Fat Failure

{I am putting a trigger warning on this post for eating disorders, body issues, and self-harm.}

I'm still new to the concept of fat acceptance.

I have been trying to love my body for years. I understand that I have tried everything short of weight loss surgery to lose weight and was never able to get lower than 140lbs. On a 5ft frame, that is still pretty big and still put me in the overweight category according to the BMI. I had to eat nothing but apple juice and saltines, plus throw up two to three times a day for a whole month to get to that weight too. When given the choice by my very scared (now ex)girlfriend between eating and not puking and being put in the hospital against my will, I decided to try to eat again. Within a few months, I had regained all but 2 of the 40lbs I had lost in that scary month, and had gained anxiety attacks and an occasional heart issue as well. When I tried to get my heart issue examined, I was told to lose weight first, regardless of my protests that I hadn't had a heart problem until after I had lost weight. I have come to the realization in recent years that my girlfriend's threat probably would not have been carried out, not from lack of intent on her part, but because by most medical standards, I was still fat even after starving and purging for 30 days straight.

When my Grandmother was on chemotherapy for her second (and eventually fatal) round of breast cancer, she drastically lost weight. All people at her office could see was that she was skinny. So what if she was going bald? So what if she was nauseous and tired all the time? So what if she was dying? At least she was finally thin!

And we reach my central point...the value we have on thinness. The myth that it is better regardless of how it is reached. I have been told that I should lose weight before I could get fertility advice, because I am supposed to put my health in jeopardy for arbitrary standards of what is attractive in order to win the right to reproduce.

As much as I want to love my body, I am buffeted constantly with images, people, advertisements and medical professionals telling me that fat is BAD and since I'm fat, I must be weak-willed, lazy, gluttonous, and immoral because being fat is a "choice" that I made. It started from childhood, with a schoolmate calling me "chubby" in the first grade to my dance teacher when I was 12 nick-naming me "mama cow" because puberty made me balloon to my school mates in junior high taking up the nickname and mooing at me in the hallways, and in the end, all of this is considered justified because I wouldn't be fat unless I wasn't trying to be thin, amiright?

I have accepted this idea of the morality of body shape/size to such a degree that when I don't do something right, I criticize my body. When I feel incompetent, I can feel my body very acutely, and the feeling of it touching my clothing reminds me of how big I am. I tell myself to stop being so damn fat as if my fat disappearing will take all of my foibles as a person away with it, and being thin will mean that I have attained perfection. It takes all of the mental energy I have not to freak right the hell out and break down crying when this happens. I know that its not true, I know that its a fantasy, and that just reinforces my feelings of being a failure. Its a nasty downward spiral that usually ends with me in the bathroom tearing my clothes off and punching my own stomach repeatedly.

My spouse tries to help by telling me that I'm beautiful when I complain about feeling fat. While the sentiment is well-meaning, and I know zie truly finds me beautiful, the problem still remains of juxtaposing a truth about me, my fat, with hir perception of me as beautiful. It translates in my warped, self-hating mind to hir loving me despite my fat. My fat is still bad, zie just tolerates it. That probably is not the case at all, but that is what happens in my head. My sister-in-law also makes such well-meaning gaffes. I try to talk about my fat as a morally neutral fact, in order to counter my fantasy of being thin, and it can help to a point, at least on the surface. She can always be relied upon to rush to reassure me that I am not fat! Not at all! She doesn't realize that she is assuming fat is always a bad thing. Then again, she and I are both dancers and have been subjected to the same brainwashing, so I can understand to a point why she does this. Her intentions are sweet, but not helpful at all.

All I want is to get a point where I don't actively hate my body and myself for having it.
Why the fuck does it have to be this hard?

Gaza Update

The body count in Gaza has climbed to 348 Palestinians and 4 Israelis.

Israel has rejected international attempts at truce.

Israeli officials said the military blitz against Hamas targets is just the "first of several stages" of military action.

Medical officials in Gaza have also put the number of wounded at about 800. Considering the lack of medical supplies that are allowed to enter Gaza, which is little better than a walled in prison, those wounded are unlikely to survive.



