February 2012
48 posts
January 2012
20 posts
Quinn Valentine;: Quinn Valentine's response to Amber Hazard →
quinnvalentinexxx.tumblr.com
Dearest friends, colleagues, fans, and the rest;
I’m sure many of you have been shocked and perhaps outraged by Amber Hazard’s recent accusations of my ostensive transmysogyny and transphobia. This is my response.
Introduction
When these accusations arose my immediate rage-initiated…
there is still absolutely NO excuse for what you said. it was horrifying and disgustingly transphobic. for you, a person who identifies as a cis male, to try to decide whether someone else’s identity is valid, regardless of what they’ve done to you, is WRONG.
(this just fucking reminds me of when the news about alaska-says-sun broke and all the cis people decided that because ze lied in a terrible way, it was ok to decided that ze wasn’t genderqueer based on those other lies).
as for the whole you were going to “bash back over the internet” and not actually hurt anyone physically, you knew full well what your message sounded like. it does not matted if you intended it to sound that way. (and, to quote genderbitch, intent isn’t fucking magic.)
i absolutely understand that this a complicated issue, there are a lot of complex feelings involved, that there is a backstory, but i do NOT excuse your disgusting transphobia in this situation. you do not get to wax poetic about how you’re such a big ~trans ally~ while you have actively denied someone’s identity. YOU DON’T GET TO FUCKING DO THAT. and you don’t get to excuse it. ever. it would have been a lot fucking better if you just OWNED the fuck up to your shit instead of writing this long ass self righteous message about why it was okay for you to tell a trans person they were ‘appropriating queer culture.’ that was wrong, and that was the issue that was addressed originally, until it blew up into something else.
i get it. if amber’s a shitty person, she’s a shitty person. but she’s still a woman and you do not get to decide that she isn’t because of how you personally feel about her.
Bolding for truth. This is tangenty because I don’t know anything about this situation except that Quinn Valentine, whom I had never heard of before this, is a massive asshole.
But denying someone’s identity because you don’t like what they did happens all the fucking time and by people who call themselves allies while doing so. They always say they’re doing it to protect ~real~ trans people, or that they would never do something like that to a ~real~ trans person.
There is an infamous person in fandom, anyone who has any familiarity with Lord of the Rings/LotRiPS fandom, Harry Potter, or Fandom Wank has probably heard of Jordan Wood/Thanfiction (full list of aliases here). This guy is a serial con artist who also happens to be trans, and so so SO many people continue to refer to him by his birth name and to use female pronouns, saying that because he lied about XYZ he doesn’t deserve any respect and is probably lying about being trans anyway.
If you act like that, you can say you’re an ally all you want, but I will give you the side-eye forever and will not trust you, will not have anything to do with you if I can help it, because what your actions tell me is that if I ever do anything you disapprove of, I could find myself in for the same treatment. People like this may not think of it consciously like this but basically they think trans people are only deserving of respect if they are “good” trans people. And the only reason to act like that is if you don’t really believe trans people are the genders they say they are.
You may think you are hurting someone who deserves to be hurt by disrespecting them, but if you do this, you are hurting ALL TRANS PEOPLE.
cassette decks
cassette decks that had auto-reverse
and then
dual cassette decks with auto-reverse
became
portable cassette players
^ with auto-reverse
and finally
PORTABLE DUAL CASSETTE PLAYERS WITH DUAL AUTO-REVERSE
and ^ that was the way I carried my music.
I am ollllllddddd
Cassette singles.
Taping songs off the radio.
Frantically trying to put records on tape before you had to replace the needle.
That little BEE BEE BEE BEE BEEP? at the beginning and end of prerecorded cassettes
Putting scotch tape over the notches so you could tape over a prerecorded cassette
Having to sit and rewind the tape with a pencil in the spool whenever it snarled in the deck
Putting a penny on top of the needle arm of the record player to weigh it down and avoid skipping.
Scrambling to find your current blank tape when a song started on the radio, so your taped-from-radio cassettes had most songs with the first five or ten seconds missing.
