moominmuppet

Called the 2nd Precinct to find out whether to come in to file a report there, or have someone come to the house. As expected, had to stand up for our right to have this reported, even though there isn't really anything they can do about it at the moment. Seem to have convinced the officer I spoke with (who even voluntarily used the phrase 'hate crime' so that's a good sign), but will have to go through it all over again when I get home. They don't recommend we come in, but that we call to have an officer come out. I've got the number for that, now, and anticipate the same kind of conversation all over again in order to get them to actually come out. And likely the same conversation a third time to get them to actually write a report and give us a copy. (sorry for the pre-emptive exasperation, but I've dealt with the local cops too many times on clinic protester violations).

As I told Mom a bit ago, I can get intimidated, or I can get ENRAGED. I'm pretty clear on my choice here. I've talked to my coworker and boss, and they understand why I'm headed home early today to deal with this. G has a hard time with cops, and I'm sure as shit not making him report it by himself, but I do want it on paper today.

Also, G's taking suggestions for appropriate yard signage in response. (which reminds me; I wonder what happened to our "We are the 99%" sign?)

My ideas: btw, if we don't come up with appropriate verbiage for a new sign, I vote we just hang a big-ass rainbow flag so they won't have to come to the door to ask anymore. On the other hand "Yes, we're queer. Now go away and let us sleep" could work.

Convo with Chad:
Chad: how are you?
me: So-so. Irked that my day is going to be hijacked by wondering how worried I should be about this shit. And all the surrounding thoughts, like not being willing to be intimidated, and political elements of decisions to react, etc.
Chad: Nod - I can understand all that. I'm feeling the same.
Hugs
me: hugs
me: I'm processing it by doing it aloud -- on LJ. Trying to make it a teachable moment and also get the support I want right now (which is to feel like my community is around me)
Chad: I understand that. It's really beyond ridiculous, and I can't see how it is not illegal harassment. And I can understand all of the other thoughts too.
I know there are ugly people out there, but you should feel safe in your own damned home.
me: nod I strongly suspect it is illegal, given that they came onto private property (clearly -- gate!) for the express purpose of harrassing us.
Chad: Nod. I know I'm repeating myself, but if you need anything...
me: Thanks. Right now I'm trying to decide whether to call the cops today, or wait 'til we talk to the Center tomorrow.
Leaning toward calling them today.
Debating about trying to get home early in order to help G deal with that if we're going to, though.
Right now, going out for a smoke and to call my folks and rant about fucknuggets.

Report Hate Crimes -- Instructions from Lambda.org

Paste from the site (links at the original)

Report Hate Crimes

To report hate crimes, call 911 or your local police department. Assistance for survivors of hate crimes is available through:
HATE-CRIME NETWORK (USA/international) click here

Hate Crime National Hotline (USA) 206-350-HATE (4283)

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


What to do following an incident ( Read more... )

My camcorder arrived, but not its battery pack. The can of Dr. Pepper in my bag got poked by something and sprang a carbonated pinhole leak. The second of our newly installed DVRs insists it's unauthorized for use. I think perhaps it's going to be one of those days. Very tired, otherwise doing ok.

Also, messaged my boss about reclaiming half my weekend. Right now my days off are Wed/Thurs, and that's worked really well for quite a while. Now, though, I've got more reasons to want at least one of my weekend days back. I still want to stay second shift, though, and I still need at least one weekday off in order to not have to give up Patient-instructing. So I've proposed that next time we reorganize the schedule (which seems to be coming up sometime soon) I'd like to have Wed or Thurs off, and Saturday off. We'll see, but I've got more seniority than anyone else, so it's likely it'll work out.


Can We Make Time For Love? ColorLines Magazine Brings Something Positive to Social Justice Journalism
A family supporting their "princess boy" and a love song for women of color are just some of the ways that Colorlines, a progressive magazine, seeks to articulate love.