What crime have these people committed that they deserve being dehumanized like this? Voting for Hamas? little light makes a point about this particular argument that I find difficult to disagree with:

Tell me what you would do! Tell me! Who do you believe, who do you listen to, who do you rely on? You are walled into a prison with guns pointed at you all the time. Food is not allowed in, fuel is not allowed in, medical supplies are not allowed in. You lose count of family members violently dead or maimed. Your schools and hospitals and places of worship are destroyed, your neighborhood is full of rubble with few buildings intact, and you cannot expect to live to thirty. And you don't know any of the people on the other side of that wall.

Who do you listen to as a reliable source? The guys with the guns pointed at you, who took the food away and tell you you deserve to have nothing, but who the outside world tells you are decent folks acting justly? Or the people you're told are evil scumbags, but who provide you food, medicine, a little pride, a little order, and the promise to fight for you? Who among you, looking at your hungry, sick child, is going to listen to the person telling you that you shouldn't be allowed to care for them over the person handing you bread and antibiotics and a little civil infrastructure? Do you listen to the asshole who gives you food, or the asshole who takes it away? When you have nothing, no dignity, no hope, when you've got nothing to lose, who do you listen to? What do you think you would do differently? Do you honestly think that, with a gun pointed at your family, you wouldn't be grateful for even a vile human being who tells you you don't deserve it and points a weapon right back?

I don't think I'm that saint. I don't think you're that saint. You want to say you'd know better?

I really don't care what anyone says. Inflicting this level of suffering on a group of people with as few resources as the Palestinians in Gaza have is NOT justifiable. Inflicting this kind of suffering on any group of people is NOT justifiable.

I have heard argument after argument that the Palestinians started it and therefore deserve this. Bullshit. The Palestinians are living in some of the most resource deprived, most densely populated places in the world. There are people who have been living in refugee camps for half a fucking decade. They get angry and toss some rickety rockets over the wall at the people making their lives hell, and we rush to justify their oppressors sending one of the most well-funded and equipped militaries in the world back at them.

Living in fear because your government insists on treating another group of human beings like animals DOES NOT justify the taking of lives, especially on this scale.

To add a disclaimer: No, I do not think that the violence perpetrated by Hamas is right, as it clearly leads to continuing the cycle of violence. However, Israel has the power to stop these cycles before they start, and the Palestinians do not.

To quote Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville, "...sometimes, at a certain point, being right becomes less important than doing the right thing."

Israel...I Just Can't...

Gaza body count: Palestinians-271 Israelis-1



From the linked article:

Israeli jets have launched a second day of airstrikes against the Gaza Strip on Sunday. Despite international condemnation over what is being called a disproportional response, Israel is not excluding a ground offensive. According to Palestinian officials, 271 Palestinians have been killed so far for only one victim in Israel.

Israel is reponding to rocket attacks perpetrated by Hamas which killed one Israeli. I will repeat that, because it bears repeating. Israel's government and military is killing almost three hundred Palestinians including children in response to the death of one Israeli.

Let me put this out there right now: any violent death is a tragedy regardless of how many are killed. HOWEVER, 300 to 1 is disproportionate force. Especially considering that it is widely known that Hamas, a paramilitary organization, is responsible for the single Israeli death.

And of course, while most of the world is decrying the extraneous violence of this situation, the US is blaming Hamas.

"The message from the United States is that Hamas is a terrorist organization that is firing rockets into Israel and they fired them onto their own people as well," Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said.

"The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement.

Even the Dutch government, who tends towards virulent anti-Arab and Islamophobic policies and positions is calling Israel's actions almost a war-crime. I am so very sick of the "arab=agressor" stance of our government. Just because Israel is our friend, this does NOT put them above reproach. It doesn't change the facts. And this ignoring of the facts mainly serves to make the US look like anti-arab assholes once again. The next time someone tells me that the arab world needs to fix its anti-American sentiment before we can work with them, I might just bite their damn heads off.

