Stanton: Then and Now

Odds are that if you’ve come here to read this, you’ve heard about CNN finally airing the documentary on Susan Stanton.

Some of you may even recall that this documentary is often brought up whenever ENDA is in congress and looks good.  I mention this because some of us have been waiting to see this for a long time.

I know I have, for certain. And since I’ve waited so long, I’ve got a lot to say on the subject. (yes, long post ahead.  Get the coffee/soda/tea and get comfy).
(more…)


Unique visitors to post: 16

 

A Nymic Dyssonance

-nym.

It a part of a word. Parts of words can mean many things, and often people will take the parts of a word and construct a new meaning for it that wasn’t there before.

But -nym is a kind of special one. As some folks know, I have a fondness for the letter “y”. Which, simply because it has that letter in it, makes nym something i like.

Yeah, its that silly.

-onym means “name”, ultimately. We have patronyms, matrinyms, antonyms, anonyms, pseudonyms, and more.

Some folks may have noted I use various terms like e-nym or netnym — little neologisms I’ve been using because they are more effective at saying “the name one uses online as a sort of nickname or ‘Handle’”. I’m settling more and more on e-nym, because it has that same quirky quality and carries a social connotation of internet usage by borrowing from the “e-mail” thing.

Its related to -onymy as well — so when you see words like that you can generally get the idea that they have something to do with a name.

A specific name, usually — or lack thereof as in the case of anonymity (the lacking of a name).

Names are important. Names are Labels. Names are nouns. They are the way by which a person is identified, separated, singled out, distinguished from others.

In some cultures, some names are common. They are ordinary, everyday. John, for example.  Most of us in the USA can be said to know more than one person named John.

So we add additional labels to them.  How many John A.’s do you know?  How many are John Aaron?

Names are important that way.  We have an entire industry dedicated to figuring out what your name is going to be, and we have rules and policies for dealing with your name.  Identification without your name does not describe you, it describes people who have everything else in common with you.

Names — labels — are important.  They are critical to communication.  If I said “so, did you like John’s show last night?” to you, you might think of a John that you know, but unless you and I know the same John and both of us are aware that John had a show last night, you wouldn’t really know what I was asking you.

That’s a frame of reference, btw.

Others will be aware that I am anything but proud of the person I was prior to my transition.  I’m slowly coming to terms with things to be proud of — accomplishments and feats — but in general I dislike that falsehood under which I lived so greatly that I am putting as much distance between it and I as I can.

There are some things that stand in my way.  I’m somewhat resigned to the difficulties of changing my name on my degrees.  And it’s kind of nice at times to have them separate, as I still on occasion use that name in some writing and that gives me the ability to separate my “public and personal” views from my “professional” writing to a degree that would otherwise be hard to achieve.

I’m fairly resigned to the unwillingness of the military to change my DD-214.  It’s not critical.

Some odd things have come up, though.  I can’t change my name on my state GED records.  Not because of any great wall set up in front of me, but because somehow or other the state up and lost them.  This isn’t a big deal — I have a DD-214 available to me from a time when to join you were required to have such. It provides the evidence needed.

And there has been the burden of my PayPal account.

I opened my paypal account up a long time ago.  They required some matching information — something that otherwise I had managed to avoid online – and so I had to use *that* name.

In personal conversations, I don’t usually say “that name”, I say “him”.  Because I really do dislike him.

It was interesting, as well.  I had set up a business that operated as a shell ompany for three other businesses that ultimately let me operate under a DBA as the name I was using at the time online.

My Official excuse was to provide anonymity ’cause you know how bad them internets is. My actual reason was I was living online as a woman.

weird, yes, sorry, pick on me if you must, but phbbbt cause I don’t give a damn.

In any case, I ended up with a paypal account that was His.

I am funded primarily through paypal.  Hence the little link there to the side of the page that says “donate”.  I get my money through there.  MY paypal account is appropriately connected to various things — a credit card in my name, a bank account in my name (that is currently closed due to not working for so long and owing money to the bank), the assorted stuff that goes along with all of that.

And what it meant was that I had a paypal debit card.  Two, in fact.  I had chosen and operated under my name long before I actually changed it legally.  So I had a card in his name and a card in my name and life was good and when I checked into changing everything on paypal a long while ago, they had a series of hoops to jump through to change my name that would have required me to give up documents I didn’t want to give up.

Besides, I reasoned, nobody sees it but me, anyway.

I’ve moved a lot over the intervening years.  Last night I removed some 12 different addresses on my account.

That meant, though, that cards were “lost” because they were mailed out to the wrong address.  Odd stuff like that.

And then, earlier, when I went to NYC, it was at a changeover point.  My “real” card, the one in my name, went to an address and was destroyed.  His card had long expired and a new one not requested because, ultimately, if pushed, I can’t really prove I was him short of a fingerprint check.

Yes, I went to that great a length to erase my connection to my past.

