You Don't Have to Go Home

But really, I'd rather if you didn't stay here.

This blog is now closing. The good news is that SlyCivilian.com is now up, and i'll be posting there in the future. RSS, bookmarks, whatever, change 'em all.

I'm leaving this all up, as i can't (yet) find a good way of moving the old comments over. But i have a feeling this place might get a little dusty.

-sly

The Relativity of Wrong

In which I shamefully steal borrow Isaac Asimov's title.

In this book, Asimov discusses the nature of knowledge and the unfortunate binary nature of our understandings. To a skeptical English student, he explains that the revision of science is not uncertainty, but the revision and improvement of knowledge. Heliocentric orbits are a better understanding than Earth centered ones, but are further improved by knowing that the orbits are ellipses, and even further improved by knowing that the sun is not the center of the universe. Revision is not the destruction of the former, because not all answers are equally wrong. His example (paraphrased here from memory) is a young girl asked to spell "Sugar" for a test.

The are several options. Sugar, sucrose, C6H12O6, shugar, and xhjkly.

Which one is correct? Spelling is almost never graded on a sliding scale, and so like many of our ideas and formulations of knowledge, they get evaluated in right/wrong and good/evil terms. Yet, surely some of these responses display more/different knowledge about sugar than others. Is chemical formula better than phonetic spelling? For whom, under what circumstances?

Thus enter, transphobia and "The Transsexual Empire."

I've been reading Sandy Stone's rejoinder, "The Empire Strikes Back," which a really super fabulous blog linked to a little while back. It was either Jay, or B|L, or Piny, or oh, I feel terrible but my memory is like a steel sieve sometimes. Sorry. Feel free to claim credit if it was you.

The point is that Sandy gets to a critical point here, when discussing the narratives of transpeople in the early days of the movement:

No wonder feminist theorists have been suspicious. Hell, I'm suspicious....Besides the obvious complicity of these accounts in a Western white male definition of performances gender, the authors also reinforce a binary, oppositional mode of gender identification. They go from being unambiguous men, albeit unhappy men, to unambiguous women. There is no territory between.

Yet this statement occurs in a work that is deeply affirmative, and explores the consequences of categorizing what the "correct" response to "gender dysphoria" is. Hint, it involves a lot of people telling shrinks the same story because it's the one that the medical establishment wants to hear. The construction of lives, especially these lives, occurs under the gaze of power. Stone examines critically, but remains committed to finding truth in trans narratives. Not as some deep artifact beneath socialization, but in the trace of the continued negotiation and contestation of gender and sex through embodiment.

Which is why I bring up the relativity of wrong. Because it's precisely what's going on in Stone's work. Without getting into the boogy-person of false consciousness, we can play attention to the cultural frameworks that surround the process of identity construction/maintenance. Given limited choices, these women chose identities that depended on extremely "femme" conventions and ideas of binaried gender. To wit:

Hedy Jo Star, who was a professional stripper, says in I Changed My Sex!: "I wanted the sensual feel of lingerie against my skin, I wanted to brighten my face with cosmetics. I wanted a strong man to protect me."

To which we can rightly express some concern in terms of this narrative confirming and conforming to sexist notions of women's identity. But Stone's project is not to debunk Star's idea of her life. It is rather to show the conditions, which are still not completely met, under which women have the actual freedom to construct identities that are liberating for themselves and others. We should not doubt that for Star, being a woman as she understood it was a better answer for her than being a man in that culture. Revision as improvement and not erasure is possible...but we have to be willing to see promise in the imperfect.

-sly

The Carnival Of Safe Spaces

Last couple days, there's been a lot of discussion and reflection about separatist spaces in the wake of the Carnival of the Feminists...which while the fight is frustrating as all hell, has produced some of the best explanations of why safe spaces are necessary parts of liberation movements, and why the "reverse discrimination" canard cannot be taken seriously.

Thus, the (likely one off) Carnival of Safe Spaces, hosted by yours truely. So I'm going to be going around and asking for permission to link/excerpt, and I'm interested in new submissions as well. There's been a fair amount of academic/theoretical defense, which is awesome, but I'd love to see celebrations, personal reflections, and reflection on safe spaces as well. I'd actually tell you the date this is all going up, but the plan is that I'll be leading off my new place with this. Arbitrary deadline then of the 18th, and probably up by the 20th. Details will follow as soon as the wonderful VeganKid has my new blog up and running.

So in closing, a quote from my reaction to RPBKA's inception...

Closed community, like anonymity, does not begin as an end unto itself. It's a mirroring of the already present conditions of injustice. It takes a form of the exclusion or dehumanization of the oppression, but subverts the signification.

We don't close our ranks and whisper because we like to be alone. We do it because we're already excluded, and need time, energy and affirmation just to keep going. I don't give up my name because I'm ashamed of what I say. I do it because the way the system works, I have to choose between having a face and having a voice.

I gladly look to a day when I don't need to mark off spaces for their safety. But until then...

-sly

Doctors without...

A little while ago, my insurance changed over. Again.

I shouldn't complain, I have insurance, and it's usually been pretty decent about getting me treated without too much drama.