Julie from Modern Mitzvoh has this to say:

If you can’t figure out why this is unacceptable - if you insist on an eye-for-an-eye mentality, in which one Israeli eye is worth an infinite number of Palestinian eyes - then quite frankly, you’re a privileged fuck with no concept of how violence is perpetuated or what the phrase “human rights” actually means.

I could not have said it better.

ETA: Anonymous comments will be rejected. If you want to engage in discussion, at least have the intestinal fortitude to post with a username.

Cocky

H/T to Womanist Musings and Feministing

Transcript:

We are often told that we are living in a mans world, and this culture no image represents power more than the phallic symbol and if the penis equal power then I am illegally armed. My body full of freckles and curves is like a stealth bomber, I fly just under everyone's radar, but only because they choose not to see me. Only because no one wants to believe that a sweet petite green eyed girl like me could ever possibly be packing heat. They say it's not the size of the wand but the magic that it does. Well after many months on estrogen my penis is pretty darn small, but she has supernatural powers. She is like some pissed off ancient Greek goddess. My penis changes the meanings of everything, and because of her every single one of my ex heterosexual girlfriends has slept with a lesbian, and every guy who hits on me these days could be accused of being gay. Because my penis bends everyone who is straight and she can make the most entitled catcallers and womanisers scurry away with their balls between their legs. All because of six small words, I used to be a man. And being a transsexual I realize that most people see my femaleness as a façade, as an elaborate hoax, but I am more real than any of them could ever hope to be. I am real because unlike them my gender is not based upon what other people think of me and that may make me an object of ridicule but I am not the butt of anyone's joke, because I know that people make fun of trannies because we are the one thing that they fear the most. I am more badass than any gangster, more dangerous than any marine core , my penis is more powerful than the cocks of a million alpha males all put together. Because when a man is defined as that which is not female and a woman is defined as that which is not male, then I am the loose thread that unravels the gender of everyone around me. They say it's not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean, well my penis gives most people sea sickness. It makes people dizzy because most people are not secure enough in their own masculinity or femininity to serve a night in the sack with me. My penis turns simple sexual pleasures into political acts. She turns biological impossibilities into cold hard facts. My penis is the curiosity that you have been told will kill your cat. See, my penis can be deadly, especially to me, and I have hear d almost every true story about what frightened macho boys do to trannies; every bludgeoning and mutilation, bodies beaten beyond recognition and I have imagined it all happening to me first person. Everytime I get up in front of a crow to perform one of my outspoken word pieces, I can feel myself morph into a slow moving target. After the show when I walk back to my car I will be holding my breathe half expecting that inevitable blow to the back of the head. Sometimes I wonder why it hasn't happened yet, and sometimes I wonder why they just don't get it over with and sometimes I just wish I was dead, I wish I was dead. You see I never wanted to be dangerous and I spent most of my life wishing that I didn't have a penis. I used to hate my body for not making any sense to me and these days I often hate it for being so in between. Some mornings I can hardly get out of bed because my body is so weighed down with ugly meanings that my culture has dumped all over me. You see I have made to feel shame and self loathing so that everyone else can take comfort in what their bodies mean. And if I seem a bit cocky it is because I refuse to make apologies for my body anymore. I am though being the human sacrifice offered up to appease other people's gender issues. Some women have a penis, some men don't and the rest of the world is just going to have to get the fuck over it. If I am destined to be the loose thread that unravels the gender of everyone around me then I am going to pull and pull and pull and pull and pull until everyone is exposed, till they all finally see that all along that they were merely wearing the emperor's new clothes . I know that people don't like it when I turn the tables on them but what the hell else am I supposed to do, play a hand from a deck of cards that was stacked against me? If I seem a bit cocky, it's because I have spent my entire life being backed into a corner and like a frightened animal packed full of adrenaline and sick of hunger and hiding I am finally desperate enough to come out fighting.

A Turkey Called Brotherhood

(yet another hat tip to Renee @ Womanist Musings)

This is pretty obnoxious.

Basic rundown: A pair of schools have a Thanksgiving tradition of dressing one kindergarten class up as indians and one as pilgrims. They have a parade and then go have a party together. This year, a parent who is actually native, protested this event, calling out the lie that children are being forced to believe, the lie of the peaceful coming together of white settlers with native tribes. She also protested the racist stereotypes being perpetuated by the "indian"costumes.