So suddenly I was without access to my paypal account via debit card.  This is, for me, tantamount to not being able to access your bank account.  No ATM, no Checks, no bank branches, even ones with agreements.

I’ve been there before, and, thanks to my boyfriend, had a way around it that he rapidly reinstated.

And so it was that one day I get a card, as expected, that is from Paypal and it has His name on it.

I was revolted. It freaked me out to have such a strong reaction to it.

That wasn’t me.  Why was I getting this? I wondered — aloud I’m told, to the humor of my roomie.

And then, because I’d reported too many lost or stolen (that mail issue) I wasn’t approved to get a second card.

One with the proper name on it.

What was I to do if asked for ID?  ”Oh, it’s my husband’s card” works, but is kinda deceptive to me. And I’m avoiding that.

I was stuck with a bit of nymic dyssonance because of paypal.

Well, last night, I looked up the rules for doing changing one’s name.  And things had changed.

Now they would be satisfied with me emailing the documents they wanted to them, *and* they had changed the documents needed.  All I needed now was an ID in my name and the court order, and I could easily scan them into the system and send them.

And then, 3 to 5 business days later, they would let me know if they would do it.

So, late last night, I did just that.

I sent them copies of each page of the court order, and the ID.

And then sat back, expecting it to be a hassle but hoping that since I’ve been with them for like *forever* they wouldn’t have  a problem.  After all, they have the full history of my account there — they can see what I’ve done and I’ve used the name for some time even there.

And then, much to my surprise, on a Saturday (which is not a business day) morning, I got an email from paypal.

It had the right name on it.  After all this time.

I have no clue if I will get a new paypal card with the right name on it. And, really, I’m not all that worried about it.  I’m not asked for ID when I withdraw cash, which is how I did things before, during the days when things were less pleasant, early in transition.

But I am very happy that they changed it. It makes me grin.  To look at His name is almost painful physically, and certainly is emotionally. I avoid it as much as possible.  It’s why I’m conflicted about my degrees, why I’m conflicted about my DD-214.

It is not my name.  It is not my label.

And so now one more little piece of him is gone.  One more little bit is killed off.

And, evil bitch that I am, I’m happy about it.

Some would say that I’m talking about Self hate.

To which I will respond that was never my “self”, that was a fabrication, a fiction, a shell game. And if you want to say I hated that lie, you certainly are welcome to do so.

But I don’t hate my self.  That’s what I fought to be.

Let’s call that Consonance.


Unique visitors to post: 11

 

Divide and Conquer

You know why it is that “divide and conquer” is such a powerful tool?

Because it works. Fomenting division in those you oppose is not merely time honored as a tactic — it is time tested and highly effective as a tactic. It’s use applies in both grand social fights and interpersonal conflicts. It is one of the single most powerful tools in the arsenal of anyone, no matter what side of anything they are on — if you can get your enemy squabbling within its ranks, or you can take advantage of a weakness to create such, you weaken them.

Turn your enemies against each other, and you will have fewer enemies to fight.

How do you do that?

Well, one of the most common ways of doing that is you use spies and misinformation. In short, Espionage. These days, the concept of espionage in the US has all these massive overtones of cold war era legacy imagery and issues — it’s either james bond or some nebbish little nobody.

But there are other ways of conducting espionage. Espionage is dependent on methods and lines of communication — the goal is to attempt to control the information of your opponent. In this age of the internet and the ubiquitous personal computer, this age of cell phones and phone banks, there has never been as easy a way to communicate.

And when it comes to the internet, there’s a peculiar quirk to it.

People have a tendency to go to the same places — to limit the kinds of information they take in. They go to places they like, where people share similar ideas, and where they feel comfortable — “safe spaces” they are sometimes called, to use a common phraseology.

They get together and talk about the things that interest them — for example, mommy bloggers are generally bound by their discussion of things mommy related. So they talk about kids and families and women’s issues and cooking and the way husbands and boyfriends can be totally cool and incredibly infuriating at the same time.

I read a lot of mommy blogs, I noticed last night. Odd. Probably a vicarious living on my part that’s helping me cope with something personal.

In any case, there’s an interesting side effect to this that people noted as far back as 1997.

Folks get “set in their ways”. They go only to sites within a particular network, and rarely step out of it and become involved in other things. An example of this is one of the problems with being an Activist — or, to use the new term, social justice worker — is that it is very easy to simply only stick to sites and blogs and news articles and such that stay just within the narrow confines of your activism.

Here’s an example: how many LGBT activists do you know that are actively involved in and part of places like world net daily, free republic, and the drudge report?

There are a lot who read stuff there and then come back to report, but that’s not what I’m talking about — I’m talking about people who are genuinely part of those communities — those affinity groups.

This “sticking to your own kind” sort of mentality — this insular quality — makes for an ideal opportunity for espionage directed towards the task of dividing and conquering.