The downside is that I'm once again in search of a primary care physician. I took several reccomendations, and nearly took them until i thought about it. How do i have any reason to believe that these people, while competent in other regards, have any knowledge, sensitivity, or experience with treating queer people?

So, with google as my trusty friend, I set out in search. Surely, in a town like Minneapolis, there has to be some queer friendly docs, right?

Unfortunatly, the Gay and Lesbian Medical Alliance's referral service isn't working at the moment...

But I kept getting results for Allina's Clinics, and so I click through. Nothing. But on a hunch, I try the Google Cache. Saved there is a record of several docs who specialize in GBLT health care.

Why is it that this was such a production? Was I looking wrong? Is GBLT health care really that hard to find, even in such a queer friendly town? Why would Allina remove that information from their listings?

I'm frustrated, but I'm also upbeat. I have an appointment early next week, and it's going to be long overdue. I need to get stuff documented for Yale in regards to my depression/anxiety stuff, and I also really ought to check my HIV status. I know that I'm negative, but c'mon...a boy can't be too careful, and it's worth it to know.

None of this would really require me to disclose my orientation...but I just don't see the need to settle for health care that at somepoint might be compromised by homophobia. Health care is a human right...

-sly

GOOOOAAAAAL!!!!

Can you tell what I'm up to?

Don't have a real reason, but I'm rooting for France. Underdogs, and all, I guess...

-sly

Friday Blogging

Oh, Friday. Day of days...

I haven't yet gotten into a Friday blogging pattern, but i should think of one. You have your random tens, your cat blogging, the blogwhoring, the open threads...all sorts of lighter
fare. I'll be brainstorming. Folks? Suggestions?

Anyhow, for today, it's going to be a compliation of some of the stupid corporate things that have happened recently.

Schell's Beer. Unless you're Midwest, you don't know what I'm talking about. Skip on ahead. But recently noted at the Turf Club (a place that should know better), they have a sign that crows "Proudly Not Served in Meat Markets." Yeah.

In a similar vein, Pam at Pandagon notes that Pace's ads have been miserably homophobic...

And if you haven't had enough of thinly veiled homophobia in your advertising, the Silly Little Fairy spot from Daimler/Chrystler still takes first prize for dumbest 30 second spot in recent history.

But for the most stunningly "I cannot believe someone actually did this" moment of commerce...we go to Blackademic for her commentary on the utterly dispicable Sony compaign.

What really irks me about all of this crap is that real marketing takes skill. Repackaging racism and homophobia takes none. So quit trying to pass this crap off as "high concept" and admit that your ads are explicitly racist, Sony.

-sly

quiet

a few more assorted thoughts on Brokeback as I've had time to think.

I'm still conflicted about how they showed the violence of the relationship, but i'm starting to see some other issues too...

In the "making of" clip, they talked about how the women in the story played out "their own miseries." Not quite true...they played out the miseries of the men. Their characters were not much deeper than to show them as shackles...Jack's mother being the only sympathetic woman in the whole story...

And please, please, please....can we have a queer love story that doesn't end in a gay bashing? I'm all for showing and confronting violence...but i'm getting troubled that the theme of our narratives is becoming "impossibility." I know, Romeo and Juliet doesn't mean that straight love is conflicted and forbade...but i think we can see the difference here. Can't we grow old once, or even just kiss in the last scene?

-sly

Cred

Oh, goodness. So behind schedule here....tomorrow is going to be a real writing day. Promise.

Anyhow, I'm working on getting back some of the points I've lost recently. Until tonight i'd been 8.7% less queer than normal due to not having seen Brokeback. Tomorrow night will be a additional 6.2% bonus for Transamerica.

What really struck me was how much violence, overt and latent, was in Jack and Ennis' relationship...which brings me to the million dollar question. Are we, queers etc, better off in the culture wars for this movie? My instinct is to say yes, that it does help humanize gay men. But by placing the setting in the 60s, the film elides the gender conditioning that frames male sex. With the "Malboro" style images, the pair and Ennis especially get portrayed as the "timeless cowboy" figure that exists as the pure and essential male. Simply put, gay separatism looks like rough sex remixed into a spaghetti Western.

It doesn't have to be that way...

-sly

Old

This friend of mine...we go way back. In middle school, I was a tiny thing. Under 10th percentile height and weight. Now, my friend...let's call him Joe, wasn't all that much bigger. But he was fearless.

He saved me from a lot of bullying, and was a true and loyal friend to me. Has been ever since. He was and is a simply nice human being, one whom I'm honored to have in my life. We don't talk all that deeply...he's the kind of guy that doesn't really tip his hand very much. But we're close, as close as can be considering. And I've never doubted that he cares...he's always shown it in his way.

Why are you hearing about this?

The rampant and persistent homophobia that he expresses.

I'm really torn on what to do, but I know that I've reached my breaking point with it all. I've been trying to interrupt his use of gay as insult, and make targeted reductions in the amount that I hear this stuff from him...but I know that I've done little to actually change his thinking. And every time I don't say something, I feel a pang of guilt. For not standing up for my relationship, for hiding behind het privilege, for choosing to stay "safe" from the consequences when there are people who don't have a choice about being safe...

How does a guy with a boyfriend come out to one of his oldest and dearest friends who happens to be a homophobia?

If you know, tell me.

-sly