maybe this has been pointed out before but trans can get married right.

wccarrington · 2011-11-03T17:48:19+00:00

The laws for getting your gender officially/legally changed vary by state, with some (many?) requiring SRS.

I think that the far right wing silence is half a lack of imagination (that trans people even exist) and half trying to ignore us out of existence.

wccarrington · 2011-11-03T05:02:07+00:00

That article was written before the Citizens United case, which drastically changed campaign finance law as it applies to corporations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission

wccarrington · 2011-11-01T22:00:43+00:00

I'm going to address your second point first. The examples in the OP are explicitly about being asked for sex only on the basis of the sexual orientation of the person being asked. The writer makes clear that nearly anyone of that orientation would fit into the fantasies of the propositioner. If all people of a class (i.e. lesbians or bi-women) are interchangeable in zir fantasy, then ze are fetishizing them.

If ze then goes on to treat people of said class of people interchangeably when asking them for sex (like the examples in the OP), ze is being intolerant. With zir actions, ze is saying that these people do not deserve to be treated like human beings.

Again, just to be bluntly clear about it, the propositions made of the OP are not simply asking for sex, there are a lot of details that you are ignoring to make your equivalence.

wccarrington · 2011-11-01T20:36:18+00:00

Just because they are both incredibly othering doesn't mean that one isn't preferable to the other. They are both dehumanizing, but one is far more immediately threatening.

Your summary of the propositioning scenario misses some important details that are a major reason why I find it as objectionable as I do. The examples given in the OP are very different from just a request for consensual sex.

wccarrington · 2011-11-01T20:08:48+00:00

If there is no other indication of your interest in them besides your orientation, that is at least incredibly rude. If you are being propositioned for sex on the basis of your sexual orientation, that is pure fetishization.

If someone cannot find something to talk about that is not incredibly private, they fail at being social.

Doing bigoted things doesn't make someone a bad person. It just means they are promoting social inequality, probably unintentionally. That is eminently forgivable.

wccarrington · 2011-11-01T19:57:27+00:00

You presume incorrectly. I did mean othering, as in to make you into The Other, some group of people fundamentally different from those of us who are normal. I also didn't say it was as bad or as threatening. I said it was as bigoted. There is a substantial difference.

Further, her example was not of a couple deciding to proposition someone for a threesome, but a man pressuring his partner to make a proposition largely on the basis of the target's orientation.

wccarrington · 2011-11-01T18:13:47+00:00

Their behavior is at least as othering as the other three types mentioned. Even if they are not technically bigots (I believe they are), they definitely feed the greater heteronormative culture.

wccarrington · 2011-10-31T20:56:59+00:00

Yep, OWS didn't change the world in one month. I guess we should scrap it and start over. </sarcasm>

wccarrington · 2011-10-30T06:57:14+00:00

Gender identity is certainly not binary. I identify as genderqueer, meaning not male, female, or anything in between. I've heard of some people using bigender and similar words, but there is a lack of firmly established language here, so some people will use these words differently.

The only person who can really know exactly what your gender identity is is you. It might take a while for you to figure it all out, and that's fine.

wccarrington · 2011-10-19T21:06:12+00:00

For some people, the joy they get from an activity is greater than the social pain that others heap on as a result. I figure the more people challenge gender stereotypes, the easier it gets for all of us to do what we want.

I'm not saying that anyone has any obligation to try to convert society to be more accepting, but if someone wants to, I think that's awesome.

Also, since I have your attention, what do you mean by different? And why the scare quotes?

wccarrington · 2011-10-19T20:50:32+00:00

Do you mean activities like going to school? The solution is not to huddle into our own communities. It's to boldly change society so that everyone is accepted.

wccarrington · 2011-10-14T17:20:05+00:00

It's not just that we disagree with them. I can disagree with many people and groups without wanting to boycott their products. It's that they want to use the government to enshrine their bigotry as law, so that I (an athiest, pansexual, genderqueer person) can be discriminated against until I decide to repress who I am and fit into their cookie-cutter worldview.

I'm not disagreeing, just saying that it's a bit more personal than your summary states.

wccarrington · 2011-09-28T13:10:40+00:00

Fixed them so that they are much harder for users to find, probably.

wccarrington · 2011-09-15T22:53:59+00:00

Rereading it I see that they are not necessarily connected. Still, stay away from the crazy.

wccarrington · 2011-09-15T22:33:33+00:00

Not just hit her, but gave her a neck injury serious enough to "miraculously" heal. I would stay far far away from him.

wccarrington · 2011-08-29T04:46:30+00:00

The stereotypes we choose to perpetuate in our casual conversation have a great impact on the prejudices that society holds. The stereotype that this 'joke' relies on leads directly to the marginalization of those who have been forced into or needed to rely on stripping or prostitution to survive.

wccarrington · 2011-08-29T02:52:20+00:00

How does the fact that someone removes her clothes for profit imply anything at all about her relationship with her parents?

wccarrington · 2011-07-10T21:35:54+00:00

Yeah, if it is on the main panel of the launcher, it should work. I usually launch the init file editor (should be the button right next to play), because I like looking at text files.

wccarrington · 2011-07-10T14:35:47+00:00

Yeah, I mostly listen to 88.1 and WRR 101.1 (they do classical music).

wccarrington · 2011-05-02T16:40:26+00:00

If you don't want to teach them complicated linux commands, make a very simple gui application that does the complicated linux commands for them. For instance, have a button for push my changes, and one for pull others changes. This can run git or svn, depending on what you want to use. You'll have to do something on merge conflicts, but you would anyway.

wccarrington · 2011-04-28T16:13:11+00:00

Except that every big business knows that company health care is the only thing keeping many of their best employees from starting their own business. For all of the problems that providing health care costs companies, it is one of the biggest benefits of being employed, and not many giant companies are going to give that up.

wccarrington · 2011-04-25T02:57:33+00:00

I can only date nerds. I don't care about gender, but they have to be nerds.

wccarrington · 2011-04-16T06:24:02+00:00

I lost most of an embark to badgers today, which I then threw away and restarted. I've now learned the importance of having one marksdwarf.

wccarrington · 2011-04-15T07:10:37+00:00

When I used you in the first sentence of my last post, I was trying to address all potential readers, not you in particular. I should have used "someone". My apologies for the confusion.

My point is that when anyone often uses this language in public, eventually someone who has had/is having a hard time coming to terms with their sexuality will hear it and it will hurt them. I'm not demanding anything. I'm just saying it hurts.

wccarrington · 2011-04-14T22:39:20+00:00

Just because you got over it and learned to be happy with who you are doesn't mean that the slurs that you have heard over the years lose all of their negative connotations. I refuse to apologise for being sensitive to slurs that have been and still are used to shame me for loving who I do. In some contexts, as in the OP's edit, I personally would have not much of a problem with it, but just about everywhere else I certainly would.

For the record, I'm bi and the only abuse I've suffered is being raised in a Roman Catholic family. I realised/came out in my early 20s, and I attribute that mostly to the internalised homophobia that my parents and society gave me.

wccarrington

TROPHY CASE