In honor of Trans-Awareness week.

Ok, if you have any way at all to see the episode of Queer Eye that's "Queer Eye for the Trans Guy", SEE IT! FUCKING SEE IT ALREADY! My god, it brought tears to my eyes. It's got to be one of the most fucking amazing things ever put on television. I wonder if they know how huge of an impact they made with just one hour of film?


Alix Olson- Gender Game

You wanna give me a shiner
Cause I look like this
And I got a vagina?
See, I’m familiar with this Gender Game,
I’ve played this war many times before
On this playground called my identity
When puberty hit like dodge balls
And freeze-tagged as sissy-fagged
My best friend dissed me- common interests,
Different anatomy.
See, vagina meant quieter, caretaker, peacemaker.
Vagina meant keeping lips closed, keeping bodies posed.
Vagina was silent dolls and no action toys,
Vagina was punches when I played with the boys.
So I learned to take it in the stomach, I learned to
Fight to make friends.
And as I learned to make that bullshit end,
Vagina became a slippery slide for my little finger
Vagina became a quiver that lingered,
Vagina became what I looked for, worked for, stood for,
I "Viva La Vagina’d all over the place!"
I revitalized Vagina’s grace,
I discovered vagina’s taste.
I became a fine diner. Put my face in vagina after vagina.
And then I was faced with some other lipservice
Putting me in my place
That Vagina should not be liberator.
But dictator. Of the shoes we wear.
The hair we crop. The palms we clasp.
The way we walk. The space we use.
The threads we choose.
Well, I refuse to follow suit.
Cause I gotta confess, my straight jacket is a dress.
You know it used to be a crime
To wear clothes that didn’t scream "Vagin-A!"
I wear these shoes so I can move with my own easy spirit.
I don’t shave my legs cause
It gets cold.
Besides, my legs rebel
Against the bloody hell of
Shaved and sliced
And since when is my body hair something to judge?
Is furry a male privilege-
Or a patriarchal plot by gillette?
I don’t cut my nails cause I’ve got hammering to do.
I’m pounding out my path as I cruise this gender landscape,
As I peruse the choice between silence and
Violence. Matthew Shepard was bent, so you hang him to a fence,
Brandon Teena was murdered as a liar for hiding his Vagina.
And I can’t even sit
In a restaurant without causing a stir:
"Whaddya have sir? Whaddya have sir? Whaddya have sir?"
I have a Vagina!
Yes, I’ve got a vagina and you can still call me sir,
Cause I can’t cure
This visual disease of yours.
But I don’t give a damn about "Sir" or "Ma’am".
So, in the "F" or "M" boxes they give,
I forgive myself for not fitting in
And blame the world for lack of clarity.
I deliberate. Penis? I got one y’know.
I write down "d" for dildo,
I write down "D" for "Don’t know,"
I fill in "F" forfi-fie-foe male!
Yes, I’m a giant Vagina!
And I am too big for these boxes they give,
Too real for this Gender Toyland
Built over soiled contradictions
With Barbie bricks and Ken cornerstones
Built over the skulls and bones of our Transgendered Ancestors.
Danger:She-men working above. And beyond. You.
Yes, we are Deconstruction Workers.
We are exposing unfounded bedrocks
That bed us to one sex, that wed us to one gender.
We are overturning those stones,
We are throwing them back.
We are making revolution
A gender evolution.
We are invoking strategy, we are revoking shame.
And we are calling it. We are calling it
Refusal to be Named.

HAPPY TRANS-AWARENESS WEEK!

It's Trans-Awareness Week, the week in which we celebrate and try to make people more aware of the diversity and beauty of the world of gender, and of people who are transgender, transsexual, drag kings and queens, cross-dressers, etc, etc, etc! Eon, by the way, is the local LGBT youth center/lounge associated with Wingspan and a few other great organizations around Tucson. So now that you know that, here are the events that Eon is holding this week, starting tonight. I'm hoping to get up the motivation to go to the one tonight, but I'll definitely be attending a few of them this week. It's so cool that they're doing this! Woo, and that rainbow text I did looks quite spiffy, if I do say so myself.

Trans-Awareness Week is coming to Eon and we want YOU to come play with us! All of these events are open to EVERY EON PARTICIPANT (ages 13-23)! You don’t have to be trans-identified; you just need to be TRANS-ALLIED! If you have questions, please call 620-6245 for more info.Here’s the lineup:

Tuesday, Sept. 19, 3-7pm: Art in the Lounge

Wednesday, Sept. 20, 5:30-6:30: “Ask a Dr. Anything” – Are you thinking of transitioning? Is your partner, your friend, or your family member thinking of transitioning? If so, then this hour is for you. We’ll have a local Trans-friendly doctor here to answer your questions and concerns around hormones, what you can expect from other healthcare providers, standards of care, and surgical options. Wednesday, Sept. 20, 6:30-8pm: “Ask a Tranny Anything” – We’ll havea panel of local trans folks here to answer ANY question you may have about living as a trans person. Join us for a fun and exciting conversation – you just might learn something!

