Open Invitation: Civil Unions Demonstration Planning Committee

There is a demonstration for queer rights planned for the 2nd of February 2008. A meeting for people and organisations interested in being involved in this demonstration is being held next Saturday, the 5th of January. The meeting will be at 2pm, at Tilley’s bar and cafe in Lyneham.

 

The Agenda for the meeting is currently as follows:

1. Why are we protesting/demonstrating?

Kevin Rudd has vowed not to block Civil Unions legislation, and is in support of the ‘Couples Registry’, right? So why the fuss? Well, the legislation hasn’t actually gone through, so even if Kevin Rudd doesn’t block it, we need to be certain that our representatives know our opinion on the matter, and that the people still want the legislation to go through.

 

2. What are our demands?

Every protest requires well defined demands. Demands currently under consideration are:

- Give us Civil Unions

- Lift the Ban on Gay Marriage

- Equal DeFacto Rights for queer couples.

 

3. Who will write a Press Release?

Online promotion of this event will be handled by Ryan S****, with political advisement from Farida Iqbal of the CAAH. This promotion will occur through blogs, Facebook, email, and so on.

However, it is important that we advertise through the conventional media, and this means that we will need a press release written. We will be looking for volunteers for this task. Also contact details of people interested in being interviewed for any media attention that this achieves will be collected.

 

4. Roster for Poster Paste Ups, and Flyering

We need volunteers to hand out flyers and paste up posters. (We’ll be providing the recipe for cornflour glue! Yay!).

 

5. Set a date for our next meeting/working bee.

We will also be setting a date for our next meeting, which will double as a working bee to paint a banner for the demonstration.

 

If you can attend this meeting, please RSVP so that we can book a table at Tilleys. Bring along some cash for drinks and nibbles!

Review: His Dark Materials

I love the His Dark Materials Trilogy.

Its wonderful. I look forward to seeing the movie. I just found this review over at Pandagon. You should all go read it.

A Comic Treat!

I am going to restart my comic “Cheerful Megalomaniac” some time soon. I’ve started writing scripts and such. As my loyal fan base though, you get the first taste of comicky goodness.

Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image. The file is 1440×900, and 170kb if you want to download it as a desktop theme.

(this is just a draft, by the way)
 

Comic Review: A Distant Soil

I spent last night reading “A Distant Soil” 1-4. I don’t have the final volume, curse it! *weeps hysterically*

They are awesome books. I love the art, simply because it is incredibly beautiful. Its made clear in the later volumes that the art itself is not idealising normality, but in fact deliberately beautiful. Ugly characters start to crawl out of the wood work as time goes on. The extreme beauty is a device to contrast the extreme cruelty, and selfishness and inner ugliness of the the Ovanan race, with the beauty that they surround themselves with. They are a people that worship youth and beauty. They exile people that have been senetenced to terminal aging. The incredibly pretty hero, with his long blond hair, and youthful, angelic  face isn’t so pretty once he has his hair cut off, and he is tortured, but his inner strength and purity is stronger than ever.

The number of societal issues that the books address tactfully and meaningfully is impressive. 

It deals wonderfully with the impact of child abuse on children, both physical and sexual abuse, but also emotional abuse, and manipulation. The effect that this has on adult relationships is subtly critiqued, using a variety of different characters experiences. I was strongly reminded of my grandmother by one of the characters, and found some of this content extremely poignant and connected with one of the characters very intimately. (I see him as the hero now, though he really isn’t)

The books also look at a variety of attitudes to homosexuality, and transsexuality. Its rather cleverly done. The Avatar is having an affair with his man-servant, and this is scandalous… not cos they are gay, but cos the manservant is a mortal. One of the characters is a shape shifter who can change her gender and appearance at will, and at one point she asks one of the other characters why he doesn’t like her as a man, when he was so keen when she was a woman.

Race isn’t ignored, and neither is slavery. The characters are predominantly white, but the humans come from a variety of races, and the Resistance fighters come from a variety of alien races, trying to overthrow the White Supremacist Ovanan. I quite like one of the speeches by a character where he asks if there was never any slavery on Earth because of the humans lack of sympathy to his cause.