To forestall a planned protest, Bay Area Rapid Transit turned off cellphone service, angering passengers and raising questions about First Amendment rights in an age of social media protests.

Revisiting the IUD for Contraception – Pros and Cons for Women
Related: 10 Reasons To Get An IUD, And 5 Downsides
( Read more... )

Seven interests from my profile explained:

brother cadfael: Brother Cadfael is the main character of my all-time favorite mystery series (it's also been done for BBC with Derek Jacobi, but I haven't watched more than one or two). Dad's a fan of mysteries, and I found them through his collection. Brother Cadfael is an ex-crusader who came to the monastery late in life, and much more world-wise than most of his fellows. He's also much more compassionate and empathetic and understanding of the gray areas in life as a result. A great deal is learned about his history and his feelings about the Crusades throughout the series, so I won't spoil all that, but I will say I like him a great deal, and that'd generally be hard for me to say about a Crusader. He's also the monastery herbalist, and a great deal of the pleasure of the books can be found in the little details of his daily life and the monastery rituals. They're very light little mysteries, about as cheerful as a murder mystery can be. Dead people mostly weren't so fabulous to begin with, and the life of the monastery and village winds through everything as Cadfael patiently pursues the path to truth and justice. Even with the requisite murder in the middle (Cadfael has the Jessica Fletcher problem of people dropping like flies in his general vicinity), I find them incredibly peaceful and calming to read. Ellis Peters made use of an actual town and monastery for the setting, and paid substantial attention to detail. There are still Brother Cadfael tours and such in Shrewsbury.

callahans: Spider Robinson's Callahan's series, and his writing in general, have had a huge influence on my life. If you want to understand my morals and ethics, his books demonstrate it in spades, and helped me sort many of them out to begin with. In fact, a particular scene in Time Pressure, which was the first book of his I read, when I was about 14, was my first introduction to anything resembling poly, and it grabbed me so intensely and immediately that it's amazing it took me another six years to actually identify that about myself. My approach to intensely individualistic communalism, including my whole Villa Villekula project, is certainly deeply influenced by Mike and Lady Sally's respective spaces, and Lady Sally's brothel is my vision of "perfect world" sex work. The sex-positivity of the Lady Sally series was especially meaningful to me given the role sexuality plays in my own life. Much of what Spider writes is light and funny and silly and idealistic, and none of that is a negative for me; the world he imagines is the world I want to create. I'm not the only one. Although I haven't generally participated actively in the Callahanians communities, I often find myself friends with those who do, and learning someone is part of those communities is generally a signal light of possible shared views and ideals.
When I'm feeling beaten down by all that needs to be done in the world, and need an infusion of hope and joy, Callahan's is what I reread.

Shared pain is lessened.
Shared joy is increased.
Thus we refute entropy.
--Spider Robinson

I'm incredibly proud that a fan letter I wrote him back in 2002 still up on his site:

From: "Sarah Young" [email protected]
Subject: fanmail for Spider...
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002

Spider,

I just finished CALLAHAN'S KEY, and I feel a deep need to tell you:

Your writing, starting with a battered copy of TIME PRESSURE, found at a library book sale when I was 14, doesn't make me "happy". It brings me joy to the point of tears, and hope that makes me feel like my heart might burst. That's the most beautiful gift you could ever give a complete stranger. "Thank You" doesn't begin to cover it, but I hope that the fact that I take that joy out into the world, and try to make a difference with it, might.