The thing that chaps my ass is all of these white people trying to claim that this is not offensive at ALL! That these are just CHILDREN! Enjoying a holiday TRADITION! I am so glad that these privileged asswipes can conveiniently forget that by TEACHING these children this tradition, they are continuing the myth of a benevolent white man vs the gentle savage. I really wish they would blow it right out of their asses. As the member of the group that benefits from the oppression of the other, YOU DON'T GET TO SAY WHAT IS OFFENSIVE TO THEM! This is Don't Be An Asshole 101 folks.

These white people wringing their hands about telling children the truth of their history reminds me somewhat of this clip:

I normally don't like South Park all that much, but every once in a while, they have a really good point. That IS how it actually happened. This idea that white people calmly showed brown people their "better ways" in the spirit of brotherhood and Christian Godliness is blatantly false, besides being obnoxious and racist as fuck.


And if we are really going to clutch our pearls and gasp about "THE CHILDREN," consider this: what about those native children, who learn their history from the perspective of people who think that it is okay to ignore the massive damage done to their people? They learn that their history doesn't matter, only the history of the white man matters. Renee says it very well:

It is further disgusting that children are being taught this falsehood as a method of maintaining white hegemony through the physical performance of revisionist history. The indoctrination of children with revisionist history is part of the way that racism passes from one generation to another.

Of course to a child this seems like a harmless tradition, they have no knowledge of history. They count on us as adults to be their guides and tell them the truth. This is an abdication of our responsibility to educate them.

Native culture has repeatedly been appropriated. We see it show up in the form of mascots for sporting teams as a normalized display. People seem to feel that it is their right to cheapen and demean the culture of another, while telling the oppressed community that they are being too sensitive.(go read her post Teaching The Young To Disrespect Indigenous Culture. I'll wait here)

The myth of the peaceful thanksgiving is regularly offered up in order to forget that the real beginning of this country was violent, painful and bloody. What happened to the native population of this hemisphere when Europeans came here was GENOCIDE. Nothing less.

We continue this heroification of the white people who came here and supposedly built this amazing civilization out of nothing, ignoring the rape, enslavement, murder, cannibalism and early germ warfare that made all of this possible.

These lands were not "discovered" by Europeans. You cannot "discover" a place where people are already living! Many of these colonies would not have survived if not for the work already done by tribes living there previously, if not for stealing from the tribes who were still there, if not for enslaving members of these tribes, if not for living off of the decomposing bodies of natives who were killed by epidemics spread from early European explorers, if not for slaughtering whole cultures.

Whole cultures, languages, ways of life are GONE, destroyed by this idea that God gave White people dominion over the Earth.

I will be using this day to teach my children about the cultures that were here already, about what happened to them, about what their lives are like now. I do not accept this white-washing of my history.

As a kid, I always wanted to do a Weddnesday Addams when confronted with this season:

Granted, a good deal of what occurs leading up to her soliloquy is offensive as hell, which is not surprising considering it is intended to show a white privileged man's perspective of the Thanksgiving myth.

In the end, I believe we have an obligation to be honest about our history. There is no excuse for ignorance, and no excuse for degrading displays of faux "brotherhood." These myths are dangerous, despite what some may think. They allow those of us who are granted white privilege to pat ourselves on the back and escape our responsibility to end oppressions that we benefit from. They create an environment where understanding of current effects that can be traced back to these event is impossible, because without honesty in regards to our history, we have no realistic idea of the true roots of injustice. These myths create an attitude that we white western people can still charge into whatever country we want and do whatever we please because we forget that we aren't the saviors of the goddamn world. They allow us to be blind to the personhood of others, and to the actual effect we have on the world. They allow us to continue to marginalize and oppress others simply for not being one of us.