One of the things that I was extremely surprised to see in there, is a man’s addiction to the ‘Nexus’ a communications network somewhat akin to the internet. He actually becomes numb to humanity because he is so enthralled by the flow of information… whats the point in knowing everything, if you care for nothing? Any comic book that looks at the effect extreme internet addiction can have on someone life, but more importantly WHY the internet is so seductive, is pretty fine, IMHO.

The Avatar, Seren, has become my favourite character. He is an incredibly effeminate, and is conducting an extremely scandalous relationship with his mortal manservant. He is lonely though, and tends to be too trusting. Kindness is to him, like rain on the desert, and this gets him into trouble with people that simply want to manipulate him. His ‘mother’ betrays him, deliberately manipulating him in his pain, to gain complete control over him. He was weak willed, and shy until he acquired a much stronger, braver, second personality, and slowly as he has gained in strength and courage the personalities have assimilated into one personality.

He is brave, and his greatest battle isn’t necessarily the political struggle to free his people, but with his personal healing after a lifetime of being manipulated and abused, and the brutal understanding that he cannot trust anyone.

I wouldn’t recommend this series to anyone that doesn’t like the ‘pretty’ aspect of it, or is uncomfortable with all the characters being people, instead of 2D shadows. Also keep in mind it does have sex scenes, rape scenes, torture scenes, and pedophilia.

Overall though, I give it 10 out of 10.

A rant about Chauvinists

So I am reading “Man Made Language” by Dale Spender, because I really ought to return it to the person that loaned it to me.

Its quite fabulous, and I am enjoying the first chapter, but while I was reading, I was reminded of an oft-quoted trope.

Why is it if a woman is sexist, she is a feminist, but if a man is sexist, he is a chauvinist pig?

Now then, that seems like a genuine question, and I really should have a look at the Feminism 101 FAQ to see what is said over there about that particular straw-feminist.

The question I would like to pose, is When was the last time anyone heard a man called chauvinist, and the person calling him that, not rebuffed?

When I call a man on sexist behaviour (even behaviour as serious as rape), I am almost always treated with censure. I get called a number of things. Harsh, unfair, rude, mean, bitchy, misandrist, militant, fucked-up, psychotic… the list goes on. (Yes, someone did actually call me psychotic cos I said that I thought women had a right to defend themselves from rapists. They were of the opinion that women should meekly submit to rape, and then let the police deal with it later.)

I have not actually heard a man called ‘chauvinist’… well, other than Hugh Heffner, but he doesn’t count being a celebrity. I have heard a woman called a ‘female chauvinist’ by a man that should have known better, simply because he was a lowly student, and she was the Director of a firm, and tore a strip out of him for including a sexist remark in his presentation. (He assumed he would be presenting to a male audience. Idiot.)

Calling a man ’sexist’ is actually considered a very serious charge. Its like calling a man a rapist, if he’s ‘only’ date raped people. If he didn’t beat her up too, then fuck, what are we whining about?

Calling a woman a man-hater, however, gets thrown about like there’s no tomorrow. I’m tired of it. Maybe its cos I have turned nocturnal, so I haven’t actually had human contact for a few days, but I feel kind of grumpy, and ranty… and MISANDRIST even.

Men have so many privileges, they don’t even realise that they have. I got a ‘Closed Door Meeting’ at work for saying in an ‘aggressive tone’ that I didn’t think that my boss was doing his job. Meanwhile, a male colleague threw a tantrum, and threw stock across the shop-floor in his temper, and the whole thing got ignored.

I have been molested, hit, slapped, punched, cut, bruised, attacked with a chain, groped, harassed, threatened and raped. All by men. Tell me again about how men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime, I really fuckin’ love that story.

So, yeah, sometimes I am a little aggressive. A bit ‘mean’, a bit ‘harsh’, a bit of a ‘bitch’.

I don’t hate every man. My current boss has told me I am not to put up with the least bit of bad behaviour, and has even accompanied me on a job because he suspected the academic was being rude to me.

I love and adore some of the men in my life, because they are loyal, and stick by me. Those men are PEOPLE, not pre-programmed drones, mindlessly serving the patriarchy. (ZOMG, idea for a sci-fi feminist comic blockbuster!)

People that tell me feminists are whining about nothing, and being ’silly’ make me angry.

