"Switching Sides Later In Life" a blog response

So there's a post up on Huffington Post about "switching sides later in life" and I can't help but feel it misses the whole point.



While I appreciate this post I also have fundamental issues with the idea that there are "sides" to sexuality. The inherent hetero/homo dichotomy is unfair to the vast majority of people who have attraction to both sexes, even if not on a major scale, but are pushed to ignore them in favor of a single sex preference.

The gay community is just as, if not more, guilty than the straight community in this regard. We inherently distrust people who openly identify as bisexual and force them to hide who they are so we feel more comfortable.

How hypocritical is that?

I expect that people are going to come after me for my opinions but I feel strongly that there HAS to be a safe middle ground where people are allowed to exist without labels of hetero/homo/bi or even man/woman just to make others feel more comfortable. As long as these categories persist the biases and discrimination surrounding them will continue to exist as well.

I understand that many people feel we are better with these categories and expectations but I genuinely feel that we would be better off simply viewing each other as "human beings" rather than man, woman, straight, gay, bi, christian, muslim, jewish, black, or white.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Art is relative

These are various photos I've taken over the years that I'm particularly proud of. They're not amazing but They're significant to me.

I like the way the only clear thing in the picture is Andrea smiling. Just a friend but a beautiful one.





My sister named this picture "Persephone" and I quite like that name.





I kind of feel like this photo explains my entire relationship with Fae. It's all blurry and distinguishing what's actually there and what isn't is almost impossible.








Allison was so amazing and beautiful and trying to capture that in a photograph was almost impossible. This was the closest I ever came.
I still miss her but I wish her all the happiness the world could possibly offer.


If you haven't seen the movie Cashback you totally should.

It's all about the dots.

My reflection and life philosophy.
Fair warning: I abandoned grammar some hours ago and am now going for broke.


I honestly loved this class. I know I dropped off the face of the earth halfway through and was kinda craptastic about regular upkeep but I still loved this class and I loved the chance to really examine something I see as on the rise and important- blogs in the context of activism.

I see the human spirit as having so much potential. My entire life philosophy is based on the painting "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat. This idea doesn't make a lot of sense until you know what the painting is made of . The painting is made up of tiny individual dots of paint, millions of them. There isn't a single brushstroke on the canvas.

My theory is that life is a canvas and each of us is a blank dot. As we live our lives we fill our dots up. We can either have our dots be beautiful and contribute to the end result being beautiful or we can contribute to the painting being ugly. What will your dot look like? What can we do to make the dots around us more beautiful? What can we do to make the whole painting more beautiful?

I also feel that each act in our lives is a dot within our dots. Our lives add up to those things we accomplished and those lives we touched and those people we loved and were loved by. All of these things are part of the picture.

It's hard to create change more than a few dots beyond yourself but with blogging and the internet we are starting to reach a point where entire portions of the picture are able to shift quickly to being more beautiful, more loving, more accepting. The ideas and changes and words move quickly across the globe.

In this class I enjoyed reading as people grew and changed and became more comfortable with themselves as bloggers. I'm excited to see where everyone goes from here. The potential is just mind blowing.

I want to thank everyone for being supportive and amazing and really building a blogging community. It rocked and I hope everyone continues their blogs because I'll keep reading them...




PS: I apologize if "the dots" analogy got long winded and weird and incomprehensible. I'll try to explain it more clearly at a later date.

You guys rock!!

Badass Bits&Bobs

My first category is WebComics. The ones I list here are all drawn by women

1. DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary- The webcomic diary of a queer feminist and artist. Hilarious and brilliant.
2. Girls With Slingshots- A webcomic that follows a writer named Hazel in her many adventures in life involving relationships, drinking, a slightly retarded cat, and a talking cactus. It's much better than I make it sound.
3. Lackadaisy- The reason I list this comic is because the art is beautiful and the content is brilliant and well researched. It sounds nerdy but it's true and it's amazing for it. A comic about anthropomorphic cats running a speakeasy in prohibition era St Louis. Just look at the art if nothing else.

My next category is blogs

1. The Huffington Post- It is the mothership of blogging. An excellent and amazing source for progressive news and information as well as host to a massive list of A-List bloggers.
2. Life as an Underage Lesbian- I love following this blog because it's simply the life adventures of a young lesbian living life underage. It's well written and has some very good stories and insights.
3. Vive la Vida- This is the blog of a woman I worked with on the Obama campaign. I'm asking you to please check it out because it has her videos from her recent trip to Rwanda to help film a documentary there. It's amazing and beautiful and Ash is a seriously brilliant little lady. The videos are incredible.
4. Genderfork- It's very cool stuff about gender theory and gender queer etc.

Fun random things:

• Compatible Partners- eHarmony was forced to launch a gay dating site after losing a lawsuit. This is their new site.

• Whitehouse.gov- Our government went 2.0 and it's definitely worth checking out.

• How To Kill A Mocking Bird- It's a flash video version of a book report by that one kid in the class who only read the first four chapters of the book and then made the rest up. It's long but it's hilarious.

• The Rachel Maddow Show- Because I wouldn't be a proper fangirl if I didn't promote her

Gender is a light board not a switch

reading response to "The Gendercator"

When I walk into a dark room the first thing I look for is a light switch. On means light. Off means it's dark. There is no nuance to the lighting. In theatre we can have up to hundreds of lights with different colors and intensities. They can have moving designs. They can move where they are pointing on the stage. All of this information is stored on a massive board that looks like something you would see in a recording studio or Star Trek.

