by the light of the moon...

There's so much to blog about I don't know where to start, so today you just get links.

John McCain thinks that calling Hilary Clinton a bitch is part of an "excellent question." More discussion here.

Somebody is finally noticing that the majority of animated characters are boys - even when they are worker bees...which are always female.

And finally, in Seattle, a collection of apartments designed to get chronically alcoholic homeless people off the streets that does NOT require them to stop drinking.

Here is another article about it. Here is their official site.

I support this idea wholeheartedly. Yes, take my taxes, please. Alcoholism is a mental illness like any other, and poverty and homelessness are not likely to help anyone quit. Why deny someone the social supports that keep them off the street because they can't cure their illness alone, or because it isn't cured yet? The idea is inhumane and preposterous.

The quote that really got me is this one:

"Finally, he asks, what kind of equation of humanity is this: Since you refuse to stop drinking, since you refuse to address your disease, you must die on the streets."

Posted by Lythande at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have so many ideas I want to blog about, and no time to do it. Rather than let the site languish without any changes, here are snippets of things that have caught my heart over the past week:

Went to see The Da Vinci Code movie:

* Was reminded of how much I appreciate the alternate media, where women have choices besides whore or wife (which apparently Mary Magdalene does not). It was so sad to see Audrey Tautou (from Amelie) spending a movie getting passively yanked around by Tom Hanks.

* It was also sad to see that Ian McKellen's character conveniently does not mention persecution of the LGBT community when he is describing the ways in which the church oppresses. I am guessing that that omission is a concession to ticket sales. I wonder if that was a painful omission for McKellen, out and proud as he is. It was painful for me.

* In this movie, I noticed that the fat person is evil; the albino is evil; the disabled person is evil; and I was only tracking race consciously for part of the movie, so I may have missed something, but it seems that only one person in all of France is a person of color. In Ron Howard's world, only the pretty white people have lines, and are good. It's the Amelie's Paris phenomenon.

Yet another English-only amendment:
As part of the new immigration reform bill, the US Senate passed an English-only amendment on Thursday, May 18th. If you think this is inappropriate legislation, call your senators.

Not crossing picket lines:
Al Gore, Howard Dean, State Assemblymember Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) and State Senator Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont) have all refused to honor speaking engagements at Cal this month because doing so would require them to cross picket lines.

I am so impressed and thankful! How fabulous to see examples of people in the spotlight valuing workers and social ethics. Thanks you, thank you, Howard, Al, Fabian, and Liz. Thank you so much.

Allowing transgendered children to identify how they need to, and allowing their parents to support them
A five-year old with male genitals identifies as a girl and her parents are supporting her. O goddess, do my eyes deceive me and are my prayers answered? Can this be a trend? Can an increasing number of parents really be supporting their children who don't conform to societal gender expectations? I heartily cheer, cry, and holler for these wonderful people, and pray that their local (or national, for that matter) government does not interfere.

It is not usually so. Said government took Aurora Lipscomb away from her parents in 2000, and I have not been able to find out yet if she was ever able to return home, let alone attend school as the girl she wished to be. I have a call into GPAC; we'll see if they have any news of her.

image is the cover of one of my favorite books on transgender issues, She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan.

Posted by Lythande at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

...from NPR to 94.1 KPFA, an independent radio station here in Berkeley.

I've been an NPR junkie for years. Raised on Karl Cassell. And I don't think I'll swear off entirely.

But over the past few years I was spending more and more time annoyed or frustrated with the coverage I was hearing. Most of the voices I was hearing seemed to be American, white, and male. The business stories seemed to lean towards supporting the companies described...who were also sponsors. There was so little coverage of protests and liberal activities...and never, in my experience, an interview with a true left-winger, like Noam Chomsky or Dolores Huerta. And I'm always wondering what stories are not being told due to Republican pressure or corporate funding...

Even Car Talk, my beloved Car Talk...I'm just tired of hearing them quote tired stereotypes of women.

(BTW, FAIR.org has catalogued these phenomena, and more, in their studies of several center-to-right biases on NPR.)

So I'm taking a break and giving my ears, and my pledge money this year, to KPFA. I can get my center-to-right news from so many places, and I get enough of it, by golly! Let's hear what else is going on!