(Also, I just KNOW someone is going to ‘resent’ that I called him a ‘preprogrammed drone, mindlessly serving the patriarchy’. So, if you jump to that conclusion, yeah, fuck it, I AM TALKING ABOUT YOU.)

Damned Uppity Queer Feminist Transsexuals!

So, I’m getting more and more uppity in my old age. It seems that as every day goes by I am made aware of yet another injustice. I am helping to organise a rally for the 2nd of February to demand the ban on Gay Marriage be lifted, and Civil Unions for queer couples be legalised here in the ACT.

I am angry. Very ANGRY. I will not be a second class citizen. I refuse to lie down and be told that my people’s love is not good enough for legal recognition. All love is holy, and all marriage is sacred. The gender of the participants is not a matter that should be relevant.

Anyone who is interested in getting involved we need people to help out. We need people to help hand out flyers, stick up posters, send emails to their local members, talk to their church and community groups about supporting us, and even if you can’t help with any of that, just show up on the day, and join us in support.

Artists, paint posters! Writers, write essays! Speakers, prepare something for the open mike! Poets, write a song! Musicians, learn the words!

We need every bit of help we can get. With the combined creative energy we can make this even go off!

Conversations at the Comic Shop

I stopped and had a chat with the fellow in the comic shop today. Its quite amazing. Nice Guys(TM) are so formulaic. I felt like shaking him and saying “Get a grip man! You’re a CLICHE!”

He’s a nice fellow, but somewhat misguided. I scored Bingo on the Feminist Comic Bingo Card during a half hour conversation. He is quite sympathetic to the Feminist cause, but calls himself a masculinist, and I am afraid that when he started the regular Nice Guy(TM) trope about how girls are more attracted to arseholes I smirked, and rolled my eyes.

Women aren’t more attracted to arseholes, they are just conditioned to put up with shit, and so they end up going out, and staying with whoever asks, and usually the arsehole is there asking while the NiceGuy(TM) is too busy watching 300.

I do not know a single truly nice man that is single, except for those who choose to be so either temporarily or permanently. I think that really fabulous men tend to get snapped up pretty quickly, and because our society seems to spend an inordinate amount of time shaming single women, the girls that don’t manage to hook up with a treasure, often feel pressured to go out with whoever asks, instead of waiting for more men to try harder, and be nicer.

I quite like the fellow in the comic shop, he’s nice, and I look at him as a kind of hatchling feminist… DC’s Elseworld comics woke him up to what feminists are ‘whinging’ about in comics.

I’m losing patience and tolerance for idiots and arseholes though. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on everything, but I think that it is reasonable to expect a certain minimum standard of behaviour from my friends, and from now on people in violation of those standards probably wont see me much. I’m too busy. I’ve got work to do.

Coming out bit by bit…

So I officially came out as a Lesbian on my 22nd Birthday. I had been kinda out as a bisexual for quite a while, so it wasn’t really that big a deal to most of my friends. I don’t think that many of them understood the distinction I was placing on Officially Coming Out, as opposed to ‘my close friends know I dig chicks’.

I think that there is a difference between actually coming out, and just going about my everyday life knowing I like women, but not doing anything about it.

I seem to be catnip to the ladies since coming out. I went from getting no play at all, to having a few lovely ladies interested, and making some lesbian friends too. I am pretty sure that I don’t look different since coming out, but it seems that something about me now screams “RAGING QUEER”.

I have a girlfriend now, and things are going really well with her. She is a passionate activist, socialist, and brilliantly talented artist. She’s also doing her PhD in Anthropology. Over all, a gorgeous, zany, fun woman. She is also challenging, which is good, because it is forcing me to examine some area’s in my life that I would be willing to let stagnate.

One of the things that I have been extremely closeted about has been my gender identity. I’ve never bothered claiming that I am cisgendered, but I’ve never acknowledged that my gender identity is an important part of who I am, and needs to be examined. I’m in many ways a sheltered little creature, and so the existence of FTM Transsexuals had slipped under my radar until recently. Once I found out that they do exist I was left with the desire to get very very drunk. Once I recovered from a night of drinking port and sending embarrassing text messages, I had to actually think about what this meant to me.

