Confessions of a guy who likes the rain

life, , ,

Cat with coffee mug
I’ll be fine if you just give me my coffee… and my snacks… and my allergy meds… and… and… and…
So one of my co-workers had been working for the same employer in an office on the east coast, and decided to move to Seattle and work in our group. She’s been here since mid-summer, and it’s been quite an experience trying to explain Seattle weather to her. Yesterday she was asking why summer hasn’t already started, because a daytime high of 48ºF with lots of drizzling and some rain with sun breaks in April seems absurd to her. I hadn’t realized that each of the times she had come out to work in our office for several days over the last few years had always been in August. I tried to explain how our summer doesn’t really start until about July 12, and so forth, which seemed to astound her. I think maybe she thinks we’re all pulling her leg or something. I mentioned that I like the rain, and really don’t like our typical August weather at all.

My walk home later that day was fun and weird. It was raining, but the sun was also out, so I had to put on my sunglasses. When I got to the corner, where our office building was no longer acting as a wind break, I found out it was really windy. At the next corner I swear a whirlwind touched down on me and threatened to sweep me away. The rain got much more intense as I walked the third block… and then it turned to sleet. I had sleet for about three blocks, with the wind buffeting me from many directions. The wind is particularly weird now because of my new hat, which has a much broader brim than my old broad-brimmed hat. So the amount of lift it was putting on my head was disturbing.

And I should mention that even when the rain and sleet were coming down hardest, the sun was still shining right in my eyes, since it was close to the horizon and there were blue skies visible there.

The sleet let up to just a light drizzle by the time I was at about the 11th block of my walk, and the wind shifted to a fairly steady breeze coming straight out of the north—right in my face.

The rest of the walk home (about 4 miles total) was breezy with occasional drizzles. The sun was just dipping below the horizon (but the sky was still lit nicely) when I got to the house.

The new hat, by the way, didn’t let any water reach my head. Some of my previous hats would have been soaked and my head would have at least been damp by then.

Seattle weather is like that a lot—by which I mean, weird mixes of things that change quickly throughout the day or that just change from one neighborhood to the next. One of the consequences of this is that I own several different coats and jackets. This was another part of the co-worker’s disbelief: she’s used to owning one heavy coat for winter, and a light jacket for the fall. She was freaked out at how many different types of raincoat she tried (and returned) before she found one she liked last fall. And now neither of her three coats work, because it will be too cold for the light coat or rain coat when she leaves the house in the morning, but too warm for the heavy coat when she goes out for lunch in the middle of the day. I and several co-workers said (almost simultaneously) “That’s why everyone in Seattle wears layers.”

I have several coats. My heavy winter coat, which is leather and has a hood and that I waterproof regularly (and also has a removable extra liner) gets me through several months from the late fall through winter. I start wearing it without the liner mid-fall, add the liner about a month later, then take out the liner around the end of January. Then I have a medium jacket, which is puffy and insulated and looks like it might be for colder weather than the coat, but because it only covers my torso is inadequate for winter. Well, not totally. It gets worn on weekends a lot during the winter when I’m only out of the house to go shopping or visit friends and mostly driving rather than walking and busing. The jacket works for part of fall and a bit of spring. Then I have a lighter jacket that still has some insulation. It tends to take over around April and is the jacket I wear until about June. And then there is a light windbreaker style jacket with a hood that gets carried around in my backpack starting in late May or June and usually through September because you often need a jacket for part of the day during those months.

When we were out looking at apartments (again) on Saturday, I wore the medium coat, and regretted it because it was too heavy for how warm it was. So I switched to the lighter coat Sunday, when I ran out to buy a money order because the property manager of the apartment we put in an application for called and asked us to bring the deposit the next day. Finding a place to sell me a money order using a debit card on a Sunday was more of an adventure than I expected, in part because of that switch in coats. When I switched, I wasn’t diligent about moving things from the medium jacket to the light one, so my emergency granola bar I always carry in case I have a glycemic crash wasn’t in my pocket. Because I’m on timed-released or long acting insulin, I have to have small snacks of meals every couple of hours, or my blood sugar drops too low and I have a glycemic crash.

For me, glycemic crashes mean my mood gets weird, I usually get a headache, and my brain just doesn’t work right. The problem is that the low blood sugar headache feels just like a hay fever headache, so if I don’t realize it’s been longer since my last snack or meal then I think, or notice that my fingers are trembling if I hold my hand up, I don’t realize what’s going on.

I won’t go into all the details of finding out I couldn’t get a money order from debit at the first place I went, or the rude customer in line in front of me, and so on. But what should have been a clue was that once I had the money order in hand, there at a counter at the second place, with my wallet in my other hand, I had this thought that I shouldn’t put the money order in the wallet because I might lose it if I didn’t keep my eye on it. So I walked out to the car clutching the money order very tightly in my hand, and only when I was inside the car and needed both hands to operate the vehicle, did I decide I should put the money order in a pocket or something. All of the pockets seemed like a bad idea, and I finally remembered I could put it in the wallet. Which I did.

When I’d left the house, Michael had asked me to pick up a very specific brand of juice. Instead of stopping at the grocery store on my way back with the money order, I drove right past it and was just pulling up in front of the house when I remembered the juice. So I went back to the store, parked in the garage under the store, grabbed a shopping bag from the bag of the car, and ran upstairs. It was while I was having trouble finding the juice that I finally realize that I was in the middle of a glycemic crash, so once I found the juice, I grabbed a cold bottle of thai iced coffee, which would give me both caffeine and some much needed carbs, and headed to the front of the store.

All of the registers were open except the express line, and they all had really long lines. So I ran down to the self serve checkout. I’d scanned my items and was feeling around in my pockets for my wallet. Which wasn’t there. I had to cancel my transaction, which meant the clerk monitoring the whole section had to scan her card in and authorize the cancelation. I told her that I seemed to have left my wallet in the car. She said, “It happens to everyone. You want me to keep these up here for you?” I thanked her and ran down to the car.

