Just Don't Mention Indy

I'm alive!

2009-04-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

So I haven't written owt lately, for this reason:

I've been having a great deal of social FAIL and speech FAIL, so have had to avoid social occasions. This makes me gloomy. I LIKE social occasions and my friends, I just don't know how understanding the average person is with someone sitting next to them and "refusing" to speak - I guess it looks like refusal, because I'm normally Master of the Big Long Words.

So I decided to make a conscious decision not to communicate, because at least then the decision is mine, not that of a random bit of neurological circuitry.

But I'm up for a rant. This might not be the most important thing ever, but it made me rage incoherently (silently, obviously!).

OK. Sometimes I hate my body and face. They make me fucking miserable. I'm convinced that being a freaky trans person means that everyone goes "EWW OH GOD NO MY DEAR SWEET BRAIN" at the thought of having sexual relations with me (this is called internalised transphobia... though I just generally don't like my facial features).

And the media bar for representations of trans people is set so low that it'd make sense to be pleased by anything without the message "trans people are hideous, badwrong, fakes, "really" their assigned gender, really totally badwrong...".

So, a comic that's all about trans men being hot? Because of the above two issues, we should surely shout Hoorah! Or, some of us, Good gods, give me the artist's phone number!

But this one? (Found it here, where nixwilliams already says everything that needs to be said).

I was assigned female. This, combined with our sexist society, means I've been subjected to more objectification by straight men than... than... than something else I've had lots and lots of (yes, perhaps it's a good idea that I don't attempt to use language at the moment).

So, I know what good, consensual objectification feels like, and I know what creepy, unpleasant objectification feels like. This cartoon falls squarely in the second category.

In the last panel, is the author negating the rest of it with humourous self-deprecation? "Look at the ridiculous way my mind works"? That was my last hope. However, if you find her LiveJournal entry concerning the comic... nope.

There's more stuff to rage about the more you look. "They transform their female bodies to pass as male"?

... yes. Yes, that is our ultimate goal. To put on a big performance for everyone else's benefit. Not to feel congruent with our own bodies, or anything - to "pass".

If your irony detector isn't working... that's a giant pile of poo.

Finally, I've come across the comics before. I've liked them. One of my friends has an adorably lovely one up on her wall. I'm disappointed in the author.

Let's put it simply. If I hadn't had sex in fifty years, because Hagrid had fallen under a bus and every single person I'd approached in the meantime had done some version of the "OH GOD NO" thing... if I was desperate for affirmation that I'm not some hideous monstrosity (OK, yes, make that more desperate, be quiet)... if the Government had paid a skywriter to follow me around producing the cloudy sentence "All trans men are hideous and Oliver particularly so" for all to see...

I still wouldn't date/sleep with a tranny-chaser. Because I was assigned female, and have thus had enough of "you're a sex object because of your parts, I am not interested in any objections" (obviously trans women get that a hundred times over - "tranny chaser" originally meant a creepy individual who chases trans women).

In the post by nixwilliams, he's worried that he's merely projecting his Issues on to the comic - heterophobic Issues. It's pretty obvious that he's not, but I need to do the same kind of check - am I simply bitter because everyone around me, apart from Hagrid, thinks trans men are EW GROSS?

In vaguely related news, Hagrid and I are now like all the other queers (queer in the modern British identity sense, though we just don't eat/knit enough lentils for this to be entirely true). We've decided we'd officially be polyamorous if appropriately lovely people wanted to do so. We have plenty of issues (like my not being able to talk, can you tell I'm getting tired of that one?) but relationship-related jealousy is decidedly not one of them. Insert stereotype of male homosexual here.

In other news, I have now seen both Repo! The Genetic Opera and Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (yes. Yes, I am late to the geek party) and have decided that no other genre... hell, no other medium... need exist. From now on, everything needs to be done in melodramatic modern quasi-opera.

For example, the news and weather. Wouldn't life be better then?

2009-03-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard "McJob" used in a derogatory fashion, to indicate a job that requires no qualifications and no skills? How about "stacking shelves" referring to those in a supermarket, intended to put across the same meaning?

Because I couldn't do either of those jobs. I'd be fired within a week - or, if the McDonalds or Tescos or wherever was very desperate, shouted at and complained at and certainly not, like most of my uni friends who have worked in customer service for a while, promoted.

I'd have to consistently understand what strangers said, over a great deal of background noise. I'd have to have reasonable personal organisation. I'd have to be able to remember several simple instructions at once. I'd have to consistently be able to speak, in an appropriate tone of voice, wearing the appropriate facial expressions, or my management would get complaints.

Customer service is one of the few sectors in which one can reliably get temporary jobs. I've sometimes considered doctoring my CV - to remove all my qualifications, so I could begin a "simple" customer service job on the understanding that I have mild mental retardation. Then, perhaps, my behaviour would be accepted. But... I'd still be a student, and they'd have to know that to organise my hours.

Now, all those As and 100%s tell people that, if I act like I'm retarded, I must be doing it on purpose - being annoying, being lazy, being rude, being purposefully dense. Especially as, sometimes, I'll "snap out of it" and give someone five thousand rapid words on philosophy, human evolution, queer theory, Victorian novels... or even tell a relevant joke or anecdote (a joke or anecdote I'm desperately hoping is relevant).

Anyway, this is procrastination before a trawl through the university's jobs website. There might only be one non-customer-service temporary job in the whole city... but it's got to exist, hasn't it?

...right?

Firefly...

2009-02-01T07:21:00.001-08:00

Is the best thing that's ever been on TV, ever. I'd forgotten quite how awesome it is till today.

Go and watch it now.

Feminist hat, engage.

2009-01-18T15:41:00.000-08:00

Now, I look a heck of a lot like my dad. This pleases me, because he was my role model when I was younger (he can't be now, as it's plainer every day that I have inherited none of his skills and talents!).

But the point is, I don't have delicate, feminine features. I have an androgynous body shape. I wear, surprisingly, men's clothing. There is nothing, nothing whatsoever about me that suggests, to someone raised on stereotypes, that I'm into men in any way - unless, of course, they're thinking of me as a man, in which case I might as well have HOMO tattooed on my forehead.

But I still, still, get unpleasant attention from straight cis men. I don't mean attention from unpleasant men, either violence/aggression or suggestive remarks calculated to make me uncomfortable (though, obviously, I've always been different and have always got that). I mean completely inappropriate remarks from men who might be OK as people, or men who I even know are quite nice. Men who are neurotypical and should know better, who have still completely swallowed the dominant meme of THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT YOU IS WHAT YOUR VAGINA AND MY PENIS CAN DO TOGETHER KTHX.

I can't fucking win, as I'm certain that a few of those men have thought, aha, a "woman" who is really weird - "she" must be kinky/a slut/not mind me being rude by some reasoning process that I have not yet perfected or, actually, begun.

(Of course there's nothing wrong with being kinky, a slut or both. Both are often fabulous. I'm merely replicating the "reasoning" process).

So... I absolutely can't imagine what female-assigned individuals who are conventionally pretty, or even beautiful, or simply have large breasts etc. go through every day. In fact, I've seen them deal with it, not committing multiple murder on an hourly basis through acts of sheer willpower and/or resignation.

During my brief femme phase as a teenager (I felt uncomfortable during every second of it, but I felt the social pressure. I thought for a while I'd have to keep it up to keep Hagrid, ha, ludicrous notion in the light of his homosexualist tendencies eh?) some adult male acquaintances were particularly bad. I'd WALK INTO A ROOM that contained them and, say, my parents - I wouldn't have a chance to say or do anything - and there would be a remark about my looks. They really, seriously thought it was "complimentary".

And even lately, some (straight and cis) men have managed to instantly lose all my respect, going from my default of 100% respect to about minus 10%, by a similar immediate "compliment" - even interrupting what I am saying to ensure the "compliment" is immediate.

It's really not so bad for me, as I can say I'M A GUY HAHAHA YOU MUST BE A GAY LOL! and mysteriously watch the "complimentary" tally drop... but for beautiful femmes (of all orientations, obviously) what the hell must it be like?

I guess it's a feminist point, really - even if the sense of entitlement of the men around a woman isn't completely and totally obvious to anyone, in a "yes, rape, fine," way... It can still be very, very destructive to her sense of self-worth.

Hooray, Oliver states the obvious!

Now, my particular problem... because I have the stereotypical autistic grasp of social skills, my current thought often leaves my mouth without my brain interfering. If I think that a woman is attractive, I really DON'T care to act in that creepy fashion, because, logically, she has to deal with more creepy than she'd like, all the time.

I'm sure I often don't get it right, and I'm very, very sorry.

But if I remember to go through that logical process, I decide that the advisable option is that of complete silence until an unrelated thought enters my head.

Y'know, normal men should try that option sometimes.*

*I realise that the rule means I can't make any attempt at flirtation, but I'm REALLY REALLY sure the women of the world can live without me, my poor interpersonal skills and my uninspiring looks (they suit my dad better).

How to make an autistic obsessive-compulsive cry...

2009-01-12T16:23:00.000-08:00

We organised skeletons today, which is a pleasing thing to do. If respectful treatment of human skeletal material is organised from the outset, one rarely has to consider its previous use inside humans (disrespectful treatment means one would have to consider it, to rectify the problem). I just like arranging things correctly, bones included.

I was wrestling with the worst preserved skeleton of the lot. Many of the bones were unrecognisable at first glance, appearing just as bony lumps. And a mean trick was played upon me.

"This is a ball and socket joint. It plainly doesn't belong to a pelvis, but the scapulae are both there."

While someone else was muttering... "This foot has six and a half toes..." I wasn't really paying attention. I was stuck, stuck and unhappy with my outlying chunk of scapula.

It was, finally, the three lower legs that clinched it (and I mean finally, we'd been so desperate to sort the damn thing that the third bone disappeared from our vision entirely for about half an hour).

When I'm in Hell, they'll make me sort things that cannot be sorted.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to make a brief, unrelated public service announcement:

If someone has a female-assigned vagina, and intact "female" reproductive organs, and you have a male-assigned penis and intact "male" reproductive organs, and you place the latter genital into the former with no heed to safer sex...

Small humans can be made.

The gender identity of the vaginaed partner is not important. Neither is their exposure to testosterone. Small humans can still be made.

I'M NOT PREGNANT BTW, this is for a man I spoke to recently, and those like him... I quote.

"I fucked him up the fanny! What? He could WHAT?"

The New Doctor!

2009-01-07T07:43:00.000-08:00

On the day the new Doctor was announced, I asked the nearest person - a ten-year-old girl - "Well, who is it then?"

"A man." said she, then after a pause, "Who is ugly."

After learning that Steven Moffat would be running the show, I didn't much care who played the lead - it could be a turnip. We'd still watch religiously.

But my curiosity was piqued, so I got the name out of her - well, several names - "Mark Smith or Matt Brown or something" - and consulted Google.

It is Matt Smith, a man... who is no, not at all ugly. In any way.

He's got that slightly chiselled/poncey/geek look that, in men, makes me want to introduce them to Mortimer Wheeler (if you don'k know, don't ask, no, really. That's the most delicate euphemism I got).

If we'd known they were considering actors with extensive stage careers but little previous TV stardom, I'm sure a lot of the actors I know would have gone for the job (and their jealous rivals wouldn't have stuck pins in a Doctor Who doll conveniently placed on the agency desk for the purpose, oh no...).

And all the people going OH NOES, how will we believe that a 26-year-old is a 900-year-old Time Lord???!1...

...

...

...oh, never mind.

Either I do more laundry than before...

2009-01-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

Or I own more clothes. I haven't run out of clean stuff and thus had to go to uni in an ancient miniskirt and a pink strappy top labelled "age 11-12" for months now (NOT FUNNY NOT FUNNY AT ALL HONESTLY) ... nor a pyjama top and swimming trunks... nor in regular clothes apart from boxer shorts belonging to Hagrid that have to be held up with several safety pins (he's called Hagrid for a reason) nor with no underwear or socks at all.

However, I did butter my bread with a ladle this morning, having run out of knives... then forks... then spoons... yes.

Now I've systematically dashed all hope in our ability to feed, wash and dress ourselves - because the process can take years and years and years, and we fully expect to come across opposition that is NOT based on our ability or inability to take care of a child, we're probably going to get ourselves on the adoption register by the end of 2011.

Exciting eh, this future planning lark?

More on that dreaded grammatical element...

2009-01-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

A good while ago, I was in a bar with various people, including the first trans woman I had knowingly met. I knew she was trans because someone had told me - no-one would guess from just looking at her. She was tall (but not that tall) thin and pretty.

So there was I, in the same bar, talking with some guys about the different cocktails.

"I like that one, and he likes that one," said one guy, pointing in the woman's direction.

"Who?" said I, completely confused.

"Oops, sorry, she."

There were no bodily cues whatsoever about the woman that might cause a slip of the tongue. Nor was this bloke intending to say something hateful. It's just that he'd known her since before her transition two years before, and was too lazy to pay attention to pronouns.

Now, I've seen the same thing happen to other trans people, and read various accounts online in which the person complains "I transitioned TEN YEARS AGO, I have all the physical characteristics generally assigned to my gender, and people are STILL getting it wrong. When I point it out, they go "Oh, but it's really hard to get it right"!"

So... those hypothetical* non-op transsexuals I mentioned before , who go through the unpleasantness of hormone treatments and surgery just so other people will get it right, not because they have to... well actually, they're screwed, aren't they?

And all those people who say that non-op/no-hormones transsexuals, and transgender people, and genderqueer people, should just make some EFFORT to "pass" and it's UNFAIR!! to expect everybody else to respect them even though they haven't had some surgical procedures...

Well, we knew they were complete morons, but now we have some concrete evidence to prove it, in that what they're suggesting doesn't work.

And another rehash of the "but it's so hard!" thing... It'd odd how I've rarely spoken to a trans person who hasn't had that phrase thrown at them when it comes to pronouns.
Surely it just can't be hard to substitute one small word for another, when both of which are equally pronounceable with the human mouth (or hands)? Here are some uses of the word "hard" that I don't find completely puzzling (the word does have a wide range):

It's hard to complete this piece of academic work that is appropriate to, or higher than, my level of study.
It's hard for me to fix a car engine, because I only have the faintest idea how they work.
It's very hard for someone with depression to complete everyday tasks.
It's extremely hard for someone whose family have all been blown up by a bomb to complete everyday tasks.

Is this an autism thing, where I take a word or phrase too literally? Or am I right, and is the usage truly peculiar?

(A confession - they're not so hypothetical, actually. I might be one of them, I might not. Anyway, I bet the poor bastards exist)

This kind o'stuff...

2008-12-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

Is why a large chunk of the population avoid religious matters altogether.

Here we go... (I've cluttered up the comments with my shock at that behaviour).

When a Christian is bereaved, and writes a piece about it online, do atheist bloggers (not anonymous trolls, real people) comment with "Look, there is no afterlife. NO AFTERLIFE."?

No. Because, you see, that would be no place to discuss theology or politics.

I don't care if the comment was intended to be "friendly" or "helpful". What comes across instead? "Ah, this agnostic woman feels vulnerable and unhappy. I'll get her converted while she's mentally too weak to resist."

As a regular reader of that blog, that commenter is perfectly aware that my dead grandfather was an atheist. He raged against religious indoctrination and cruelty until he died (if anyone's interested, for him the main issue was how religion is used to keep oppressed people down - y'know, the whole message of "all things bright and beautiful" etc.).

I know many, many very good people of many faiths. It's a cliche, I know, but I don't want to bash all religion (here my grandfather and I would part ways, he did!).

But now, you see, he is DEAD. And my mother is bereaved.

On various Trans Day of Remembrance threads on the interwebs, someone always turned up to argue issues of feminist and queer theory.

That behaviour was wrong, and this behaviour is also wrong. I'm aware it is the interwebs, free speech and all that, but you wouldn't do it in a conversation.

Changing History

2008-12-26T14:56:00.000-08:00

I'm probably the last Terry Pratchett fan to read his newest novel, Nation. It's not a Discworld, this one, and it gives free rein to the darker topics that one can really only touch upon in comic novels.

And I'm not sure if Pratchett intended this reaction, but the happy ending almost broke my heart.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ALERT!

He uses his "parallel universes get out of jail free card" for good reason here. The British Empire is at its height when a flu outbreak wipes out a great deal of important people, leaving a good, intellectual, unhappy, unprepared man as the King of England.

He's not, really, central to the story, though. A storm that wrecked the ship which carried his young daughter has also killed nearly every inhabitant of an island chain that is not located in the Pacific Ocean, no, not at all.

A young boy travels home to find his whole Nation dead. The voices of his ancestors ring in his ears, and he knows that he must keep the Nation going. He is now a chief, caring for the survivors that wash up on his shore.

Because this is a novel, the young girl is also alive, washed up on the same island.

I won't spoil the intricate plot in the middle. The King has, of course, been searching for his daughter. When they are reunited, she immediately becomes angry at the behaviour of his entourage. Turning up like that with flags and guns, insulting her friends! Treating them like they're "savages"!

And the King of England... listens. He teaches the surviving islanders cricket, with which they are less than impressed, and admires their ancient artefacts. He's not able to stay the tide of colonialism by himself, but is able to... manipulate the situation to give the people the best possible chance (at his daughter's suggestion - she has inherited his brains*).

The people tell him which trappings of "civilisation" they would like, and which they decidedly would not. On their terms.

The world isn't a fairytale. From most English characters comes the applicable bucketloads of racist hate and disdain. But at the end of the book, I was supposed to be concentrating on the two main characters... but I was almost crying, wondering if history could have gone that way in this universe, with someone in a seat of imperial power deducting from empirical evidence that brown people are people...

Incidentally, as far as I, a white person, can judge, Terry Pratchett definitely "gets" issues of race. Also, I am female-assigned, and I know that he's truly brilliant when discussing sexism. I love a certain passage in Men at Arms in which Vimes, the grumpy protagonist (I'm sure any similarities to the author are entirely coincidental) gets stuck at a dinner table with a lot of rich, powerful people. The topic turns to... immigration.

They begin their usual slightly racist (speciesist, fantasy world) ranting... and he has fun egging them on until their real, appalling opinions emerge. They don't suspect a thing.

"You know," Vimes shook his head, "you know, that's what's so damn annoying, isn't it? The way they can be so incapable of any rational thought and so bloody shrewd at the same time."

*In a scenario that is not racist, I shan't give away the joke that explains why it isn't a racist depiction, a cannibal is impressed enough to express a wish to eat them.

The most offensive thing you'll read this decade...

2008-12-18T05:48:00.000-08:00

Don't look at this article if you're having lunch. You'll lose your appetite pretty quickly.

A synopsis: Kid with Asperger's has been shot dead by his father. Lots of other autistic kids are killed by their parents. It's such a shame that these children have autism, which makes their parents kill them.

I was going to write something blackly comic about it, but I just can't.

Parts of it, yes - "Jacob Grabe, 13, could sense a storm coming several days out. He would get agitated and make strange noises. Silverware bothered him. He could eat only from plastic forks and spoons. He breezed through complicated algebra but struggled with basic division." Oh no!! He must die!!!!1

Nope, I can't even laugh here. Because Oh no, he must die is what his own father thought, and this journalist totally empathises with that thought process, like it's a logical one that people often go through.

I want to rewrite part of the article, in fact, to make it more respectful (well, it could hardly be less respectful). However, this piece about a murdered child doesn't really bother talking about the child. So, I've nothing to go on - I can't put "Jacob Grabe, 13, loved computer games and detective novels" because I've no idea what his interests were.

Jacob Grabe: RIP.

The other children mentioned, whose names the author doesn't bother with (I'm aware that the little girl was called Katie McCarron): RIP.

And here's an idea that should be common sense:

Say you're planning to have children. If you think you'll "snap" if they are neurologically atypical - DON'T BOTHER. Introduce yourself to the humble condom or contraceptive pill.

If you're ever likely to shoot a child, suffocate them or burn them to death because they are disabled, please shoot yourself instead, before you have time to breed. It is YOU "society" should reject, it is YOU who shouldn't be "mainstreamed".

Signed: Oliver, an autistic guy who will also, actually, never be able to live a "normal life" but has NOT been shot by either of his parents. Crazy world, eh?

Questions...

2008-12-17T08:23:00.000-08:00

Is there an equivalent, for any other group of people, to pronoun slips for trans people? Something that is not necessarily purposeful, but can be purposeful, and pops up in every single conversation?