I’ve been interested in gender for a long time, I heavily researched gender when I was in highschool… largely on the sly and using the schools PC’s which no doubt had net-nanny or some such installed. I expect that is why I never managed to find out much about FTM transgender people… also the literature is amazingly MTF-centric, to the point where I think that I can be forgiven for assuming I was a freak and that other FTM’s simply didn’t exist.

In my final year of high school, and first year of uni I think that I did every gender identity test I could find. They are largely crap that rely heavily on invalid stereotypes, but even knowing this I kept doing them until finally I managed to fudge my way through one enough to test as female gendered. The BBC gender identity test is pretty good, and if you are interested in how the tests work its well worth looking at.

When I was very young my mother took great pride in my “tom-boyish” nature. From an early age my friends were boys. I played a variety of imaginative games with them, and didn’t have much interest in stereotypically feminine behaviours, toys or games. I suffered quite a bit from penis envy, and it was my discussion of how I wished I had a penis that led me into the room of my molester.

By the time I became a teenager I was starting to absorb expectations of how I ought to behave, and my mothers attitude to my ‘tom-boy’ behaviour was changing. The few female friends I had ‘turned into girls’ much to my horror, and my guy friends didn’t want to hang out with a girl anymore. I was very lonely for a couple of years. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t fit in anymore.

I think that when every one is a child, there is a certain sameness to us all that lets us play the same games. In high school a much greater level of gender conformity is expected. I watched Disney’s Mulan over and over, feeling Mulan’s pain as her father said “I know my place! It is time you learned yours!”

I was being told the same thing. It was time I ‘grew up’. My mother said that I wasn’t ‘Lady-like enough’. The women at church praised me for not dressing like a slut, but must everything be so boyish? All my clothes were charity, until late high school and soon I found that the composition changed to more feminine items. (The first three items I bought when I started buying clothes? Two pairs of cargo pants, and a blue polar fleece jumper the same as one of my guy friends had)

When I was 14 I got my first period. I was, as my mother put it ‘blessed with the essence of womanhood’. I was not impressed by this development at all, and it was about this time that my lingering depression became acute. When my figure started to develop I hid it under loose clothing as best I could. My period stopped when I started starving myself. This satisfied me, but I dropped weight and got more depressed. When I got too weak to continue my boxing lessons with Mr Gorman, the one teacher at my high school that didn’t think only boys could box, things got even worse.

I started researching all manner of things at this point. I was about 16, and one of the girls in my year had come out as a lesbian. I was really impressed by this amazing feat of bravery. I looked into gender, and homosexuality, but I was simultaneously submitting to the church’s teaching, and getting involved with the more radical aspects of the religion. I ended up pushing my confusion behind a wall in my mind, and trying to be the best girl I could be.

When I arrived at uni I was ready to test my wings, but an early heart break sent me scuttling back into myself. I fell in with a very traditional group of Indian people, and started dating one of them, who reinforced my hot-potch femininity, extending it, and developing it. He was quite effeminate, and in some ways looked at me as a doll that he could make into the woman he wished he could be.

I spent years in that relationship, then dumped his arse when it became clear that he was an emotionally abusive fucktard, and that I needed to move on. I discovered feminism then, and attempted to embrace my womanhood, which I had a fairly decent level of success with. A lot of my latent misogyny has been addressed and annihilated. I have learned not to hate my body just because it is female. I can acknowledge that I am a sexy, beautiful person, even if I don’t look how I think that I should.

However, the moment I found it is possible for a woman to transition to become a man I was on fire with excitement. I have had many thoughts about this. After all, as a feminist I don’t believe in gender essentialism, so how can I claim to be male, surely I am just a woman that displays characteristics which are labelled ‘masculine’ within the cultural construct of gender. Right?

I think my girlfriend summed it up best when she said that I am “haunted by a phantom penis”. My body doesn’t feel quite right. My breasts for example. I love them dearly, they are wonderfully attractive breasts. However, most of the time I feel like they are some kind of bizarre growth on my chest, and every now and then I will do something, and they will get in the way, and I will be somewhat shocked for a moment that I have breasts. When I am aroused I miss my penis. I really do. In sex dreams I am almost always male, although sometimes I am having anal sex with a male partner. If I am female in the dream the partner is always female.

Essentially I have reached the point of acknowledging that I am transgender, and that undergoing t-therapy and having top surgery is something that I should think about as a serious option, rather than throwing my hands in the air and screaming ‘too-hard!’