In 1999, a group of folks who were part of a particular political campaign sat down in a room with a bunch of computers. They were beat up ones, old, running mostly windows 95, but they were all hooked up to an expensive (at the time) T-1 line. All of these donated computers had been carefully refurbished, and the latest, greatest browser was on them.

This is the time before blogging had really taken off. Email and chat rooms and the peculiar threaded conversation realms were the norm.

They sat in this room with a guy who wasn’t all that. He was paid to be there, and he was there to teach them some things. Among those things were how to use certain words. How to write certain kinds of sentences. How to argue (although that was a basic quick job). And, most importantly, how to come across as someone or something you weren’t.

The goal of that class, and then after that, the people in that room (which was fairly cheap to set up, all things considered), was to divide the supporters of a rival candidate in an election that was not due to take place for another 8 months. This was done in a wide variety of ways.

For example, a couple people would go in and be all quiet at first, fairly humble, and make minor comments and agree with other people chatting (most of the time it was chat) and bring up things that were common themes among them. After about a month, they would have acquired some credibility, and would suddenly disagree with something someone said about the candidate. They would then introduce on of the talking points of the campaign.

A talking point not from the campaign that they were working for, but from the carefully crafted list of them so that it seemed to be a talking point already in use by the campaign they were attacking.

An example here would something like some fundie joining Pam’s House Blend, “lurking”, and then slowly getting involved and then coming out as an assimilationist. He would “act like a gay person” — and it’s interesting to see how readily people’s stereotypes can be modified by exposure without changing their actual ideas about that stereotype.

They would then start to create a wedge within the opponents, laying the groundwork and foundation for a campaign by their actually choice that would take advantage of the issues created and made worse.

This is a slow, subtle, careful kind of work — all espionage is. IT is not all that exciting, and is really, really deceptive. It’s the kind of stuff that takes time, and effort, and focused attention.

And money.

Each of those participants were paid a full time job’s wages. At the time, it was about 8 bucks an hour, which in the particular economy wasn’t awesome, but wasn’t bad, either. They all knew or knew of each other, as well — recruited from places like churches, AA meetings, and apartment complexes. They didn’t talk about what they did much, because that was part of the job, and every last one of them believed wholeheartedly in their choice of politician.

They were true believers. Willing to sacrifice and put up with extra stuff because they ultimately feared the person they were working against.

They changed the course of the election — in part by giving rise to a second candidate on the opposing side that ultimately did split the vote.

The funding to do all of this was provided by a non-profit organization linked to a church.

The teacher was paid to set up and do this kind of thing in multiple locations throughout the district. Each time, he would take a measure of that area’s views overall, and tailor the responses to it. He earned a pretty good sum doing it too — 15K per site, plus another 10K beforehand for research. Which he conducted primarily by talking to people in the areas targeted at grocery stores, convenience stores, gas stations, retail shops, malls, etc. Friendly little momentary conversations that were preceded and followed by careful observation.

In today’s terms, the equivalent would be a sock puppet. Someone paid by an organization to go to sites frequented by the target group and use the knowledge of that group against it. In LGBT terms, it might be things like saying Obama is a lousy president, or bisexuals don’t exist, or trans folk are screwy, or gay men hate trans people, or anything that would be a meme that is divisive within that online community. Something that almost always, some small group of people already there have said at least once before.

They become echo chambers, in effect, which is actually what this kind of espionage has been called in the past. And since the groups are fairly insular, the echo chamber’s effect is magnified — especially when it’s heard often in different places within the social network.

This is the danger of singing to the choir the song they already sing. They know it, they will often forgive an occasional harsh note.

And then, when the big moment comes, the fight is on. If the saboteurs — the spies — did their job properly, then there is dischord, and infighting, and the opponent is distracted enough that they “drop the ball” and fail to effectively engage the medium in a manner that conveys a clear, unified message.

Which is important. People want to hear a clear, uniform message. They want the message to be simple, sound bitey, and it needs to make sense to them on their terms.

Some might note that none of my messages are really all that sound bitey. To many people, they don’t always make sense.

The truth often *doesn’t* make sense. Fiction, however, fiction *always* has to make sense.

Truth can be uncomfortable, unpleasant – fiction, well, to sell it one has to make it comfortable, familiar, and structured.

Truth is, truth doesn’t always win out. It does not always set you free, either. Sometimes truth makes you run from it.

And sometimes truth can divide.

And when division happens, there is conquering soon to come.


Unique visitors to post: 42

 

Potty Politics and Biased Books

Hi all.  Still being lazy and avoiding the domestic things as best I can — which is to say not very well at all.

Gonna talk to you about Potty Politics, here.

The story: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/nurse-beaten-in-midtown-bar/

This guy is indeed a complete psycho.  Pissed because he was turned down.  Followed her down stairs and into the women’s room, where he barged in at one the most vulnerable moments of a person’s life.  Where upon he did what I consider attempted murder, possibly, and wouldn’t be surprised if, given the degree of violence involved here, he was charged with such.

It is an *exact* example of what those who talk about the “bathroom bills” say will happen *if those bills are passed*.