Americana Under Assault by Queer Special Forces

According to the new video being circulated by the AFA, yet another reactionary group on the religious wrong fringe, the queers have invaded quiet Eureka Springs, Arkansas and are using it as a forward operating base to expand our 'gay agenda' into the heartland of America. I came across this piece of news on Feministing. No longer content to remain in our liberal bastions of the Eastern Corridor and our beloved Left Coast, we are apparently aggressively attempting to undermine the very fabric of this ultra-conservative christian nation called 'Fly-over Land' or alternatively 'The United States of Jebus'.
I can almost see the AFA's collective nightmare of a sky-blue Blackhawk helicopter with Rainbow insignia inserting a Queer Agenda Special Operations A-team to taint the city's water supply with 'the gay'. In order to ensure total compliance of the local heteronormative population, the Special Operations A-team will be supported by the 1st Transvestite Air Assault Battalion led by Eddie Izzard looking fabulous.
Meanwhile, back in reality....
The only real gay agenda is basic civil rights for every person regardless of sexual or gender identity or lack thereof.

Who wakes up and says, "I wish I could be oppressed too"?

I have been talking with my cousin lately. He is 15, and I have been trying to explain the mechanics of oppression, privilege and power to him in a way that doesn't make him think he is being accused of something. Frighteningly, I have had to debunk several ideas that he has picked up from Cthulhu-knows-where about how oppressed he is. After doing that, he said something really upsetting to me:

"I wish I had a struggle of my own, something to fight against."

O.o

The mind...she boggles.

Somewhere along the way, the idea that having a struggle, an oppression to fight against, was in somehow. Stylish. It got you "special rights." Either that, or the rapid loss of privileges was seen as a loss of rights.

The idea that white affluent western men are an oppressed minority is laughable. It is also a perspective that one encounters quite frequently in popular culture, and especially from so-called men's rights activists(MRAs).


Let me explain something about MRAs. These people are rarely concerned with actual rights or oppression. They are primarily concerned with maintaining the status quo, because the only way they can see the rights of men being violated is when women have those same rights.


They see rights, freedoms and opportunity as a zero-sum game, namely, if females are doing well, that means that males must be getting worse. This ties in to the problem with essentialist thinking. If one group is "naturally" better at something, but the other group is doing just as well as them in actuality, then the only way to maintain this false dichotomy, is to assume that something must be holding back the "naturally" better group.

These groups do little more than encourage the very gender essentialist notions that create the inequalities they like to scream about. They help create these structures, and then blame them on the groups that are actively trying to fight them.

They blame feminism for all of their problems, with no knowledge of what feminists and feminist groups actually do. They tend to be against any legislation that deals with domestic violence, any legislation that makes divorce easier for women, against taking the victim's side in rape cases, against women having the choice to abort or continue a pregnancy, generally against anything that doesn't include men regardless of whether they actually need it or not and tend to support using children in custody cases to control and/or threaten ex's, support rapists, and rape apologists, and generally blame women for all of their own personal failings.

They tend to spend a great deal of time spouting off inaccurate information to support the idea that a cabal of women, queers, racial minorities and evil radical feminists control everything, and may even be responsible for the fall of Western Civilization! As a result, they paint hapless white men as the unfortunate victims of an "anti-male" society that grinds them into submission under the boot heel of the Fascist PC Thought Police.

Let us examine some of this, shall we? Not too much, lest we scratch out our eyeballs in frustration.

As far as this idea of "politically correct" (scare quotes intended) as code for "uptight" or "restrictive," I don't see why it is so important to some people to be allowed to use words that create an othering effect of specific groups. One thing that must be put out there right now: complaining about being forced to be "PC" is, in essence, complaining that you can't be a racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic douchenozzle without there being consequences. I seriously don't see why treating other people like the people that they are is such a damn burden. In the US, one does have the freedom to say exactly what one wants to, however, the rest of us also have the freedom to tell you that you are being obnoxious and insulting. Attempting to shame people with the sneering at political correctness indicates that you would rather be able to hurt people because you like to. This would make you, at best, a bully, and at worst, someone incredibly dangerous.