--Sarah
Oh, USA

Since I am writing about Spider as much as Callahans, I'd like to note that I just saw on his site that his beloved wife Jeanne is now in palliative care. As writers and artists, finances are incredibly tight. They are accepting donations. If you feel moved, please consider tossing something in the pot.


idke: International Drag King Extravaganza. I went in 2002 with Katy and Tori, soon after we started dating, and it was amazing. I haven't been to one since, but IDKE XII is in Baltimore this year, where K and T now live, so I'm absolutely definitely going, and really, really excited about it, both for schmoopy reasons to do with K and T and nostalgia, and because it's just that damned awesome!
A post from that first IDKE, in 2002: The show. OK, I knew I liked drag kings. I was wrong. I fucking _love_ drag kings! IDKE is going to be traveling cities in the next few years. If it comes to your town, I highly recommend going! The environment was amazing; intensely queer and genderqueer. Although I frequently find it uncomfortable to be bi in primarily lesbian environments, that wasn't the case here at all... The audience was full of folks of all genders in full regalia. It was wonderful to be in an huge crowd of people, not be able to identify bio-sex on many of them, and have it not matter in the slightest. And, damn! Talk about some sexual energy... I've apparently determined that I'm reactive to a really wide range of "male" genders when performed by women/queerfolk/genderqueerfolk that I'm not generally drawn to in standardly gendered bio-men. Hmm. Lots of room for gender analysis in that. Of course, I'm also reactive to a lot of "femme" genders in queer women that I'm not generally in straight women. I think it's probably largely tied to the extent that my politics and my libido are intertwined. Those gender performances within queer space signify something very different than they do in straight space, and it's usually an indicator of a likely "meetings of minds" on a number of topics. The performers were amazing - I literally screamed myself hoarse over the course of the night. When I woke up Sunday I had almost no voice, and it's still noticeable today (this is really unusual for me; I think I vaguely recall having laryngitis once before in my life). It's making helpdesk work interesting. Oh, and Tristan Taormino was there! *bounce* Hot,hot,hot. Yum. I spoke with her very briefly, and she crowd-surfed over me... Oh, that reminds me. We've decided that we need a queer women's porn night sometime soon. I've got Tristan's "Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex 2" (although I haven't got #1 yet), Hard Love and How to Fuck in High Heels, Slide Bi Me, and a few other recent queer-produced movies. I should create invites and make a real party out of it. Yay! I wish I could describe the acts, but I honestly have no idea how to get that across in words. All I can say is "Genderfuck. Yum."

Robert Anton Wilson: Robert Anton Wilson is mostly on my interests list out of college nostalgia; The Illuminatus Trilogy and Discordianism were major touchstones amongst many of my college friends. Although I don't connect as deeply with his worldviews as Spider Robinson's, there's a great deal in his work that resonates for me, especially in his joy of the absurd and surreal and chaotic and just plain silly. fnord

skepticism: Wikipedia hits the definition I use pretty much right off the bat: "Skepticism is an approach to accepting, rejecting, or suspending judgment on new information that requires the new information to be well supported by evidence." It's tied into my science geek tendencies, and to my atheism, and is a major element in how I understand and interpret the world. That this is so central to me does create some substantial tension in my life in odd ways, due to the various communities I inhabit simultaneously. It's essentially de rigeur amongst the science geek/atheist communities, but is a much trickier fit with the hippyish idealistic and activist circles that are equally important to me.

united perverts: If I recall correctly, this was something suggested by someone on LJ a long while back; a way for those of us with diverse kinks and such to claim a sense of political solidarity. I don't actually recall beyond that, but it's a concept I like, and that ties in very well with my views and approaches to sexuality-related and identity-based activism. I'm much more a "what we have in common is that we're all different" than a "what we have in common is that we're all the same" fan, and that deeply influences how I handle activism and concepts of community, especially as it relates to identity policing and exclusionism.
It matters to me to work in concert with people who share my belief in freedom for all of us, not necessary just to work in concert with people who might share my activities but none of my beliefs and goals. This definitely ties into the ways in which I am profoundly expansionist rather than assimilationist in my politics. I want there to be space for all of us, in all our spectacular, fabulous freakish glory, not just those of us who can say "Don't worry, I'm really _just_ like you "normal" folks except that my partner's the same gender; I won't really rock the boat and mess with your assumptions once you cope with that". It's also deeply tied into why I strongly prefer the term "queer" as my own identity label. I love the flexibility of the concept; taken absolutely literally, we're all queer in some way. We're all outside the norm, because none of us are purely mathematical constructs. It allows anyone who feels that way and who chooses to be my ally a "space in the room", so to speak. It helps defuse policing questions that require people to pick a letter in the LGBTQIAA alphabet soup and stay there, and that give others tacit permission to judge who gets to claim what identity. It's also my way of saying "These are _all_ my people; don't think I'll look the other way at injustices aimed at them just because I may not be a direct target".