Funny, it happens when those bills are not passed, too — I believe GENDA is still waiting in the NY Senate, and NYC doesn’t have any ordinances that I am aware of (and I may be wrong there) that apply to general public establishments.

So it happens, anyways.

Of late, some have taken to saying I’m too abstract.  Well, when I talk about the abstract concept of the opposition saying that men are evil — and pointing out they don’t make exceptions in this — this is what I’m talking about.

They know such things as this exist, that they happen, and they will use things like this to say this is why such laws shouldn’t be passed.

Note that this person was not crossdressed. They were not “pretending”.  And there were a lot of other men there that night who weren’t even considering doing such a thing.

But the potty politics argument is based on the *threat* of men.  As if men are, by their very nature (and, inevitably, by their possession of a penis, since that’s how so many of them describe men) dangerous.  That is, having a penis makes you a threat, in and of itself, and therefore you should not be allowed near women.

one guy, out of at the least dozens in the bar. A whole bunch of men who were not threats, who did not go out and beat the shit outta some woman who turned them down.

A pediatric nurse, no less.

Personally, I hope this asshole is caught and accidentally falls down a few dozen flights of stairs — being wheeled into court a paraplegic doesn’t seem all that unfair to me given what he did.

But the opposition is putting all men on trial by using the argument of potty politics.  And, apparently, they haven’t been out to many clubs, given the trend of multiple occupancy unisex bathrooms (which, to be fair, freaks me out a little).

Also, the State of Texas just up and decided to erase Thomas Jefferson.

Yes, really.  It seems the elected members of the school board there decided that new textbooks for the school should de-emphasize him because several members of the school board do not believe in the separation of Church and State, and so he’s been de-emphasized.  The guy who wrote the Declaration.

I know some of you are native Texans and love your state, but that article shows that in another 15 years, the kids of Texas will be among the most poorly educated in the United States.

Me, I’m waiting for the AZ state Legislature to do the same thing.


Unique visitors to post: 35

 

On Trust

Hi, and welcome back.

For those just joining us, we are in the midst of a conversation on Trust.

Specifically, the issue of trust in the larger LGBT community.

Earlier, we talked about how many people mistake a deep mistrust — or lack of Trust — for things like hate and how oft times it seems as if people forget that the reason for so much anger is the lack of trust.

The next hour we’ll be looking at things surrounding the issues of history, the hostility that comes from a lack of trust, separation, and ways to overcome the problems surrounding that relatively simple concept of Trust.

(more…)


Unique visitors to post: 62

 

Domestication

So I’m up on the first day of my break.

Last night was not a good start to it.  First, I let my bf know i’d be sorta incommunicado for a bit.

Then I checked email.  That was a mistake.  I’ve got a serious fuckwit on one of my columns over at Bilerico who, in reflection regarding some of the things he’s said abou tme, seems to think that I’m the writer behind ENDABlog.

Which as most of ya know is not me — those two have a very particular style all their own, lol.

In any case, the fuckwit decided that he was going to defend his position regarding ENDA and trans exclusion and tried to answer a question regarding it, and then screwed up his original answer pertaining to the kinds of gays he was saying should be left out of ENDA.

Until his comment last night, I’d more or less just sorta toyed with him.  While I’ve been a contributor at Bilerico, I sorta tucked “Dyssonance” into a comfy place and was just myself.

Well, I let her out last night.  For those of you who don’t know what a full on dyssonance style attack on what you’ve said is about, I suggest you read the Drag Queens and Transgender Activists thread over at Bilerico.

Now, the sad thing is that I didn’t cuss at him as much as I wanted to.  I was even actually pretty nice.

Ah well.  Some people think I’m just a nice person.

Then I started the process of being domestic.

Yes, me.

If there was any lace trimmed apron involved, I’ve burned the evidence.

I started with a complete overhaul of the Kitchen.  I got about two thirds of the way through it — some parts needed me to use a chair for reaching up high and I left those for today.  I’ll finish that, and then I’ll move into the living room, where I will do a complete refashioning of it, as well. Hopefully to be finished by Sunday, when I have to make a meal I’m not even prepared for and, right now, not really up for.

I’ll be doing other room s in the house like this as well — including the two I dislike the thought of the most.  The first is my shared closet.  This is a bedroom that needs to be worked on and its also been turned into a sort of storage room for both mine and my roommate’s things.  The second is the room I’m sitting in right now, which is full of my personal belongings which I will be unpacking to some extent in order to use in the rest of the house once I find space for a lot of them.

Noted: I have two main themes in my stuff: books, and kitchen stuff. Roughly 80 bucks more and I’ll have the ability to create a fully portable kitchen, lol.

Ah well.

There obviously will be some posts coming out from me.  I’ve got to have something to do while I smoke the first of my five daily cigarettes that I’ve limited myself to in my effort to quit,  and drink my tea.  I’m hoping that I get into some point shortly where I will be stuck working into a long period and thus correct my sleep schedule so I can be up at the same time as most folks.