The gentleman doth protest too much is something else I want to examine here. There is a huge discussion amongst these supposed rights activists about false allegations that lead "innocent" men to being dragged through the court system and possibly imprisoned. Yet false allegations "experts" tend to turn out to be nothing more than perpetrators who are finding ways for other perps to get away with beating and raping. There has even been evidence that false allegations are more likely to come from men:

Are Allegations of Sexual Abuse That Arise During Child Custody Disputes More Likely to Be False?

An Annotated Review of the Research

Bala, N. & Schuman, J. (2000). Allegations of sexual abuse when parents have separated.

Canadian Family Law Quarterly, 17, 191-241.

Canadian Family Law Judgments: Nicholas Bala and John Schuman, two Queen's University law professors, reviewed judges' written decisions in 196 cases between 1990 and 1998 where allegations of either physical or sexual abuse were raised in the context of parental separation. Only family law cases were considered; child protection and criminal decisions were excluded.

The study showed that the judges felt that only a third of unproven cases of child abuse stemming from custody battles involve someone deliberately lying in court. In these cases, the judges found that fathers were more likely to fabricate the accusations than mothers.

These people want to tilt at windmills to preserve their privileges to the detriment of those they consider to be lower than them. They couch their true desires in the language of empowerment, and attempt to cast themselves as some tragic victim.

There are inequalities in this world, some of which specifically effect men, and most are rooted in constructions of masculinity. To resolve those inequalities, deconstruction of gender essentialism must occur. There are people who do this, who truly work to make sure that people are seen as equal regardless of what is in their pants.

They are called feminists, and they are not your expectation.

TDOR

This is for the men and women and those in between and outside of that binary who have died because of ignorance and xenophobia. This is for the victims of transphobia. Remember the fallen, and work for a better world so that those we have lost will not have died in vain. Everybody is someone's child and queers are people too.

Shamelessly lifted from TransGriot.
Courtesy of Ethan St. Pierre, as of November 16, the list of people being memorialized for the 10th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance on Thursday.


Kellie Telesford
Location: Thornton Heath, UK
Cause of Death: Strangled
Date of Death: November 21, 2007
Kellie was strangled to death with a scarf, by 18 year old Shanniel Hyatt, who then covered the body of 39-year-old Kellie Telesford with a white blanket - with the brown furry scarf used to choke her still bound tightly round her neck. Hyatt said he killer her after discovering she had a penis.


Brian McGlothin (Liked to dress in Women's clothes)
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Cause of Death: Shot in the head with an automatic rifle by Antonio Williams who is serving a six year sentence. Brian was 25 years old.
Date of Death: December 23, 2007



Gabriela Alejandra Albornoz
Location: Santiago, Chile
Cause of Death: Attacked and stabbed
Date of Death: December 28, 2007

Patrick Murphy (Found Dressed in Women's clothes)
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Cause of Death: Shot Several times in the head
Date of Death: January 8, 2008
Patrick was 39 years old.

Stacy Brown
Location: Baltimore, MD
Cause of Death: Shot in the head
Date of Death: January 8, 2008
Stacy was 30 years old.


Adolphus Simmons
Location: Charleston, SC
Cause of Death: Shot to Death (Aldophus was 18 yrs. old)
Date of Death: January 21, 2008


Fedra (a known transvestite)
Location: Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Cause of Death: Was found lying face up in a pool of blood,
cause of death was not reported.
Date of Death: January 22, 2008


Ashley Sweeney
Location: Detroit, Michigan
Cause of Death: Shot in the head
Date of Death: February 4, 2008
The age of Ashley Sweeney is unknown, she was only described as a young transgender woman in a press release.


Sanesha (Talib) Stewart
Location: Bronx, NY
Cause of Death: Stabbed to Death
Date of Death: February 10, 2008
Sanesha was 25 years old.


Lawrence King
Location: Oxnard, California
Cause of Death: Shot to death by a classmate because he liked to wear
women's clothes. (Lawrence King was 15 years old).
Date of Death: February 12, 2008


Simmie Williams Jr.
Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Cause of Death: Shot to death, Simmie was found wearing women's clothing. (Simmie was 17 years old)
Date of Death: February 22, 2008


Luna (no last name reported)
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Cause of Death: Brutally beaten to death and tossed into a dumpster.
Date of Death: March 15, 2008


Lloyd Nixon
Location: West Palm Beach, Florida
Cause of Death:Repeatedly beat in the head with a brick.
Date of Death: April 16, 2008
Lloyd was 45 years old.