And I couldn’t find the wallet.

The wallet with all my usual wallet things plus, today, a very large money order. I was trying not to panic. I pulled out my phone to fire up the Tile app and ping my wallet, hoping that it had just fallen on the floor of the car and rolled under a seat or something. I hadn’t quite gotten the app up when, because I was leaning into the car slightly differently, I saw where the wallet had bounced when, apparently, I had tossed it at the passenger seat after putting the money order in it. I hadn’t slipped it back into my pocket because by that point I had strapped myself in (don’t ask me why after pulling the wallet from my pocket while sitting in the car but before I put it back I had decided to put my seat belt on, making the pocket inaccessible; my brain wasn’t working right, see above). I grabbed the wallet, ran back upstairs and only when I got to the clerk did I realize I’d left my shopping bag behind.

I paid for my purchases and was on my way out when I saw another clerk who had helped me earlier and I had seen dealing with an unreasonable customer, and I stopped to thank her for her help before and hoped she was having a better day.

Back at the car I drank down the coffee drink so I would start to get my blood sugar back where it ought to be. I strapped in, turned on the car, checked all my mirrors, looked over both shoulder, and put the car into gear. I heard an immediate crash and the car jolted funny. I stomp on the brake, put the car back in park, and looked around. There was no other vehicle. No sign of anything that I had hit or had hit me. I turned off the car, suddenly remembering that I had seen someone walking by as I was starting the vehicle, and had a complete panic that I had actually hit a person who was currently trapped under the car.

So I jumped out and ran around the car.

Nothing.

I took a deep breath and squatted down to get a better view under the car. I slowly circled the car again, looking under at several locations. Nothing and no one was under the car, thanks goodness. I circled again looking for scratches or dents on the fenders and such. Still nothing.

I took another deep breath and held up my hands. My fingers were still trembling, but not as badly, so my blood sugar was coming back up. I climbed into the car. I opened up my Breathe app on my Apple Watch and went through a cycle with it. Half of the reason was to just not move for a minute and let my blood sugar keep improving. I started the car, foot firmly on the brake. I looked carefully around. And then I heard the crash again. I turned up the volume on the stereo. We keep an old iPod (really old) in the car plugged into the car stereo set to random play. It is loaded with a bunch of my music and a bunch of Michael’s music. There’s a particular They Might Be Giants track that has a lot of these dramatic orchestral blasts that sound a lot like a crash.

I remembered that sometimes, if I take the Subaru out of Park and let my foot slip from the brake before it gets all the way to reverse, that the transmission does this little thing that makes the car wiggle just a bit, once. I had apparently managed to set off the wiggle at exactly the same moment that one of the musical crashes happened, when the stereo was turned down so that I could hear only some of the music, and not realize what was happening. So I hadn’t run over anyone or hit something.

I drove home. I told my hubby of my misadventures while he had juice and I ate a yogurt. When gathered things up, I swapped laundry loads, I tested my blood sugar and made certain I had a granola bar in the jacket pocket.

And then we headed out to pay our deposit and get on with the day.

I didn’t make as many runs to Value Village as I would like, but otherwise, the rest of Sunday was great.

Confessions of a guy who cries…

life, , ,

This little guy made me cry...
This little guy made me cry…
My husband and I have to move, and we’ve been going through our stuff, hauling things we don’t use any more to Value Village and the like, boxing other things, et cetera. It’s a long, boring, tiring process. It is also sometimes grueling emotionally. I’ve always been someone who cries easily—tear jerker moments in books, movies, or TV shows always get me, for instance. There’s an old idiom I don’t hear very much that captures it well: “I cry at card tricks.” There are a lot of moments while packing things when I find myself a bit surprised at the emotions things evokes. One reason is because we just have a lot of stuff so that every book case in the house as shelves where there is a second row of books behind the books you can see. And it isn’t just books that have been put away like that. So I keep finding things that I haven’t looked it in a long time and were hung onto for sentimental reasons.

Not everything that has hit me like a stab in the heart has been stuff that was hidden away.

My late husband Ray passed away 19 years and 5 months ago. It wasn’t a surprise, and yet it was. Almost four years previously doctors said he probably had less than two years to live, you see. There had been so many doctor visits & tests, then surgery and chemo and more tests and so forth. But, like that line from a Buffy the Vampire episode, when Tara is asked, regarding the death of her mother, “Was it sudden?” she answers, “No. And yes. It’s always sudden.”

It was mid-November when he died, and everything in my memory for the next gets a bit jumbled from that moment when they turned off the breathing machine through the next few months. There are some moments that stand out for different reasons. One day probably right around the beginning of February, not quite 3 months after Ray died, I walked into the grocery store that’s a few blocks from our place. I had grabbed a hand basket rather than a cart, because I was only planning to pick up a few things. Just inside the door they used to have this sort of miniature gift shop? It had a small variety of greeting cards for many occasions, some gift bags, and a few tiny toys, trinkets, and/or small plushies. The sort of thing you could grab as a last minute present because you didn’t have time to go elsewhere. I was walking past this thing when something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.

I stopped, glanced over, and there was this cute little stuffed brown mouse holding a red heart. I picked it up, a warm feeling washing over me with the thought, “This would be perfect as a little surprise Valentine’s present for Ray!” The sort of thing I would attach to the outside of a gift-wrapped box with something bigger in it.

Before the thought had completely articulated itself in my head, I crashed right into the recollection that Ray was dead and I wouldn’t be sharing any of our usual Valentine’s Day activities with him. It wasn’t the first time that I had that particular momentary internal dissonance. Those moments were among the worst: for a second I would forget that he was dead, and have a normal thought about something I would tell him when I got home for instance, then the realization, which was a shattering moment reliving that first wave of grief when the doctors convinced me that Ray was brain dead and I needed to let him go. It really felt as if I had lost him again. And then, a moment after that, an equally devastating stab of guilt—how could I possibly forget that he was dead?