It would be abnormal for me to do so, granted, but what the hell — it’s easier to live that way.

Off to the races, peeps.  Huggles, and all that good stuff — I’ll try to avoid finding a feather duster…


Unique visitors to post: 21

 

Break Time

Hey all :D

I’ve got to take a break.

Yeah, I know the timing is bad, but I have to.  It’ll only be a couple days.

No, it’s not anything going on in the wider world. It’s something purely and strictly related to my living situation right now.

Something is broken, and I need to see if I can mend it.  Will take time to do.

I’ll check emails still, but no blogs for a bit, no facebook, no twitter, etc…

I need to be spoiled once in a while. ;)


Unique visitors to post: 15

 

Four Months and Three Years

Do not countenance them, thou there: turn away from their lackered sumptuosities, their belauded sophistries, their serpent graciosities, their spoken and acted cant, with a sacred horror,with an _Apage Satanas._–Bobus and Company, and all men will gradually join us.

Imagine you have a blog.

And on that blog you have a person commenting who  spends most of their time on your blog commenting on the stuff other people say, and using their words against them. With a sharp tongue and literalist sensibility that erases humor. They don’t cross your lines, but they definitely push the limits of your ideas of what is proper.

Now imagine that they cause you trouble. By kinda “hijacking” your blog threads simply by the sheer presence in them they have.  Where you look at one thread and you see 100 comments and they have far more than a third of them.

What would you do?

Would you let that person have a spot on your blog — a place to speak their voice from?

Would you tell them they need to back off a bit, stop running over the threads.

Well, I can say that for me, both have happened. Because I am an outspoken sort, and I don’t back down, and I don’t have much patience for idiocy in action.

And it’s been four months. (more…)


Unique visitors to post: 32

 

Prostitution

Scary word, huh?

Were you aware that prostitution was legal in the United States until the lead in to World War I? Indeed, the biggest motivator for changing tht was the whole deal with “camp Followers”.  The newly formed military didn’t want to deal with that outside the whole base thing.

So the Army helped to get rid of prostitution.  Probably had something to do with that whole invasion of a another sovereign nation we did back then.

Were you aware that most laws in the US make the criminal the person *accepting* — overwhelmingly women — not the person *asking*.

That the basis and effort has always been to criminalize women’s sexuality?

Some of you may have heard of the Mann Act.  Jack Johnson was prosecuted under it.  So was Charlie Chaplin.

The Mann Act is also the same law that makes “white slavery” illegal.  It also makes forced prostitution illegal in situations where the girls are transported across state lines.

The Man Act was very vaguely worded — an example of how Semantics change over time.  It has a compadre in New Orleans, as well.

In 1805, New Orleans passed a law.  At the time the law was passed, it was understood to not apply to most prostitutes, since prostitution was legal.  Indeed, it was long after the law was passed that NOLA had a section created for the white men to go often called Storyville.  Black men had to go to a less legal and more secretive place not too far away.

THe NOLA law was meant to punish people who had sex with kids.

But language changes.  Understandings of language change.  Semantics changes.

And two hundred years later, that Law in New Orleans is being used like the Mann Act was used.

With related laws being applied after conviction under it, what it does is place people — primarily women — on a roster of sex offenders.

Not for having sex with a minor, but just for having had sex.

Think about that for a bit.

I have been.


Unique visitors to post: 48

 

Brief post to start the day

Yes, that’s exactly what this is — a quick post to start my day, lol.  I’ve just now started drinking my tea, I’m sitting in front of my heater, and I’m going through the emails and such that have been around today.

I crossposted the “Drag Queens and Transgender Activists” post to Bilerico.  There, the multiple named CP/RB/CK has held forth in full offensive style, calling pretty much any other trans person at Bilerico a man. I discovered this when my email popped open.  You see, I get every comment made to that post as an email — even if it is never approved.  So I’ve read all of them.

It’s an effective tactic, and instead of actually talking about the points I was kinda subtly raising (that the new attack against ENDA will be all about the trans people), there’s now a big ole fight on the thread that’s *almost* as good as the one from Austen’s thread.

There is indeed a Trans Mafia, btw.  Might even be one more visible soon.

I got to see two good friends arguing via twitter over the changes to ENDA.  The changes that no one really knows what they are. So it’s kinda like arguing about an invisible turtle that one has just tripped over.

Until the Changes are out, there’s no point in arguing over them.  At least we are aware that there will be changes, in the first place.

Yesterday I twittered a link to the Onion News story about the massive wall of text — all of 500 words long — that had people in misery. Well, as long time readers here will know, I sorta toss things four times the size out without flinching.

Me, I suspect the writers of the Onion News Service are readers of Topix. Because I can’t count the number of times I’ve had that said to me.

I wrote a new post over at Bilerico about what really amounts to priorities.  At least as I see them.  How others do that is their business.