Because I can't imagine somebody who really does care about somebody else, say, a overweight person who's sensitive about their appearance, talking like this:

"Catherine, who is a lard-arse, went to work today, and she's got a fucking massive arse, and she got some difficult calls from customers, god, she's fat and ugly, and then she went home".

And, once one person doesn't bother to use the right pronoun, it infects other people, and the trans person is immediately totally undermined -

"What did that hideous gargantuan woman do after that?"

Is there an equivalent? Of course, people from every marginalised group have to face racism, or ableism, or whatever continously - but from people who truly care about them? And even from people who understands, to whatever extent that is possible, what it's like to be them?

I also want to know - what proportion of post-hormones, post-op transsexuals are really no-hormones, no-op transsexuals who were just desperate not to have that discomfort and pain in every. single. conversation?

A River in Egypt

2008-12-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

My mum has written the definitive post about my grandfather. I still can't really be upset that he's dead, because both he and I were aware of the impossibility of the concept. My grandfather was immortal.

He projected an air of immortality wherever he went - from his "I'm king of the world" pose in photographs, to his undisguised contempt for "old codgers", most of whom were a decade or so younger than him.

I remember thinking Hagrid ludicrously naive when he gently suggested that my grandfather might not, actually, live to be a hundred.

In conclusion, it's equally ludicrous now that everyone's saying he's "dead". I saw his body, of course, to check - but they'd shaved off his beard just before I last saw him alive, so it looked nothing like him (he hated his face without hair, I have no idea why he consented to the procedure).

Now I'm thinking about it, this might be considered the "denial" stage of grief. Er... NO IT ISN'T.

Joyful Fun

2008-12-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

So today, I went to the doctor's and talked about getting referred to a GIC (note that I said neither "saw a doctor" nor "got referred to a GIC").

I ALREADY have a pounding headache created by bureaucratic fools. This headache will be permanent for a few years, I guess.

My grandfather is dead. I'll write a coherent post about him later.

We're a family of Jewish atheists. Did we take the ashes home from the funeral? Nope. We took home all the extra food and lived on it for two days.

Half-formed thoughts about Bad Things

2008-12-03T13:21:00.000-08:00

Currently, I've been thinking about how people cope with stress and trauma. My grandfather is currently in hospital and failing to respond to treatment, and I just hope that my grandmother isn't behaving the way she normally does when there's a problem (I can't go and see him, because I've got full-blown flu, which would kill off him and half the ward in an instant). I hope she's not being REALLY REALLY EXTRA CHEERFUL and totally dismissive of everyone's concerns - that's what generally happens, and that upsets him (he's unconscious now, so actually I don't suppose it matters).

"My head has fallen off."

"Nonsense! Buck up, you'll be fine!"

My grandmother refuses to read books, or to watch films, that might be at all sad in any way. Now, this coping method is pretty bad on its own - but where does it leave her when something happens that she can't ignore? Does she go completely crazy? I don't actually know the answer to that one, not having been alive at the deaths of her parents.

Note that I'm coping with this situation by mainly ignoring it - that's simply because I can't get my mind to believe it. The doctors have said "Your grandfather is going to die" before, and they've reached that conclusion by grossly underestimating his physical and mental strength.

What about coping with traumatic events in the past? Well, my grandmother "dealt" with that one by not telling anybody about it, until she finally snapped and told the nearest person, who was an eleven-year-old child. Who wasn't allowed to tell anyone how freaked out he was by the revelation, because it was a secret.

Again, not so good.

For people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and for some people without, there's the issue of triggers - situations or sensations that cause you to recall the event. If it were possible, you'd cope while avoiding these altogether.

However, it's my understanding that, sometimes, you can't really predict when you'll be triggered. Say you were in a car accident that killed your friend - no-one has to mention death, or car accidents, or your friend's name, because somebody who's just shaken your hand at a party is wearing the same strong aftershave as the paramedic who pulled you out of the wreckage.

And that's why a lot of people with post-traumatic stress seem to be coping extremely well - firstly, maybe they can keep a calm detachment when the incidents are mentioned, because words don't necessarily register on that visceral level, and secondly - well, in a way it's all or nothing, isn't it? If you can't predict when something will trigger you, you can't avoid it; you just become an excellent liar in your non-verbal communication.

(These are things that I've learned from talking to people with PTSD and people who wouldn't be diagnosed with it, but have suffered trauma. I don't know anything else about PTSD, please correct me if I say something completely wrong.)

So... my conclusion to this part? I'll try more to ignore irrational-appearing behaviour, I guess, and not treat people like they're insane when they do "go off on one". Actually, I generally do that anyway - everything other people do is equally incomprehensible.

I realise that most people have suffered severe trauma. Get any group of people in a room, somehow get them to trust one another, and you'll hear some awful stories (especially if those people are women/female assigned, because they have the more hideous side of reproduction to deal with, and of course they're more likely to have been raped).

I say that so I can mention that none of what I would consider the more terrible things have happened to me. I'm not trying to compare my experiences to those of those people, and I'm not going to tell you what I'm talking about. In the scheme of things, it's not important enough for anyone to pursue it.

I am triggered by two things that I know of. One is fairly easy to avoid entirely, and another is everywhere - but, here's the key thing, most normal people slightly dislike it. Like the reformed Discworld vampire who knows that "I'd kill for a cup of coffee" is part of common parlance, I can say "Egad, that's so annoying!"

Of course, that can backfire. On many occasions (actually, it happened a few days ago!) I can say "Egad, that's so annoying!" and lots of other people can agree (Hagrid always does, and he has no idea what happens in my head... well, I guess he does now). However, the perpetrator(s) can then say "Lol! You're all irritated! I'm in a happy and childish mood, so I'm gonna do it some more!!!" which is the kind of humour I'd enjoy (anyone seen that comic by the trans guy that proclaims "Failed to Mature"?) on any other occasion.

So, I'm thinking that... if you're reminded of the Bad Things all the time in daily life... facing them head-on might, counterintuitively, be easier than trying to avoid all related subjects. Because the related feelings appear anyway.

That's probably the conclusion that every mental health professional in the world has come to with ease, but meh. I'm going to ignore it, as I'm sure most people do (just not on the same level I described earlier).

You can probably tell that I'm only typing this because I've nothing else to do - too sick to get up. And very feverish, as you can also probably tell. This wandering train of thought actually started with the Worst Film Adaptation of a Novel Ever Made in the History of Cinema, the film of Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights" (the film has a different, goddamned stupid, title, as I'm sure you know).

If you haven't read the books, fine - go and rent the DVD. You'll think it was a reasonable film.

If you have read them, spend an entertaining hundred minutes chewing off your own ears, instead. It will be infinitely less painful.

This cinematic travesty (how is it even possible to hire Nicole Kidman and Ian McKellen! and get something that shite?) is relevant because the story has been systematically stripped of all negativity. Dead child? No, no dead children allowed here, sorry. But the dead child is absolutely vital to the story... quick, play the saccharine music and hope nobody notices that there is now no story!

There's a hideously, appallingly mutilated child, too. That one is even more vital... OK, let's show him for precisely four seconds, with no relevant reactions from any other characters, and move on, and ensure that the film has no atmosphere whatsoever, because then no-one will care about him anyway - LOOK AT OUR CGI!!

My grandmother would certainly enjoy watching that film. But I don't understand what would make it entertaining. The bad guys don't do anything... bad. Well, nothing we can take seriously. So... why are the good guys after them, again? Is it because creepy music plays whenever the bad lady appears, thereby giving them a clue?

By the end of that gloriously cheerful cinematic romp, I'd completely separated its characters from those in the novel, and wouldn't have batted an eyelid if the whole lot of them had exploded.

In fiction, Bad Things musn't be underestimated.

Kamelot...

2008-11-26T03:12:00.000-08:00

... are a great big heap o' fabulous.

I want to write a post about the National Identity Register and its corresponding ID cards, but so frustrated can't construct sentences WORST IDEA IN HISTORY OF UNIVERSE argh.

Trans Day of Remembrance

2008-11-19T09:20:00.000-08:00

It's International Trans Day of Remembrance tomorrow.

(Incidentally, I'm trying to black out this blog for that very reason). Embarrassingly, the top part just will not comply. Can somebody tell me how to do it?)

The list of names for this year:

Kellie Telesford

Brian McGlothin

Gabriela Alejandra Albornoz

Patrick Murphy

Stacy Brown

Adolphus Simmons

Fedra ?

Ashley Sweeney

Sanesha Stewart

Lawrence King

Simmie Williams Jr.

Luna ?

Lloyd Nixon

Felicia Melton-Smyth

Silvana Berisha

Ebony Whitaker

Rosa Pazos

Juan Carlos Aucalle Coronel

Angie Zapata

Jaylynn L. Namauu

Samantha Rangel Brandau

Ruby Molina

Aimee Wilcoxson

Duanna Johnson

Dilek Ince

Teish Cannon

Ali ? and two other women, names unknown

I didn't want to talk about "cause of death" and "age at death" in this post. These people, mainly young women from ethnic minorities, were not born to be murdered. They had personalities, friends, families, interests and passions.

I could link to the few cases in which we have information about one of these people as an individual, but it's always an addendum in a piece about their deaths.

So, all we have is their names. In the cases of most such victims, we don't have even those.

Sometimes, I fantasise that I could be allowed near these people's killers, with a weapon. Any weapon. The murderer of Kellie Telsford is walking free around London...

But the answer doesn't lie that way.

Just... remember.

Stephen Fry in America

2008-11-19T02:38:00.000-08:00

I'm full of busy, so this one will have to be quick...

Anybody been watching "Stephen Fry in America"?

I think it was the last episode wherein we saw working-class American families eating at soup kitchens along with the homeless, because an ordinary 9-to-5 no longer pays even the grocery bill.

In the same episode, we saw a bunch of millionnaires wittering on about how socialised healthcare and other such things were BadWrong, because charity! and the trickle-down effect! could fix everything perfectly - and one simply needed to ostracise other rich folk who didn't contribute enough to Good Causes. Send 'em to Coventry.

...?

...oh, never mind.

My parents are travelling to the US this week. Because they've got a bit of nouse, they're aware that they'll only see the shiny happy parts. So they won't come home going "Everything's so BEAUTIFUL! And new! And the people are all so polite and welcoming! And we need to move there right now!!!" like I've heard so many deeply stupid white, wealthy, able-bodied tourists do.

On the end of that episode - it's sad that the American Dream still thrives, in a way. At least, the part about the streets being paved with gold. Those people were willing to die for the chance to enter the US - and plenty of them do, every day.

As Hagrid put it - "They want to sponge off the state! And get all the free... um... er... never mind."

I'm sure the tax dollars used to maintain that big fuckin' border fence could pay for a lot of life-support machines or schoolbooks. And if the authorities let in every Mexican in Mexico, and those people thus learned that their choice was between living in poverty in their homeland and living in poverty somewhere else (with added racial discrimination!) they'd soon go away again.

Oliver's Solution To Our Own Immigration "Crisis" will have to wait for another post, if those wishy-washy liberals won't let him simply do a swap - we'll have all the world's asylum seekers and economic migrants if it takes our Sun readers, fox-hunters, traffic wardens, the BNP, Julie Bindel, bankers and... y'know, child murderers and stuff.

Deal, world? Didn't think so.

On another political note, I'm getting into the anti-choice (sorry, pro-life-until-birth-after-which-who-gives-a-fuck?) mindset. I'm currently LRP-ing a pro-life Catholic French minister. While that sounds like lols all by itself, I know, the setting is a world troubled by zombies.

But they're not zombies! They're unfortunate victims of a psychosomatic illness, whom I'm sure can be cured with a little effort! We must keep every single one of them well and happy (Hagrid made the character, as you can tell if you've ever come across any of his more tiresome ones).

Politics

2008-11-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, I know, one can blog about politics.

Whether one of my best friends excommunicates me or not, I might have to start voting Lib Dem.

Actually, look carefully at the alternatives. The only thing that would have stopped my becoming an ardent Lib Dem supporter is if, when Nick Clegg turned up at the university on Thursday, was if he had said "Hello, Oliver. I'm going to break into your house tonight and eat your cat".

If you actually listen to the man, you'll find out that he's a proper old-style socialist, with some caveats - caveats that I appreciate.

But the man can say what he likes, because nobody listens, anyway...

It's teatime!

Zombies!

2008-11-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

I think that our culture is so media-saturated, we now all live our lives backwards. We went to a most enjoyable, and extremely peculiar, party last night... and we spent half of it discussing what headlines would be written if our campus media got the wrong end of the stick (there was only one sofa and about thirty people, so it was a bit of a squash).

I like "President in Five-Hour Halloween Orgy With Transsexual" best. He pointed out that his reputation would probably be greatly increased.

Now, what made this party peculiar? I hear you cry.

Well, the hostess had brought in a student of landscape gardening - who had landscape-gardened the living room. The floor was now a real lawn, and there was a beautiful shrine and grave (those of the teenage years of our hostess, who had just turned 20).

I really have nothing to blog about atm. I'm lacking inspiration on the serious stuff. I could post a picture of my new tattoos when they're healed, I guess. I'm going to go and play Zombie Fluxx now.

Foot... ball?

2008-10-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

Right, David Mitchell can have his own category.

In some ways, I've grown up into a slightly shorter replica of my dad. In this particular, minor, way, we both pour a great deal of bile and contemptuous scorn into the word "football" - enunciating both its syllables, Foot. Ball.

Though my dad was actually on a school sports team, which would have been pretty much unthinkable for me. I can't quite look back at school P.E. and laugh yet - it's more looking back and screaming "Nononono make the memories stop I beg for a swift death".

And remember, I played with the girls! Well... I'm not sure that you can call them "girls", more "enraged she-beasts from the Book of Vile Darkness who've been handed blunt instruments and then cheered on in their bloodshed". If I'd had to share sports lessons with the other boys, I wouldn't be alive to write this.

Menstruation? It does rather jar with my sense of self, but I'm glad that the sports teachers never kept track of my menstrual cycle. Eight periods a month is probably not the ordinary number.

I guess the attendant anaemia would have explained my height and weight...

Anyway, come on, people. Give me a positive view of sport. One that doesn't recall me having my head trodden into freezing mud.

It's going to look like YOUR FACE.

2008-10-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

Hey, real people have been commenting on this here thing. And I hadn't noticed. Ahoy there.

And I got my first insulting anonymous comment a few posts back, w00t.

Anyway, I has mostly been... worrying, because my marks this term have to be decent. And wondering if I ought to improve my idiosyncratic French, because I have just got to go and study some Upper Palaeolithic cave art in the flesh... paint... at some point.

Anyway, my rant of the day. I'm aware that we're having a global economic recession, sorry, "downturn" and that there are bigger issues out there, but this is my blog.

People who meet a tattooed individual, then trot out the cliche: "What's that going to look like when you're 80?"

Now, that doesn't annoy me because I've got tattoos. Nor does it annoy me on the behalf of others who do. The general response is a lighthearted "Fuck off, when I'm 80 I'll probably be in a wheelchair or dead; if a blobby tattoo is my biggest worry, my whole life is gonna be one giant party."

Of course, I'd say the same - but the topic, in all seriousness, is upsetting. I'm insulted, on the behalf of every 80-year-old in the country who finds themselves with another new physical disability every day, and every 80-year-old in the country who is in constant, debilitating pain.

The people asking that question are never, ever elderly themselves. And they're able-bodied enough to wander the streets being rude to people. They've never, ever considered what life might be like for the very old - they prefer to make jokes about their possible appearance.

Here's a classic case - my own grandfather, though something similar will happen to every one of us:

My grandfather can't walk any more. Because he had to have one leg amputated, an operation that had to happen under local anaesthetic, because a general anaesthetic would have killed him (yes, I realise that many women have caesarean sections under local - and that's just another type of bodily trauma that these appearance-obsessed people, who seem never to have encountered it, can ignore). He's blind in one eye, but has to lie with the working eye facing the wall because the appropriate side of his body gets too painful (he can't sit for long, for the same reason). He can't wash or dress himself, and has to use a catheter. Imagine how dignified that must make him feel.

So... in answer?

AWFUL. It's going to look awful. So, because tattoos start fading from the very beginning, I'm going to hide in a hole for the rest of my life, because my precious, precious looks are irreversibly damaged - because unattractive things and people shouldn't be seen in public. And when you're 80, and you still meet every stupid standard of beauty in the world and are also perfectly physically fit, because that seems to be what you're expecting, you can drop by my hermit-cave and laugh at me.

Edit: That's odd: I was thinking about tattoos and unconscious ageism, and don't have time to rant about the sexist vitriol directed at tattooed women - an awesome blogger read my mind and wrote one for me, today.

Eeeeee!

2008-10-21T03:39:00.000-07:00

http://xkcd.com/491/

That is all.

Masculinity fail

2008-10-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

The comments for my fieldwork last term pointed out that "Oliver found the physical aspects of the work demanding, and he had some absences through illness" - egad, can I get a disclaimer already, for all the eminent archaeologists that see them and mock what they assume to be a particularly wussy cis boy???

"Incidentally, Oliver has XX chromosomes and weighs less than 120lb whatever he eats, and YES WHILE HIS CATEGORY IS CERTAINLY WITH THE BLOKES, doesn't feel that the comparison of physical strength that people are now going to make is necessarily fair. Many of his absences were owing to migraines, which he gets at certain points in his menstrual cycle, OK??? He has the body and constitution of a consumptive Georgian romantic heroine or an elven princess, all right? If you want to fight over this issue, he'll gladly... erm..."

Also, if you're trans masculine at all, you really don't want to come out to my supervisor - his attitude isn't the problem, he's been bloody wonderful - but he might make you feel rather inadequate. "Hello, Oliver, I'll be with you in a minute. I've got to move fifty pianos with my left hand, demolish a skyscraper with my right, father two children (with the obvious parts) and open some beer bottles with my teeth."

OK, he might never have said that in so many words. But his superhuman strength is admired throughout the department, and he really doesn't understand the concept of illness. I reckon he thinks it's a fiction invented by heartless capitalists.

Anyway... I think I'll post a more light-hearted take on the toilet issue, as the only other option is to stab people in the head with rage.

So, I use the Gents, unless I'm in a dodgy place where it seems less than safe to do so. I miss the cameraderie of the Ladies'. WHY don't other men talk while they're having their pees?

And WHY do they always go alone? It's not just homophobic men not wanting to seem gay, or gay men not wanting to be stabbed - men in gay bars do it too!

It's not a secret mission. Everybody can guess where you're going.

Welcome Week

2008-10-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

According to Sarah and D, two Warwick freshers have died this week. Of alcohol poisoning.

Up here, our teetotal SU president is trying to make introductory events less like compulsory drinking contests.

And people are COMPLAINING. Apparently all the fun!!! of Freshers' Week!!! (now renamed Welcome Week) is all gone!!!

FUCK OFF.

That is all.

We won't inherit the Earth, whatever my bumper sticker said. The Earth is full of twats.

2008-10-15T03:42:00.000-07:00

Battybattybats' writings on the fabulousness that is the Goth subculture makes me want to write an elegy for my other much-maligned cultural family - that of the geek.

However, I'm feeling snarky, rather than poetic - or, indeed, elegiac (?). So, I'm going to start by aggressively debunking the main myth that is associated with geeks/nerds/whatevers - as suggested in this week's copy of our student rag, Vision.

Apparently, our freakish hobbies and interests exist only to soothe our troubled souls - troubled, because we simply don't get laid enough.

That latter part might, indeed, be the case - until our sample geek reaches 18 and leaves high school!

After that, ze gets laid ABSOLUTELY ALL THE TIME. If ze so wishes - a fairly large proportion of us are on the asexuality spectrum somewhere - meaning, O Vision writer, that they're not trying.

Oh yes - and in my sample of geeks, i.e. those at my university, threesomes/foursomes/etc. seem to be more common than average.

We rarely get laid out of our tribe, yes - but the thought of sleeping with the average person generally leaves us cold. Bear with me, said Vision writer, and say we're in a parallel universe in which every "normal" student suddenly WANTS US BADLY. Let's try it with both sexes -

Male Student: Let's have sexual intercourse (yes, I realise that non-geeks are less direct, but I can't replicate what they actually do).
Geek: OK, but we'd better have at least half a conversation first. What do you think of (insert obscure film/book/mathematical equation)?
Male Student: I am amazing. Listen to my immense sense of entitlement and vastly inflated sense of self-worth. I like football.
(In the unlikely event that Geek is still horny, ze wanders off and masturbates).