So there I was, standing in the grocery store suddenly sobbing my eyes out. And when I say standing that’s being generous because I had to lean against something to keep myself upright for a minute. A complete stranger asked if I was all right, and I shook my head, then nodded my head and managed to stammer out something about “I’ll be okay in a second.”

I put the mouse in my basket, because damn it, I was buying it for Ray, anyway!

Ray's current resting place.
Ray’s current resting place.
Ray’s ashes are in an urn that has been resting on a shelf in one of the bookcases in my current living room for 19 years, 4 months, and 2 weeks. The urn is attended/guarded by three of his tigers, two of his teddy bears, and the little mouse that had me sobbing in the store three months after his death. This is just one of the reasons I don’t want to move. This was the last place Ray lived. Of the three homes we shared, this was the first that he really loved (because when we first got together we were both coming out of messy break-ups that left us both in bad financial shape, so we first lived in a really crappy studio, and I was still digging myself out of the previous relationship’s debts a few years later, so we moved to a slightly less crappy 1 bedroom, before finding this place). Ray loved having a yard, even though it was very small, and being in a neighborhood that felt much more like a small town than part of a city.

I know that we shouldn’t get too attached to things. And life is about change. I’ve lived in the same place for a long time, maybe too long. And we’re never completely ready for change when it comes. Even though Michael and I have known that this was likely to happen since September, and that it was definitely going to happen since December, it still feels like it’s too soon. It’s not sudden, but…

Weekend Update 4/8/2017: Show of farce, anti-gay judge, and clowns

news, , , ,

“If Donald Trump has no obligations to Russia, then why did Trump seek Putin's permission instead of Congress's to bomb Syria?”
“If Donald Trump has no obligations to Russia, then why did Trump seek Putin’s permission instead of Congress’s to bomb Syria?”
So, Thursday Donald ordered the navy to shoot a bunch of Tomahawk missiles at an airbase in Syria, presumably to punish Assad for using nerve gas on his own people. Donald did this because people here were up in arms because a bunch of children were killed in that gas attack. And the next day all the media talking heads were acting as if Donald had done something brave, effective, and presidential.

Bull.

First, Donald gave Russia a head’s up that we were going to bomb Russia’s ally. Whitehouse spokespeople claim it was just before the attack, using normal de-conflict procedures. But according to the BBC, all the Russian trucks and so forth left the airfield an entire day before the attack. ABC News, meanwhile reports that Russia wasn’t the only ones: Syria evacuating their people and equipment a day ahead of the supposed surprise strikes, too.

(click to embiggen)
The problem is, not that long ago Donald literally said, in answer to question about his ban on Syrian refugees, that he would look Syrian children in the face and tell them they can’t come to America. So nobody should think for one moment that Donald was moved to attack Syria because of some dying children. And the attack was entirely for show. We already have drone footage showing that none of the runways were damaged, none of the hangers were damaged, and there are a whole lot of planes parked undamaged on the taxi ways. Russia claims six older planes were destroyed and a few people were killed. But Russia was also pretending just a bit over a day ago that they were shocked and angry and completely surprised by the attack. And we now know that was a lie.

Tomahawk missiles are meant to blow up buildings (not necessarily hardened buildings). They’re not meant to destroy something like a runway: Why Firing Tomahawk Missiles At Syria Was A Nearly Useless Response. And they didn’t destroy any runways or apparently do much of anything to the base’s effectiveness: Syrian jets spotted taking off from airbase bombed by U.S., according to human rights group

And it should surprise no one to know further: White House has no clear plan for next steps in Syria after missile strike.

And let’s not forget that in 2013 private citizen Donald and all the Fox newsniks who are praising this week’s action, were all insisting that Obama should not take any action against Syria without Congressional approval. Something that Congress refused to provide (and now they’re acting like it’s no big deal).

But the attack accomplished one thing: all of the news services stopped talking about how the Senate just destroyed decades of tradition to confirm a man to the Supreme Court who was chosen by anti-gay groups because of things like this: Gorsuch: Skeptical That LGBT People Deserve Rights and Neil Gorsuch Has an Unacceptable, Hostile Record Towards LGBT People.

LGBT Organizations Respond to Confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to Supreme Court: “Securing a ‘Political Win’ Was More Important Than Safeguarding the Rights of Millions of Americans”.

So, thanks for throwing us under the bus, America!

It's illegal in Russia, now, to share an image of Vladimir Putin as a “gay clown.” There's a specific image that prompted this, but no one is completely sure which one, because Russian media can't share it, right?
It’s illegal in Russia, now, to share an image of Vladimir Putin as a “gay clown.” There’s a specific image that prompted this, but no one is completely sure which one, because Russian media can’t share it, right?
But while we may not have equal rights for long, at least for now, we can share the banned images of Vladimir Putin as a gay clown. Right after this image started going around the internet with various comments about not sharing it because it make Putin mad, some other people were sharing a tweet claiming that those of us sharing it are being homophobic. Oh! Hey! Again with the straightsplaining! No, I am not being homophobic when I share this, because I think there is nothing wrong with a guy wearing makeup. I mean, all clowns do wear makeup, anyway, right? Straight, bi, asexual, whatever the clown’s orientation or gender, makeup is okay. Anyway, let’s end this depressing update on a funny note. Stephen Colbert has a very short take on this story that’s worth a look:

WATCH: Colbert Unleashes Vladimir Putin, Gay Icon:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Friday Links (denial and deflection edition)

blogging, , ,

Gilbert Baker, the artist who created the rainbow flag in 1978 for Gay Freedom Day, died in his sleep earlier this week in New York City. He was 65 years old.
Gilbert Baker, the artist who created the rainbow flag in 1978 for Gay Freedom Day, died in his sleep earlier this week in New York City. He was 65 years old. (Today.com)
It’s Friday! And we’re into April already.

We’re still packing like crazy and looking for a new place to live. I’m trying not to stress and probably failing at it. There has been a weird mix of good news and absolutely horrific news among our extended friends circle and it’s all a bit overwhelming.