wombats: The WomBATs were how I ended up on LJ in the first place, actually. It's a now pretty defunct bi women's mailing list that I've been on since college, when it was created in order to have a more trans-friendly bi women's space than existed on one of the other major lists at the time. When LJ first got started, about a decade ago, we gradually mostly migrated here over the course of a few years. To this day, a large percentage of my friends list is made up of Wombats and folks I've met through them.

WOMBaT was one of the major development points in my online life, really (the major community that was a similar part of my life prior to that was rec.arts.bodyart). It was incredibly active list for a long time, with a lot of really stimulating and intense conversation, and a lot of long-term bonds formed. I didn't make it to any of the in-person gatherings that happened, but it was how I found some of my first friends in Cleveland when I moved up here (*wave* to Sue and Colleen). When we started moving to LJ, most of us put "wombat" in our interests list so we could find each other under our new screen-names.

San Francisco’s Answer to Westboro Baptist Church -- Laughter is a marvelously powerful tool, and this is great implementation!

Yup, more. (also, as a note, after this I will be following only my nearest and dearest for the next five days at least, and probably longer -- I'll really only have access via b'berry until Sunday night, though)

Bart described it as a "piece of shit racist gem" -- I couldn't agree more. Way to make your side look like moronic assholes without any semblance of an actual argument. I wish I were surprised. At all. And a particularly relevant piece about Obama, race, and that press conference

BradHicks has a great post about the self-induced doctor shortage in the US, and its relevance to the health care debate (I have as many issues with the AMA as I do with the Insurance and Pharmaceutical lobbies)

Dr. Tiller's Accused Murderer in Court Tomorrow

British Army Magazine Features Openly Gay Soldier on Cover Next to Word 'Pride'

Bill Maher: When Did Making a Profit Become the Only Reason to Do Anything? Amen.

On the whitewashing of book covers

William Shatner does Sarah Palin's farewell speech! (from klwalton)

Setting aside all of the other meta-discussions on race and class that surround this issue, the thing about all of this that creeps me out the most is that so many people are willing to defend this officer who, assuming the most charitable possible interpretation, arrested a guy because he didn't like his attitude. That is what [Mike Barnicle] is defending. That is what the execrable Mika Brzenski is defending. That is what I have read numerous commenters on a multitude of sites from the entire political spectrum defend. -- Yes. This.

Not at all surprising, sadly, but utterly enraging: A woman in New Jersey refused a c-section during labor. She gave birth vaginally, and the child was healthy. But the baby was taken away and placed in a foster home, because the woman allegedly “abused and neglected her child” by refusing the c-section. She was also accused of behaving “erratically” — to which I can only point out that she was in labor. I hear that hurts a lot.

Bi The Way will air on the Logo Network at 8 pm on August 1st (THIS SATURDAY)! (and is now also available for advance DVD purchase) Must remember to set the DVR for this.

Sex Work and Marriage

Well, out of time. Still have about 160 emails (which includes LJ notifications I've set) to get through. Oy.

I don't really know how close we are to being all done and complete and finished with closing on the house. All day has been about faxing one last bit of paperwork after another. I think we're pretty much done, and it is happening now, but I'm rather confused at this point. And exhausted. And headachey. So glad I'm going home now.

Incidentally, I've been keeping a sleep diary in prep for my sleep study next month. I know I sleep weirdly, but wow. Five days so far, and no single sleep period longer than 3-4 hours.

