Questioning Transphobia

Unlike Queen Emily, I post the videos at the bottom. That’s how I roll.

Gallup: GOP take unprecedented 10 point lead in polls.

NY Times: Border sweeps in North reach miles into US:

ROCHESTER — The Lake Shore Limited runs between Chicago and New York City without crossing the Canadian border. But when it stops at Amtrak stations in western New York State, armed Border Patrol agents routinely board the train, question passengers about their citizenship and take away noncitizens who cannot produce satisfactory immigration papers.

“Are you a U.S. citizen?” agents asked one recent morning, moving through a Rochester-bound train full of dozing passengers at a station outside Buffalo. “What country were you born in?”

When the answer came back, “the U.S.,” they moved on. But Ruth Fernandez, 60, a naturalized citizen born in Ecuador, was asked for identification. And though she was only traveling home to New York City from her sister’s in Ohio, she had made sure to carry her American passport. On earlier trips, she said, agents had photographed her, and taken away a nervous Hispanic man.

Shakesville: Police State Newz:

At some point I may have mentioned that while my family was riding the train between Chicago and New York last December, we were rudely awakened by armed government agents on the hunt for foreign looking people that may have boarded at South Bend, Toledo, Cleveland, Erie, or any number of totally not Canadian stations. They really didn’t pay us much mind. Mostly they were interested in the folks seated in front of us speaking a foreign language (Russian, FWIW). That and yelling at the deaf woman in the next row.

Yeah, this is beyond out of hand. Can we start talking about police states yet?

Miami Herald: Should a parent seek therapy for a child who crosses the gender divide?

Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality for your class and oppression analysis needs. I really recommend reading this if you’re interesting in intersectional and kyriarchal viewpoints.

And of course, a music video! Emily in Love, Sow the Seeds:

“I’m obsessed with the mess that’s America”

Lisa appears to have given this week’s open post a miss so I thought I’d step into the gap once again and tide you lot over til next week’s.  Today’s Links of Interest are:

I wrote at Global Comment about the paradox of the Tea Party, a “radical” party dedicated to making things stay the same.

Australia had an extremely boring election with an interesting outcome.  Does Australia have a government yet?

Religion Dispatches had an interesting but problematic piece on Christian churches and their trans parishioners.

My always lovely co-blogger Helen posted at her own spot a PSA about trans women and prostate checks.

And that’s it..

This week’s video is a quite amazing fan vid of Ariel Pink’s “Round and Round,” set to clips from 80′s aerobics movie Perfect.  Both song and vid make me feel slightly nostalgic and slightly queasy at the same time.

This week’s open post has things:

Vanity Fair has an interesting piece about the dubiously short-term view of Washington politics.  Jack Abramoff’s assessment of the culture of “legalised bribery” seems about right to me.

Anna Lekas Miller has a good post up at Global Comment about the manufactured “Ground Zero mosque” “controversy.”  Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches uses that as a jumping point to suggest that this is a move in a wider Christian Right strategy to eliminate Islam altogether in the US.

Keeanga-Yamahhta Taylor in the Socialist Worker on how the Right has re-defined racism, stripping the concept of all meaning.

And lastly, Brentin Mock at Colorlines has a post up about the terrible working conditions people cleaning up the oil spill in face, and the desperation for work for many people in Louisiana.

Drop yer links in the comment section, cheers.

“a teenager in love with Christ and heroin”

I have decided to step in to help Lisa out with today’s open post.  I haven’t really posted much at the new site yet, hey how’s it going?  Me?  Oh, you know.  Things that I have been reading lately that are tremendously interesting…

The Washington Post had an article about how corporations are moving towards a new business model that can–already has–create profits without resuming hiring after the economic crisis.  To whit:

In the mildly halcyon days before the 2008 crash, the one economic outlier was wages. Profit, revenue and GDP all increased; only ordinary Americans’ incomes lagged behind. Today, wages are still down, employment remains low and sales revenue isn’t up much, either. But profits are the outlier. They’re positively soaring.

Among the 175 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index that have released their second-quarter reports, the New York Times reported Sunday, revenue rose by a tidy 6.9 percent, but profits soared by a stunning 42.3 percent. Profits, that is, are increasing seven times faster than revenue. The mind, as it should, boggles.

It turns out Target’s executives are quite significantly less gay friendly than the 100% HRC rating might have suggested.  I, for one, am shocked (ie I am not shocked).

I wrote some music criticism at Global Comment about millennial rnb.

Peter Laarman at Religion Dispatches writes about why taxing the rich is the godly thing to do.  Couldn’t agree more about the alliance of distorted Protestantism and supply-side economics that dominates American political discourse.

The Australian election is depressing me, but this debate between the Australian Sex Party and far-right fundamentalists Family First was quite entertaining.  Seriously though, if Tony Abbott gets in, I am taking away the entire country’s dessert for a whole month.

And lastly, Lisa wanted you to read this post about cats and Science.

I want to try to stick to mondays, but as I said a few weeks ago, I don’t know how reliably I can manage it. So, this week I completely forgot to do this.

Gina at Skip the Makeup reviews Ticked off Tr***ies with Knives

Despite many of the its supporters’ comments to the contrary, I found TOTWK’s trailer to be an accurate representation of the film I ultimately saw. If you like the trailer and its promotional materials, you’ll (sadly for your level of non-taste) enjoy the film. If you thought the trailer looked like crap or found elements of it offensive or banal, then you’re wasting your money and will walk away from the film feeling as if you’ve just thrown away another few hours of your ‘haven’t-got-a-life.’

I totally cherry-picked that quote, but the whole review is worth reading.