ALL OF THEM! And when you’d get frantic and be like, FUCKIT, I’ll just tape over the last half of this song, I don’t have time to fast forward any more, so it cuts off all of a sudden into some other shit entirely
Man, even when I sat there with my tape at the ready, most of the songs had the first few seconds cut off, because most songs didn’t get announced before they were played, so it took a bit to realise it was something I liked.
And speaking of not announcing the songs, there were songs that were favorites of mine, that I’d get super excited about whenever they came on, and yet I never knew the artist or title until years and years later.
Doctor blah
So a couple months ago I noticed my testosterone was getting low, but it’s really hard to tell how much is left in those bottles, and I can’t calculate by how many doses they told me it would be, because it doesn’t last that long, even though I don’t use more than the dose it’s supposed to be. Anyway, I thought it was more left than it was, and one day I noticed it really looked like only a couple doses left. D:
So I contacted the LA Gay & Lesbian Center, where I have gotten it from before, and asked if I could get a refill quickly or if I had to see the doctor. Unfortunately I did have to see the doctor, and she would want blood tests first. The first blood test date was this week, which was about three weeks from when I called. Then I would have to set up an appointment with the doctor at least a week after that, but while I didn’t bother asking, knowing her schedule and how booked she is, that might not have been possible until next month or even March.
But a friend of mine has been really talking up this other doctor, a general practitioner who runs a trans-related clinic every other Tuesday in Hollywood. My wife went to him for an estrogen prescription in December after calling it quits at the LAGLC because the doctor there basically threatened to stop prescribing her estrogen if she didn’t do something about her (elevated, but not zomg dangerous) cholesterol. This new doctor prescribed her estrogen no problem, with quite a few refills.
So I was hopeful that it would be that easy for me. Unfortunately the day I called was right after the Tuesday he’d been in the office there, and wasn’t taking appointments for another two weeks, and then that got bumped back so my appointment actually ended up being the same date that they had given me at the LAGLC for blood tests. >_< But this was an actual doctor’s visit, not just tests, so I was still feeling good about it being sooner than the Center (especially since I used my last injection the week after I called to make the appointment).
I was a bit worried when, after I arrived and filled out the paperwork, the nurse told me the doctor might need me to get blood tests before prescribing me anything, but when I got in to see him, he already had his prescription pad out and was ready to write it right then. All in all, I think I talked to him for about fifteen minutes and he wrote me a prescription for one 10ml bottle of T + one refill, so I won’t have to worry about another doctor’s appointment for over a year, regardless of whether I go back to him or the Center.
He seemed like a really nice guy, definitely easier-going than Dr. Maddie at the LAGLC. The downside of going to him is that it’s a little pricier.
With the LAGLC, they have discounts if you are poor, and for the past couple years my wife and I have been going there, we have been poor enough to qualify for the lowest prices, which is $30 per doctor visit, and super reduced prescriptions and tests. Dr. Flores’ office charges $65 if you don’t have insurance. However, I figure since he gave me a refill, that is the same as if I went to see Dr. Maddie twice, so it evens out. What will really hurt is the prescription itself. I think I paid about $18 for one bottle of T from the LAGLC pharmacy and I know it will be much more at a regular pharmacy (I haven’t gotten it filled yet; I went to Rite Aid this afternoon and they said they don’t actually carry it there and have to order it, so I will pick it up Monday evening; at this point, I’ve already missed two doses, so another few days isn’t going to make a difference).
Anyway, if you’re looking for a doctor in LA for trans-related stuff, I definitely recommend him. His name is Dr. Jacob Flores and his trans clinic is at the St Nicholas Medical Clinic, which is a little hole-in-the-wall place on Santa Monica near Western in Hollywood. More info here.
white women’s tears →
abagond.wordpress.com
Relevant to Australia and also online spaces, and thanks abagond!!! xx
“White women’s tears is one of the main ways White American women have of derailing any talk of racism, particularly their own racism. It is part of a more general pattern of white people making their feelings matter more than the truth – something you see too in the tone argument, for example.