Female Student: Let's have sexual intercourse (see disclaimer above).
Geek: OK, but we'd better have at least half a conversation first. What do you think of (insert obscure film/book/mathematical equation)?
Female Student: I am amazing. Listen to my immense sense of entitlement and vastly inflated sense of self-worth. I like shoes.
(In the unlikely event that Geek is still horny, ze wanders off and masturbates).

Sorry about the binary examples, there - but most of the genderqueers I've met are fellow geeks. Heck, "geek" is a gender.

Incidentally, we also build more lasting relationships. Take a look at the average online forum dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons, MUDs, Terry Pratchett, whatever (No, someone is not a geek just because they play bloody World of Warcraft. They might simply be emulating the worst aspects of the subculture).

Anyway, you'll see so much evidence of marriages, civil partnerships, and every other kind of committed relationship.

I'm an autistic geek, so I am one of those few that do have problems getting laid (see my last post but one). But even I've managed it a respectable few times, and I'm in a great relationship.

I believe it's fitting to end with a Discworld quote.

Vision writer, and all your ilk; I think you have something wrong with your head.

I think it's stuck up your bum.

(I know I've let the side down by not finding the exact quote, but tough.)

Prophecies

2008-10-12T12:53:00.001-07:00

Hagrid decided that, today, we would go and visit Mother Shipton's Cave in Knaresborough. The borderline-illiterate signs and museum displays were filled with spookiness and lots of "ooooh... some of her prophecies came true... ooooh" which was thoroughly enjoyable.

Sadly, the Internets tell me that they've been fairly selective, so as to heighten the atmosphere. Here's the big one that wasn't mentioned anywhere:

The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.

FAIL. You really have no idea how disappointed I am.

I became a geek...

2008-10-10T13:55:00.000-07:00

So that I wouldn't have to talk to people. I could talk to dragons and things instead. In my head.

But what's the most common geek pastime nowadays? Online multiplayer RPGs.

So you have to talk to fucking THOUSANDS of people! A normal person's social life actually involves fewer of 'em.

I'm off to drink alcohol! in a place of revelry! with fellow humans! then.

Edit - oh yes, people at university are fairly accommodating of my autistic self. Someone who knows about our stance on extra-marital shenanigans, and about my communication difficulties, came up to me yesterday and just said "I would like to have sex with you."

Good! I understand that! If you'd flirted with me for hours, I just would have stared at you like an anthropologist witnessing a tribal ritual that ze finds utterly foreign, then I'd have wandered off.

"Now?" I asked, because the statement wasn't specific enough.

"Not now, because I'm busy, but at some point in the next few months."

Ladies, gentlemen and genderqueers, we have conversation with no subtext, no hidden agenda and no idioms! Yes, I know I'm Mister Subtext and Idioms when the communication is written, my Literature A-Level marks attest to that... but I need a bit of time to figure them out in speech. By "a bit of time" I mean "two solid minutes to sit with my mouth open in a foolish way".

I know that my pathetic tally of sexual conquests could be because I'm ugly as fuck, but there is this aspect as well - I have only slept with people who gave a statement exactly like the one above.

And, of course, most of the people willing to be that blunt are random creepy drunk men covered in vomit stains, or similar, who, y'know, I've turned down. Apparently, nice people don't tend to be so direct.

I mean, I've ignored lines like "Shall we have sex?" because... well, how should I know? I'm just getting this "theory of mind" thing, so I've only just understood that your thoughts aren't the same as mine... and now you want me to read them?

Anyway, I met another person last night, who also seemed to speak without any of the peculiarities that make up normal conversation. When something bad was mentioned, he said "Oh dear," in a heartfelt way. At every "Oh dear," Hagrid and I simultaneously thought "We love you. We damn well hope you're gay, because we want you to have our babies and live with us forever".

More insights into the world of autism, that eeevil disease that eats away YOUR CHILD leaving an EMPTY SHELL, no, wait, it doesn't.

Final edit (info from Lisa Harney) - Apparently Stonewall (you know, that charity supporting rich white cisgendered gay men, yes?) is honouring Julie FUCKING Bindel. Yup, that Julie Bindel. Not a different Julie Bindel, who isn't a crazed raving fucking bigot, but the more well-known one... who is.

I'm going to write a piece for the Mail that says "Well, the Pakis and the spastics should all be shot, but the gays... they're lovely!" and see if I get honoured too.

Manga Ollis

2008-10-08T12:34:00.000-07:00

OK, so a couple of years ago, I looked like this:

Now, I look like this:

Hagrid has pretty much continuously looked like this (which is, of course, how he gets the pseudonym - particularly from the small child that pointed and yelled "Look Mummy, it's Hagrid"*):

I guess that for him, as a pansexual (who has never been entirely out, in case his mother goes OH NO, I RAISED *TWO* OF THEM**??? and cries, but I'm very sure she doesn't read this), the variety has been pleasing. He's had the depressed femme and the comparatively cheerful androgynous man: now he just needs someone resembling an Uruk-hai for balance.

No can do, I'm afraid.

Well, making those was some time I'll never get back...

*Actually, he resembles Hagrid in personality, too - yup, entirely. You guys, I'm doing Hagrid!

**My queer-theory-sense is tingling... his (out) sister is bi- rather than pansexual, because she only likes men and women.

Surprise!

2008-10-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

I think, in a few months' time, I'm going to surprise Hagrid.

I hope he likes the surprise - if not, I'm screwed.

O yes, my mum reads this - NO, I'm not bloody pregnant! Not as far as I know, anyway. There are no twins (she always says "is it twins?" whenever I look the least bit worried).

Entrenched stereotypes

2008-10-08T05:07:00.000-07:00

Obviously, people see what they expect to see. Obviously, if someone has been fed the stereotype of black men being scary, dangerous, criminals, etc. they will remember and recount the ethnicity of the mugger when a young black man steals their wallet, and forget about race altogether when they're recounting their other three muggings by young white men.

And obviously, they won't remember the race of the black man who holds the door open for them, smiles nicely at them in the street, etc.

(I was thinking of that particular example because I've had too many accounts like that from white people, recently - "This BLACK man assaulted me" vs "These men assaulted me" and "I thought he was going to attack me because he was black, and then he did" - well, yes, but also NO! logic FAIL! you eejit.

Anyway, this insightful post reminded me that, in the case of stereotypes about trans people, the need for many of us to pass as non-trans adds an extra layer of difficulty.

The post points out the doublethink inherent in social attitudes to trans women - that all trans women can somehow be hilariously obvious "men in dresses", AND "deceptive" enough in their exact "portrayal" of femininity to "trick" nice young men.

The second concept is more dangerous than the first, of course - it ensures that trans women are murdered, and their killers get off with a slap on the wrist. It gives an excuse to deny trans women employment, etc.

However, the first stereotype ensures that trans women are mocked and ridiculed.

Of course, if a trans woman passes as non-trans, it's impossible to tell that she is trans. That's... kind of the point. So, the first stereotype continues - the average person has only noticed trans women who, in their eyes, look "humorous."

We need to get rid of this concept that a male-assigned person in female-assigned clothing is inherently funny. I'm not sure how, in real terms, we manage that - ban humourous drag shows? Banning things is generally not the way to go...

But anyway, less seriously, it made me laugh how tenaciously stereotypes, particularly this one, hang on. I went on a trip, to an undisclosed location, with a cis male friend and a friend who is a trans woman. This cis male friend has been known to act with even less tact than myself. Therefore, a while before the trip, I said to him "You might notice that my friend is trans. Please, please don't say anything incredibly appalling. Kthx."

Although this particular trans woman passes as non-trans, she didn't seem too bothered about people knowing on this occasion, or perhaps she just assumed that everyone did. So when we were in our little group, she talked about her obstinate stubble, not being able to take off her trousers because she hadn't packed more forgiving undergarments, how she'd been on hormones for enough time to compete in the Olympics, had she wanted to do so... And throughout the trip, my cis male friend, indeed, said nothing incredibly appalling.

On the final day, I was with that friend, and I was talking about something to do with trans... ness, I forget what. "It's like this for me, but for some trans women like *name of trans woman friend*, it's..."

Whereupon, my cis male friend stared with eyes like saucers. "She's trans???"

She just didn't look enough like a hairy lumberjack in a frock, it seems. Thus, the evidence of his own ears could be discounted.

A very short Sexism 101

2008-10-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

This is Professor Ben Barres, a neuroscientist at the prestigious Stanford University.

According to a colleague, "His work is much better than his sister's."

Professor Barres, oddly, doesn't have a sister who is also a neuroscientist at the prestigious Stanford University. If he does, she hasn't been seen since he turned 40, when he started injecting the testosterone...

Right, left, upper and below.

2008-10-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

My book on Palaeolithic art considers scrapping a hypothesis about cave art's educational use, because some of its scenes "can't" have been observed or copied properly.

Why? Because animals that are "quite clearly male" are depicted trying to initiate sex with other males.

You obviously don't need observational skills to get your doctorate, anyway.

1) How heterosexist.

2) How divorced are we from the natural world nowadays??? This "fully heterosexual bison" dogma is one step away from the famous piece stating that "a cow has six sides - right, left, upper and below".

The 8-year-old anorexic

2008-10-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

My uni has a new timetabling computer system. Tasty. Sadly, it's *completely fucking incomprehensible*, so I now have even less idea where I'm supposed to be when. It's reached new heights of incomprehensibility. It's like... a po-mo theoretical archaeology book, THAT'S what it's like.

Ha, mildly damning insult.

We've got a new telly, and I'm still ill. Channel 4 is my friend.

I watched "Dana: The 8-Year-Old Anorexic". Here is a comprehensive list of all the people I now want to stab in the eyes:

1) The child's dimwit mother, who managed to learn absolutely nothing about anorexia despite having an anorexic child. Ah, the child has said she is better and there's nothing to worry about. That's OK then, I can go back to ignoring her. Anorexics? Devious? ...oh, never mind.

She also moaned about how hard it would be for her to constantly watch what Dana ate, and to constantly ensure she was getting enough. Oh, she's 8 and has a debilitating often-fatal psychological disorder, how hard for meeeee! (And don't most parents pay attention to their 8-year-olds' food?)

2) We didn't see much of the father, but apparently both parents blamed the (non-anorexic) teenage sister, because "teenagers go on diets". Apparently, a lot of shouting at the sister went on.

Yes, because anorexia is *just like* a fad diet. Though I'd be surprised if the older girl didn't have a psychological problem of similar severity, with parents like that.

3)EVERYONE in the programme who gave a variation on "How horrible, a child has an adult illness!" as if an adult woman having anorexia was practically fine, because adult women are supposed to be skinny, don'tcherknow.

Children will always copy adults. We've had about 150 years, out of several million, with this "childhood innocence" concept - and, frankly, children anywhere but the privileged West have never had carefree, innocent childhoods.

How about we work for a society where women don't feel they have to starve themselves? That would have the nice effect that fewer 8-year-olds would do the same. But, y'know, the adult women are just as important as the 8-year-olds.

I have no idea why...

2008-10-01T14:03:00.001-07:00

The national media persist in describing the titular family in The Family as "dysfunctional".

They're more functional than my family, Hagrid's family, and far more so than the families of the vast majority of my friends, many of which have been *actually* dysfunctional, what with the beatings and the abuse and the parental addictions and all.

So either those journalists had idyllic family lives, or... they're not admitting something.

I know of one, 1, family more "functional" than the one on Channel 4. And, frankly, that makes them freaks. And they're enormously rich, which oils the wheels of family life somewhat if there are few problems already.

Though the Hugheses are pretty damned rich - a PS3 and a Wii? In my day...

I have no idea why...

2008-10-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

Kitteh Blogging - the inferior acquaintance of baby blogging

2008-10-01T04:21:00.000-07:00

Now, when we chose this here kitteh, we were assured that she was used to adults, children and other non-human animals, and would happily play and socialise with an organism that fitted in any of those categories. However, we’ve hit upon a problem – she’s decidedly not used to computers.

She goes absolutely mental whenever there’s a screen in front of her, with its moving cursor or scroll bar - jumping up and down on the keyboard with all four feet, attacking the screen with claws and teeth and, in fact, making a decent effort to eat the whole thing. She can’t be dissuaded – the only thing to do is to shut her in another room, which feels mean as she’s only a baby.

Hagrid is a professional computer nerd, who spends a decent chunk of his time working from home. Is this an insurmountable problem, the only solution to which is the hire of a small child to amuse her while we work?

Also, she feels the need to tell me whenever she makes use of the litter tray – not just half-heartedly, either. I’m meowed at and bitten for as long as it takes to get me to view the poo. I just have to see it for her to be gleefully happy again.

Is that normal feline behaviour?

As you can tell, I’m at home with the kitteh. I’m also so ill that it’s an immense effort just to get up for the Viewing of the Excrement, and as for cleaning it out… bending down makes me very dizzy.

Also, I thought I’d sorted out an issue of mine, of the sort with a capital I… but, it seems, I haven’t. I think I’ll take some preventative measures to stop me from going so utterly mental again. To the outside observer, they’ll be both hilarious and peculiar – but, sadly, I can’t tell y’all what they’ll be.

OK then, imagine that I’m the bloke that went on Trisha with his phobia of scotch eggs (yes, he did). No, say it was only a phobia of a particular brand of scotch eggs, made in minuscule quantities in a Northern Scottish cottage industry. A scotch egg of this brand tastes much better than the average supermarket fare. It is more pleasing to the eye, the palate and the soul.

Would it be fair for me to ask my friends not to eat them, to avoid triggering me? (I know “trigger” shouldn’t be used lightly, but say that I have, like most people, had experiences to which the concept “should” apply, but I’m still affected more by the eggs). Do I ask them to stick to Tesco’s Finest or M&S for their daily proteiny goodness? Or is that entirely unfair? Does it matter, if they’re unlikely ever to travel to the single town in the North of Scotland wherein those particular, terrifying eggs are available?

I have a serious case of Analogy Fail, here – but it’s intentional, so that no-one has any idea what I’m talking about. As usual, haha. Give me your answers.

I was actually around several other trans guys / female genderqueers on Friday. It was weird, like looking in several mirrors at once – though the binary trans guys had all obviously gone through transition the “regular” way, living as butch dykes beforehand, and ending up straight guys rather than, say, *giant fairies*.

There are supposed to be the same number of trans people, of every variety, in the world as there are French people (so says my little book on the subject, though I’m sure that’s a conservative estimate). The problem is, if you’re French, you can take a wild guess as to the location of another French person – and, y’know, it’s not common for French people to deny, and hide, that they are French, “Cette baguette? Il n’est pas ma baguette! Je les déteste! J’adore le pain grillé! Est je ne sais pas pourquoi la baguette est dans mon pantalon!” (that’s an FtM in denial about his nation, see? But he’s speaking Franglais, because it’s a while since I applied myself to irregular verbs etc.).

And whatever the reason, you do tend to see more trans women / male genderqueers out and about.

So, anyway, it was nice to be in a space where a lot of people looked like me.

Interesting...

2008-09-25T08:19:00.000-07:00

I would like to send this to everyone who's ever thought I "must" dislike them because I'm not very verbal around them/can't process their speech, even though I've always been able to express myself through/understand the written word.

From Wikipedia, yes, that gem of all sources -

"In hyperlexia, a child spontaneously and precociously masters single-word reading. It can be viewed as a superability, that is, word recognition ability far above expected levels. The more common definition also includes difficulties with comprehension of printed material beyond or even at the single-word level. Many hyperlexics also have trouble understanding speech. Most or perhaps all children with hyperlexia also lie on the autism spectrum.

Hyperlexic children are often fascinated by letters and numbers. They are extremely good at decoding language and thus often become very early readers. Some hyperlexic children learn to spell long words (such as elephant) before they are two and learn to read whole sentences before they turn three. An fMRI study of a single child showed that hyperlexia may be the neurological opposite of dyslexia.

Often, hyperlexic children will have a precocious ability to read but will learn to speak only by rote and heavy repetition, and may also have difficulty learning the rules of language from examples or from trial and error, which may result in social problems.

Despite hyperlexic children's precocious reading ability, they may struggle to communicate. Their language may develop using echolalia, often repeating words and sentences. Often, the child has a large vocabulary and can identify many objects and pictures, but cannot put their language skills to good use. Spontaneous language is lacking and their pragmatic speech is delayed. Hyperlexic children often struggle with Who? What? Where? Why? and How? questions. Between the ages of 4 and 5 many children make great strides in communicating.

Social skills often lag tremendously. Hyperlexic children often have far less interest in playing with other children than do their peers."

Whee!

2008-09-25T05:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not continuously miserable any more!

Living as a woman, I was always down.

Now I'm only sometimes miserable.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating...

I say, it's lunchtime!

But I oughtn't really to leave the office empty. The other chap is having some difficulties moving house, so isn't here - incidentally, when Hagrid helped Kim to move house, one of them tidily packed his car keys. Or was it the new house keys? At the bottom of the bottom box.

Anyway, yes. Don't know why I just told that scintillating story.

Oh yes - I'm very pleased with myself. Here's why -

I was at the supermarket last night, when a charming youth ran up to me and shouted, "WHY ARE YOU WEARING FUCKING MAKEUP YOU FUCKING POOF" in my face.

This pleases me for two reasons.

Firstly, I've been practising keeping my temper. I very rarely lose it with someone I know, but when chavs hurled abuse (at me or anyone, especially girls or vulnerable-looking people) I used to hurl abuse back, and hurl my whole self at them if I figured I could take them on (which was rare, because they obviously hunt in packs).

That was why I got so many beatings at school - I couldn't keep my mouth shut, and didn't have the physique to match my testosterone levels...

(Actually, I reacted quite differently to bullying from males or females. I'd get really fucking angry at boys, but girls always managed to make me cry).

So, I'd have a problem if I tried to follow the advice they give to mugging victims - don't make eye contact, just hand over the stuff, it's worth less than your life, etc. I know that I'd say "No, fuck you, that's my stuff," and stare them straight in the eye.

I was incredulous, and impressed, when my friend recently followed the advice to the letter. I would be in hospital if our places were exchanged, or I would have died too young to decide upon a decent funeral playlist (actually, those particular muggers weren't too hardcore - just hospital).

So, I have to keep reminding myself, "Someone mental enough to randomly scream at you or mug you is certainly mental enough to stab you in the gut. Which, I've heard, is unpleasant. Oliver, don't react."

And I didn't react yesterday... OK, that's a lie. I did call him a cunt - but only when I was out of possible knife-range.

That's progress, right?

Secondly, the more obvious reason: WHEE! O superbly passable me! I got called a poof! And I am a poof! EXACTLY RIGHT! Fifty points! And I obviously wasn't trying - the eye make-up.

That makes up for several of the latest people assuming I'm a butch dyke.

Which, incidentally, makes me wonder whether any of those people have eyes. How butch am I, exactly? Where is my pickup truck and my ability to lift pianos? How many seconds of sports talk does it take before I beat myself into unconsciousness?

Lols

2008-09-24T10:01:00.001-07:00

Slippery Slopes

Posted using ShareThis

Thoughts...

2008-09-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

Firstly, here's my tattoo (the angle's a bit off, so it looks a bit squashed, but it's the only pic I currently have).

OH YES, five hundred geek points please. Kthx.

More pensively:

Here's a murder trial ruling that has escaped the usual "disability panic" defence.

People are slowly, slowly starting to get the idea that murdering a disabled child is not a "mercy killing" or "for the best" - comments that have been everywhere after reports of similar murders; not just in the more fascist corners of the internet and in the more fascist newspapers, but everywhere.

However, the progress of this understanding that disability is not the end of the world has come too late for the little girl in question, Naomi Hill.

And over in the US, a "trans panic" defence has been (almost, this is a preliminary hearing) thrown out, ensuring that the killer of a young trans woman named Angie Zapata will be charged with first-degree murder (anyone who assumes that a murder charge for the murderer of a trans woman is normal needs to do some extensive reading on the thousands of similar cases).

Two signs of real progress, and two reasons to hope. Maybe the world, after all, is becoming a more humane place.

But, again, too late for Angie Zapata and Naomi Hill.

I'm not sure what to think.

And Part III...

2008-09-23T09:17:00.001-07:00

It would also be nice if they could decide what they wanted *before* they sent out the email telling us, supposedly, what they want...

