to make in German are less "bad sounds you are not to make" in terms of English language speech therapy my accent is not terrible. But I'm still sure, probably in a way that's not helping, that I'll never be able to speak the language because I'll always be too ashamed.

As noted last night, the Prop 8 ruling is coming down today. As noted in the comments to that post, it's also quite unlikely that that's the end of this, or will make any marriages start happening again immediately.

I think, sometimes, because LJ can often be an echo-chamber of those we more or less agree with, how fucking hard it is to be gay. It's not just "oh, the laws suck and haven't caught up with reality yet." I have at least two people on my friendslist with profoundly strained relationships with their parents because they are in queer relationships. And I don't mean strained like "but what about grandkids?" I mean strained like making threats, demanding lies, gender-policing, shame, bullying, removal of resources, isolating from friends and family, other abusive behaviors, etc.

And here I am, out and loud and very much not much one for bullshit, but a week doesn't go by where I don't think to myself that when my mother had me in her mid-twenties I bet she never thought her life would look like this: breast cancer and a gay daughter. My parents aren't even mad or disappointed in me, but all I know from living in the world is that I've probably made them sad.

So, do I hate how much of the LGBTQ rights debate has come to rest on marriage when everything form healthcare to employment to housing can be denied to you simply because you're queer? Ayup. In spite of this, does the marketing person in me think the equal marriage rights issue is sensible from a PR perspective and a potential cascade from which all other rights will come? Ayup. Do I remain deeply conflicted because of the way the necessity of mainstream political activism combined with the AIDS crisis basically destroyed and remade the gay community in a totally different image (in your image, straight world, not ours) in just a few decades? Yeah.

But what's done is done, and hopefully soon we can simply live.

(This rant brought to you, in part, by having to explain the AIDS crisis to someone yesterday. I'll take being too young to remember when cashiers were afraid to take your money if you were male and read as gay because there might be AIDS on the dollar bill and people thought you could get it off toilet seats. But "I'm sheltered"? History is not an R-rated movie, and Wikipedia is a totally appropriate starting place but not a primary source. Thanks.)

The downtown mosque has been approved. Racist assholes are still freaking out though. And what the fuck was with the ADL weighing in on this one? And did people miss the part where us Jews aren't the only Semetic people out there? Argh argh argh.

Meanwhile, The New York Times points out of the obvious by saying the labor market is punishing to women. Then, of course, being the New York Times, it comes up with winners like, "Men and women are not identical, of course. Many more women take time off from work. Many more women work part time at some point in their careers. Many more women can’t get to work early or stay late," as if these are all biologically based facts.

Really, I'm starting to even wonder why I read the Times, and that's hard for me to say, as a native New Yorker, an educated person, and a J-school alum.

The Tea Party and 'historical fundamentalism.' (Sometimes this is saying you need to be subscriber, sometimes it isn't - apologies for their annoyingness).

Free-range lawn care and goat rental.

The Piano that Lives in the Hall now has a damaged microscope on it.

I know more things about my tentative Dragon*Con schedule. I've already hit one major conflict. If neither of the panels gets moved by the master scheduler, I'll be pulling off of one of my YA Lit track items (I'll be on others!) in order to give my mourning-related presentation at 8:30pm on Friday on the Anime/Manga track. That is some primetime loveliness. More when I know it, because depsite my typing this, I know nothing.

I completely regret ever linking to that thing about Tom Hardy and whether or not he's had sex with men, since it's keeps changing and won't go away. This is hopefully, yet surely not, the last word on that.

I have read two really good Big Bang fics for the Whoniverse in the last couple of days. I must note, however, that military don't call women "Mum." You're just hearing "Ma'am" in an accent that's unfamiliar to you and you're writing it down wrong. It's a very distracting wrong too. So, you know, FYI. And yes, really, I'm sure.

Confession, I didn't pay enough attention really to White Collar or Covert Affairs last night because Patty had just come home and I was multitasking other things, so I'll need to rewatch both shows.

It occurs to me that part of the problem with the slowly emerging Jack/Auggie fic is we're getting so much new backstory on Auggie every week that I still feel like I am in the middle of a rapidly shifting landscape. But how great was the lie detector scene???? "I have four older brothers, so you'd think I'd learn how to lie." Oh man. Also, still so Jack's type -- tragic past, stubborn beyond what's good for him, thinks he knows better than the folks in charge, keeper of secrets, nice clothes. Also, how much does this CIA remind you of Yvonne Hartman's Torchwood?

Comments

the "we're not just like you" thing

[gement.livejournal.com]

I spent years thinking I wasn't cool enough to be queer.

I knew I liked women. I knew I liked cross-dressing. But I date men a lot more often. I dress straight a lot more often (or at least I used to). I know that, if I lived in a society that didn't make as much space for variance, I'd probably have fit neatly into expected roles without a problem.

I also live in a big gay city with lots of big gay people in it. Really visible gay people. Really visible 'gay culture.' Most of which really isn't my scene because I don't like clubbing and don't get a lot out of environments branded as womens' safe space. To be honest, I was afraid that if I called myself queer or bisexual or somewhere on the trans spectrum, they would tell me I was a poser. It felt like there was a Council of Queerosity that could grant membership cards or club access, and I probably wouldn't get past the bouncer, so I'd better not try.

I was angry and insecure about this for a couple years, and it still flares up for me sometimes. It comes up in other areas of my life, too. It's hard for me, in any context, to see someone blazing with visibility, proclaiming "I'm living large!" without feeling small. For example, I struggle to remember that, when someone publishes a lot of books and says "I'm a writer," they're not saying I'm any less of a writer for not publishing yet or ever, or for only wanting to write one book, or for wanting to write vampire smut instead of literary fiction. They're not saying anything about me at all.

When people say "We're not just like straight people," that's one lens, and "We are just like straight people" is another, and all these things can be true, even for the same person, depending on perspective. I'm very glad the Pride parade I attend every year has the group of men with strollers and toddlers. I'm also very glad it has the pansexual kink club float. (Here's a lens exercise: my sex life is really really not like other people's sex lives in major ways, and it affects my relationships. I am also just like vanilla people in a number of major ways.)

Within 'The GLBT Community' (which consists of anyone with an opinion and is about as coherent as 'The Black Community' or any similar construct), there's a lot of erasure of smaller minorities. Queers of color. Bisexuals and genderfluid people (hi.). People who are kinky and obvious and very sexually active and perceived as standing in the way of the Nice Normal Gays getting acceptance.

Sometimes we need to have a conversation about actual visible or cultural variation being okay. I don't think every such discussion should be prefaced with a disclaimer that we know people without these issues exist too. Obviously people without these issues exist. People without any issue exist. We're not talking about that right now. Does that make sense?

(I'm happy to talk about this more, if you like.)

Re: the "we're not just like you" thing

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

I spent years thinking I wasn't cool enough to be queer.

To be honest, I was afraid that if I called myself queer or bisexual or somewhere on the trans spectrum, they would tell me I was a poser. It felt like there was a Council of Queerosity that could grant membership cards or club access, and I probably wouldn't get past the bouncer, so I'd better not try.

You've pretty much completely nailed how I feel about this stuff, so thanks.

From my perspective, it's really easy for me to get caught up in this stuff because a) I've only really accepted the bisexual label for myself quite recently, and I'm 34, so there's that, plus I'm socially awkward and have a very hard time seeing myself as attractive, so I don't really get out much. So it's very easy for me to feel 'not cool enough' and like I don't have queer 'cred' or something. Which I realize are my own issues, but you really did illustrate them quite well.

Re: the "we're not just like you" thing

[gement.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm glad you found it helpful.