I have a really bizarre sense of humor.

Off to see what the day brings…


Unique visitors to post: 10

 

Drag Queens and Transgender Activists

Hello brothers and sisters and friends and family.

I’m coming to you, by delay, from the realm of personal martyrdom and finance calling known as TVC land.

Yes, that’s right — your SPLC-identified Hate Group has begun the battle against ENDA.

They want to kill it, you see, because them darn gays will, I don’t know, be thought of as entitled to equal rights or something. Which as we all know is just not going to happen — am I right or am I right?

In any case, the TVC — that’s Lou Sheldon, one of the several people behind the Alliance Defense Fund, and his daughter and the thousands of churches they purport to represent (which is really just a way of saying they send them email blasts to pass out among the congregation and hope to raise a buck or two off the suc– err, faithful thereby) — has recently issued a release that is, as usual, full of all manner of poisonous thinking in their battle to stop ENDA.

You know, the thing that will help gay and lesbian and some bi folk to get work.

Let’s take a look at what they say! And go a little deeper than just the front page here. That is *more* stuff.

(more…)


Unique visitors to post: 104

 

Survival Seeds

So I was wandering through the blogsophere and popper over to Pam’s House Blend where an addition to an article on the ever asinine Glenn Beck led me to the Media Matters site where I checked out advertisement for something called “survival seeds”.

Now I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to a few things, but something said in the advertisement sorta triggered me.  So much so that I went to the actual site and had to read for myself their amazing use of people’s own ignorance against them.

THe trigger comes in two lines, a bit apart from one another.

First, they say:

These seeds are authentic strains which are NOT genetically modified in any way.

Now, that’s a dog whistle kind of statement — meaning that it’s something htat is said in order to make you think about something else. It’s something only certain people will get, as well. In this case, it’s a dog whistle about hybrid seeds, which are the stuff used to make “genetically modified tomatoes” and so forth — stuff like corn for ethanol and plastics, etc etc.

Then they say this a bit further down the page:

These are NOT ordinary seeds… they have been chosen for their truly extraordinary germination rates!

Grown in remote plots, far from the prying eyes of the big hybrid seed companies, each of the Survival Seed Bank varieties have been hand-picked for germination rate, nutritional density and of course, storage life. These seeds are true heirlooms and produce extremely nutritious plants.

Well, on reading that I burst out laughing and immediately started writing this post.

Some of you may wonder why that’s so funny.

Well, plants are, comparatively, fairly simple things. They are also relatively easy to modify genetically. Indeed, the proof of genetic manipulation and inheritability was most famously demonstrated by a monk that no one had ever heard of raising flowers.

One of the most heavily modified plants of all time is Corn. Indeed, corn, as most people know it, would die out within a few hundred years were people to suddenly cease to exist. Because most corn is not capable of reproducing itself with some form of human involvement. It’s been bred that way — different varietes were selected for particular traits that were wanted.

And it’s been going on for literally thousands of years.

But what’s funny is that traits like germination rate, nutritional density, and storage life (which is the biggest reason for genetic modification) are all genetic traits.

So they are selling genetically modified seeds that are not genetically modified.

I call that a lack of truth in advertising, but there is, of course, a catch.

You see, what they are talking about is a little quirk of goverment labeling that requires something that is done in the lab to be called “genetic modification”, while a gardener doing the same think in his field can potentially call it organic. Even if they both are breeding for the same traits.

The difference — two kinds of labs are used in the govt regulated version: one your basic biochem lab with petri dishes and microscopes and teeny tiny needles and all that stuff. The other kind is a great big field where they grow stuff just like that gardener.

And I seriously question the use of heirloom in their advertising, but that’s a matter of preference from, well, the organic gardeners history of mine. The kind that understands that the description of “organic” on various foods in the stores is not the same as actual organic. Indeed, the store kind has to follow rules that ultimately *reduce* the efficiency of growing food.

It is more than just not having used pesticides and the like.

And in the seed collecting and swapping community, an heirloom seed comes from before most of the modern varietals of different things that we have now. Another way of looking at it is Heirlooms really are heirlooms — seeds from lineages prior to the 1940’s, for the most part.

Very different kinds of plants from the sort that are usually seen today.

But I did find it somewhat amusing that to sell a pack of seeds, they are lying to their customers and for the most part their customers don’t know it and are too damned scared anyway.

Survivalists are a peculiar lot as a whole — and I will admit that I’m the sort of person that is often mistaken for a survivalist.

But I absolutely love the way the whole spiel they have closes out, because it’s perfectly in tune withthe rest of their general message about how the society is collapsing and you’ve got a year at most before we are all in the middle of hell (millenialist stuff and the whole 2012 thing notwithstanding) so you better buy now because I may not have enough of these once the government comes to me and demands them (which, of course I’ll sell at a higher price, but we all know what will happen then).

“Indestructible Survival Seed Bank Can Be Buried To Avoid Confiscation.”