Then everybody would get fewer indignant emails going "We're having to amend this and send it out again! We asked for 30-something men last week, and didn't get any 60-something women! Not one! Why not? The audition is in 6 minutes in Belgium, so you'd better jump to it!"

Today, somebody was casting a musical adaptation of His Dark Materials (incidentally, three of the Best Books In The World Ever, currently also being adapted into the Three Worst Films Ever, but that's a whole other opportunity to watch me spit with rage).

They're trying to cast Mrs Coulter, but have failed to mention that the character is physically attractive - no, make that stunningly beautiful. The whole point, at first, of the character is that her looks allow her to get away with pretty much anything, as she captivates powerful men; and even manages to con her cynical, monstrously intelligent 11-year-old daughter.

Now, I can tell from the rest of the breakdown that they're not altering the plot, or any of the characters - they want a pretty faithful adaptation, it's just that they're expecting the usual mind-reader on the other end of the Interwebs. And they'll actually lose faith in this mind-reader, and all connected with hir, if ze sends in a load of normal-looking people...

And now I have to tell a load of normal-looking people, those that want submitting for the part, that they're too ugly...

Casting Directors, Part II

2008-09-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

Now, away from casting directors' enlightened views of racial minorities, poor people and Northern people, and on to their similarly enlightened views of the LGBT community (yes, I'm aware that these sets of groups often contain the same people, who I'm sure are quadruply happy to know that those who control our media are portraying them so well).

My favourite today:

"However in our story, there is a possible slight sexual ambiguity towards the end of the piece (it is a comedy after all!!) so not too macho for this one."

Lollerskates, those comical gays.

I also like:

Male transsexual (MALE) (note: the only description).

EPICALLY UNBELIEVABLE LOGIC FAIL.

To be fair, some casting directors do not live in cloud cuckoo-land. One of them has just forwarded this quotation from Eve Ensler to DPM's inbox - presumably because she liked it, though it comes with no explanation...

"This is from Eve Ensler, who wrote The Vagina Monologues.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a task from God.'

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will s hould have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, 'Drill Drill Drill.' I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?"

Is true, no?

Though how we over here are supposed to influence the US elections I have no idea. Let's register our new kitteh as an American voter (what? That'd work if we were voting for McCain/Palin, methinks).

I would write a blog right now, but...

2008-09-22T13:02:00.001-07:00

Bruce Parry is on the telly.

Inconsequential Things and Advice

2008-09-19T04:50:00.000-07:00

I have a very sore throat (and all the other symptoms of man-flu). It hurts to talk. If people could STOP TELEPHONING ME for five minutes, that would be lovely. Though I'm not working - I'm in my designated illness dressing gown, drinking hot water and watching Jeremy Kyle.

Thanks to Kim for cheering me up last night.

This morning -

Me: "I can be all beautiful and femme! Look... this is a gorgeous feminine pose!"

Hagrid: "No... that's a very masculine pose."

Me: "Oh. What about this one?"

Hagrid: "Masculine."

Me: "I know... this one is feminine! You can't say it isn't!"

Hagrid: "Ew. That one's just... disturbing."

Also, you know when you are talking to someone who is vaguely familiar, and they mention that you met them in a bar/club, and you slowly realise that that night was one of horrible drunkenness and behaviour that was so embarrassing that NO I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT I JUST WANT TO DISAPPEAR FOREVER, and you may have done anything from trying to seduce them to vomiting on their shoes, and you can't remember?

That happened to me on Wednesday. And has been happening all year. And I really, really wasn't a drunk fresher compared to the standards of most. By those standards, I was stone cold sober.

Here is my only piece of advice to my friend whom, after a foundation course, is off to uni now:

DON'T DRINK ALCOHOL DURING FRESHERS' WEEK.

This is no moralistic tirade or expression of excessive interest in another's liver...

You'll avoid every single one of those moments! Isn't that just lovely?

Repetitive Daily Trangst Update

2008-09-16T07:08:00.000-07:00

I'm 100% sure that my dad doesn't read this blog - he's a proper autistic person, who neither likes nor understands people communicating with other people, and prefers his one-sided communication with machines.

"Autism speaks" still wouldn't have him as a token (insert ablist slur), though, because his life isn't a tale of woe. He's supposed to be one of the best... whatever it is he does... in Europe, so... he probably doesn't spend enough time sitting around in his own poo.

Whenever I see him in the evenings after work, the bags under his eyes make me glad that I'm not good at anything at all, and inspire me to stay that way.

I specify one-sided communication because his goes "You are a machine. I have fixed you. Now you work" and mine goes "Right, you son of a bitch! Do what I say!" "No." "What in the name of Jesus' knickers do you mean, no? You're a computer! Compute!" "Only if you ask me nicely." "Please?" "No." I think the robot revolution is already here.

I think he tried to compliment me yesterday, is the point. We were in my parents' house, with Gareth in another room, and I was shouting through a list of the world's most beautiful women (that's not actually a regular pastime of mine - I'm not FHM or whatever, and besides, we have much better taste).

Whereupon my dad said vaguely "No, my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. And my daughter is the second."

I don't need to tell anyone that I'm an only child.

I think someone has given him suggested compliments for females. He meant that he was vaguely glad of my existence, no matter how much I puzzle him.

/daily trangst update

Reminds me of Venus Envy in which the dude is called "princess" by his parents... although I'm plenty more femme than he is... he exists mainly to beat stuff up...

My Pet Peeve

2008-09-15T02:06:00.000-07:00

Look, the world's going to hell anyway. This is my blog, so I'm going to write about something that, while it's unimportant in the grand scheme of things, annoys the crap out of me.

Whenever someone who doesn't belong to a very select group of my friends start talking about The Lord of the Rings, I have to stick my fingers in my ears and go LA LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING.

Why? Because they will always, always say "I never finished the books" and then they'll joke about the length of Tolkien's descriptions.

Our current GM did the same thing recently! It's like being an evangelical Christian who's never read the Bible... OK, many evangelical Christians ain't so good with the readin', but you know what I mean.

It's a thousand pages. Not a thousand pages of doctoral research into nuclear physics, a thousand pages of swords and monsters and poems and stuff. Tasty? Yes, tasty tasty.

Now, it's true that the books have one obvious flaw, which is pretty much rectified in the film versions. Tolkien... didn't find interesting anything that the average person might find interesting. So, all the crucial, dramatic moments in The Lord of the Rings get a grudging sentence of description, while everything else gets a decent chunk.

It's rather like when you're reading a Victorian novel, and you suddenly find that the plot has been set aside while the author gives a phrenological description of the newest character.

But that's a comparably minor issue, yes? It's worth dealing with an author's foibles to read a story of that magnitude.

Apparently not. People suddenly become so viciously anti-intellectual, they could be mistaken in a poor light for John McCain. "It's too loooong" they moan. "There are too many words". "Everyone has too many names" - try reading the Children of Hurin, sunshine! Or even, gosh, some real mythology!

Unless you're dyslexic, illiterate, or blind, reading a book is the most leisurely of leisure activities in existence. You have to turn the pages. That is the extent of the effort you have to make. You have to make sure that your eyes are open, so that you can see the words. Have I covered everything here?

Now, all these people that just "couldn't" finish the books are neither illiterate nor blind, and the vast majority are not dyslexic. In fact, I know several badly dyslexic people who love the books, and read them, slowly, often.

So, can we modify the "Tolkien-wrote-long-books" jokes from people who never finished them? Can't they just say "I have the shortest attention span known to humanity! Yay me - what? I say, a pony!"

Of course, the films aren't without their flaws. Some lines (either written for the film or needlessly modified) that enrage a pedantic sod like me:

"No parent should have to bury their child"

Excuse me? Why are we suddenly anti-sexist? The Lord of the Rings is innately sexist! You'd have to not make the films at all! Dispense with this horrible American quasi-anachronism at once, and try "father" and "his" so it doesn't sound shit.

"It makes the trees grow tall... and come alive... and even move."
"Alive???"

Trees are already tall and alive. That's why they're TREES, and not, say, small flat rocks. And yes, they move. Being ALIVE - oh, we've been through that already. I believe the line ought to be "and walk about" - something that trees do not ordinarily do. I wouldn't employ a screenwriter unfamiliar with the concept of a tree.

There are dozens more, but I suppose they're minor quibbles *twitch*.

Finally, two people have made their best attempts to destroy The Lord of the Rings for me.

Firstly, there is another pseudonymous Bob. Because Bob is very handsome, I allowed my baser instincts to take over, and I... listened when he mentioned those five words.

Bob thinks that The Lord of the Rings is all about Frodo and Samwise's latent homosexuality, which they are man enough to throw into the appropriately named Crack of Doom. While Sam becomes a "real man" who breeds millions of small hobbits, Frodo is still consumed with lust, writes some poetry then goes off in a boat with a load of gay elves. He thinks the effect of Tolkien's Catholicism on his work should not be underestimated.

And absolutely finally, there is whoever made this:

Is so catchy...

Athens Boys Choir

2008-09-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

Watch this...

Then watch it again...

Then taste the tasty awesomesauce.

I am feminist fail?

2008-09-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

I'm alive! My grandma drove me somewhere, and I'm alive (I just wish I was rich enough to own a car, so that she would never drive me anywhere ever ever ever ever ever ever again...).

I think she thinks that appropriate gears and speeds are for fascists, capitalists and/or the under-85s. Which she thinks are all the same thing. Like first and fourth gear, in fact.

Firstly, I have the most awesome tattoo ever in the history of the world ever.

I hope that's clear. I also hope it heals well.

I've been watching people descend on this blogger with the understanding that they are, in fact, Hermione Granger and she is, in fact, a house-elf (the metaphor, applicably, of that man pseudonymously named Hagrid).

When she says "You are not Hermione Granger and I am not a house-elf", they say "well... well... you're a SLUT! Ha! Yes, a SLUT! And a BITCH! HA!"

Thus ends my detailed analysis of "sex-negative" - no, wait, YES sex-negative, also incredibly woman-negative, the-porn-industry-is-a-monolith, feminism.

I refuse to share a label with women who are so bitterly, evilly judgemental of other women (racism, transphobia etc. in the movement are a thousand million other posts... hell, could be a thousand million encyclopaedias).

"Female Chauvinist Pigs"? If you're living under a rock, this is a fairly new, popular "feminist" book in which the author, Ariel Levy, does NOTHING but insult and belittle other women (and some transmen/transmale genderqueers, for good measure).

Classy. That'll end male domination, I'm sure. That's just as useful as fighting for employment rights or reproductive freedom, fighting against rape or female genital mutilation... etc. etc. Those issues will take care of themselves!

Sadly, the issue is as old as feminism itself - no, hang on, Mary Wollstonecraft never wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Some Women, and A Great Long Bitch About Others" - OK, then, at least a few decades old.

My introduction? I was 15. I was wandering through Waterstone's, having just had my lip pierced at a shop around the corner. I thought "aha, I have never browsed through the feminist section before, even though I am feminist - I am feminist because it's evident that women are equal to men in worth, and they (I thought "we" at that point) are hardly ever treated like that is the case".

The first paragraph I read in the first academic book I skimmed through? All about how women were JUST DISGUSTING for having body piercings, tattoos, etc, because they were TORTURING THEMSELVES for male approval.

Yup, I loved all that male approval that my gothy appearance procured! All those beatings from boys at school, and all the street harrassment!

I'd assumed that other feminists had my back, and I had theirs - but I had the sense just to laugh at that particular author and assume that most feminists were lovely people, dedicated to gaining women every freedom.

Well... fuck that belief. Royally.

I know some people would think that I can't speak about these issues - I'm disqualified as I "quit" womanhood.

Look. If a woman says/writes, "I believe this..." or "This happened to me..." I listen. Intently. I assume that that woman is telling the truth. I mentally file the information away for future use. If the statement is my first example, a belief, I check that it does not contain blatant racism, misogyny or any other ideology that only exists to hurt - if it does not appear to, I accept it.

If a woman says/writes "Women all think", "Women all do", "A real woman would never"... they fail the misogyny test. Just as a man would, if he expressed the same sentiments.

So... do I call myself a feminist any longer? What do I call myself instead? I particularly won't call myself a "trans-positive feminist" because that implies that hatred of trans women is an optional feminist extra, like peanut butter on toast. Is "womanist" vastly culturally inappropriate, as I'm white and English? "Trying not to be a dick to women" doesn't roll off the tongue.

Ethnic bees and actors

2008-09-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I feel vague ethical twinges about submitting actors for parts. I get a bit media-deterministic in my wilder moments, and I figure it can't be good that every TV/corporate training/film role requires a stereotype.

Also - gems like these, that you find in almost every casting breakdown -

"actor should have neutral accent" - they mean RP, tinged with Estuary English, but not enough to terrify. They don't say that, because they mean That's How I Talk, So It Must Be Neutral, The Default Human Is The London Yuppie, Yah Boo Sucks To You Scum.

"actor can be white or ethnic" - this means I Have Absorbed That Blatant Tokenism Will Get Me A Cool Grand From The Arts Council, But Sadly, I Am A Racist, Illiterate Fuckwit.

(Incidentally, when my friend D beekept, which is now a word, somebody said to him "These are ethnic bees. They are from Africa". I'm assuming that that person didn't mean it in a beautiful, Alice-Walker-esque, Africa-is-the-mother-of-us-all way).

Far, far worse ones are common - we just haven't had any in recently, so I can't source current examples.

Yes, I am having a boring day.

My friend Ed told me last night that he is looking for a sheep. If you happen to have a spare one, please do tell me.

I got cornered, and told off (by someone I don't know) on Saturday, because she learned that I was changing my name. She kept repeating "But (old name) is such a pretty name!" with a look in her eyes that said I Will Eat Your Soul.

Hagrid bore my oh-so-decidedly unpretty self away, laughing at my expression of utter puzzlement. "Well, that's you told" he said.

This is vaguely applicable.

The Sad Tale of Bob

2008-09-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

In this tale of woe, there are two main characters. Let us call one Bob, and the other Arseholeface - OK, let's not, let's call him Fred (those who know me will be aware that I often give the name Bob to characters with whom I am sympathetic, but I've made an attempt to remove some naming bias, at least).

Bob is fairly sociable, and extremely wealthy. So, it was natural that, come his 50th birthday, he decided to hold a bloody massive party.

OK, now everyone in the world knows who Bob is, as I know very few extremely wealthy 50-year-old people... never mind. Let's plough on.

The party was held in a giant marquee in his back garden. There were 120 guests, plus some caterers, a DJ, and some Portaloo operatives. It was a most excellent party - I ate, drank, and was merry - danced, and improved my not-so-mad Mario Kart skillz (there were a lot of kids, so Bob was prepared).

Now, Bob and his wife, whom we will also call Bob (this is why I can't GM) are friendly, lovable, accepting people - and a cynic with my upbringing understands that these are rare qualities among the very rich. Where Bob and Bob went wrong, then (as did their children, Bob, Bob and Bob) was to hold their party in their Dead Posh Neighbourhood.

What would the average person, in the average neighbourhood, do if their neighbour was having a fairly loud party? Remember, this is a posh neighbourhood, so the houses are very, very far apart - closing your window would be the technical solution to the problem of what noise was left.

Also, the residents immediately on both sides of Bob's were all at the party.

Finally, all the neighbours had been sent a letter informing them of said party.

However, Fred did not like that his Very Important Evening was being disturbed by what, by the time it got to his house, was a small amount of noise - noise he'd been warned about a week in advance, noise that he knew would last an entire hour more.

Instead of using the double-glazing that I'm certain he could afford, or, y'know, joining in the party (there were a couple of happy gatecrashers), or engaging in any behaviour that might be attributed to a normal person, ever...

He turned up and started shouting in Bob's face.

Bob asked him to be less aggressive. He became... more aggressive.

Bob pushed him out of the garden.

He fell, humourously, upon his bottom.

Bob walked back in, and reminded the DJ that he must finish up by the time Bob had promised in the letter. Which the DJ did.

However, the next thing he knew, Bob had been arrested for assault, and carted off to the police station - where the police did have the decency to look a bit sheepish as they fingerprinted him and gave him a caution (!)

It emerged later that Fred had been yelling at them, too.

Can I take a straw poll, here? Would you, yes, you, phone the police if someone pushed you off his property?

Would you phone the police even if someone, irritated at your trespassing, had punched you one?

Would you then shout at the police until they administered the harshest possible punishment to whoever pushed you?

Would you assume that the police have nothing better to do, and they're just sitting belching the alphabet until your call?

Here is where I get a bit inarticulate with rage... D'you think that, if Fred had been poorer, or had his skin had contained a bit more melanin... would the cops have acquiesced to his shouted demands? Or would they have locked him up for Wasting Police Time in the Most Fucking Major Way Ever?

(I never saw Fred. If you think that my assumption that he's white is uncalled for, I say - no, he would never call the police otherwise. Not in the city where I grew up, at least. I also say, ha, you're a fool).

So... Bob now has a criminal record.

And I've got yet another model of masculinity to avoid - that which is "manly" enough to go around shouting the odds, but runs to Mummy in the form of the nanny state when things don't go entirely his way.

Kitteh, part II

2008-09-04T01:58:00.000-07:00

So, I searched the websites of some animal shelters for a kitteh, but there weren't any the right age. So, I searched all the classified ads, looking for the nicest-sounding owner (I'm not encouraging unpleasant ones to get more cats!).

I immediately found an excitable advert extolling the virtues of my babies! They need new mummies and daddies! They're used to being kissed and cuddled! They are beautiful fluffy balls of fun!!! and thought OK, that's perfect. Even though I would rather drown in a barrel of eels than write that advert myself, I want to buy a kitteh from someone who has.

We walked through the door, said hello, sat down, and were immediately covered in kittens. The lady had 10, from two litters, and was obviously only selling them because her husband thought that 10 more cats was excessive.

Four of them had new homes, five of them didn't (she's hoping her husband won't question that calculation).

I sat there, covered in friendly kittehs, panicking because how the hell can one possibly choose? Will we have to choose our children like this?

This was, I swear, the conversation that came next:

Kitteh: (to Hagrid) You are mine now! Kthx!

Hagrid looked puzzled, as you would if a cat had just telepathically yelled at you.

Hagrid: "I... like that one."

Kitteh: "You better! I love you. Lovelovelove you - put me down and, I swear, I'll claw your hand off to the best of my ability - love you!"

Hagrid: (still puzzled) "I... love you? Yes, yes I do." He has never looked at a girl like that before!

Me: "Pass her over, then."

Kitteh: "I don't fuckin' think so, mate - I want my daddy back! I love him lots and lots and lots!"

I gave her back, and she smugly fell asleep in his hand.

She comes home on the 27th. Hopefully, she'll get as keen on me when she realises I'm the more reliable source of food.

Barack Obama

2008-09-03T02:55:00.000-07:00

Look, US politics are important over here, no matter how much we're fed up at how much our media reports on them. Frankly, no-one listens to a small, overpopulated island whose last achievement was the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the 80s - and OK, a normal person would replace that with victory in the Second World War 45 years before then, but I'm optimistic.

Basically, we have delusions of grandeur. The US has political and corporate sway - and loadsa nukes.

That's why I'm paying attention.

I've heard British people my age, who know a bit about our own political matters, compare the Dems to Labour, and the Republicans to the Tories. No... Political savvy failure. Read both candidates' proposed policies, and all their speeches - with your eyes. Yes, read them.

John McCain is rather closer to Nick Griffin than he is to David Cameron. In his turn, Barack Obama is what we, here, would call a "conservative" - and had his family moved to Britain instead, I reckon he'd be in David Cameron's place right now (actually, he wouldn't - we don't seem to like politicians who are great orators any more. We like ones who resemble confused bunnies).

So... they're not like our candidates. You can't view them as much of a muchness, and it's actually quite important who gets in - yes, for the whole world. You don't like them being that important? Go and do some empire-building for Britain, then, so we can have the political clout instead. Look how well that turned out the first time! We could have another War of Independence... with our armed forces made up of five men and a cat, with one combat boot between all of them. Oh.

So - use whatever influence you have to get US citizens voting for the right candidate.

When I talk to people, I'm not even bothering with "Think of all the poor starving children with no healthcare..." etc. - if they ain't thought of them before, they ain't gonna start now.

North Americans are proud patriots, yes? *wins small prize from Royal Society of Obvious-Stating* So, we need the "Your country won't be the punchline to every joke in Europe" angle.

"You won't have to pretend to be Canadian when on holiday in Europe, so that people don't punch you in the face" (I remember that being common a few years ago, at least).