Thursday, Sept. 21, 6-8pm: “Queer Eye for the Trans Guy” – you have absolutely got to see this…

Friday, Sept. 22, 6-9pm: Open Mic Night – bring your poems, your music, your words, your art – share with us what you got! We wanna hear it! This event is open to all – your art need not be trans-focused, but we do encourage the trannies to make your voices heard!!!

Saturday, Sept. 23, 5-10pm: A screening of “Transgenerations” the documentary! Come eat some popcorn, drink some coffee, and hang out with us as we watch the entire series of Transgenerations – it’s a year in the life of 4 young trans folks and the trials and triumphs of transition. BE THERE!

In other news, apparently the annual Wingspan Benefit Dinner was a big success this year. Over 1,000 attendees, over $150,000 raised to go toward Wingspan and it's programs... points for Tucson and its community of LGBTQQ and allies! Go us. It was awesome to get to volunteer there and hear parts of a couple of the speeches made and hang with some tremendously cool people.

Animal rights

For those interested in animal rights... an interesting study is being done at the Oregon Health and Science University. Apparently they've decided that the best use of animal lives is for a study being done to see if they can figure out the hormone that causes homosexuality. "WHAT???", you say? "Is this the Dark Ages, or what?", you say? I guess so. Here's more information:

Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), a school that has received criticism in the past for torturing monkeys in its labs, has officially been outed. Information has been brought to light about ridiculous “gay sheep” experiments that are being conducted at the school. You heard right—OHSU experimenter Charles Roselli is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to kill homosexual rams and cut open their brains in an attempt to find the hormone behind homosexual tendencies so that these tendencies can be changed. Roselli is also working with experimenter Frederick Stormshak of Oregon State University (OSU), who has surgically inserted an estrogen implant in the bodies of these rams in an effort “to restore tissue levels of estrogen comparable to those of heterosexual rams and affect sexual behavior accordingly.”To put it simply, these experimenters believe that homosexuality is a defect that needs to be fixed, and they’re cutting open and killing gay sheep to do it. Roselli has made it very clear that he intends to use the findings of his experiments to “cure” humans next. In his application for public funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), he states that “this research also has broader implications for understanding the development and control of sexual motivation and mate selection across mammalian species, including humans.”

-source,
http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/
p2gaysheepexperiments?c=p2ggsheep
PETA

Well, for gay rights and animal rights activists alike, this is ridiculous and scary. The immediate action to be taken can be found on the website, at the link I put right there. They have a form to email the presidents of the university and let them know that we're not ok with such craziness.

PETA is a great organization in many ways. I mean, it's not like I agree with everything having to do with them, but what organization is 100% what I'd want? And why should they be! Ahem, anyway. They have some great volunteer and other opportunities outlined very nicely on this page: http://www.peta.org/actioncenter/.

Take this opportunity to help out creatures that are powerless to help themselves, as well as to tell OHSU that what they're doing is just wrong on SO many levels.

First things first.

The biggest news that I know of in my area right now is that Proposition 107, also called the "Protect Marriage Amendment", which we had done lawsuits to try to stop, is officially going to be on the ballot. Bad, bad news, people. In every state that a similar proposition has been on the ballot, it's passed, with very icky results. Here's the pertinent info (from www.aztogether.org):

Currently cities such as Phoenix, Tucson, Scottsdale and Tempe offer domestic partnership benefits as do businesses such as Intel and Chase. The "Protect Marriage Arizona" Amendment will take away these benefits which are vital to children, families and seniors throughout the state. Over 100,000 Arizonans could lose their health insurance benefits, hospital visitations, the power to make decisions for loved ones in the case of an emergency and inheritance rights if the amendment passes.
Under the guise of "protecting marriage" this amendment could take away unmarried Arizonans' right to file domestic violence charges or to secure a restraining order against their partner. This dangerous amendment is backed and financed by extreme groups.
The "Protect Marriage Arizona" Amendment will not change state law. Same-sex marriage is already against state law. The "Protect Marriage Arizona" Amendment is the anti-domestic partner benefits initiative and it goes TOO FAR and takes away rights of many couples - regardless of their sexual orientation.

Ok, so basically, if this is passed, we'll lose all of the existing domestic partnerships and benefits that we have in Arizona. Anyone in Arizona, please vote no, and tell everyone you know to do the same. People living outside of Arizona, look around and see if such a bill has passed in your state, or if one has come up.

What else can you do? Arizona Together, which is a coalition created just for fighting this proposition, has lots of volunteer opportunities. www.aztogether.org. CONVINCE PEOPLE TO REGISTER TO VOTE. So many people out there think there's nothing that voting can really do since the world is too messed up to fix, but here's a great example of something we can do with our votes. The campaign also needs money, especially since we're fighting the right-wingers who have mulah coming out of their ears. We've got to get the message out, and much of that has to be done with the help of money. You can contribute at the Arizona Together website as well.

VOTE NO! PLEASE VOTE NO!