FWD: CDC Study Reveals Poverty as Major Contributing Factor for HIV Infection

FWD: US Action Item: Encourage the Senate to Adopt HR3101:

In June, I wrote an action item asking readers to support The Twenty First Century Video and Telecommunications Accessibility Act. I’m pleased to report that the House version of the bill, HR 3101, just passed, thanks to a lot of work by disability advocates (and a few FWD readers)! Now, it’s the Senate’s term. The Senate has its own version of the bill, and we are faced with either Senate passage of their version and then reconciliation (writing a bill that both chambers will agree to) or Senate adoption and passage of HR 3101, at which point the bill can be sent to the White House for the President to sign.

Flipfloppingjoy: On Being Triggered – I can’t even begin to do this topic justice here, and an open post isn’t really appropriate for it. However, I want to boost the signal on this specific post, because it needs to be said. I do want to say more, and hopefully I’ll be able to follow through on that.

Flipfloppingjoy: I Talked With a Friend Last Night:

who lives on the line of where the Michigan oil spill happened. And she said that they had to seal all their windows shut and keep their doors closed. Crank the air conditioning up.

Because every time they smell the oil outside, the gag, cough, retch–their lungs feel like sharp twisting knots.

Cripchick: disability justice is (our) liberation, not a trend

Colorlines: BP’s Dumping Oil-Spill Waste in Communities of Color, Study Finds:

More than one hundred days into the BP disaster, folks are wondering where all the oil has gone–much of it seems to have crept under the water’s surface, or maybe evaporated into thin air. But, as officials scramble to assess the pending damage, we do know the destination of around 40,000 tons of the spill waste: it’s headed for the families that have been getting dumped on for years. In what may be yet another calm before the storm, BP’s colorfully advertised waste management plan appears to follow a haunting pattern of environmental racism.

And since I was just introduced to this band:

Skunk Anansie, My Ugly Boy.

Feminists With Disability (FWD) has a couple of posts:

(Quick Hit) The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) at 20

Disability and Work: Equal Pay is a Disability Rights Issue

On Feministe:

On Rape and Deception – comments get problematic, so be warned

Guest Poster Tasha Fierce writes on The Coming Race War – also some problematic comments

Where Are Are My Keys I Lost My Phone – A few weeks old, but worth reading

Shakesville:

Feminism 101: Your Underdog Lovelorn Romantic May Be My Rapist

Genderbitch:

Dating and Disclosure

Flipfloppingjoy:

No – Another post about the Israeli woman charging an Arab man with rape because she thought he was Jewish when she had sex with him. There’s a lot of nuance in this, so go read it.

And this week, two videos:

Conversation between a trans woman and a cis woman about the cis woman’s decision to attend MWMF. If anyone wants to write a transcription, that’d be brilliant. I’d do it, but my short term memory hates me and would make me listen to each sentence six times. Jayinchicago transcribed it in the comments. Thank you!

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts – I Love Rock and Roll

First, some links:

Samia writes I actually call it cisfail sometimes.

Restructure! writes Male geeks reclaim masculinity at the expense of female geeks.

Before I get to the music video, please remember to update your RSS feeds and links, etc to http://www.questioningtransphobia.com. The old site will no longer be updated, but will remain online for archival purposes. Things are a bit messy here and now, as I’m still getting things organized. Most of it is functional now, at least.

Tori Amos’ Cornflake Girl. The video has some elements from the Wizard of Oz (tornado part) but otherwise seems pretty random.

Not all open posts will be on Monday, although I’ll try to put one up every week.

Share any links you like in the comments, talk about anything you want to talk about. I know comments are a bit sparse lately, but hopefully we can get some life in here.

Also, hopefully, QT will be on a new server very soon.

Now, these two posts by Quinnae Moongazer about Blizzard’s RealID mess last week:

World of Warshaft

Through the Looking Glass

Although Blizzard’s decided not to go through with this decision, this is a kind of zeitgeist that’s developing in some corners of the internet (such as Facebook) that people should be expected to use their real names in online communities. As Mark Zuckerberg,  the owner of Facebook has said, we should be expected to use the same identity in all of our interactions, and that people who don’t want to must have something to hide or be ashamed of. And of course many of us really do have something to hide, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s the fact that we have the right to privacy and to control what aspects of our lives we put online:

For Zuckerberg, that ethos means sharing everything. He disagrees with the notion that people have different identities. To him, the idea that someone is different at work than at home, than at a rock concert, is dishonest. Says Kirkpatrick, “He believes that he will live a better life personally, and all of us will be more honest, and ultimately it will be better for the world if we dispense with that belief.”

This is a very cis white heterosexual male perspective.

But I expect further RealID plans to push in this direction again, and I expect Facebook to continue messing with privacy settings to make it harder to lock away your entire profile. I also expect others to start adopting this mindset (although not everyone).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbNymZ7vqY&hl=en_US&fs=1]

The Muppet Show muppets singing their own version of Bohemian Rhapsody.

I totally forgot this last week, and nearly forgot this week.

I don’t have music videos, and the links below make me averse to putting one in this post.

For those who have heard about Aiyana Stanley Jones’ death at the hands of police and think you have no words, here’s a few words you can borrow.

As with the past two, share any links or blogs you think are interesting. They don’t need to have anything to do with trans stuff or politics, although those are welcomed.

I’m going to try to share more links with these each week. I have a couple this week:

Comments and the Myth of Free Speech by s. e. smith. This has been said over and over again, but it never gets old.

PSA: Online Privacy by nixwilliams. If you’re trans, you should read this. A new online service, Spokeo, makes it easier to learn things about anyone, especially trans people. Instructions on how to opt out at the link.

Spill, Baby, Spill: Oil spill endangers economy and wildlife in Gulf states.