Call for Submissions- Double Edge: The Intersection of Transgender and BDSM

Thanks, abstinence-only education!

Thanks to a decade of misinformation masquerading as sex education, teens are having the same amount of sex, using contraception less, and getting pregnant more.

Cute and funny Rachel Maddow gifs

Bisexual Relationships Examiner on Margaret Cho (with some great pics of Margaret, too)

Raindrops burst in mid-fall

I'm not normally all that into pranks. I'll make an exception for this fabulously evil Who-themed one

Doctor Who and Torchwood icons (for my own reference)

The Bad Astronomy blog looks like fun

Moon-landing-related debunking. I was horrified and boggled to learn I'm actually related to one such conspiracy theorist. *headdesk*

I think porcinea nails it on the head by calling ittotal societal FAIL! (on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr.)

"Are Bisexuals the Glue that Holds Poly Together?"

I still think Dan Savage is entirely too dumb about entirely too much, but he's right on here: Dan Savage on Dumb Therapists

Poly casting call for "major cable network" -- I loathe this kind of reality TV, and I anticipate the televised dramallamas with dread, but fwiw, and just so you know...

Rachel knows how to annihilate the bullshit

Pushing Joe Arpaio to the margins

California Sprouts 'Green Rush' From Marijuana

It’s Not Sarah’s Fault…Just Ask Her (on Sarah Palin)

Palin’s Resignation: The Edited Version
If you watched Sarah Palin’s resignation speech, you know one thing: her high-priced speechwriters moved back to the Beltway long ago. Just how poorly constructed was the governor’s holiday-weekend address? We asked V.F.’s red-pencil-wielding executive literary editor, Wayne Lawson, together with representatives from the Research and Copy departments, to whip it into publishable shape. Here is the colorful result.

Nudism: Stick It to Your Puritan Forebears By Stripping Down

Why I Hate Filling Out Forms -- a good guest blog on being trans and dealing with the ticky-boxes.

RM has some things to say: Oh Noes! There's Gay People In My Fandom!

The Online Class Divide -- I'm still pondering this one. I pretty much loathe both FB and MySpace, and use them as minimally as I can while managing to reach the people I want to connect with. I'm not sure whether I agree with this take on it or not, or whether I've got anything close to enough perspective to have an opinion at the moment.

Mark's still working the job in Toledo, and gone most of every week. Grafton left for the Rainbow Gathering. Caleb works second shift. It's very strange to have such a quiet house.

Not really a bad thing at the moment, though, because I seem to be having some substantial fatigue problems again. Sleep, sleep, and more sleep. And still tired. Today, also achy, probably from the storm.

Massive storm last night. Lost a major branch in the back yard. It fell right on the part of the fence Tarma jumps when she gets a chance, though, and right now I'm kind of pleased it's there, since it's less hassle watching her when she's outside now that her escape point is covered in tree. Can't wait for the new house's new (well-fenced) yard. Really.

Close on the house is July 9th. Things seem to continue relatively smoothly, although I'm freaking about budget to accomplish everything we want to do, and feeling really weirded out about the month or so when Bec and I won't be living in the same place.

New boss continues to pass the "so far so good" tests... Work's really a pretty good scene right now.

A good article about the relationship between unintended pregnancy and abusive relationships, especially among teens

I'm damned relieved SCOTUS came down on the right side of the strip search case

FDA approves generic form of Plan B -- excellent news!

An interesting article on fat men in film

States could lose federal funding if prison rapes continue -- Good.

Breaking News: Trans-inclusive ENDA introduced in the House -- Here's hoping...

Oh, I love me some Rachel. Especially Rachel and discussion of butchness in this culture

Dear Anti-Choicers: Please Shut Up About the Non-Existent Link Between Abortion and Breast Cancer -- If you have to lie to make your argument, you don't have an argument. We hear this one constantly outside the clinics, and it just makes me batshit and headdesky.