Felicia Melton-Smyth
Location: Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Cause of Death: brutally stabbed to death by Francisco Javier Hollos, who said he killed her because she would not pay for sex. Felicia was an HIV activist on vacation from Wisconsin.
Date of Death: May 26, 2008


Silvana Berisha
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Cause of Death: Stabbed to Death
Date of Death: June 24, 2008


Ebony (Rodney) Whitaker
Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Cause of Death:Shot (Ebony was 20 yrs. old)
Date of Death:July 1, 2008


Rosa Pazos
Location: Sevilla, Spain
Cause of Death: Was found in her apartment, she had been stabbed in the throat.
Date of Death: July 11, 2008


Juan Carlos Aucalle Coronel
Location: Lombardi, Italy
Cause of Death severely beaten causing fractures to the head and face before being run over by a car.
Date of Death July 14, 2008
Juan Carlos was 35 years old.


Angie Zapata
Location: Greeley, Colorado
Cause of Death: She was found in her home with two severe fractures in her skull.
Angie was murdered by 31 year old, Alan Ray Andrade. Angie was 18 years old.
Date of Death: July 17, 2008


Jaylynn L. Namauu
Location: Makiki Honolulu, Hawaii
Cause of Death: Stabbed to Death
Date of Death: July 17, 2008
Jaylynn was 35 years old.


Samantha Rangel Brandau
Location: Milan, Italy
Cause of Death: beaten, gang raped and stabbed numerous times before being left for dead.
Date of Death: July 29, 2008
Samantha was 30 years old.



Ruby Molina
Location: Sacramento, California
Cause of Death: Drowned
Date of Death: September 21, 2008
Ruby's naked body was found floating in the American river.
She was 22 years old.


Aimee Wilcoxson
Location: Aurora, Colorado
Cause of Death: undetermined (Police have yet to reveal cause)
Date of Death: November 3, 2008
Aimee was found dead in her bed. She was 34 years old.



Duanna Johnson
Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Cause of Death: Shot
Date of Death: November 9, 2008
Duanna was found dead in the middle of the street. She was 42 years old.


Dilek Ince
Location: Ankara, Turkey
Cause of Death:Shot in the back of the head
Date of Death: November 11, 2008


Teish (Moses) Cannon
Location: Syracuse, New York
Cause of Death: Shot
Date of Death: November 14, 2008
Teish was 22 years old.



Ali
Location:Iraq
Cause of Death:executed for being transgender
Date of Death:2008, Month is Unknown
Video of Ali before she was executed: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tDVtjQNfQ


*IMPORTANT NOTE FROM ETHAN - (In case I don't get the details posted in time) There were 2 other Iraqi transgender women who were executed at the same time as Ali. Please remember them at your TDoR event.

The Spirit of the Stairs

So...privilege.

It's an important, and critical idea, and one I have been dancing around trying to parse out how I want to talk about for days now. I have written and re-written this entry, and have given up on it a few times. However, as far as the intent behind this space, an understanding of privilege and how it works is needed.

The need for this was touched off by several things, some in my own life, and some in the rest of the US.

One of the personal: a gentleman who was otherwise quite nice, who felt privileged enough to say some "well-intentioned" (scare quotes intended) but profoundly homophobic things to me while I was working. It was enough to send me running for a large Americano with an extra espresso shot (for those playing the home game, that would come to four shots of espresso, with the rest of the 18oz. cup filled with steamed water) which I am now sipping and feeling the caffeine tingle to the ends of my extremities.

Another is one friend of mine who repeatedly claims that I go too far on the "female" stuff, and that he feels that I am being unbalanced because I never talk about the problems that men face, and conversely never talk about women as "being at fault" for anything. According to him, I blame men for everything, and let women coast by regardless of whether they deserve to or not. When I call him on the fact that inequalities for women outnumber inequalities for men, he hedges with "well, we should all just be good to each other, but it has to be FAIR," or if I point out that the system that hurts women also hurts men, he moves the goalposts "well some people are just LIKE THAT" or "Some women bring it on themselves."