I need to work out more, I want to start running again, and weight training. Last time I did a weight training course I did myself serious damage cos I was trying to keep up with someone much stronger than me… I am really competitive. I can be a bit like a chihuahua that believes its a great dane at times.

I am also overhauling my wardrobe over the next few months. One of my fashion conscious friends said that I need to make sure that I maintain a ’sense of style’. This made me laugh, because at the best of times I don’t have a sense of style. I am more enthusiastic about the idea of building a wardrobe of guys clothes… jeans, trendy shirts, and blazer-jackets, than I usually do about clothes shopping for girls clothes. I unsurprisingly find it really difficult to find clothes that I like.

Oh, and I still love pink. In fact, I like it better now that I am not repressing myself. I don’t think I will ever be a fan of ‘Barbie Pink’ or that ‘Candy-pink’ they select for Game Consoles, but rose pink, and pale pink, and so on are quite attractive. Also, my Pink Doc Martens have a laser etched DEATHS HEAD MOTH on the side. Oh yeah, that is pretty awesome.

So, there we have it. I am out Queer. I am out as Transgender. I am helping to organise a protest for Civil Unions, and about to go on a Woman’s Rights/Queer Rights/Anti-descrimination/Anti-sexual Violence Activism rampage. I guess I better tell my mum. Wouldn’t do for her to read about all this in the newspaper now would it?

Thoughts on the Police

 

 The Police are, according to the Oxford Dictionary (My primary source of definitions), the civil force of a local or national government, responsible for the detection and prevention of crime, and the maintenance of public order.

I was always raised to respect the police, and see them as protectors, and defenders of the peace and so on. I swallowed that line whole. I was reading through issues of “The Queer Revolutionary Disco” today, and one issue has a page of myths, and one of them is that “There are good cops” and a later issue has a comic depicting a pig in a police officers uniform flying with “Police are here to protect you” written beneath it.

My instant reaction was “Oh, thats a bit harsh, police aren’t that bad.”

Then I thought about it, and wondered why on earth I believe that. Really, why?

I haven’t had a huge amount of experience with the police, but what I have had should outweigh what I hear through the mainstream media. Thats the way I work. So I started thinking about my experiences with the police.

When I was in primary school I was hauled down to the police station and ‘interviewed’ by an officer who told me I would go to jail if I didn’t tell the truth. Of course, I lied and lied and lied. Because I was frightened, I lied. (Funnily enough, being 11, I wasn’t jailed, even though it must have been obvious I was lying).

Again when I was in primary school the police came to our house, and threatened my mother because they were called by neighbors about my brother yelling and screaming. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I remember my mothers fear very clearly.

A few years later the drug dealer across the road was busted, and thought that we had dobbed him in. He paid off the cops, and became an informant. He then went on to terrorize my mother and call the police around to our house whenever the whim took him, until he moved away.

When I was 16 my stoner friends were searched for marijuana pretty regularly, until they started buying from a corrupt cop instead of their usual supplier.

When I was 17 my mother had the shit beaten out of her by my brother so bad that we finally managed to convince her to go to the police about it. They said that being as he was her son, it wasn’t really their place to intervene.

I don’t have a single experience of the police effectively doing their job without using fear to gain power over a vulnerable individual. In fact, most of my experience of them has been them NOT doing their job.

So, looking over that, and factoring in that I know people that have been at protests where police have beaten the protesters, I honestly wonder why I was so blindingly trusting of the police force. I am sure that like in any profession, there are good officers, but mostly I think that the Police are drunk on their own power, and reflect the ugliest side of the intolerance and lack of caring in wider society.

BACK!!

My internet hasn’t been working recently, so I have been forced to go nomadic with my work laptop. I am currently steelin’ internets from Fenner Hall (a college at ANU). It took me 25 mins to figure out how to get on the network…My enrollment has been suspended it seems. I left my enrolment too late. Most upsetting. I have to pay a late fee of $125 if I want to enroll. It doesn’t seem worth it frankly. *growls* Anyway, in other news! My time offline has been spent writing many blog posts! It has also been spent PLOTTING with Farida to start a joint comic-blog which will probably be called “The Centre for Insanity”. We haven’t finalised that yet. So on to the many posts I have written!