Anyway, here are the links I found interesting this week, sorted into categories. You will notice it is a shorter collection than usual.

Links of the Week

On Sanders’ Denial of the Role of Race and Gender in Election 2016.

About ‘Black-on-Black Crime’.

Four maps show 50 states and european countries best and worst qualities. I would like to know the methodologies of these claims…

Happy News!

Seattle Dreamer released after more than six weeks in custody.

How Seattle police, local prosecutors address and investigate hate crimes.

BOB FERGUSON, LITERAL ANGEL, IS SUING TIM EYMAN.(If you aren’t from Washington state, you don’t understand what a big and wonderful deal this could be)

FERGUSON FILES $2.1M CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWSUIT AGAINST TIM EYMAN.

This Week in Difficult to Classify

Seattle toasts the tunnel. Lawyers prepare for war.

rotester gives Oregon mayor a Pepsi, and the response wasn’t good.

This week in awful people

Bill O’Reilly Thrives at Fox News, Even as Harassment Settlements Add Up.

AG sues Tim Eyman for $2M, says he profited from campaigns.

Former NC Gov. Pat McCrory Mocks LGBT Activists Over Compromise HB2 Repeal: They Lost The Battle.

High School Football Coach Suspended After He Allegedly Put His Dick In A Hot Dog Bun And Showed Players. “Not meant to be inappropriate” — how on earth is a teacher calling a female student a “puck slut” ever to be considered appropriate?

Here Are All The Advertisers Fleeing Bill O’Reilly’s Show.

News for queers and our allies:

“Monday you can hold your head. Tuesday, Wednesday, stay in bed. Thursday watch the walls instead. It's FRIDAY, we're all in love.”
“Monday you can hold your head. Tuesday, Wednesday, stay in bed. Thursday watch the walls instead. It’s FRIDAY, we’re all in love.”
The Supreme Court quietly handed some very bad news to anti-LGBT businesses.

Barry Manilow Reveals Why He Didn’t Come Out for Decades: I Thought I Would ‘Disappoint’ Fans If They Knew I Was Gay. I wish he’d felt free to come out sooner, but unlike other closeted people I have written about recently, Manilow never spearheading homophobic laws or programs, so welcome out, Barry!

When a celebrity comes out, we judge. Why is that fair?

Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Hate group furious that court says civil rights laws protect gays from job discrimination.

THE MOST LGBTQ-FRIENDLY CITY IN EVERY RED STATE IN AMERICA.

Federal judge rules fair housing law protects Colorado LGBT couple.

Science!

scatter plot: adventures in garbage millennial confirmation bias. Awesome graphs!

A Japanese Man Just Got Another Person’s Stem Cells Transplanted in His Eye.

GERMAN RESEARCHERS SEQUENCE RYE GENOME FOR FIRST TIME.

We might have just tracked down the mysterious Planet Nine.

Why Have Humpback Whales Formed Mysterious Super-Groups Off South Africa?

Juno has sent back more photos of Jupiter, and the results are spectacular.

No more ‘superbugs’? Maple syrup extract enhances antibiotic action.

First fluorescent frogs might see each others’ glow.

Let Science Be Science Again.

Myopic Political Bubbles Apply to Science Books, Too.

Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculation!

NO, DIVERSITY DIDN’T KILL MARVEL’S COMIC SALES.

The Obligatory Hugo Nominations Reaction Post 2017 – and the first ever Nommo Awards.

Here Are the 2017 Hugo Award Finalists but Spoiler Alert Chuck Tingle Should Win Every Award.

Measuring the Rabid Puppies Effect on the 2017 Hugo Ballot.

THE HUGO REPORT: FINALISTS 2017.

2017 Hugo Award Finalists.

Asking the Wrong Questions – he 2017 Hugo Awards: Thoughts on the Nominees.

NOMMO Nominations for 2017.

Netflix Whitewashed Its Death Note Remake, and That’s Not Even the Only Reason It’s Problematic.

The Best Series Hugo Is the Hardest Decision on the Ballot.

And other news:

Harry Shearer: Why My ‘Spinal Tap’ Lawsuit Affects All Creators.

This week in Words

singular they in the news.

Use gender-sensitive language or lose marks, university students told. Some people gripe this is language policing; news flash, so is basing any grade on grammar or punctuation!

Harvard study: When telling a story, aim for clarity over cutting edge.

This Week in Tech

Justice in the age of big data.

The Mac Pro Lives.

Twitter Sues Trump Administration Over Demand That They Unmask Person Behind Anti-Trump Account.

This Week in Misinformation

William Shatner’s Tweets Are a Classic Case of Misinformation Spread – It was frustrating to watch but also instructive.

I’m not going to answer the same question about being fat any more. Ask me something else.

Culture war news:

The rainbow is ours, now. You can't have it!
The rainbow is ours, now. You can’t have it!
Bryan Fischer: “LGBTs Stole the Rainbow From God. It’s His. He Invented It… Give It Back.”

Bryan Fischer Epically Mocked on Twitter for Claiming LGBT People Stole God’s Rainbow.

God remains silent in response to Bryan Fischer’s claim we stole the rainbow.

Economic Policy Institute: Low-wage African American workers have increased annual work hours most since 1979.

Boy Butter TV commercial banned in Chicago.

Activists Chase NOM’s Hate Bus Out Of Connecticut.

A Judge Has Temporarily Stopped Kentucky’s Only Remaining Abortion Clinic From Closing.

Creationist (and Convicted Felon) Kent Hovind Spoke To a Sparse Crowd in Mississippi.

How The Hate Group Alliance Defending Freedom Is Infiltrating Public Schools.

NCAA caves, rewards North Carolina for stigmatizing transgender people: The NCAA thinks North Carolina is just fine now — “outside of bathroom facilities,” of course.

This Week in the Resistance:

Kirsten Gillibrand Is an Enthusiastic NO.

Washington state legislators fights for internet privacy that Congress took away.