Unique visitors to post: 26

 

Response to AnnaRose

Sometimes we have to do things in a different way than we otherwise would like. This is such a time.

In the comments to a recent post of mine, one commenter has been railing at various elements of our differences, and at me, personally, as well. I’m an easy target. I know that quite well — and the odd thing is that I often see great humor in that, as I recognized my flawed self for what it is — flawed and fleshly.

Anna,

Do you have an issue with abstract thought?

If so, why?

You are one of the anti-trans trans people, Anna.

You are also sexist (personally), racist (via institutional racism and a cultural ideal that you apply on different ethnic groups unknowlingly), ableist, and elitist. To name a few things.

Like all of us, you are a product of your times, the sum total of all your varied experiences and the way the world was when you grew up.

That is reflected in your desperate desire to ignore the simple fact that you are not normal, and never will be. You strive for something even more nebulous than perfection, and you have placed much of your sense of self, your personal self esteem and social value on this conceit of being normal.

And you do that because of the times in which you were raised — a time of great conformity, a time when anything that was different was frowned on, a time when propaganda was spoonfed to you from early childhood about the proper and the right, in the name of false patriotism and economic growth.

You can help that, but to do so would require you to do something you resist doing, constantly, predictably, with fervor and fire.

You probably think I am insulting you in writing all of this, for example, for you were raised and taught and likely think that all of this is insulting to you. That it is an insult to be called racist — when it’s still true, no matter how much you want to think otherwise because you don’t see that institutional degree of it within yourself.

In part because you avoid abstractions.

I don’t avoid any of it.

Fucking a penis is worship of one if you use it as the essentialist measure of what defines sex. Perhaps you should learn what worship means — as an abstract concept, of course. For that, read the Rule Of Screwing. It’s a fairly quick and simple way of explaining a larger concept that surround the idea of what I am talking about when I speak to worship. But for an even easier and likely more familiar way of looking at it — you are a tool of the patriarchy, willingly and substantially, and you are working to reinforce it by using it as the basis of your arguments.

And a Penis is absolutely the center of your function. What, you think that the abstract concepts of the discourse exist in a vacuum? Your use of the Penis or lack thereof (which is a penis-centric structure) affects everything in your social interactions that stems from that.

Including your self. If the penis wasn’t at the center of how you function, you wouldn’t have suffered so greatly from incongruence or dysphoria or just flat out transsexualism to the point where you had to get the surgery. And if that strikes you as somehow saying that I suffer from the same thing here, then you are right.

You wouldn’t use it as a verbal weapon and a sneering retort “oh, you little pre-op with no experience” which places a person as an action, creating a value structure by which only surgical status has merit.

You use braniac as an insult, in a space where sexism is already present fundamentally, calling to mind the ideas of “smart girls” being less desirable, less valuable.

You raise MENSA like it’s something of value and importance. I was a member of MENSA, it was full of fuckwits who valued a number over knowledge. And what sucks is that one of my personal little issues is that I can’t talk about when I was a member, without some bright toad doing something I don’t want done and bringing up the name I had for most of my life (which was not the same as the name I was born with, thankfully).

MENSA, to me, is a cool thing for those who want to be a part of it. I think it’s a waste of time and has little value beyond that because it’s sole purpose is really just to say that we’re smarter than the rest of you idiots out there. And when you have intellectual abilities a little or a lot ahead of the world around you, things get pretty annoying because you develop a sense that you don’t belong on that basis, and it colors your perceptions of others. So what if my number is high. It’s just a number meant to reflect potential, not capability, not use, and it is the use of that intellectual capability that is more important, imo.

I am not “smart” at Engineering. I do not enjoy math enough to sit and do calculations; I am not a chemist (though I understand some of it), nor a physicist (although I try to grasp some of it as best I can). I am not a hard science person — that is not the gift or curse I have, that is not the source of the spirit that the Greeks said roamed the house and home and gave inspiriation: genius.

And my manly man is quite real, Anna. He’s also my fiance and I am his fiancee, and I’m quite satisfied withthat arrangement.

You skipped the class you said, and yet a short while back you were talking about how you read through what is trans and openly admitted you didn’t understand that. Instead, you disagreed with me on what I said about the article, and then dropped it when I pointed out what I had written already. And that’s only one part of it, AnnaRose.

If you don’t understand that part, what makes you think you will understand the other parts, found in the same space, such as What is Sex, Gender: expression, identity, and role, the sections on situational membership and so forth as well? Instead of asking questions, you make assumptions, you leap to conclusions, you write things here or elsewhere to me that spend more time saying I said something other than what I said, or you attack some personal aspect of me as a person.

But I’ll tell you what. You find out what I refer to when I talk about existence before essence. You read you some Simone and Sarte, you give yourself a bit of growth with Irigay. Then you get familiar with the scientific method (which I would assume you already are, having multiple advanced degrees that would have, at one time, relied on such, unless it was something like, oh, law or business where science is only useful on occasion and something other people do).