As a lighting tech I appreciate how a lighting design in and of itself is art. The changes in brightness and color and the speed with which the lights shift, the addition of movement, subtle shifts, all of these add up to a symphony of light. It sounds lame but it's so beautiful. Lighting is so amazing and beautiful and makes so many things what they are and no two lighting designers will design a show or a cue the exact same way. In theatre the lights vary for each person. Gender is the same way. There are more than two options in gender and people so often miss that fact. We are not all Barbies and GI Joes.

In reading about how the blogosphere responded to "The Gendercator" I noticed a split into two camps. One group was furious that the LGBT community would turn on its own members and the other group agreed with the concepts and felt that trans individuals were bringing unwanted masculinity or male-ness into strictly female spaces and that lesbians were succumbing to what males wanted when they chose to bend their genders.

This is what I was ranting about in the beginning: the accusation that people of alternative genders are sometimes not welcomed in "feminist" spaces because they are neither feminine nor masculine. There is almost always an accusation of bringing male-ness into female space when feminists argue against acceptance of transgender individuals. This pisses me off because feminists are arguing for the equal rights and protection of women but arguing that transgender indivudals do not deserve the same rights. WTF?
I think that's against the rules of logic.

I am constantly stunned by the amount of bias in a community of "outsiders" who want "equal rights". There is both a hatred of Trans people and of Bisexuals in the LGBT community. Which, I suppose, would make it the LG community. It's outright prejudice and discrimination and stuns me everytime I see it. I'm infuriated that my own "community," that "my family" would turn against me like this. I would like to not be pigeonholed plzthx.

I think the blogosphere has the ability and the obligation to expose this ugly discrimination in the LGBT community and help push for more acceptance and tolerance the way people did in reaction to "The Gendercator".



If a tool can be used for good then it should be used for good.

Wikipedia = Legit

blog response....?

When doing research for my response to the Dating a Banker Anonymous reading I stumbled across a blog entry about the use of Wikipedia in academic settings. My professors always make a point of telling our classes to never use Wikipedia. Most academics refuse to use it as any kind of source. Unfortunately for them the new generation of students have grown up wired and understand the benefits of making the knowledge of the world OpenSource.

The ability to build something like Wikipedia which now has sourcing and notifications if information seems dodgy, is utterly astonishing. By building it in the public domain and making it publicly accessible then all of a sudden the ability to instantly add new pop culture pheonmena, update information, add statistics, and tweak and finetune vast quantities of information instantly. How freaking cool is that?

I love this particular blog post because it addresses the four major arguments against using Wikipedia and effectively neuters them. It's worth a read.

The post is here at the Digital Scholarship in the Humanities blog.


In short: We Win!!!

Don't Ask Don't Tell: why institutionalized discrimination is STOOPID

blog response number... thing.

"Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about to fire him. Why? Because he came out of the closet as a gay man on national television."

Dear Lord. What does it say about our country that we institutionalize discrimination to the point that we are willing to turn away ready, willing, enthusiastic, and amazing men and women from serving our country in uniform. And because of what? Because of who they love? Because of who they sleep with? ...that's some solid reasoning, right there.

After coming out on Rachel Maddow's cable news show on March 19, 2009 Lt. Dan Choi explained why Don't Ask Don't Tell is a bad idea, bad policy, and just generally negative. During the segment Maddow asks Lt. Choi if he could lose his job for coming on television and saying this. He admits that he could but stands firm that his position is both morally and legally correct.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

As of May 5, 2009 he was notified that

"sufficient basis exists to initiate action for withdrawal of Federal Recognition in the Army National Guard for moral or professional dereliction... Specifically, [he] admitted publicly that [he] is a homosexual, which constitutes homosexual conduct. [His] actions negatively affected the good order and discipline of the New York Army National Guard."

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

How is this fair? If he refuses to resign and essentially admit that being gay is wrong then he will be given a dishonorable discharge. WTF?!?! He's an Iraq vet and a Westpoint Graduate!!!! I'm so angry that our government has discrimination as public policy. I'm so mad that they are wasting money kicking good people out of the military, people who want to serve.

How is this right?

How is it right to make hate part of government sanctioned policy and therefore validate homophobia?

If you think about it, no one would have known about this story if it hadn't been picked up on the blogs. I'm still pissed but I'm glad that we're able to spread the word so much quicker.

Today...

As I was walking into my Anthropology final a girl in the class, out of no where, called me a "lesbian fucktard" for no reason.

Why is it okay to use a part of someone and twist it into hate speech?

It shouldn't bother me anymore but it does. I'm genuinely hurt and angry and exhausted.

You were so beautiful

So I dropped off the face of the earth, I know this. There has been a lot going on with finals and the difficulty of the summer. I always dread the summer because from the time I was 8 I have had people die in the summer. All four of my grandparents died in May or June each a different year.

This year was not someone I was related to but someone I admired and appreciated.


Kahlo Benavidez was two years ahead of me in school. He was one of the most openly gay members of the student body who paved the way for younger gays, dealing with the teachers' prejudices and the snide remarks, forcing the administration to sell couples' prom tickets to same-sex couples (something they briefly fought).

After highschool I learned that Kahlo was HIV positive. Rather than retreating into depression and denial he became an amazing and inspiring activist. I'm still blown away by how hard he worked and the things he accomplished.

On the 24th of April he took his own life.

It's still surreal and painful and confusing. It doesn't make anysense. The outpouring of love and sadness over his death is astounding.

I'm sorry he chose that path. I can understand what it's like to be staring down reality and choose that path. It's just so tragic that despite how much people looked up to him and loved him and admired him and respected him he still felt that death was the best option.


I'm in the midst of trying to finish the semester and sort out my emotions and maintain my own delicate balance between mania and depression. I'm struggling but I'll make it through this.



Kahlo, wherever you are, I'm sorry I never thanked you for everything you did. I hope it's easier, that you're happier, wherever you are. Around here you're missed greatly.