Opposing a Corrupt Transaction. (This was written before the Republicans made their hatred of democracy official, but it is still a good analysis)

The Internet Is Absolutely Loving Ivanka Trump’s ‘Petty’ Neighbor: She grabbed her fur and some wine to watch a protest outside Trump’s house.

This Week Regarding the Lying Liar:

Donald Trump’s Ignorance Extends to Foreign Affairs. That’s A Big Problem.

What the Woman Who Invented the Term “White Fragility” Thinks About Trump.

Donald Trump Approval Rating Declines Among White Men: Polls.

Trump Syria attack raises questions about whether it was authorized.

Can the President Attack Another Country Without Congress?

Syria strike reactions: what top Republicans and Democrats in Congress are saying.

News about the Fascist Regime:

The Long, Lucrative Right-wing Grift Is Blowing Up in the World’s Face.

agazine owner Jared Kushner doesn’t understand a free press.

Ivanka Trump interview: “If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good … then I’m complicit”.

Joint Chiefs invite Jared Kushner to Iraq, because Ivanka’s husband is in charge of everything now.

Steve Bannon Calls Jared Kushner a ‘Cuck’ and ‘Globalist’ Behind His Back. (BTW, in case you didn’t know, “globalist” is an alt-right dog whistle meaning “jew” in a pejorative fashion)

C.I.A. Had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than Believed.

One week, three more Trump-Russia connections.

Why the Trump-Russia investigation may continue for years.

This week in Politics:

(click to embiggen)
The Fundamental Dishonesty of the Gorsuch Hearings.

Devin Nunes shouldn’t resign from the intelligence committee—he should resign from the House.

The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them: They betrayed you for chump change.

Russians used ‘Bernie Bros’ as ‘unwitting agents’ in disinformation campaign: Senate Intel witness.

Out of options, Spicer attacks Hillary, suggests Obama engaged in illegal surveillance.

Former Trump campaign chair in Virginia spent campaign money on Trump party.

How We Got To The Point Of Republicans Ready To Invoke The ‘Nuclear Option’ In The Senate.

Senate approves ‘nuclear option,’ clears path for Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination vote.

This Week in Racists, White Nationalists, and the deplorables

Judge Rules That Trump May Have Incited Violence Against Protesters, Allowing Case to Move Forward.

Trump Ally Alex Jones Threatens To “Beat” Rep. Adam Schiff’s “Goddamn Ass” In Anti-Gay Tirade.

Trump Voter Furious that Border Wall will Fence Her House into… (Wait For It)… Mexico!

How Many Of Trump’s Supporters Really Are ‘Deplorable’?

TOP DEMOCRATS ARE WRONG: TRUMP SUPPORTERS WERE MORE MOTIVATED BY RACISM THAN ECONOMIC ISSUES.

This Week in Hate Crimes

Police: Armed with guns and racial insults, Jacksonville man assaults Muslim neighbor.

This Week in Sexism

Uber’s Korean Escort Visit Shows Sexism Cover-Up Goes To The Top.

It’s a problem when men avoid one-on-one meetings with women.

Fox News Reeling As A Big Bombshell Just Dropped In The Bill O’Reilly Sexual Harassment Scandal.

Farewells:

Gilbert Baker, Creator of the Rainbow Flag, International Symbol of LGBTQ Pride, Has Died at 65.

Key West remembers Gilbert Baker, creator of rainbow flag.

Gilbert Baker Film Festival still a go despite its namesake’s death.

Gilbert Baker, rainbow flag creator, dies.

Things I wrote:

Not fooling around with my goals this year!

Weekend Update 4/1/2017: No need for jokes while we have these clowns in the news.

Reblog: The first openly queer person to run for U.S. public office and win was not who you think.

More adventures in straightsplaining—bless your heart.

Confessions of an unrepentant rationalist.

The incredibly true confessions of a totally queer sci fi geek.

Time to say bye-bye to LiveJournal.

Confessions of a pink and purple flaunting dandy.

Videos!

Get Churned!:

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Expiration Date – Brett Gleason (Official Video):

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Lana Del Rey – Love:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

2CELLOS – Moon River:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Confessions of a pink and purple flaunting dandy

life, ,

“Let your colors shine.”
“Let your colors shine.” (click to embiggen)
When the Bryan Fischer tweet crossed my timeline, I did a search to see if there were any related stories, because often when he and similar wingnuts go off on a topic it’s in response to a news story or other event. I didn’t find any obvious inciting incident, but I did uncover a number of memes and posts (many anonymous) from people lamenting the fact that they like rainbows, but since they aren’t gay, they feel a need to only wear rainbows if they can also wear a t-shirt or button or something that identifies them as not gay but also not a homophobe.

Which flabbergasted me. Okay, it didn’t completely bewilder me, but several of them insisted that they didn’t have any problem with gay people at all, no sirree, but they just wanted to make certain no one mistook them for a queer person. And I’m always confused when people exhibit that much self-delusion.

Because here’s the thing: if you didn’t have a problem with queer people, it wouldn’t bother you if some people concluded that you were one of us. And feeling a need to be defensive about your sexuality and lack of bigotry means you are bothered.

People will assume all sorts of things about you no matter what you do. When I was in my thirties, for instance, I went through of phase of wearing unusually colored beach pants, and many of them looked tie-dyed. People who saw me wearing them sometimes assumed that I was a Grateful Dead fan—especially if I was wearing the rainbow-colored pair. Which was mostly just confusing, because I was so much not a Dead fan that I usually didn’t understand for the first several sentences of the conversation when some stranger tried to strike up a conversation. But while I’m not and never have been a Deadhead, it didn’t offend me that people sometimes thought I was. It never occurred to me that I should get a button made that said, “Not a Deadhead” nor did I ever think I should stop wearing my rainbow shirts or tie-dyed clothes.

We’ve probably all met straight men who refuse to wear pink. I’ve seen men get apoplectic if their son or another boy of their acquaintance even picks up a pink object, for goodness sake! Which is really hilarious given that just a bit over a hundred years ago pink was considered a very masculine color—ironically because magenta pigment was newly invented and very expensive to manufacture. It’s also hilarious because colors don’t have gender.