"No-one will think you spend your days alternately beating your wife and having sex with your sister, taking breaks to take potshots at passing black people".

At posh dinner parties, no-one will say, "I must introduce you to Bob... though he is American".

I think that angle is our slim, but only, chance at success.

Here's Obama, anyway, doing his speechifying at the DNC.

He does seem to have those family values goin' on, incidentally - the family seem to quite like one another, and he's never, as far as I know, divorced a wife because she became disabled (I'm not thinking about anyone called John McCain here at all, tis just an observation).

Anyway, this is enough politics, or my mum will kick me off her blogroll (everyone calling her "little comrade" when she was small kind of put her off - I'm frankly surprised she's not a card-carrying fascist now).

Sarah quite fancies Barack Obama. I'd quite like to look and sound like Barack Obama. A Yorkshire Barack Obama. With a flat cap.

That's another problem with his appeal, apparently. He's in too good physical shape. For fat people. To vote. For him.

Please, America. Don't make this true!

Casting directors...

2008-09-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

Are like very small children with ADD in the Shiny Land of Shiny.

I'll carefully craft a submission for, I don't know, a 25-year-old South Asian slim, stunning one-legged female plumber who can sing and play the barrel-organ, and they finally pick a tone-deaf, pasty John Prescott clone with five legs.

And am I the only one who dies a little inside when asked for a "named" actor? 'Cause actors are actually given names at birth, like everybody else - they're not like a modified Inuit tribe where, instead of getting a name at two or so, you only get it once you've gone through the rite of passage that is appearing in a bloody awful soap?

Levels of disaster...

2008-08-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

Once we've done all the DIY that I ought to be doing right now, rather than writing crap on the interblag, and the house is thus suitable, we're going to get... a KITTEH!

KITTEH KITTEH KITTEH KITTEH. In about a month's time.

Also, KITTEH.

What shall we call it?

Incidentally, KITTEH.

Today, I saw my cousin Helaina in an ITV documentary about living with her disabilities. It was excellent - none of that bollocks that documentaries are crammed with nowadays - no overly loud music, no "interesting" camerawork, no THIS IS THE GREATEST DISASTER EVAR!!!11 O NOES!!!11111 WE MUST PITY THEM! I CAN'T HEAR YOUR PITY YET! CRY, BITCHES! kind of stuff.

I'd give you a link to what I assume is clips from it, but I can't watch and check; ITV's website refuses to play videos unless you are the willing bitch of Microsoft.

Hagrid's looking over my shoulder and saying INSULT MICROSOFT MORE! Microshaft Microshaft Micro$oft! but I'm struggling to summon up the energy to care - aren't I supposed to be stuffed with political principle? Never mind.

Anyway, I'm in awe of Helaina's parents - not in the "Oh, the burden of a crippled child! Why didn't they just shoot her?" kind of way that is still worryingly acceptable, but simply in awe of all their hard work over the years, both to help their own child and for other people's children.

Now, I'm autistic, and my grasp of social nuances is about as great as Microsoft's love for free software, but...

Why, when people use the wrong name/pronoun for trans people, can't they just say "Whoops, sorry" or "BobFUCKRoberta" (my name is permanently E-fuck-Oliver for one person, whose memory is filled to capacity with D&D rules)?

Why do they say "Oh, but it's so hard to get it right"? I sort of understand that they're trying to say "I really didn't mean to do that, I'm sorry, it's not because I'm a bigot of any variety, I just forgot". But the whiny tone - exactly like the one I just used when reminded that I ought to be painting a door! - alters our perception of the statement.

We want to respond with "And it's super-easy to be trans" then list the latest murder stats for people like us, or simply just discuss the smaller, daily incidences of annoyance and insult.

If you've... learned to walk, passed an examination, gotten over an illness, brought up a child, done a job, cooked a meal... done many things... you're surely capable of using a word without much difficulty.

Or do they mean emotionally difficult? Because the patience of the less adorable trans person ends here - we're back to "It's super-easy to navigate the world when your existence is offensive" again.

Do they mean "It's easy to forget something, it'll take time to remember consistently" - 'cause that would be rather more reassuring.

I'm not attacking anybody in particular here - we were just discussing on the interblag why on earth "but it's so hard" is the most common response.

I've just come to the conclusion that if people are gonna be so tactless, they can't complain when I do it. Fellow auties - we get a free pass!

Incidentally, I'm living a double life at the moment - my grandma knows nothing, so no-one is using my new name in front of her. Of course, she's deaf as a post - I could say "I'm a Nazi warlord who eats babies!" and she'd say "Ahh, that's nice."

But she might learn to lip-read...

Finally, I'm incredibly glad that I live in the UK. The concept of all the North Americans going "Bugger me, it's hurricane season again... better evacuate," with the same resignation that we'd use to say "It's drizzling," is crazy.

I hope everyone gets out safely. If I was the praying type, that's what I'd do.

In which we learn that trans people can't use mattocks

2008-08-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to write an email to my supervisor at uni, so that I can go full time trans-wise in my department – and also so I can get help with the stupid name thing; I guess if the staff know me as Oliver, the bureaucrats will be more likely to accept it.

I tell a lie – it says that they might accept a letter from a GIC, if no GRC exists.

Incidentally, what's the waiting list for a first appointment at the GIC I could be referred to? More specifically, how long is the waiting list in years?

At least two, is the answer.

But that is, in fact, beside the point.

I'm also mates with our very LGBT-friendly students' union president – I wonder if he can pull strings. I'll be extremely nice to him, shall I? Though I think the nicest thing I could do would be to relieve him of the presidency somehow (he's a freelance creative genius normally, and not really cut out for a 9-to-5).

Anywho, what shall I say to my supervisor? I've done nothing but stress him out over the past year, mainly because I spent a lot of it ill in bed, failing to reach deadlines; I'm not sure that I'm imagining the look of slight horror whenever he sees me. AND I'll need help with my coursework from him soon. By “help” I mean that I'd like the whole thing to have a single reference: “Steve Roskhams, pers comm”. I'm sort of stuck.

If I was a cynic, I would list the few things he might be pleased to hear: he's turned me into a nascent Marxist archaeologist (he's an established one)? I recently read one of his books, and thought it was awesome? The way he wields a mattock makes me jealous (him: Str18/Dex17, me: Str7/Dex9, an extra -2 to mattocking owing to back problem)?

As does his ability to have millions of biological children without going through hell (he's rarely seen without some small carbon copies of himself – and, see, that's trans-related!)?

Nah. I think I'd just better say O HALP HALP. Again.

Thoughts

2008-08-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

Just an FYI to Hagrid, here, in writing; my name is NOT Oliver Aragorn F-P. That's your only contribution so far to the Great Middle Name Debate, and hopeful repetition of it does not increase my liking any.

------------------------------------------------------

My facebook status has, for weeks, been "Oliver is in the doldrums" and "Oliver is still in the doldrums". The feelings of inadequacy that keep me there are not likely to depart. I was with two friends yesterday, whose conversations are able to go, with no bending of the truth, like this:

"What about when you were living with a Pygmy tribe and you caught that weird tropical disease?"

Me: "Wait - you lived with a Pygmy tribe?"

"Well, yes, because I have experience in jungles, so my friend wanted me to come along as a guide."

I have known this man for a YEAR. He always tells the truth. He has never, ever mentioned this vast body of jungle experience. He's mentioned other cool shit, like his music PhD and his farm, but always in an offhand manner as if the listener's life must be far more interesting.

The other friend has had equally awesome experiences, but my personal favourite is:

"You know when you were hired to train all the Alton Towers staff in how to talk like a pirate?"

See, if I had had an interesting experience, it would be shouted from the rooftops. HELLO, NICE TO MEET YOU, DID YOU KNOW THAT I HAVE EXPERIENCE IN JUNGLES? YES, REAL JUNGLES! I KNOW ALL THE SECRETS OF THEIR NATIVE INHABITANTS, SO I CAN DO SOME PRETTY AWESOME SHIT, AND INCIDENTALLY, I ONCE WON A WRESTLING MATCH WITH AN ELEPHANT.

Is this just me?

------------------------------------------------------

You know when things are so incredibly dreadful, your only options are to laugh, or to cry forever?

Hagrid thinks we should make leaflets to hand out in the street. They would suggest to the average Joe that he shouldn't murder any trans women. That day, at least.

They would explain that, if he meets a trans woman, or has sexual intercourse of any variety with one, the logical next step is not *necessarily* to kill her.

Some men do seem to treat it as an ordinary, ethically neutral action, like eating lunch or combing their hair.

Our courts, like the American courts (I don't know enough about the justice system of any other country) treat it the same way.

I can't deal with this shit any more. I mean, what can I do? Does anyone have any suggestions? Does anyone actually care?

I'm beginning to think that handing out those leaflets would probably help.

Is this really OK?

2008-08-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

Firstly, my snake, it iz ded. It was my tenth birthday present, and could have lived for another decade had it not got ill. :-( I may write an obituary for it later.

Secondly,

The last time I vented my anger at this kind of thing on the intertubes, I was shouted at by able-bodied, minded, etc. women.

I was attempting to present as a girl then, so I assume it's gonna be even worse now - "You're a guy, how could you possibly judge women's choices?"

Bear with me.

1) I've met far more fathers than mothers who reject anything but the "perfect" child. Are you feminists who accept these abortions certain that the women concerned were making real choices, or were they pressured into them?

2) I'm not speaking as someone with the ability to get pregnant, and the ability to request an abortion if I wish. I'm speaking as someone with a "minor disability" - "high-functioning" autism. Many people and organisations would like me to have been aborted (read up on the aims of that prominent "charity" if you don't believe me).

3) I understand that foetuses that, were they to be born, would need extensive medical treatment just to live (like my cousin, who has Costello's Syndrome) are often aborted because the family concerned cannot afford decent healthcare (even in this country, the NHS really cannot provide enough). That is no fault of the family, a damning judgement on healthcare providers, and NOT a suggestion from some divinity that those foetuses should not live. It all comes down to money, and the seemingly obvious fact that some people don't have enough to support their families. NOT "well, disabled, never mind".

4) I am very, very glad that several hundred parents (unless the statistics for the South-West are anomalous, which seems unlikely) have aborted their club-footed, webbed-toed foetuses. What kind of miserable life would those children have had? What kind of miserable life do the other children of those people have? What if their GCSE grades were under par? What if they turned out to be, O I don't know, just pulling examples out of the air, autistic, or trans, or gay? What if they wanted to go down the wrong career path, or married the wrong person?

In an era with painkillers and other medical treatment, it's not having, or lacking, a disability that makes a child's life worth living, or not. It's the presence or absence of a loving, accepting family.

Also, I think we don't need to pass ammunition to right-wing god-botherers. We don't need to leave condemnation of eugenics to some loon in a cassock (as pictured in the Telegraph article).

As feminists, as half-decent human beings, we need to stop treating disabled people as less than human.

My university...

2008-08-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

Requires a GRC to change my name.

Or at least that's what its policy document says.

Fuckwit arsemothering dickwad cockmonkeys - nay, felchmonkeys.

Well, they ain't having one. And they're changing it.

Ascuse me, I has to go be embroiled in a horrible battle with beur - beaur- fuck it, twits with databases and forms, who are twits.

A good cure for insomnia

2008-08-18T05:06:00.000-07:00

I'm probably the last person in the UK to see Torchwood. I saw the first episode last week, and the second yesterday.

Now, I made the mistake of assuming that, because Torchwood is a spin-off of Doctor Who, whose new series have all been giant heaps of awesome, it would also be a giant heap of awesome. Perhaps it would be even more awesome, as sex was allowed?

It has been, so far, a giant heap of disappointment instead.

The first episode; yes, quite good. I liked the realistic reaction to an alien creature - "That's a good mask you've got there..." etc. I liked the "CSI Cardiff" quip. I liked the introduction of Captain Jack. It wasn't as good as Doctor Who, but it was a nice thing to be watching in its absence.

The second episode; bloody awful. When I'm watching a series written by Russell T. Davies, or... anyone good, really, I want them to use the best horror/sci-fi tropes in the correct places. When a storyline unfolds containing a trope that is mediocre at best, I want them to mess with it a bit. Add a twist, or some humour.

I don't want to watch the whole, predictable thing to its incredibly dull finale!

The best thing I can say about it is that they'd updated it a little bit. The pale young virgin posessed by the EV0L SEX FIEND now had previous sex partners; and there was some bleating about She's a Person! We Must Save Her! Look, Here Are Her Swimming Certificates To Prove It!

Well, no, because that storyline will never contain a person, will it? She's there as torture porn masquerading as Serious Drama, torture porn for hypocrites. Hmm, mysteriously she wasn't; anything other than classically beautiful, or over a young-looking 18, or a man, or non-white.

Well, now she's being slammed around by said EV0L SEX FIEND, with her blonde curls blowing about prettily.

Well GOSH, now she's doing seriously unattractive lesbian kissing, in no attempt to hook horny heterosexual males at all! Seriously unattractive, because the creeeaking of the plot was so loud, all you could do was point and laugh.

Well, now she's been rescued by the nice man. That's nice.

By then, I was holding my head in my hands, vowing to watch Firefly on repeat *for the rest of my life* to prove that sci-fi TV shows do not have to be this shite.

....wait, hang on, does the EV0L SEX FIEND *really* have to live off only male orgasms? Because female ones are rubbish, or don't exist, or something? Did it *really* just say that?

You know, I can't even be bothered with feminist ire here, because the episode was such an awesome cure for insomnia.

However, I do have a worrying picture in my head of Russell T. Davies masturbating along with Bram Stoker.

But... Davies is gay, right? But, but, why else would he write this crap?

Shame in the Park

2008-08-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

London Pride and Manchester Pride get some of the biggest musical names in the country.

York Pride? A covers band called Jesus and the Felchmonkeys.

(The several over-fifties readers I know of might not understand the full implications of the name; to them, I suggest a nice cup of tea instead of brooding about it.)

Now, York University Students' Union, us, happened to have the largest banner, near the entrance. It really looked as if we were running the whole show, and people behaved accordingly.

So, when Jesus (an astoundingly wobbly man) of Jesus and the Felchmonkeys came onstage in a frilly bikini and a sink plunger, we laid our heads in our hands and cried.

When he mooned the audience, we died a little inside.

If I were allowed to choose a representative of the LGBTQI community, to wave about at the straight/cis passers by, I might choose... well, not him....

Anyway, we handed out some leaflets. They were good leaflets, if a little EXCITABLE!!! because one of our officers loves the humble exclamation mark, and the underline tool, and Caps Lock, a little more than is healthy. QUEER!!! Hooray!!!!

Anyway, Hagrid and I filled out some surveys about our sex life (which is astonishingly dull, if the questions are anything to go by - have YOU ever used poppers while receiving anal intercourse? I thought that was oddly specific, too).

Here are the first question, verbatim.

1) Are you a) a man, or b) a woman? This survey is for men only. If you are a woman, do not complete this survey.

The second question was "Are you a trans man?" which was nice. Of course, the rest of the questions demonstrate that they'd forgotten about trans men altogether, but meh.

------------------------------------

Incidentally, he's now on the phone to Kim, who works in Jorvik Viking Centre. Not Eboracum Roman Centre, say, but Jorvik Viking Centre, with all the big Vikings on the side and all the Viking stuff in it.

One of the visitors to Jorvik, in Jorvik, while Kim was wearing her Jorvik Viking costume, asked, sincerely, whether she was a Roman.

This was because she is female, and Vikings were all men.

Someone else complained that there were only two Viking re-enactors. There were four. Two had vaginas.

But... the Vikings were all men, godsdammit, and I with my Massive Penis of Saxon-Bashing will tell you so!

------------------------------------

I just wrote an ending to this post explaining that I now want to be a fireman when I grow up, with astonishing illogic.

I have the spine of someone sixty years older. I don't remember a life without constant back pain.

Career plan fail.

A Less than Interesting Blogpost

2008-08-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

First, a powerful post from Drakyn, with no comment. It doesn't need it.

On a humorous note, if you find near-death experiences humorous, I don't like housework. In fact, we both hate it. Our house is basically what you might expect from a house owned by two guys.

But...

At least I don't booby-trap our stuff!

I don't think that the washing basket is the best possible place for £20 notes, or for important documents folded fifty times over; nor is under the sofa cushions the best place for fragile objects; nor the middle of doorways the best place for shoes (each shoe in a different doorway is a masterstroke); nor the smallest object possible the very best base for a tall pile of stuff.

Four-sided dice scatter the floor like particularly ironic caltrops. When I was about 15 and he used to come and visit, he'd always leave a few of them in front of the floor next to the ladder that came down from my bed.

I've been bloodied on a number of occasions by falling knives, I kid you not, from elaborate cutlery traps in the kitchen. They're built so that the knives fall point first, with some force.

Sometimes stuff just falls on my head, but I reckon he thinks that's unimaginative.

In conclusion, I think he's trying to tell me something. I'll be certain the day I find an empty bottle labelled Irritating Partner Poison next to my tea, or a big round black thing labelled BOMB with a fizzing string.

LOOK LOOK, he's constructing a new pile, as I watch right now. It's got my Ipod on the bottom, my phone in the middle, and a selection of books going up from small to very large. There's going to be something very heavy on top, at just above my head height...

On a happier note, it's so nice being in York. We went to the park today, and there were children playing - children who might not yet have torched their first car or shot up their first heroin. They had parents, doing parenting.

There was a playground, intact, and a lake with no suspicious human-shaped bags floating to the surface, or even any human turds. We went to the cafe and had coffee, in proper mugs, not poncey Southern cups.

Yes, OK, OK, my life isn't so thrilling right now. We'll go to Pride in the Park tomorrow, which will probably also be less than interesting.

Doctors, part eleventy

2008-08-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

The cinema in Leeds has designated some showings of Mamma Mia! as sing-alongs.

O HALP, I are being dragged there by a mysterious force...

That *nearly* makes up for the delay of the new Harry Potter film (a delay I only just heard about).

Let's watch the trailer, anyway.

Now, I lovelovelove Harry Potter (not the films so much, but they're not that bad). I rather wanted to change my name to Harry rather than Oliver, so that every second was like being inside one of the books. I would make everyone say it like Hermione does.

"Harry!!!"
"Yes?"
"Do the fucking washing up!"

Don't you see how wonderful that could have been?

-------------------------------------------------------

Trans FAQ, part eleventy-one:

"Why don't transsexual people trust doctors?"

Transsexual people are often told not to worry their pretty little heads about transition - surely the doctors have got it covered? Or, WHAT, they haven't even SEEN a doctor yet? How do they know they're a real transsexual?

Now, these questioners have obviously never had a serious medical condition - and, wait, are male or childless.

(DISCLAIMER - this post is about MOST doctors. It's not about nurses, who are heroes, paramedics, who are heroes, and the few doctors that are attracted to the profession through altruism, rather than for the massive pay packet.)

Doctors. Are. Crap. Doctors cannot deal with the commonest of issues, and faff about until more serious issues escalate. They can't prescribe the fucking Pill.

One of my own GPs, who has treated me for minor ailments in the past, almost killed Silverback through negligence. That's no exaggeration. Through more inaction, he made certain that my grandad had to have his leg amputated, because it was too late to save it. There are more GPs at that practice - there's the one who doesn't listen to a word you say, the one that doesn't listen to a word you say while STARING at you in a freaky staring manner, and the other... that doesn't listen to a word you say.

Some of them might have known their stuff medically. Who knows? They can't tell you, because they didn't listen to your problem.

"I have to lie down while having blood taken, because it always makes me immediately pass out."
"Now, just sit there - "
"No, I have to lie down, because it makes me pass out."
"Don't be afraid!"
"I'm not afraid at all. It just makes me pass out."
"I'm sure it won't. It'll be very quick."
*ten second pause*
CRASH.

Now, if you had a complex neurological condition (not a "disorder") and you needed medical supplies and procedures to improve it...

And you'd have to face horrendous waiting lists anyway (try two. whole. decades. if you're a particular friend of mine, battered by cutbacks and the postcode lottery)...

And you probably won't be given the supplies and procedures if a) you're gay or bisexual, b) you have children, c) you don't dress correctly, d) you're over about 40...

You'd probably raise money for private surgery without referral, and buy some illegal hormones online.

That's what I'd do.

Why do you think so many pregnant women opt for home births, with as little medical involvement as possible?

Because they don't, actually, *like* being patronised and treated like not-quite-humans.