In the rest of my country, there are simultaneous issues that are encased in layers of problematic privilege with regards to how they are addressed and with regards to the fact that they have even occurred.

One is the passing of Proposition 8 in California, which is problematic on its own. It doesn't help that it's passing is being blamed on POC voters in CA, which is exposing the latent racism of the mainstream, assimilationist GLBTQI movement (which tends to exclude all but the white, able-bodied, cis-gendered men anyway)

In combination with the utter outrage at Prop 8 is the lack of outrage from the same exclusionary GLBTQI community at the murder of yet another trans-woman of color, Duanna Johnson, a woman who had previously been harrassed and assaulted by Memphis police officers, purely because of her gender and her color, who has subsequently been found dead.

For my situation, and how it relates to privilege as well as everything I have mentioned thus far, to make sense, some things about me need to be understood.

1- Yes, I am queer.

2- Yes, I am married.

3- No, my marriage, despite current appearances, is not heterosexual.

4- I am also female-identified, white, able-bodied, poor by Western standards, and feminist without apology.

The problem here is privilege.

What is privilege, you ask?

Privilege is: About how society accommodates you. It’s about advantages you have that you think are normal. It’s about you being normal, and others being the deviation from normal. It’s about fate dealing from the bottom of the deck on your behalf.
-Betty, A primer on privilege.

The man who talked to me this morning was privileged. He assumed when he saw my wedding ring, that since I was married, then I must be straight. His privilege is the ability to assume that marriage is for straight people only, to assume that every person he talks to is most likely not queer, and to assume that I am going to agree with him, because only straight people can be married.

My friend is privileged. His privilege is to be able to assume that he will be included in all things, since most things in our culture tend to be geared towards straight white cis-males like himself. He assumes that his experience is universal, that all men think as he does, and that anything that goes against that is prejudiced against him. His experience must be addressed or he is oppressed. He assumes that fair looks like he wants it to without accounting for the perspective of others. He feels entitled to attention, and to care from activists that don't address his needs, despite the fact that the issues that impact them the most have little to nothing to do with him.

The racist element of the GLBTQI movement is privileged. They can assume that another minority group will support them on the basis of some assumed shared oppression without ever explicitly asking that group for support, they can pretend like there is no intersection of identities, and therefore "erase" POC who are also queer. In cases like Duanna Johnson, they are more than willing to throw our trans* brothers and sister under the bus, as well as anyone else who is not easily assimilate-able in order to further their own quest for rights, regardless if those rights are what the rest of the community actually needs.

I am privileged. I live in the West, where my standard of living as a poor person is at least three times as good as women in developing countries. I can eat food that is out of season, I have access to medicine, media, and computers. I have a job and don't have to ask my family for permission to live my life. I am also white, and can be sure, when walking down the street, that no one is assuming I am a "welfare queen" or that I am a drug addict, or a thief, or a sex-worker. My gender identity, for the most part, matches my gender presentation, so I do not get intrusive stares and speculations about what I "really" am.

My point is, despite these groups and myself all being privileged, there is one major resounding difference.

I am aware of the ways in which I am privileged and have made it a personal quest to minimize my privilege as much as possible. It's a technique that I call, "How to not be a total fucking asshole." This is not to say that I don't fuck up, I do. I will act privileged, partially because the nature of privilege is to be invisible to those who benefit most from it.

Privilege, at its core, is the advantages that people benefit from based solely on their social status. It is a status that is conferred by society to certain groups, not seized by individuals, which is why it can be difficult sometimes to see one’s own privilege.
-Feminism 101 blog What is male privilege

However, I am open to being called on it, and I am willing to self-examine at any time to make sure that my words and actions match with a progressive attitude towards ending oppression. It's the least I can do to make up for the benefits I get because of my privilege.

I do not call myself an ally, I don't need to be put on a pedestal as a paragon of progressiveness. I am just a person, a privileged person, who has chosen not to be an asshole.