Pink isn’t my favorite color, that would be purple. But I’ve known a few straight men who also shy away from purple. It’s true that many people can’t tell lavendar from pink, and many shades of purple blend into the pinkish, but it’s kind of sad that guys who are most likely to insist that they are absolutely confident in their masculinity are the most likely to fear being caught wearing pink or many shades of purple.

Those are cat ears. No vagina looks like these hats.
Of course, that is part of the power of the pussy hat as a political symbol regarding women’s rights. Misogynist prigs are exactly the sorts of men who would feel skeeved out wearing pink. While we’re on the subject, can I just say that the jerks who try to make some sort of argument about how women can’t be upset about rape culture if they’re going to go around wearing a “vagina hat” are utter morons? I mean, I understand that the kind of person who thinks that a pink knit hat with cat ears on it (which is where the pussy comes in) is supposed to be a vagina has never actually look at a vagina.

Yes, I include the married politicians who have made those comments in that category. Remember, these are the same kind of guys who think that tampons are sex toys, that menstrual bleeding is somehow voluntary, and that a woman who isn’t enjoying being raped can’t get pregnant from the act. Their understanding of the anatomy of their spouses is clearly lacking. They may have had sex with their spouse (and possibly other women), but they must be the kind of guy who doesn’t like to look at that part of the body.

Just a wild-eyed old guy with a new hat!
If you truly do like rainbows, just frikkin’ wear a rainbow. Don’t worry about what other people think. And if you’re actually making the meme or posting the comment on the anonymous site because you’re trying to “four dimensional chess” your way to that give the rainbow back to god argument, stop being a prick. We’re going to wear what we want, whether it is rainbows, pink hats with kitty cat ears, or two-tone purple broad-brimmed hats if we want. And we’re not going to stop doing it because some of you think that we’re making it difficult for you to wear the same colors.

And why do I have a new two-toned purple hat? Because if you’re under doctor’s orders to wear a sun-shading hat all the time so as to reduce the chances of getting another skin cancer, you might as well wear a colorful hat. Life is two short to wear boring browns and muddy greens!

Ed Sheeran singing Rainbow Connection with Kermit the Frog on Red Nose Day 2015:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Time to say bye-bye to LiveJournal

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I had gotten a couple of error messages informing me that the LiveJournal cross-posting wasn’t working the last couple of days, but hadn’t had time to look into it. Now I suddenly know why some people were making cryptic comments about not agreeing to new terms of service. This isn’t quite how I expected that service to start killing off the non-Russian content when I predicted that was the next logical move after they removed all of the mirrored servers outside of Russia and disabled secure socket login. The new Terms of Service include a lot of weird and concerning stuff but the real deal- breaker is this:

[The user must] Mark Content estimated by Russian legislation as inappropriate for children (0-18) as “adult material” by using Service functions.

And because of their various anti-gay laws, that means any mention of, oh, say that fact that I’m gay must be marked as inappropriate for children. And that’s B.S. It’s B.S. when YouTube is doing it, it’s B.S. anywhere. There are also clauses that say the journal will be deleted if you don’t sign in for several months, and it seems to say if your journal doesn’t generate a minimum number of hits in a period of time it will also be deleted and so on. There’s some analysis of the situation here and here and here.

The real kicker is that the English translation of the Terms of Service, which you have to click “Agree” to in order to sign in right now, says that only the Russian version is valid. Well, I can’t read Russian, so I have no clue what I’m really agreeing to if I can’t rely on the English translation they’re offering, right? A user who can read Russian has kindly posted a translation of the applicable laws here, if you’re curious.

I’m still weighing whether to log in, clicking “Agree” then delete all the entries except one that says the journal is closed? I mean, I’d be abiding by the terms as quickly as I could if I did that, right?

I migrated my journal to Dreamwidth a long time ago and downloaded back-ups. I do most of my blogging on my FontFolly.Net blog with cross-posting elsewhere. I didn’t delete the LiveJournal earlier because I still have some hold-outs on the friends’ list there who as far as I can tell have not moved to Dreamwidth or followed any other blogs.

Regardless of what anyone still using LiveJournal decides to do with their journals there, I hope that you will at least make a note of the ways to find me on the net: follow my WordPress-based blog on FontFolly.Net (you don’t have to have a WordPress account to do so); follow me on Twitter at @FontFolly, follow the cross-posting from FontFolly.Net to my Dreamwidth journal. If you don’t mind the dozens of reblogs of weird and fannish stuff, you can even follow me on Tumblr (where FontFolly.Net also cross-posts).

The incredibly true confessions of a totally queer sci fi geek

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“Half naked... staring at phallic spaceships... totally straight, right?” © Syd Barrett (Click to embiggen)
“Half naked… staring at phallic spaceships… totally straight, right?” © Syd Barrett (Click to embiggen)
The Hugo Award Finalists were announced yesterday. This is the first year with two rules changes that were enacted to try to prevent certain angry reactionary (misogynist racist homophobic) parties from slate-nominating a bunch of horrible stuff onto the ballot. The pups took over entire categories of the ballot two years ago (but we No Awarded all of those categories), and slightly less-destructively last year. The good news! They only got one nominee in on a few categories (plus two nominees in one), and even then, several of their slate pics were works that almost certainly would have gotten on the ballot without their help. I don’t want to re-hash the two puppy camps, their arguments and so forth here, because plenty of pixels have been spilled on that already. For this queer old fan, a big reason science fiction and fantasy holds a big place in my heart is because its promise of better worlds and a better future was how I survived the bullying, bashing, hatred, and rejection of my childhood. That there are people who so despise people like me being included in works of sf/f that they’ll organize a bloc-voting scheme is more than a little infuriating.