Education

2008-08-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

My mother always said that I could do an English Literature degree with both hands behind my back. She is my mother, so has to say such encouraging things, but now I'm thinking that Gareth (whom I may henceforth refer to pseudonymously as Hagrid) could do the same.

Well, if he was less dyslexic and could therefore spell "literature".

Perhaps that's because we are utterly perverted.

Come ON, I got 100% in an A-level paper on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - and what did I write about, for four and a half pages?

Sodomy! Between the characters! In graphic detail! Explaining how I knew that the characters had been thinking about those graphic details.

I'm assuming that, at degree level, you get on to more complicated sexual acts. Like the Reverse Cowgirl, or whatever else you get in Cosmopolitan. Remember that I live my day-to-day life as an (insert derogatory term for homosexual male here) so I wouldn't know about that sort of thing.

Anyway, I'm convinced that Hagrid has significantly more grey matter than I. If I'm absent-mindedly deconstructing a novel at him, or if someone's talking about an author, or whatever, he'll look utterly bored... then come out with a comment of such relevance, perspicacity and insight that I can't quite believe that here is the man that tortured himself for an extra year to get an English GCSE.

I ought to have put my foot down when his parents said "He's going to university in October, despite having appalling A-levels", and he said (looking distinctly unenthusiastic) "My parents want me to go to university in October. They think I'll do well." But, I was only 15 and didn't want to interfere, so I kept my mouth shut.

How much absolute bollocks is this belief that kids with no obvious academic aptitude in school, where you're spoon-fed, will suddenly do OK at university? Seriously, fuck middle-class social acceptance. I knew he'd fail. Everyone knew - but him. He'd been told he'd do well, because... Because what?

He failed. He's got a student loan to pay back, and had no confidence in his own intellect.

He needed to be working. His job now gives him continuous confidence - he's good, and he knows it - he's even got a bit of smugness going on.

I think that what he does is a freaky arcane art. He thinks what I do is even more occult than that. He thinks Crowley would be proud.

This was, originally, going to be some adjectives to describe an archaeological degree, for those unfamiliar with the discipline:

Difficult
Very difficult
Epic-level
Hardcore
Financial suicide

Yup. I'd say the majority of people on my course are able to go "Aah. That was so intellectually rewarding. Daddy - can I have a share in your multi-million-pound caviar empire now?"

The rest of us will end up knowlegeable and physically fit - to the extent that someone who can't afford food can be physically fit.

What other graduates live on minimum wage forever, and get real, actual trench foot?

Srsly, folks. Don't let your children do it! They have so much to live for!

It's like being a crack addict. Archaeology graduates are poor, whey-faced, and just living for their next fix of obscure pottery types.

Better do my coursework now.

Our GM...

2008-08-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

Made finger puppets!

Sorry for poor photo quality.

That's my tiefling!

D thinks my tiefling is the scary!

RAWR!

Secret Name?

2008-08-13T05:39:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a 20-minute break from work before my brain liquefies.

Does anyone care to explain where, precisely, mine and Gareth's £50 each to the Deed Poll people, and £72 each to the passport people, and all the other fees that we haven't found out about yet, will actually fucking go?

There's no way we can afford that right now!

I think Gareth needs to change his full name too, or else he's getting even less value for money than I am (we're both hyphenating our surnames).

He needs a secret name, like people have in some fantasy settings, that he can't tell to anyone or else they can cast eeevil spells on him...

With my ever so middle-class forenames, and double-barrelled surname, I sound just like one of the aforementioned Hooray Henrys at my university. That's amusing.

An incident from a few months ago has just come back to me - myself, some other bi/gay guys, a couple of lesbian women and a transfeminine genderqueer person are all sitting in my college bar (we're a collegiate university - I'm assuming it's to attract posh folk) after an interminable LGBT meeting. The only noise is its unpredictable sound system, which likes to go VERY LOUD or very quiet at odd intervals, making everyone jump in unison.

Then, a large group of those interchangeable posh boys turn up, with a crowd of admiring interchangeable posh women (reverse-classist? Me? Fuck off or I'll nut yer). They are dressed as Palaeolithic people... OK, "cave men". I'd say they were aiming for the Lower/Middle Paleolithic look, as there's really no room for them in Homo Sapiens.

They are also VERY LOUD, and occupy lots of space, and shove the one poor soul at the bar out of the way.

Now, everyone in our group starts to complain. Lesbians: "Oh GOD, they're so arrogant. And are those girls trying to look ATTRACTIVE? Put it away!"

Lesbians and myself: "And they're rather a disgrace to feminism - there's no need to act quite that stupidly."

Other gay/bi men, transfeminine genderqueer, and myself: "Those guys are so arrogant. Oh GOD, my burning eyes. Are they trying to look ATTRACTIVE? Put it away!"

We all stare at our shoes with embarrassment, and there is a pause, which I use efficaciously to purloin someone's chips.

Transfeminine genderqueer: "We're jealous, aren't we?"

Gay guy: "Of THEM? THEM??? Yes."

Other gay guy: "Because we don't fit effortlessly into socially acceptable courtship rituals."

Transfeminine genderqueer: "And they're absolute fuckwits, and they do."

Me: "And below the neck, they are actually attractive. It's all the gym time."

Everyone: "Yup."

Gay guy: "This is like high school."

It's not really like my high school, because no-one's thought it necessary to put up signs declaiming that there's no safe place to stab someone, but I can sort of see his point.

What's my own, particular jealous thought?

"The facial hair. Those guys can grow facial hair. Why can't I grow facial hair? Posh twats with their facial hair. Hirsute posh twats. Them and their beard-opportunities."

I keep that to myself, however. Everyone already thinks I talk about the world of facial fuzz too much.

I have, honestly, no idea why I just recounted that.

Might as well post it.

The Something of Boris

2008-08-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

This is rather good.

I've never been into Bond... or, indeed, many other action films with a C20th/C21st setting.

Why would you make a film where shit blows up, when that actually costs MORE than a film where people are hacked to bits with swords, and the latter is infinitely cooler?

Childrens

2008-08-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

Lol.

That is all.

Beauty

2008-08-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

So, there will be a discussion of our culture's ridiculous female beauty standards, generally centering around weight.

A lot of women will say "They're ridiculous. They make me feel terrible about myself, when I'm actually, y'know, OK" and some other sensible, non-controversial things like that.

Then, some bloke - or many blokes - will jump in and say HONESTLY! You silly women, all the problems would be solved if you just STOP CARING about your weight. I like a woman to have curves, so you shouldn't be turning to fashion magazines for acceptance, you should be turning to ME! You silly women, honestly, what will you think of next? Ha ha ha.

Another will say, that's right, men don't mind what you look like, and because you obviously exist entirely for men, you shouldn't worry your pretty little heads.

This is predictable, and unhelpul.

They get worse if there's a (rare) discussion about non-white women using beauty products that make them resemble white ones.

The same blokes (though, sometimes, white women too) Well, aren't you silly! You should be proud of your race! You look fine! Why don't you just stop thinking about it entirely. Silly women, aren't you shallow. Ha ha ha.

A lot of people benefit substantially from making white women feel unacceptable, and non-white women feel even worse. They have a great deal of vested interest in female unhappiness. They are prepared to do absolutely anything to allow it to continue. This is the case.

Y'know, for a lot of women, the role their looks/weight play in attracting the opposite/same sex bothers them less than... keeping their job. Avoiding street harassment. Avoiding cruel judgement by relatives and "friends". Most importantly, avoiding feelings of self-hatred.

Sorry, you men. It's not about your utter sexiness. I know you think everything ought to be.

Though it is a typical narrative of people who are attracted to women - she really thinks she's unattractive! Does she live in some nightmarish hall of mirrors? Is she legally blind? - it's not the lady concerned who is the crazy one.

I'm NOT discussing femme, cosmetic-using, frock-wearing women who do those things entirely for fun, or because they are expressing their feminine gender identity, or for any reason that isn't to stem self-hatred or because they feel they should. I'm glad that they are allowed self-expression, just like I'm sad that women with different wants are not, and am in love with the humble eyeliner pencil myself (you know how many gay Goths there are about - look at some NUS LGBT discussions and drown in a sea of lacy blood).

But a woman who tortures herself with illegal, painful, carcinogenic skin lighteners? A woman who starves herself? If someone is willing to go to those lengths, it's unlikely that she can *just forget it*. And it's perfectly visible what makes her that way, even if some people (those who can) choose to ignore it.

n.b. for those people who have never met me - I'm not talking entirely out of my arse when discussing how women are treated. Remember that I look like one, so might have a bit of insight - not as much as an *actual* woman, but.

n.b. 2 - the catalyst for this rambling post was this. So... a light-skinned mixed-race woman has to be lightened to be acceptable? I'm thinking - how could that possibly make a dark-skinned black woman feel wonderful?

Pants Down Friend

2008-08-08T07:47:00.000-07:00

A post whose component parts are entirely unrelated. Yup, I'm back from Wacken, and my face, pimply at the best of times, looks like someone has puked on it (from my living on grease and mud).

Just thought you might like to know that.

1) I'm supposed to be reading the archaeological reports on Christ Church, Spitalfields. They are quite comical* - it's one disaster after another: Active smallpox virus has been discovered! A coffin has fallen on someone's head! Someone has caught a skin disease whose variety we have been unable to ascertain!

2) I might email my department and suggest that, before next term, they send round a message detailing the differences between a compliment and sexual harrassment. I'm treated perfectly well by the Hooray Henrys in my year, because I happily don't register on their radar as "girl" - but the pretty GTA last term was decidedly *not*.

It wasn't just feminist me and the girls that were cringing at their behaviour - it was a few of the other boys, too - the ones who hadn't been educated privately, incidentally.

Now, do we see how it's a *bad* idea to shut pubescent heterosexual boys up in a building with nothing but themselves and FHM for company? Then to unleash them on a world containing real females? Boys from families so wealthy that they feel entitled to "own" whatever they wish?

3) Ladies, gentlemen, &c. I give you (as we saw at Wacken)...
Corvus Corax!

I thought they were Corpus Corax to start off with... which also translates nicely.

*Runs off to start a band called Corpus Corax*

4) I'm gonna be harsher about the new Nightwish this time. Anette Olzon appears to be the exact opposite of Tarja Turunen. Turunen had apparently no personality, and an amazing voice. Olzon takes pains to demonstrate that she has a personality...

But she's not my housemate, my girlfriend or even an acquaintance. She's the lead vocalist in a famous band - incidentally, a band whose older music requires A SOPRANO. Someone who can hit high notes, at least approximately. Not a special new definition of "soprano", meaning "someone I would quite like to boink" - looking at YOU, mister keyboard-face.

If they weren't going to have one, if any vocal range would do, they might as well have given Blaize Bailey some employment.

5) To *sort of* tie together my comments about continental Europeans putting us to shame, and sexual harrassment (in this case, a lack of), I present to you: the most adorable proposition ever made to anyone, EVER.

Man: Vould you be interested in being my pants-down friend?

David: No.

Man (with expression of bitter disappointment): Oh.

Man (wanders off in another direction, waves): Vish me luck!

If you don't acquiesce to that, you must have a heart of stone.

I might do a SRS POST OF SRSNZ later. OK, I'll do a baby trans one now, as people seem to be actually interested in my haphazard Trans 101.

1) You can be as nosy as you generally are about the identity and history of a trans person that you know and like (no, not a random one off the street). Ask all the questions you like - as long as you make sure that person understands that their answers will not alter your perception of their identity. The average woman wouldn't mind telling you that she had a ginger beard once, if she really knew that your only, brief, thought on the matter was "That's Susan. She used to have a long ginger beard".

2) However, don't talk loudly about a trans person's trans "issues" in public. Talk about trans stuff, yes, sing a song about it if you like, but don't suggest that it's connected at all to your acquaintance. If you are talking about hir own trans stuff, keep your voice very low.

This is simply a safety issue. If you were sitting in a "white" bus during any apartheid, you wouldn't say to your companion "Well GOSH! Shall we talk about how you're hiding your BLACK SKIN?"

(n.b. the analogy doesn't work in any other way - it's just a point about personal safety).

*Maybe my definition of "comical" differs from yours, then.

2008-08-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

Just a small post before a long Wacken diary, and a question to you all -

65 years ago, Germany was a vicious dictatorship, run by genocidal lunatics with whom the average person was complicit.

63 years ago, it had been bombed far more than Britain, and had almost no buildings or infrastructure.

Now, it is a prosperous, peaceful country whose youth, at least, are committed to equality and anti-racism.

The people are very polite and helpful, there is plenty of art and culture, the streets are clean (and have public water fountains, I don't like to think of what would happen if they were installed in Britain). Of course, as an apparently white person (though half my family are Jewish, and I do resemble a Nazi caricature - I'm just a nose with arms and legs attached), I'd probably find the same things under the Nazis - but there are crucial differences.

I do look different to the average person, and I'm not safe walking around urban British streets. In Hamburg, I received no verbal abuse whatsoever - in fact, Hamburg Pride was going on quietly without the vast police support it would need in Britain - and the legions of hungover young metalheads were treated as well as everyone else (unlike in Derby station where we caught our connection, where we were not allowed to use the toilet, incidentally), because Germany is a country that does not treat its youth like scum by default.

For their part, young people in Germany are proud of what their country is becoming, and, at Wacken, cheered the loudest when a German band gave an anti-racist speech; when a Swedish band sung about the bravery of the Poles in 1940, and when Iron Maiden showed the applicable footage before "Aces High"; sported on average an anti-racist badge or T-shirt each - AND also cheered the loudest when non-German bands addressed the crowd in German, or indeed mentioned the country at all.

And, of course, as in every European country, everyone spoke to us in immaculate English as soon as they discovered where we were from - or, indeed, heard our appalling German. Gareth couldn't help but laugh when an earnest young man asked him "I would like to travel to the US. I am worried that my English is not good enough - is it all right?"

My question is, why is Britain, comparatively, constructed entirely of FAIL? Compared to Germany, how much good have we done in the past 65 years?

Considering how some Little Englanders here talk, perhaps we need a fascist dictatorship to convince them that no, it's not actually a very good idea.

Oh yes - the service industry (specifically, the travel industry) in each country:

Germany: "Would you like me to speak English? Here's what you wanted, here's everything else you might possibly want - oh, here are maps to everywhere you might possibly need to go. Would you like me to print you a different one off? You're going to Wacken, so here's a black hire car. I hope you have a very good time there. Don't worry about that, this or this. My shift ends now, but I'll be here for twenty minutes in case you need to ask me anything else."

England: "I'm so wilfully stupid, it's amazing that no-one I'm here to "help" has stoved my head in. Would you like a non-answer to your question, a weird non sequitur, or an inappropriate personal remark? DURR DURRRR DURRRR."

2008-07-29T04:55:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I haven't read any good novels this summer - I've been reading factual books about bones and death rituals.

Does anyone have any reccommendations novel-wise?

Secondly, I'm about to go and visit my grandad in hospital, but am doing very little else other than dreading travelling tomorrow.

Thirdly, I was asked to define "cis-" as in cis woman, cis man, cis person.

"Cis" just means "non-trans". So, "cissexual" means non-transsexual, and "cisgender" means non-transgender.

Why do we need this piece of "jargon"? Why not just say "non-trans"?

Now, monotheistic religious people are welcome to refuse to use "cis-", because they believe that God created Normal Default Humans, and that trans people deviate from those norms - thus, Normal Default Humans need no label, and deviations do.

However, the majority of people I know are not religious lunatics, so need to scrap the idea of the Normal Default Human, understanding that trans people have existed in every society and in all periods of human existence. Therefore, we are products of the natural diversity that keeps species alive.

For example, I've heard American politicians use the phrase "people and black people" a few times, and don't wish to do so again.

Some of them were Democrats.

You can't make this stuff up.

2008-07-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

Oh, what am I supposed to obsess over now that there's no Doctor Who until Christmas?

I mean, Christmas!

I wish you could have a TV licence for six months of every year - what use is it now?

Nomenclature

2008-07-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

I've found, as I'm sure every other trans person on the planet has found, that a lot of people think that using my old name is OK. Whether their reasoning is "I knew this person before" or "I just keep forgetting" or "This person is surely just going to use hir name as a nickname anyway", the result is still the same.

Now, all this reasoning is sensible. That's why I'm not angry with the people who still use nothing but my old name, or *almost* nothing, or use my real name in a *jokey* fashion.

So, this is an educational post, which explains what many trans people (i.e. all trans people with a readin' bent, who thus know a bit about trans history; or all people whose lives have been blighted by transphobic violence) understand to be the connotations of such actions.

Edit: I had a long and boring analogy here... it was long, boring and pointless. It was about connotations of language use that only the recipient is likely to understand.

Use of a trans person's old name without apology will always connote the words and actions of people who actively refuse to use the new one. Those people will include, depending on the trans person:

Friends and family members who couldn't accept hir, and thus cut hir out of their lives - and if you are family or good friends, then the trans person will have heard enough horror stories from hir trans friends for hir to dread a similar situation.

Public figures who promote transphobia.

And finally, the most revealing use of trans people's birth names:

Their obituaries and reports of their murders.

There is an article written every single day about the latest trans person murdered for being trans, in which a *big wink* and a nod is given to the murderers - yes! you were right! They were *really* a man/woman... so... honestly! Their deception!

Harold Johnson, who had changed his name to "Joanne" (or whoever)

Harold Johnson, who preferred to be called "Joanne"

I don't want to link to any of the hundreds floating about the web - I read them once to take in the information, but don't want to give bigoted people any more traffic.

Do you see how these journalists become complicit in rape and murder (because it's nearly always both)? The best-known real-life case:

1) Brandon Teena is raped, to prove he is "really a woman" and can thus be raped like one
2) Brandon Teena is murdered, because he was "deceitful", because he was "really a woman"
3) Brandon Teena is referred to as Teena Brandon in all media coverage, because he is "really a woman"

Well, as long as we know, that removes all the little details of, what was it? Rape and murder or something...

However, the majority of transphobic violence is still against trans women. This is the usual story; a trans woman is rejected by her family (who obviously wouldn't use her real name) from a young age for being trans; or can't get a job (her potential employer wouldn't use her real name, would they?) because she's trans; so she is working in the sex trade or at least sleeping with abusive men that she wouldn't otherwise go near, because she needs support. One of her clients or boyfriends murders her, and the half-inch of media coverage does not use her real name.

I said I'd make this post coherent when I was awake... well, I haven't.

But the point is... "David, sorry, I mean Elaine" is the sentence that trans people will weep with joy to hear, if you (understandably) forget our names.

Incidentally, I'm full of insatiable curiosity, so I've asked every post-social-transition trans person I know "What was your birth name?"

Some people will find that perfectly fine, because I've previously established that it's just general nosiness rather than an attempt to discredit their identity...

Some will always hate it, because they've got some understandable sensitivity over the issue.

I never said I had all the answers.

Autism

2008-07-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

Silverback has asked how autism affects me.

This - read the post "A Serious Discussion", currently the third post down - is how autism affects me.

That kind of thing happens to me pretty much continuously.

IF I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU, IT'S NOT BECAUSE "I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU", UNLESS YOU KNOW THAT YOU HAVE DONE SOMETHING TRULY HORRIBLE. IT'S BECAUSE MY COMMUNICATION RESOURCES HAVE BEEN EXPENDED.

(In a nutshell, however - I'm both extremely intelligent and extremely retarded. I average out to an average person in some aspects - for example, my uni grades).

Bearlesque!

2008-07-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

Gareth has found a new vocation - when he grows up, he doesn't WANT to be an IT guy any more, he wants to join these guys.

He's given me my birthday present early... and it's an ipod... and he's had it engraved.

This is my *well impressed* face.

lovelovelovelovelove.

I Like Corpse Paint and I Cannot Lie

2008-07-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

In other news, Buck Angel, trans porn hero, says some darned stupid things in this interview.

Here we go:

Here, he doesn't like guys having fundraisers for their surgery:

"Buck worked two jobs to pay for his surgery, and the sense of pride that comes along with that achievement itself nicely complements the satisfaction of finally feeling comfortable in one’s own skin. “But a boob-cutting-off party?” he asks. “What the fuck is that?""

Oh Buck, you absolute fucking moron. Shall we look over the stats and find out what percentage of trans Americans can get jobs? Because of, y'know, the lack of employment legislation protecting gender identity?

Also, WHY do we (theoretically) get SRS on the NHS here? Because many transsexual people can't function without it - it's a medical necessity. If you're not those people, fine - but you could recognise their existence. So, the real issue is that there is no Health Service in many countries.