You want it simple, and yet when it is given to you simply, you say that’s not possible, that’s wrong, and worse — you ignore the simple statements and make them into something that was never said (a strawman).

Because of your ageist expectation that it’s not possible for someone 15 years or so your junior possibly having a greater knowledge of how it really is. That perhaps I somehow lack “real life knowledge” to join the long and involved efforts of my literate education.

Forgetting that I have done more in my few years than others have done in lifetimes longer than yours. Forgetting that for me “know yourself” is not merely an axiom to hang on the wall but a commandment that I followed early on. Not knowing much more of my life as it has been lived than the thinnest slice of it from a few pages all carefully edited to proffer only the hint of what I’ve done and am capable of.

You react as if I’m not speaking English, when it’s one of only two I can speak with any fluency (and the second one is a religious one that’s dying out).

Well, I am.

And if my likely unusual mix of the academic and colloquial, the familiar and the new is hard for you, then perhaps the fault is not mine for your lack of understanding, but yours. Or perhaps it lies with both of us. Or some other variant therein.

Pedantic? Quite likely. I’m not so much into the whole formalism aspect, but certainly into the precision part. And, admittedly, I write with a desire to teach others something — so yeah, given that’s its source and where it comes from, absolutely likely. Even without the whole formality thing.

But you don’/t mean it that way, of course. You mean it as a pejorative (an attack on me as a person), a way of saying I come across as condescending. Which would be rather silly if you ever met me — you’d find that it’s not even close to the way I am.

I’m far worse, lol.

As for bully, well, you aren’t the first one to call me such, nor will you be the last.


Unique visitors to post: 55

 

Distracted

Yes, that’s what’s going on.

I’m distracted right now, in many ways.

As I noted previously, I’m engaged in the process of finding a new doctor. It’s occupying my time as the company I have is a bit slow to respond to questions. The doctor I was assigned is something akin to 50 miles away from me. And now they are trying to find one closer, while I am trying to find one closer as well.

I thought this would be easier.

It was with my prior provider, at least. *sigh*.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Making Trouble series at Bilerico, as well, which was why I started it in the first place.

I’ve been researching things until my eyes are crossed.

And I’ve been cooking, weeding a front yard, and generally not getting my “space” squared away because it’s oneof those things where the only way to do it is to just stop doing everything and get busy until it’s done.

A lot of work, and I’m not up for it.

And I’ve been distracted by a conversation of sorts, as well. One where I keep waiting for someone to ask questions, but they never do, or when they do, it’s a question about something thats already a given, and they never try to go deeper than surface stuff — I know why, and I don’t need to project or assume to have that knowledge. It’s a logical consequence.

I know it’s stupid. It’s not like they actually understand much of anything I talk about, after all — I should probably just let it go, but for some reason they refuse to get it, to think logically, to think at all, really.

Which is fine — they aren’t scholars. They aren’t really interested in questions about things greater than them. They have small lives and small needs and they just don’t like things that make them feel as if they are going to lose stuff they’ve gone to great trouble to gain.

They read something they don’t understand and fill in the gaps with something that seems to make sense to them, and then they build it up around the edges. And they aren’t alone in doing so — their “mortal enemies” do the same, and I think what annoys me is that they think I’m somehow part of that, and that if I’m not, then I’m somehow part of them, because for them everything is an either/or principle, while for me there’s always at least five ways.

Call it a philosophical difference.

Meanwhile, things are changing around us in the world like never before. And it’s enough to make one feel guilty for just being simply distracted.

fortunately, that clears eventually


Unique visitors to post: 39

 

Assumptions of Doom

I’ve got two articles I’m doing — one of which I had hoped to have ready for today — that I am researching still. It’s kinda annoying the work that goes into stuff only to have people make all sorts of assumptions.

I recently asked a couple questions of a trans person, and what I got in response was that I was supporting and defending the cis community.

Seriously. For asking questions. Which are still unanswered.

To that point, I have to say what the fuck. Seriously — what the fuck? In point of fact, I have to say what the fuck are you thinking?

Ok, we’re angry. Yeah, I get that, I feel it, and I am with you there.

But where we differ is that I see a social force being invoked that goes beyond privilege, and strikes an intersection.

And that intersection is hate.

I’m going to take a short bit of time to think a bit more on what I see happening in the trans community. I know one person who has been using prejudice to rally. I know another who has been using hate. I know that in both cases, they have attracted people to their positions and have acquired an audience willing to listen.

Prejudice is what I’m fighting, ultimately. I suppose that puts me as an ally to myself more than anything else, if the trans community is going to move to the same point of hate and prejudice as the rest in this fight.

You cannot be a bigot and win over bigotry. It just doesn’t happen.

You cannot ask for tolerance and be intolerant.

Oh, and arm up. We’ve got about two years to be ready with actual counter attacks for the entire spectrum of trans people.

And the Bathroom bill is just one small part of it.


Unique visitors to post: 23