But there are a few things to talk about on this year’s finalist ballot and the new rules. Mike Glyer at File 770 does some number sifting in an attempt at Measuring the Rabid Puppies Effect on the 2017 Hugo Ballot. David Gerrold, science fiction author (including perhaps most famously the Star Trek Original Series script, “The Trouble with Tribbles”) and 2015 World Con Guest of Honor sums up a lot of my throughs in a post of Facebook, part of which I excerpt here:

“My seat-of-the-pants analysis (I could be wrong) is that the Hugos are in the process of recovering from the 2015 assault, precisely because the Worldcon attendees and supporters see themselves as a community.

“There’s a thought buried in that above paragraph — that communities unite to protect themselves when they perceive they are under attack. This works well when the attack is real, such as Pearl Harbor. But it can also have negative effects when hate-mongers such as Bryan Fischer and Pat Robertson (both of whom were in fine form this week) invent a scapegoat (LGBT people) for unwarranted attacks in an attempt to unite the community around their own agendas.

“So while those who have a long history of participation in Worldcons will see this unity as a good thing — those who identify themselves as the aggrieved outsiders will see it as more evidence that the establishment is shutting them out.

“Myself, I see it as a collision of two narratives — one that is based on 75 years of mostly healthy traditions, and one that is based on a fascist perception of how the world works.

“Most important, however, is that most of this year’s ballot suggests that we are seeing a return to the previous traditions of nominations based on excellence. Most of the nominations are well-deserved, and my congratulations to the finalists.”
—David Gerrold

I would characterize the two narratives as:

  • one thinks that a better tomorrow includes the notion that Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations is a good thing, and
  • the other that thinks the world was a better place when the heroes were always white men, while women only appeared in stories for the two purposes of being rescued by the hero and being his reward for a job well done.

But Gerrold’s wording works well, too.

Anyway, because of the drubbing they received the last two years and the rules change, one of the puppy groups essentially folded up shop. The other, realizing that the rules made it nearly impossible for them to take over entire categories, went with a more limited ticket this year. As mentioned in one of the links above, this resulted in them naming about 7% of the nominees, and a few of their picks are complete piles of steaming meadow muffins. Which means in every category we have four or more excellent choices to evaluate and choose from. Not everyone sees this year’s ballot as good news. One puppy apologist tries to claim that this year’s balloting numbers proves that the Hugos have driven off half the fandom (here’s a Do Not Link to his post if you want to read it). Now this is a person who claims that we’ve been telling Christian and conservative fans that they aren’t welcome. Whereas all that has happened is that more than a token number of people of color and an occasional LGBT person has made it onto the ballot.

Anyway, his reasoning is dubious on a mathematical level. First, he shows that the number of nominating ballots dropped by between 42-46% in some categories, and that sounds dire. Until you remember that the number of nominators surged last year way above the usual number precisely because after news got out about how the puppies had piddled on the ballot in 2015, a bit more than 2300 fans who had not previously been voters bought supporting memberships and voted in 2015. The overwhelming majority of those new voters resoundingly voted No Award in the categories the puppies had taken over. Fewer of those fans returned to nominate in 2016 for variety of reasons, but not all of them, by any means. Again, the majority handed the puppies a resounding rebuke and we passed two rules changes that made the bloc voting scheme less likely to succeed.

Statistical analysis of the nominating and voting in 2015 and 2016 showed that the number of puppy voters was probably no more than about 250 people those two years. That many people nominating in lockstep could take over the entirety of some down-ballot categories, but it couldn’t win. The larger of the two puppy groups gave up this year—not posting recommendations, not writing their angry blog posts, and generally not bringing a lot of attention to the cause. Their 250 people could not account for more than a fraction of the 1600 nominator drop that happened this year. Most of those 1600 who didn’t participate are from that group of fans who joined for the explicit purpose of opposing the puppies, and now believe that the rule changes and so forth have taken care of the problem.

Analysis of the partial numbers we have from this year’s nominations indicates that the remaining puppy voters number between 65 and 80 people. That’s a 68% drop-off in their group, a far more significant number, I think.

There have always been fewer nominators than voters. Nominating (filling in five blanks in each category) is harder work than voting (choosing from a small list of finalists in each category). And in order to vote or nominate you must purchased at least a supporting membership to WorldCon. A lot of fans don’t have the extra money laying around to buy a membership to a WorldCon that they aren’t attending. So you have to be pretty devoted to the ideas of sci fi/fantasy and/or feel a certain amount of sentiment toward the Hugo Awards themselves to participate year in and year out. Folks who normally don’t spend those funds on that felt something we loved was under assault, and we shifted our priorities a bit to make a stand.

The puppies whipped up some reactionary anger by referring to certain past winners as being motivated by nothing more than Political Correctness, and spinning a very distorted narrative that some of their favorite authors weren’t winning because of an anti-conservative or anti-christian agenda. An angry desire to give the middle finger to so-called PC elites might motivate people to spend some money and do some copy-and-pasting once or twice, but it’s hard to sustain that anger.

I love science fiction and fantasy. I think of it as a literature of hope and imagination. Even dystopian sf, in my opinion, touches on that hope for a better tomorrow even while it portrays a dire future. I am not the only fan, by any means, who was drawn to the literature because I felt like an outsider who didn’t belong in the mundane world of the present. Sf/f has always attracted outcasts of all sorts, which is why many more fans (not just the people of color, the women, and the queers) felt it was worth defending. I know that at least some of the puppies feel as if they are outcasts, though their argument is difficult to back up with facts. White male authors still make up a disproportionately overwhelming majority of the published works, and usually a majority of the nominees for these sorts of awards. They aren’t in any danger of being excluded. I’ve voted for books and stories in the past written by people I knew I disagreed with politically, because the story was good. It isn’t the political views of the author (and not usually of the story, though some of the examples in 2015 were so heavy-handed at hitting the reader over the head with politics and religion that I started to wonder if it wasn’t supposed to be a parody).

I want sf/f to be welcoming, yes. But not so welcoming that people who have literally called for the extermination of writers who include queer characters in stories to feel welcome. Or call an author who happens to be African a savage. I do have my limits.