White women’s tears can come about in different ways, but here is the classic scene:
- A white woman says something racist.
- A black woman points it out. (It could be any person of colour but it works best against black women for reasons given below.)
- The white woman says she is not racist and starts crying.
- For added effect the white woman can run out of the room.
- Other whites, particularly white men, come to the aid and comfort not of the wronged black woman but of the racist white woman!
- The black woman, the wronged party, is made to seem like the mean one in the eyes of whites.
- The white woman continues to believe she is not racist.
Tables turned! It works so well that it is hard not to see the tears as a cheap trick.
This is more than just a woman using tears to get her way. It is built on a set of White American ideas about race, listed here in no particular order:
- It works best when these two stereotypes can be applied:
- The Sapphire stereotype - black women as mean, angry and disagreeable
- The Pure White Woman stereotype - white women as these special, delicate creatures who need to be protected at all costs. It is what drives the Missing White Woman Syndrome – and, in the old days, lynchings.
- The r-word: to be called a “racist”, however gently and indirectly, is a terrible, upsetting thing for white people – far worse than, you know,being a racist.
- White people and their feelings are the centre of the known universe.
- Hearts of stone: meanwhile whites seem to have a very, very hard time putting themselves in the shoes of people of colour.
- Moral blindness: white people think they are Basically Good, therefore if someone points out something bad about them it must be out of hatred.
- White solidarity: whites are afraid to stand up against racism, particularly when they are with other whites. Also, they do not like it when you call other whites racists – they seem to take it personally for some reason.
All these things work together to help create the scene laid out above. It is why it works best for young, good-looking white women and why black women’s tears have nowhere the same effect in a white setting.”
Also bonus racism when white people say the term “white women’s tears” is misogynist and thus anyone who uses it is a bad person whose words can be dismissed.
Can you “k” your way to the top?
I can’t do keyboard navigation commands like that because I really like the “search for text when I start typing” feature in Firefox. So if I have that turned on, typing whatever letter supposedly scrolls up or down just makes it start searching for the next thing beginning with a k. :p
I mean, I could page up a few times and get there, too, but it’s still more effort than I want to put in for something unless I really, really love it and then I am willing to go back up and hit “like”. I just wish that there was something at the bottom of the post. Even a link to the post would be good, then I could open it in a new tab and hit like! But there’s nothing at the bottom but the source. ;_;
I really wish tumblr had the like/reblog/etc. buttons at the bottom of the post (either instead of or in addition to the top), because a lot of times I don’t know how I feel about something until I read it, and sometimes due to the narrowness of the dash, that can be three or four screens down, and thus there are times when I really like a post but don’t click the like button out of sheer laziness because I don’t want to have to scroll all the way back up to the top to like it. :p
“I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. And then I get speakers’ fees from time to time, but not very much.”
—
Out-of-touch Republican presidential front-runner MITT ROMNEY, who earned $374,327.62 in speaker’s fees from February, 2010 to February, 2011 — an average of more than $41,000 per speech.
Only a dumbass One Percenter with six houses would call $374K “not very much.”
That appears to be approximately 27.5 times what I made last year. For him that’s “not very much”, but I’m sure he thinks minimum wage jobs are more than enough for others and we’re just slackers and whiners if we dare to suggest otherwise.
Taco Bell is advertising their taco 12-pack as ideal for someone “who has at least 11 friends.”
Dudes, if I got a taco 12-pack, it would be ideal if you leave my tacos alone.
Who the fuck is sharing 12 tacos between 12 people? Who are these anomalies of humanity only eating one taco?
That…is bizarre, considering all of their meal deals (aside from the $2 ones, which only come with one item and chips) come with like two tacos plus the main item. Now, those meal deals are usually more than I can comfortably eat at once, but still. They’re selling those as meals for one person, yet a 12 pack of tacos is supposed to be for 12 people? O_o
Play