And if you're interested...KPFA's mission statement.

Posted by Lythande at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...and also, (surprise!) it's kinda helpful not to use the idea of a hierarchy to keep oneself from examining a system where one has privilege.

There is a lively debate going on at blac(k)ademic about a comment she's encountered (and I've heard it, many times) saying that "Gender trumps race." Another way to say this is that "women as a whole are oppressed across color lines, and so the fight to end sexism is more important than the fight to end racism."

Woh. I can see how people would get there, but I have deep problems with that sentiment. Especially when voiced by white women. We are essentially saying that the system that gives us power (racism) isn't as important to us to fight as the system that oppresses us (sexism).

Convenient, eh? Not surprisingly, this idea was the source of a decades-old schism in the American feminist movement.

It is my firm belief that I get nowhere fighting oppression unless I am able to acknowlege the privilege that I have, sitting side by side with my oppressions. I need to own and examine all of my identities, target and agent.

Here is the comment I made in response to Nubian's critiqe of that idea. Warning: expletives.

Excellent post, Nubian. My thoughts….In my work, I used to describe a hierarchy of oppression, but in the opposite direction: it’s been clear to me that as a white, bisexual, disabled, Jewish, American Citizen, upper class woman, my race and class have powerfully protected me from much of the oppression that I face through other aspects of my identity. So I felt for a long time that racism actually was the most powerful oppression that existed in my world, and that I would do well to prioritize fighting racism over fighting other oppressions.

These days I see things as more complicated. It’s kind of a both/and situation. BOTH I need to acknowledge that my race and class privilege are very, very powerful, & I need to make sure that I keep fighting to tear down those systems of privilege and that I do not become complacent, AND I see that all of the systems of power and oppression in this society can kill and are grievously hurting people. All of us.

The shit I face as a woman, and as a queer woman, sucks, and I’m only just starting to really see it. (A very painful process.) But the shit that white women give communities of color when we claim “race work needs to wait until gender work is finished” (which is what I read in “gender trumps race”, let me know if I’m misinterpreting) only serves to derail our activism. It perpetuates the system that is killing us all.

Everybody’s work needs to happen. No one is free when others are oppressed. Hey…haven’t I heard that one before?

Yeah.

Posted by Lythande at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I put together a list I've been saving up for years of great books with strong, complicated, interesting, and smart girl protagonists. I wanted to make sure that these books were on my children's shelves - kids of any gender - to reinforce the idea that girls can be powerful and smart and strong.

The good thing is that these books were wonderful, fabulous, fun, and empowering. They taught me that being strong and smart (and Jewish, some of them!) was OK.

The problem is that it is also a list of all WHITE, able-bodied, American or European girls. Sexuality was, of course, never mentioned.

It's really remarkable to me to look back and see how my book choices were exclusively about white girls. I even remember reading pretty much every Judy Blume book except Iggy's House, which I seem to remember was the one where the typical white girl protagonist (gasp) encounters racism! no!

How young I internalized the concept of "other," and my society's racism. That wasn't my story, and I wasn't interested in it.

...I'm definitely going to have to broaden this list. Off to the bookstore and library! Here are some with more diverse characters that have been recommended to me that I plan to read:

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Island of the Blue Dolphins and Zia

And here is a website that seems to have some very promising leads...I will update as I find more sites and books.

Other recommendations? Our bookshelves will need strong, smart queer girls, disabled girls, immigrant girls, girls of color, and more...

Oh...and here is the original totally racially biased list (but still books which, as part of a more diverse list, are beloved favorites of mine that i recommend highly), for your reference:

A Wrinkle In Time and other Meg Murray books by Madeline L'Engle
Someday Angeline by Louis Sachar
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Caddie Woodlawn and Magical Melons by Carol Ryrie Brink
Anastasia Krupnik (and all the other Anastasia books) by Lois Lowry
The Laura Ingalls Wilder books
The All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor
The Real Me by Betsy Byars
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry
Beat the Turtle Drum by Constance C. Greene (although I don't remember this one as well, I need to reread it)
The Westing Game (which does have diversity in it, just not the bright girl character) by Ellen Raskin

More books of all kinds to be added as we go.

Posted by Lythande at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)