And that's disgusting, yes? We on the same page? If we're not, anybody, and you want to give me the "pulling-self-up-by-bootstraps" SHITE so commonly thrown out by Americans, who are MYSTERIOUSLY all white and able-bodied and have never been ill in their whole fucking lives?

Nope, let's not have a go at the system. Let's have a go at individuals with gender dysphoria and no money, because that's far more helpful.

Another gem:

“It just seems so female,” Buck says of the trend, "

Hooray! Let's... rip into trans people's identities! 'Cause we really need that. If a cis man threw a similar event, everyone with a brain would be all "Hooray! It's so nice that men are shedding their Neanderthal* stereotypes, helping one another and talking about their feelings! That's really good for their mental health."

But because they're trans, it's open season on their identities.

Buck reminds me of Jayne Cobb in the face - but when it happens personality-wise, that's less good.

Other trans people are more likely to understand that you're a man than anyone else, Buck - so don't throw out comments like that while trying to prove how MANLY and MASCULINE and VERY VERY MANLY you are to everyone else. We're actually your biggest allies, your fellow men with vaginas.

When some trans moron gives you trouble because he's got a surgical dick and you haven't, just berate him for being classist (and stop being classist yourself), mention all the other guys happy with what Nature gave them, and move on. Don't rip into the rest of us.

On a vaguely similar note, I wish there were more depictions of masculinity in movies. I don't find the clean-cut American clone version very attractive... Humans, please, not Ken dolls. Humans with wind-blown hair and beards and more than two facial expressions, and, and, Nordic battleaxes.

Yeah, last night I found SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER Harvey more interesting *after* half his face melted END SPOILER, that's how bored I am by that whole look.

*I don't intend to contribute to Homo Neanderthalensis' (not Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, FOOLS, incidentally) bad press. It's just the way people often put it.

Fools

2008-07-25T01:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my friend David was discussing the stupidity of the customers who phone his company. He says they get a heck of a lot of Daily Mail readers, and a lot of people who can't do basic adding up "I've just phoned you to ask what £21.99 plus £4.99 is".

Hmm, could the two things POSSIBLY be connected? Perhaps they think that maths is deeply suspect, as it was invented by Asians.

In the same vein m00nlogicwise, I mention that the US Religious Reich is now boycotting McDonald's (I'm not linking to that kind of website!) because it scored 85 on a "Corporate Equality Index" (i.e. it has pledged not to be homophobic).

Me: "But... what will they eat now? I thought American bigots ate lots of fast food. Are they gonna lose a lot of weight? What are they going to eat instead?"

David: "KFC?"

L: (deadpan) "Negroes."

Laugh now, and you're a Bad Person. Don't laugh, and you might have had your sense of humour surgically removed.

Incidentally, this conversation was on the way to the cinema to see The Dark Knight (review: stuff asploded). Directly behind me in the cinema was The World's Fifth Most Annoying Person, whom I will henceforth call Daft Bint.

Daft Bint was obviously under the impression that the film *really* needed ad libbing, and God had chosen her for the task. Also, she took a while to understand the very predictable plot twists, but she made sure her boyfriend knew about them once she did.

"HE DIDN'T THINK THAT THROUGH, DID HE?"

"OH, OH THAT'S CLEVER."

"OOOOOOOH." (not an orgasm, a noise of excitement whenever something blew up... or there was an action scene of any stripe... or, when anything happened, really)

Also, she couldn't sit still for over a microsecond.

Ascuse me, I has fed you your own mouth.

I'd better add a disclaimer: Y'know, I don't hang around with people who would *really* use the word "Negro".

A Big Trans Post, from a small trans person

2008-07-24T06:29:00.000-07:00

Yup, there's so much work coming in today. Look at all the typing I am doing. It must be work. Problem is, you leave the office unstaffed for an hour and you get two calls, viz:

1)"Hello, Spielberg here. I would like to give Actor Z this leading role. The fee will be five squillion dollars."

2)"Hello, Spielberg here. No-one has got back to me yet. Your agency is obviously not to be trusted. I have given the part to Brad Pitt."

So... I are the bored.

Apparently, the trans stuff on this here weblog could be "confusing". I've written real SRS BZNS* trans stuff? I thought I just wrote inane rubbish about dragons?

I'm sure I don't need to do a trans FAQ for morons, the ZOMG, transwomen aren't just men in dresses, really? kind. So, I'll assume that the reader is not mind-numbingly, wilfully stupid, shall I? Good.

Here are facts and links, then, in an almost entirely random order. They will probably be about trans guys, female genderqueers, etc. - trans women, etc. deserve a very long post of their own.

1) This confused me for ages, and I ended up offending some British trans people: "transgender" means different things in the US and the UK. In the US, it is generally used as an umbrella term that encompasses ALL trans people. In the UK, it doesn't encompass binary transsexual people - the people you mostly hear about when trans issues are discussed.

2) It is possible to be both transsexual and transgender - I've heard trans people of both types suggest that it's not. You can have a different brain sex to your physical sex, and a gender identity that does not fit within the norms of your culture. It's statistically unlikely, but hell, there are black lesbian one-legged Jews out there, and I bet they're fed up of the "unlikely member of society" jokes. You could be physically intersexed as well, as a matter of fact.

3) Queer trans guys are quite common. We are not girls. Otherwise, all queer non-trans guys would actually be girls, and the number of transsexual women would increase quite dramatically (yes, I know that all but the goons referred to above should be able to understand this - but... they don't).

This is mainly a sexual health booklet, but it's got pictures of gay trans guys being decidedly... gay. And having lots of fun, it seems. Probably NSFW... depends on where you work, I suppose.

4) Sexual and reproductive health is a Good Thing, while I think on - this is one of the few areas in which trans people need to be treated according to their anatomy, not their brain sex or gender. But, be tactful about it?

5) Not many trans guys have genital surgery. Some, like me, aren't bothered either way (or would sooner chew off their own arms than allow a SCALPEL near their GENITALS - I have sympathy with that view as well); some just don't want "Frankenstein's Cock" as one guy put it - the available surgery leaves many guys dissatisfied.

6) BINGO! For those not familiar with the meme, people have been creating internets bingo cards about "contentious" issues for a while - for example, one about race might talk about the *very friendly* social masochist that I so often mention. So, these are things NOT to say.

7) Raven Kaldera suggests here that you don't say "but you're so short!" to a trans guy. I concur.

8) I can't find the Questionable Content comic that coins** the word "boobsplosion" to describe the act of a trans guy unbinding his breasts. Anyone want to post a link?

9) Erm... half-naked trans guys? Not very diverse. They mainly look like... well, me, were I all testosteroned-up. They're rather more attractive, though.

10) There's a stereotype about trans guys taking Women's Studies courses, in the hope that they'll find their inner woman. They don't, but they emerge with the ability to spot sexism from a mile off. When you meet a trans guy who is SRSLY FEMINIST, like me, don't get confused if he looks male - there could be reasons for that greater understanding.

11) While anti-trans violence disproportionately effects trans women (and ethnic minorities - like all random violence, it's generally racist and sexist as well as whatever else) I have to link to the Remembering Our Dead list. There are plenty of trans men, female genderqueers, etc. on there. The threat of violence is a daily reality for many of us. If I lived in a different neighbourhood, had different family or "friends" or a different skin colour, it would be close to miraculous if I was around to write this. Which brings me neatly to:

12) Trans people are not exaggerating about their experiences of discrimination. Yes, some of them are unbelievable; yes, they seem like stories from some Third World dictatorship, not modern Western "civilisation". But, they are true. Of course, that applies to many more well-known types of discrimination, too.

I'm not sure why I numbered these. They were disparate thoughts in my head.

Don't you feel informed now? Or not? Any questions?

*ha, the abbreviation of "serious" reads like Sex Reassignment Surgery, which is a little bit genital-obsessed as a name, is't not?

**it's not a coinage, it's a blending. Very few words are true coinages. Thought you might like to know that***

***why, I have no idea.

Journeys - and a solution to all the world's problems

2008-07-24T01:45:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit on edge at the moment. This is because I'm trying to reconcile one of my greatest loves and one of my greatest hatreds.

This isn't going to be a particularly profound post. My love is for music festivals, my loathing for travelling. To get to Wacken Open Air next week, we have to travel on several different modes of transport - and if we miss the plane, or it's cancelled, we miss the festival.

I HATE travelling. By car, around the UK, it's fun, as there are very few surprises (well, there's the price of petrol I suppose, with which one can familiarise oneself if one needs a heart attack).

I HATE the uncertainty. I would love it if all public transport came at the allocated time and left at the allocated time - if nothing was ever, ever late or cancelled. My thoughts would be of future frolics at my destination, and I'd have time to read a few books.

Remember in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - specifically, the passage in which the protagonist has to have timetables made for every minute of every day, so he doesn't panic? That was one of the best descriptions in there.

Actually, I've said before that I can't cope with untruthful statements, unless I understand their value as a story or as a white lie. "8.30" on a bus timetable is NOT a white lie, if the bus comes at 8.52. It's an ordinary, stinkin' lie.

I'm impressively good at hiding my OCD and autism - until I have to go on a journey.

"Panic" isn't the word, because neurotypical people have panic attacks. The feeling is, physically, (according to people who've had heart attacks) exactly like a heart attack, but with a kind of mental freeze - it's impossible to think, and to speak in logical sentences.

Again, as depicted in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, some goon always tries to cuddle me or put a calming arm around my shoulders at that point. Those people are lucky that I'm not particularly strong.

Take this as a health and safety tip - don't try it.

I've actually forgotten what this post was supposed to be about.
I'll just concentrate on how head-asplodingly awesome some of the bands are.

Or I suppose I could talk about the Great Nightwish Controversy. Now, Nightwish wrote *our song* so don't worry, this is written with plenty of metallic emotional investment.

Yes, I realise we are both more butch than the song, but "Beer Beer" just *cannot* fill the same slot in one's life.

I saw the new Nightwish line-up in April. The couple I was with think that Annette Olson EATS RAW BABIES AND SUCKS DONKEY COCK (not that the two acts are comparable, the characters in Clerks II seemed to appreciate the latter).

I agree that she's a sub-standard singer, considering the quality of the other female metal vocalists about, and I'm assuming she aced the auditions because she's shagging one of the other band members.

And I'm glad I saw Nightwish's last performance with Tarja Turunen.

However, the vocals didn't depress me as much as they *angered* the other two (a note to some guys in the crowd - yes, these ladies are attractive Goth lesbians, no, they wouldn't be any use in your sex life if, indeed, you had one, please take your ungentlemanly remarks elsewhere).

This is because I think that Nightwish should be a karaoke opportunity! The rest of the band should come on and play, while everyone in the crowd strives for those high notes. If the vocals aren't (anything like) as good as Turunen's - try and sing over them.

WALL-E!

2008-07-22T00:57:00.000-07:00

I'm typing this whole thing while wearing long fake fingernails (what is wrong with this picture? Oh yes, EVERYTHING). My friend and I thought yesterday that we'd practise our femmeness, and she proceeded to glue the things to my hands.

I don't have an alcoholic excuse or anything.

My friend removed her set after a couple of hours (because she'd gone through the usual post-urination machinations of hygiene with no adjustments, and was thus wincing a bit), but I think a REAL MAN isn't fazed by being unable to put on his own underwear.

We all went to see WALL-E yesterday. Well, I have nothing on Gareth now (when we saw Atonement at the cinema, he sobbed noisily throughout the second half) because I just cried all through the beginning of the film. It's the perfect portrayal of loneliness.

The only negative sentiment aroused in me by WALL-E was simple wonder at how our culture is disappearing up its own bum. It's a Disney film about the evils of an entertainment-based megacorporation.

Kate Bornstein discusses how the lead robots are not very gendered, so everyone sees their own happiest relationship - for example, ze sees a butch-femme interaction because ze's very femme.

I'll just happily believe that Disney/Pixar made the film with me in mind - look at EVE. It breaks everything it sees - it's slow to catch on to new ideas, but sticks to its guns - it even looks like the love of my life, with its penguinate form and adorable little face. Look at WALL-E - obsessive, tough on the outside but with romance in its soul.

I never promised a post that made sense.

So much death!

2008-07-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

Well, you two might think like that now...
...but when you're both eaten by a dragon...
and you're in its stomach
...and the lights are low...
and the fumes are making you feel a little dizzy...

There's a facial expression that's very specific to people who have ever allowed a character created by Gareth to play in their game. Perhaps the wind changes, because the expression doesn't leave us for months on end...

If I tried to draw it with emoticons, the screen would explode... and the Internet itself. It could kill seventeen Internets.

Like, srsly - let your children play all the violent video games EVER. Let them watch every cinematic gore-fest EVER on repeat, FOREVER. Let them take A Clockwork Orange as their personal bible...

Just don't give 'em a pencil and paper!

(Wow, I have something in common with a few loons of the US religious Reich - I have a suspicion that D&D was put on this earth by Satan. I'd better treasure our common humanity for a little while...

OK, I'm done.)

I'm nearly at the humorous cats...

2008-07-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

Re yesterday's post about "shock", you know what is *surprising*?

This (click on the image to prove it is what it looks like, NSFW).

Holy motherfucking Christ on a unicycle!

Re the only comment so far - what dude in the whole wide world can't find a clitoris? Is he, in fact, imaginary? Does he know that socially masochistic black guy with all the racist friends? Has he ever had his car nicked while his dead grandmother was on the roof-rack*?

It's like not being able to find a specific tooth - yes, it's not an enormous body part, but it generally lives in the same place all on the women you meet.

*Someone I have ACTUALLY met is a walking urban myth. He was born with the coil clutched in his infant fist. His mother concurs, with a look in her eyes that suggests the story is really true...

Gee, Olly, calm down!

2008-07-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

Yes! More passive-agressive blog posts that serve no useful purpose!

Edit: I has had apology. Now I feel embarrassed for being so upset. One really can't have everything...

So... my friend behaves like a complete arse, and ruins my day.

I get upset with him, and leave the building he is in, because ONE MORE SECOND of his presence and he will be seriously injured.

Later, he apologises to me - more a "I'm sorry you feel that way" apology than an "I'm sorry I behaved like that" one, but hell, that's all you ever get from him.

Because I'm aware that he will just *never understand* why his behaviour was upsetting, or even which part was upsetting, I decide to be polite, and I say something like "It's probably partially me, I haven't been feeling so good lately".

Throughout the next day, he makes "hilarious" comments about how irrational I am, and implying that he is the Great God of Magnanimity to forgive my existence.

Erm... NO, I was being NICE. I don't actually like upsetting him, so didn't want to say something like "So you should be! Your behaviour was absolutely terrible! I know the other guys are more relaxed about it than I am. This is because I am clinically depressed. I think I have hormonal problems because my brain knows that my body shouldn't be female. I think my friends should, incidentally, be supporting me when I'm very depressed. Also, I have more emotional investment in you behaving decently, because I am a closer friend than, say, that other guy over there, whom you just bewilder."

Also, he calls me *my old name* throughout the two days (everyone else now calls me "*my old name*ImeanOlli", which I don't mind*).

He then complains that we're not giving him a lift home! Which is eleven miles out of our way.

I've waited in vain for the grovelling apology for a week (Gareth just hasn't been waiting, because he spends less time on the metaphotical m00n than I do), so I'll show him this. If we don't get an apology then, I might keep his birthday present :-D

Now, feminists know about the fashionable C19th malady that was hysteria, yes? We know that the arguments of females can still be shattered with one well-placed "irrational" or "shrill". Women have no chance when that's coupled with their socialisation into hilariously polite individuals.

So... next time, I'm going to follow the other socialisation, the kind I'd have gone through had I not been trans. The guy kind.

I'll nut whoever it is in the face, because I reckon my skull's got to be more durable than the majority of noses. And I'll use the line "It's not me, it's you" a lot.

It can be a social experiment, if you like.

*apart from the Mr Bewildered, who has Stan Laurel hair and says "Gee, Olly," at every available opportunity, and some that aren't really opportunities at all.

Shock

2008-07-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

If you spend any time around Gareth, light of my life and champion eater of dairy produce, you'll have been subjected to his "devaluation of verbal emphasis" speech.

For example, he thinks that people should stop saying "like, awesome" when they actually mean "yes, quite good".

I always dredge up historical examples at this point - what class of 16-year-olds doesn't laugh when Shakespeare says of his villain, "This naughty man,"?

Gareth thinks it's a reflection of our culture - we have to prove to everyone, constantly, that our lives are meaningful and full of interest; especially while our preoccupations become more and more shallow in reality.

I don't really mind the devaluation of positive emphasis - heck, we might start to believe what we're saying, and an obsessive love of something quite mediocre isn't all that bad a trait (Gareth's love of dairy products comes to mind for the second time). Cheerfulness never killed nobody, nohow.

No, what I don't like is the devaluation of negative statements. In the past few years it seems to have become fashionable to say "GOSH, this place is like working in a concentration camp," - is it? Is it *really*?

Just so we don't get into a logical loop, I understand when people exaggerate with humorous intent. That's why I'm *not* upset by jokes, as long as those jokes don't dehumanise anybody.

My absolute least favourite of the negative statements that are thrown around inappropriately is...

Shock. As in "I was shocked," or "Don't shock anybody,".

Physically, a state of shock can be fatal. The body is shutting down - therefore, I'd interpret the emotional equivalent as a feeling of horror, of disgust, that is so great that the human mind can't cope - news of a murder, or a rape, or rhetoric that is truly inhuman; betrayal by someone close to you; cruelty to the innocent or defenceless; they are all things that might cause it. The realisation that people are starving, all over the world, and the average person can do very little to save them.

Those things are shocking.

One of my friends has recently been betrayed by a close relative - she doesn't appear to be shocked, just sad. THAT shocks me, because she ought to believe that she is worth treating well.

(Gareth's just told me that, like everyone else, he feels betrayed by Nu Labour. I pointed out that he's only ever voted Lib Dem*. I feel that lacks the essential qualification for a betrayal)

Nudity isn't shocking. Pornography isn't shocking - it might shock and frighten children, because they might interpret even the most vanilla scenario as painful, and they certainly won't understand that the more extreme varieties are fictional. That's why it should be kept out of their hands.

Some kinds of pornography are *surprising* - "Egad, how does that go in THERE? It's bigger than her head!" as is a lot of nudity - "Gosh, those are hirsute buttocks you've got there."

"Bad" language is *surprising* if you hear it in some situations - "Would sir like some fucking mixed vegetables?"

An unusual hairstyle, particularly one that defies gravity, is also *surprising*, as are some more unusual body modifications - "How does that go in THERE?" is often a relevant question concerning those, too, I suppose.

What I'm trying to say is that, if you tell me how *shocking* it is that your new microwave has broken, or how *shocking* it is that that young man had his tie undone, I will be less than impressed.

In a few of these cases, the individuals concerned just have a dry sense of humour (people don't understand mine a lot of the time, so I get that). However, in the case of most of those people - they're being deadly, deadly serious.

As I probably said when ranting about Kim's bullies, why don't they just stand up and say "My life is so perfect! It's so perfect that I have the luxury of shock and horror whenever I encounter a new situation! Your life is terrible by comparison, because mine, you see, is perfect. Just thought I'd tell you that, in case I don't seem important enough."

They could say it repeatedly. We could allocate them certain times of the day, and the whole brouhaha would become a lot easier.

*Yes, from time to time he's eaten the ballot paper as an alternative, or stuffed it up the bum of a nearby hippopotamus - he obviously believes in his vote making a difference.

Doctors vs. Comedians

2008-07-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

If the progesterone-only pill, or, indeed, the "progestrogen-only FISH, wheeeeeeee, I am a moron" (see novel below) did cause male-pattern hair growth, I'm sure I would have noticed.

I'd be giving my GP some bullshit excuse by now about how I *really really* needed it...

If, like me, you stick your fingers in your ears and go "LALALALALALALA" whenever some ill-educated hack mentions Thomas Beattie, meaning that your fingers and ears have actually fused by now, you'll be relieved by the following joke from Mock the Week:

"What would you say to him, if you were a doctor?"
"Well, I'd say "The good news is, you've had a baby. The bad news is, it's blown your cock off,"."

If a real doctor, one I already knew, said that to me, as a joke... I would probably laugh so much that I peed myself a little bit.

Am I an oddity?

Doctors

2008-07-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

This morning, I 'as mostly been STRUCK DUMB BY THE FALLING STUPID.

I have been helping with the exams of fourth year medical students, as a simulated patient. (A simulated patient pretends to be a real patient, yes? Good? Right? I have to check to see if the wilful idiocy is catching).

The students know we're not real patients, but they're supposed to act as if we are. Today, I was playing a patient in a very boring, ordinary scenario - a woman who wanted to go on the Pill, but had to take the mini one in order not to exacerbate her migraines. My friend Rebecca was playing someone with bipolar disorder - rather more interesting.

Note: I can slip back into "woman acting" whenever I like, as I did it for so long.

So, a fourth-year med student has been trained in medicine, and in communication skills, yes? Being fourth-year med students, they will have been trained in medicine, for four years?

Out of eighteen students:

Roughly 50% of them talked about the combined pill instead, under the name "mini pill" or "progesterone only pill"

Several of these, of course, gave me advice that would almost certainly have resulted in pregnancy, as I would essentially have been having unprotected sex

Two of them knew the failure rate of the mini pill. The rest made it up, with answers from 0.01% to 5%

One of them just could not do Key Stage Three level mathematics - two others struggled

Three of them didn't know the difference between "first day of your period" and "first day of your cycle"

Two of them told me that I had an increased risk of ectopic pregnancies - FALSE - and one of these talked about the horrors of an ectopic pregnancy in great detail

One told me that I was likely to have male-pattern hair growth - you know what, FALSE

Edit: I forgot, "progestrogen" is not a hormone - and it wasn't a slip of the tongue. To this student, the substance under discussion was definitely progestrogen.

Those were the factual errors. I won't get on to the abysmal communication skills - apart from one error I especially liked. One of the side effects of the mini-pill is acne. Two students pointed out that I had acne already, in a helpful fashion.

To elaborate on the maths:

Student: "The failure rate is (made up percentage that is bollocks)"

Me (in polite ladylike tone) "Er... over what amount of time?"

Student: "The amount of time you take the pill."

Me (in polite ladylike tone) "I mean, is it the possible failure rate in one cycle, or a year, or just an average for all women over all the time they've taken it?

Student: "It's just the failure rate, however long you take it for."

Me: "..."

Student: (smirking in patronising manner) "You seem a bit lost. Shall I go through everything again?"

Now, I'm certain that all of those students (about 60% of whom were female) weren't all gay or celibate. Some of them must have wanted to prevent pregnancy at some point? Yes?

I knew all the differences between the two pills, and how they each compared to other methods of contraception. This is because I have used contraception in my life.

The examiner for my station explained to me that medical departments just aren't failing medical students any more, because universities are all competing for artificially high pass rates.

I vaguely knew that this was the case (though honestly, truly, it's not true for my degree course. Despite excellent teaching, we have a high rate of failures and drop-outs, and I haven't got over 60% so far).

It just didn't seem that important, because I'd seen it in disciplines where NOBODY DIES if you are Doin It Rong.

People with complex illnesses (like, actually, bipolar disorder) are often asked why they don't trust doctors. People who have not been ill but have had to go through medical procedures nonetheless, like transsexual people and pregnant women, are often asked why they don't trust doctors. They're asked this with the subtext "Are you a crazy paranoid loon?"

Because... because... oh, never mind.

2008-07-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

While I'm thinking of music, I'd secretly like to write songs like these.

They're by a trans guy, too (kinda obviously, considering it's the same voice throughout).

I just really like them. *wanders off to half-heartedly pursue musical career*

Julie Walters is Julie Walters

2008-07-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Just to make things entirely clear, and to destroy some scurrilous rumours that are filling EVEN MY OWN HOME:

I did not see the film of Mamma Mia! today.

And IF I did, IF, I didn't enjoy it.

And we are certainly not going to fulfil ANY gay stereotypes by watching it over and over again for weeks until the quiet, affable neighbours come round with a chainsaw and destroy our TV and computer and vocal chords.

Because it's not very metal at all.

(actually, I think it's more metal than metal, because there are homoeroticism and skin-tight clothing and cheese, but it does lack essential musical ingredients)

wheeeeeeee! Musical theatre makes my happy place happy.

Macs are for LOSERS!111eleventy

2008-07-14T15:19:00.000-07:00

Robert Webb was voted 88th in a poll of the world's sexiest men.

David Mitchell, his coconspirator, was not on the list.

WHY, women of the world? WHYWHYWHY?

He will be gay now. And he will stay with me forever. Mainly because I've locked him in my wardrobe.

kthx

Hero(ine)s

2008-07-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

These people should get as much recognition as possible for their courage.

1) Sameem Ali, a woman brought up partially in care and partially in an abusive home, forced into a "marriage" at 13 which she escaped for the sake of her son, and now a councillor in her home town of Manchester - of course, this was managed with no formal qualifications.

2) Father Louis Braxton - yes, I know that men of the cloth ought to intervene to protect the vulnerable like this priest did, but it's not exactly an everyday occurrence.

In lighter news, scroll down here and you'll find a photo of my maternal parent in an unfortunate outfit. If my grandma could, she'd still force us both to dress like that.

Now I come to think about it, if you leave a delicate garment in my parents' or grandparents' house for any length of time over thirty seconds, it is returned to you nice and clean by a beaming grandmother... approximately one-third of its original size, with no trace of its original colour or pattern.

By "delicate" I mean not constructed out of reinforced concrete.

It's a war of attrition against my masculine wardrobe and my mother's perfectly ordinary clothes, the kind that might be worn by a perfectly ordinary person (as opposed to flowery monstrosities).

At 13 and 14, I used to wear my (then long) hair in pigtails sometimes. I thought the look was obviously ironic, because the rest of me was swathed in black and spikes. It wasn't ironic enough for my grandmother. It was just *adorable*.

Birds of Britain

2008-07-13T15:52:00.000-07:00

I get all my education off the internet.

Oh, and this.

Wherein Olli is a hypocrite

2008-07-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

Hokay, so - women who explain how you'll be SO GOOD TO YOURSELF and HAPPY and FULFILLED if only you think *just* like them...

Now, I know that the Powers that Be do that a lot, obviously, but it's somehow worse when given as friendly advice from people who should know better (supposedly feminist women).

Now, some could accuse me of hypocrisy - in the last year or so, I've told several women to leave partners/friends who were very obviously abusive. I haven't minced my words or abided by social niceties in any way.

Well, I might be a hypocrite, but I honestly don't care. There is a difference between women whose mental health is questionable owing to abuse, and women who are capable of making their own decisions. If you're the sort of "feminist" who doesn't agree, I will not start a dialogue with you, as *you* are deeply misogynistic.

So, Gareth and I are monoamorous, and I don't see that changing any time soon. Gareth's happy as he is, and I don't meet people as marriageable as him every day of the week. Or ever (if they were roaming the streets in dozens, we'd happily navigate a poly relationship).

Sexually, however, it's less clear-cut. If one of us wants sexual contact with someone, we have to gain both the consent of that person and our partner. If we don't get the consent of that partner, the other person must be immediately forgotten.

If I would feel jealous, I would say no. If Gareth would feel jealous, he would say no. If either of us didn't abide by a "no", we would be cheaters, the vilest of people.

If you think that you would sleep with EVERYONE IN THE WORLD in that kind of relationship, because it's AWESOME, you might be wrong... Our conquests each are seriously well in the lower half of single digits.

Because we don't fancy that many people.

And not many people fancy us.

And we both have lower than average libidos.

And we're both on the autism spectrum, so are unskilled in the art of seduction...

And we feel jealousy sometimes, like normal humans often do.

Now, we have rows and upsets. But they have never, ever been about anything to do with extramarital attraction, because we have the aforementioned arrangement, like, y'know, mature adults.

Why am I telling the world this? Because I don't want people to see me flirting with another human and think I'm cheating scum.

Because of not being cheating scum and all.

Also, I don't really like secrets - they resemble non-white lies too much.

On to this conversation, in which I have tried to break the arrangement gently to several people, all of whom have been women who are proud of being strong feminists who know their own minds:

"I wouldn't mind if Gareth slept with somebody else, as long as I'd consented beforehand,"

"Yes, you would. You would be hurt."

Well, as long as I know my own mind in this *purely hypothetical* situation that is, of course, *purely hypothetical* and has not been tested in practise in any way.

It always seems to be under a "we're all women here! And men are BASTARDS who will TAKE ADVANTAGE of you, ALWAYS, ALL MEN, ALL THE TIME, and you are an innocent little flower who couldn't possibly FIND THE IDEA ATTRACTIVE SOMETIMES because that would be like AROUSAL, and we're ACTUALLY IN EIGHTEEN-FIFTY-EIGHT" subtext.

And no, it's not different for me because I don't ID as a woman, and "gay men can do that sort of thing". Many women are consensually nonmonogamous! Many women are polyamorous! They are real women, not crazy loons who live solely in the imaginations of straight men.

Of course, females in poly relationships must have this nonsense much worse, and it must hurt worse because they're actually in love with their other partners. It's pure virgin-whore dichotomy patriarchal nonsense - and, of course, pure SEX! THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVAR! I WILL OBSESS OVER IT 4 U! disguised as "Honestly, these people are sex-obsessed".

Because we've *never* seen that attitude in sexism... homophobia... transphobia... everything that's bad.

On to happier subjects - we played D&D today, and had many encounters of the random (draconic) kind. And lots of food and good coffee. I need to do something nice for the people who made us all the food and coffee.

Interior Decor

2008-07-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

I'm currently feeling like a rich person, as I'm staying over at my friend Luke's house - it's like a TV house, with a TV family in it.

I mean television, not transvestite.

And I don't mean the kind of television that's so prevalent nowadays, where the audience is invited to point and laugh at stupid people with rubbish lives... I mean fictional television, where everything is nice and shiny and pleasant and REALLY BLOODY EXPENSIVE.

*loses all genetic Commie leanings & desire to take archaeology (the paupers' discipline) any further*

Remind me to talk tomorrow about sexist pseudofeminists. "You think x, because all females think x! Don't treat yourself badly by saying you think y!"

Yes, I know that several people on my blogroll talk about the same thing more eloquently, but it's been affecting me personally more and more.

And I'll also talk about why I don't self-identify as an astronaut.

And link to an AWESOME AWESOME thing about the geek lifestyle.

bed now, kthxbai.

Comments and Wives

2008-07-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

OK, OK, comments are on already.

But y'all have to comment now.

Gareth and I are jokingly searching for a wife, because obviously I don't fit the bill and neither does he.

We need someone who will nurture and cuddle Gareth when he breaks a wall with his leg, rather than, say, point and laugh for half an hour.

Someone who won't tell any lie possible to get out of the washing up. "Everyone I have ever loved died in a freak cyclone today, so I don't quite feel up to it."

Though Moominmamma, that most nurturing and wifely of fictional characters, keeps the dirty plates under the bed and carries them outside when it rains.

Awesome! We'd both forget to take them outside :-)

For a Ginger Lady

2008-07-11T05:42:00.000-07:00

The incidents I'm about to describe happened over a month ago, but still infuriate me - and I want to examine why.

I also want to make myself feel better by posting a passive-aggressive rant about someone I don't like - well, why do y'all think they invented the blogosphere?

So, I have a good friend whose name is Kim (she's doing the best she can with Kimberley Leeanne - and no, I'm not giving her a pseudonym, because she has nothing to be ashamed of, and is awesome in every way).

In many ways, she is an ideal of 21st-century womanhood. Both attractive and smart, she refuses to take shit from anyone - but she's still nurturing and caring (yeah, personally, on that coach trip, I would have moved seats away from the girl whose face threatened projectile vomit, not looked after her...). Kim also has a strong County Durham accent and insatiable curiosity.

Most of the people doing my degree don't have regional accents. The department - heck, the university - is full of public school alumni, who seem to specialise in saying clueless things about people outside their arenas of experience.

Anyway, the godly Martin Carver (eminent archaeologist is eminent) was talking about the African Burial Ground in NY. It seems that some authorities fought some rather more ethical authorities over the remains therefrom, and the remains themselves got moved around quite a bit. They even spent a while stored in the World Trade Center.

When this was mentioned, Kim asked (I remember this verbatim) "But the whole thing over the bones was quite recent, wasn't it? Were they still there during 9/11, confusing the firemen?"

Whereupon one girl took it upon herself to tell everyone, loudly, how OFFENSIVE that remark had been and how HORRIBLE and OFFENSIVE she found it.

After the lecture, when she wasn't *supposed* to be sitting silently, she strode up to Kim and shouted at her. Whereupon, I said (verbatim) "Who is it offensive to?"

She then said, "*my old name* I wasn't talking to YOU!"

Having realised that I was dealing with a person who thought she could choose who replied when she spoke I started shouting back :-D

Then she proceeded to tell Kim that, by disagreeing with her, Kim was removing her freedom of speech.

During the next few days, I heard this girl
1) Call someone a "retard"
2) Sit there saying nothing while someone else used "retard" repeatedly
3) Laugh when someone compared his fieldwork experience to "a concentration camp"

And I spent as little time with her as possible. I wonder what else she found funny?

So, y'know, it becomes crystal fucking clear that this girl's vendetta against Kim doesn't come from a desire to uphold standards of decent human behaviour. It comes from her DARING to be working-class and wanting to make something of herself, DARING to have a regional accent and to STILL WANT HER VOICE HEARD, and DARING to argue with her "betters".

I wouldn't be upset if this girl was just one lonely asshat. In fact, however, we found Kim crying that next Monday - it seemed that everyone on the course found her offensive.

Not everyone, exactly - everyone with the same level of privilege in their background, who had never heard somebody from the ACTUAL REAL WORLD say ACTUAL THINGS before.

And they still laugh at her when she doesn't know a long word, at a dyslexic woman who grew up on a council estate.

And they talk about her in terms designed to denigrate all "mouthy" women. I wish I could revoke all their rights when they do - guess what, "gobby" women, women who weren't nice, "appropriate" young ladies - earned them.

Kim had tried so, so hard to come to university. She had worked more than any of them could even imagine. She is as strong as anything. And these people had reduced her to tears - something all kinds of abuse rarely managed.

I was angry at these people for another reason, too. Hasn't anyone who knows anything about American politics noted the reason for their national oversensitivity? Their ridiculous insistence that everything said, everything, has to be beautifully patriotic?

Their politicians want us to forget the children without health insurance; the elderly people, many veterans, starving in their homes; police and other official brutality towards people who have dared to be poor or black; the fact that millions of people are living in third world conditions in a First World superpower. Yes, actual third world conditions. Where running water is an unobtainable luxury. Those kinds of third world conditions.

How about they stop contributing to that culture of silence? No, but as I know by your treatment of Kim, those people are obviously less than people to them.

Hmm. I guess I know why I'm angry now.

edit: this post seems to be mainly about teh womens - I'm not letting the other guys get off scot-free. I was the only guy chivalrous enough to stand up for a woman who was very obviously being bullied. I don't care how many rugby medals and penises you have, I might revoke your right to self-define as men...

Whoops

2008-07-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I should have started driving lessons aged 16, like my partner did. I think I'm too old for this lark.

6.45pm: Olli sets out with his driving instructor.
7.05pm: Car in front of Olli becomes stationary.
7.05pm: Olli doesn't, and tries to continue careering along at 25.
7.06pm: Olli cries girly tears of humiliation.
7.06pm: It is discovered that it's only a paint job. Olli begins to believe in miracles.
7.10pm: Olli has forgotten how to drive altogether now.
7.45pm: Olli comes home and drinks.

I just can't multitask. Why didn't I stop? I was busy!

Yerwhat?

2008-07-10T04:40:00.000-07:00

If someone on a low income owns a car, is it likely to be a) a new car, or b) an old car?

Can someone on a low income a) buy a new car at will, or does ze b) have to keep the car ze has?

So... how EXACTLY is the new road tax not just money with menaces?

"Either do something you are unable to do, or give us the cash. You there! Yes, you on 10k. You obviously have a lot of money to spare, during this recession."

OK then, Chelsea tractors. Will someone on a high income, when given the choice between doing what ze likes and paying a few hundred pounds a) stop doing what ze likes, or b) pay a few hundred pounds?

Oh well! When all the working- and lower middle- classes have given up and gone on the dole, we'll get other people's money given to us in nice little parcels, to buy exactly what the government thinks is good for us. Isn't that life-affirming?

Before I explode:

Gareth points out that only this song can be guaranteed to depress both kinds of binary transsexual person...

(curiously, not me - if I am FtM rather than FtX, the initialism must be reconsidered as Failed to Mature... lulz penis)

Toiletgate, part fifty gazillion

2008-07-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

I quite fancied going to Pride London this year, and would have done had I not been in Wales with my family.

But, as it turns out, the L! G!! B ...t movement is as farsighted as ever...

And wait just one second - the toilet options, AT PRIDE, which is an LGBT PRIDE EVENT, you know, an EVENT that celebrates LGBT PRIDE, are "men's", "women's" and "disabled"?

Oh, the stupid. The burning, burning stupid.

If I wasn't in a gay relationship, my homophobia would rival that of the Pope or Jeremy Clarkson, thanks to this kind of nonsense.

Oh, and Reason for Trans Separatism no. 1753, of which I have just thought: doesn't Joe Public have the words TRANSSEXUAL, SEX, SEX SEX SEX, SHEMALE, SEX and SEX all mixed up in his head? Just before he makes something sticky?

Therefore, isn't incorporation in a homosexual and bisexual initialism going to muddy the waters a bit more? Encourage people to think about an ev0l autogynephilic rapist straw man, rather than, you know, trans women?

I suppose there's the bigger issue of the perception that L, G, B and Q "lifestyles" are all about sex, that partnership and love don't get a look-in.

And the obvious fact that bigots don't differentiate between, say, a camp gay man, a male genderqueer and a trans woman.

So, we do rather need to be fighting shoulder to shoulder. I just wish that our supposed allies would make that a bit easier.

Good stuff

2008-07-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

Look, I've got free time this afternoon and no more free time EVAR.

My partner has bought me a remote-controlled toy car.

We're having an EPIC MARATHON SESSION (of Dungeons and Dragons, of course, what else?) this weekend. If you think that sounds nerdy, guess what tattoo I'm getting come September? I've got an archaeological half sleeve already.

We're going to Wacken Open Air, on that mythical pilgrimage in the land where beer comes in litres.

I'm naked on Youtube (not linking it, use your nous from my links).

I'm going to have a male name soon.

An actor I know, David Toole, popped up in a film I just watched (Amazing Grace, with an unreasonably sexy portrayal of William Wilberforce).

This is an extremely good song.

That is all.

Just Don't Mention Indy

I'm alive!

Firefly...

Feminist hat, engage.

How to make an autistic obsessive-compulsive cry...

The New Doctor!

Either I do more laundry than before...

More on that dreaded grammatical element...

This kind o'stuff...

Changing History

The most offensive thing you'll read this decade...

Questions...

A River in Egypt

Joyful Fun

Half-formed thoughts about Bad Things

Kamelot...

Trans Day of Remembrance

Stephen Fry in America

Politics

Zombies!

Foot... ball?

It's going to look like YOUR FACE.

Eeeeee!

Masculinity fail

Welcome Week

We won't inherit the Earth, whatever my bumper sticker said. The Earth is full of twats.

Prophecies

I became a geek...

Manga Ollis

Surprise!

Entrenched stereotypes

A very short Sexism 101

Right, left, upper and below.

The 8-year-old anorexic

I have no idea why...

I have no idea why...

Kitteh Blogging - the inferior acquaintance of baby blogging

Interesting...

Whee!

Lols

Thoughts...

And Part III...

Casting Directors, Part II

I would write a blog right now, but...

Inconsequential Things and Advice

Repetitive Daily Trangst Update

My Pet Peeve

Athens Boys Choir

I am feminist fail?

Ethnic bees and actors

The Sad Tale of Bob

Kitteh, part II

Barack Obama

Casting directors...

Levels of disaster...

In which we learn that trans people can't use mattocks

Thoughts

Is this *really* OK?

My university...

A good cure for insomnia

Shame in the Park

A Less than Interesting Blogpost

Doctors, part eleventy

Education

Our GM...

Secret Name?

The Something of Boris

Childrens

Beauty

Pants Down Friend

Nomenclature

Autism

Bearlesque!

I Like Corpse Paint and I Cannot Lie

Fools

A Big Trans Post, from a small trans person

Journeys - and a solution to all the world's problems

WALL-E!

So much death!

I'm nearly at the humorous cats...

Is this really OK?