See, I want the awards to recognize cool stuff written by people who really love telling stories. I like it when the ballot includes stories and authors I’ve not previously heard of. I like it even better when those stories make me want to read more by that person in the future. I don’t want “inclusive” stories or “diverse” stories for the sake of diversity, I want stories that look like the real world, where cisgender people and trans people and people of color and straight people and not-straight people and people of many different religions and people of no religion and people of different abilities are all included. Not to meet a quota, but because that’s how the real world is now! Yeah, as a queer man I’m happy when I see queer characters in a story, but it isn’t enough on its own to make me vote for it.

Confessions of an unrepentant rationalist

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“This pretty much sums up everyone's feelings about ignorant hate.”
“This pretty much sums up everyone’s feelings about ignorant hate.” (Click to embiggen)
Bryan Fischer hosts a show on the American Family Association’s (a certified hate group) radio network, and is frequently referred to as a former AFA employee (though all that really happened was that his official title of Director of Issues Analysis was revoked after he made some ridiculous comments about the Jewish religion being counterfeit—literally the day before 100 members of the Republican National Committee were being flown to Isreal at the expense of the AFA; Fischer still receives a salary from them, so the firing was a sham). Fischer made some new ridiculous comments this weekend. In a tweet he claimed that gays have stolen the rainbow from god, the original inventor of the rainbow, and that we should give it back.

Fischer is described over on Rational Wiki as someone who “makes even the most cuckoo-bananas conservative talk radio pundits seem sane and reasonable in comparison.” He’s always going on about gay people (and how gays and nazis are the same thing) and gay sex (and how hyper masculine aggressive gay sex is destroying everything). Besides making him sound like a kook, it also proves that he thinks about gay sex a whole lot more than most gay people do. Hmmmm, where have we seen that phenomenon before?

Screenshot of Fischer’s tweet, in case he wises up and deletes it: “Worst example of cultural appropriation ever: LGBTs stole the rainbow from God. It’s his. He invented it. Gen. 9:11-17. Give it back.”
There are so many things wrong with this assertion that it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, he quotes from the end of the story of Noah in the old testament to justify his claim that queers have stolen god’s invention. I’m going to quote a bit of that: “13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.” That’s god talking to Noah, and please note what god himself says: the rainbow is a sign of a covenant between god and the entire planet. A moment later he emphasizes that it is a sign of a covenant between him and all living creatures of every kind. Gay people are part of the planet. Gay people are a kind of living creature.

So, if you believe (as Fischer frequently claims to) that the bible is the inerrant word of god and literally true in every word, well, that means that queers have just as much a claim on the rainbow as any inhabitant of the earth or god himself. I’m just quoting god from Fischer’s holy book, here!

Lots of people had fun with Fischer’s tweet. Part of what cracked me up about it is that this is one of the sections of the Bible that got me in trouble when I was a kid, because I kept having questions that my Sunday School teachers and other church leaders couldn’t answer. Such as, how did all of the land species that live only in Australia get to Noah’s boat? Seriously, did a bunch of kangaroos and koalas and so forth build a mini ark and cross the ocean to get to the Arabian Pennisula? And if they did have a way to survive crosses the Pacific and Indian Oceans, why did they need to get on Noah’s ark to begin with? How did they get to Noah’s ark? And how big was this ark, really, because just assembling every species of, say, feline is going to require a very big boat. And then how are you going to keep all those big cats away from the pairs of the 20+ species of deer?

But let’s get back to the rainbow. The sorts of Christians who insist that every word in the Bible is literally true absolutely despise the notion of evolution. And one of their favorite arguments against evolution back when I was a kid, was to look at the complexity of the eyeball: you have the lens and receptors and tiny muscles to adjust the lens in order to change focus and so on and so on, and just a beautiful perfect organ for focusing and interpreting light could not possible have evolved by chance! Seriously, they think that’s an argument the undoes all of science. Anyway, when making this argument they get very insistent that god design the eyeballs of humans (and every other species on the planet that sees the way we do) and they have all had them since god created the world in a famous six-day run, right? Here’s the problem: the very same laws of physics that allow that lens in the front of those perfectly designed eyeballs to focus images on the retina? They are also what make rainbows appear when there is sunlight shining through an atmosphere littered with tiny water droplets. If god didn’t tweak the laws of physics to allow rainbows to appear in the clouds until after Noah’s flood, then none of the characters in the Bible who lived before Noah could have had the power of sight. They would have all had these perfect organs for seeing in their heads that didn’t work at all.

And they had to be able to see because sight is mentioned in several of the Bible stories before Noah. Also, god is supposed to have created humans in his image and we still are supposed to be in his image (Jesus affirmed that in the same story in which he endorsed paying your taxes), so that means we’ve always had these eyeballs, which were apparently useless appendages until after Noah’s flood.

And I’ve completely skipped over the parts of this story in which god admits he’s very forgetful and prone to rash, unwise decisions. He says he put the rainbow in the sky to remind him from time to time that he’s promised never again to destroy the world with a flood. So god needs to leave himself post-its, “Don’t commit mass genocide.” And the whole flood story begins with god realizing that he should have never created humans to begin with, because all of them are dirty rotten scoundrels. Then god reconsiders and decides that maybe Noah, his sons, and his daughters-in-law might be worth keeping around. But only them! Everyone else has got to go! And how does this supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing, wise and loving god decides to get rid of the scoundrels? Does he unleash a plague that would only infect humans, so that all of them die off and leave the planet to the birds and animals and plants? No, he takes out the dirty rotten people by wiping out every living thing on the surface of the earth. Wipe out billions of innocent mice and puppies and so forth to get rid of a few thousand or maybe millions of humans. That sounds like a plan that a smart omnipotent being would cook up, right?

When I brought up these inconsistencies as a kid, the adults would usually try to handwave about god’s plan, and us poor mortals not understanding. As I entered my teens and got better about pointing out the problems with that, they would talk about symbolism and poetic language. Which of course completely contradicts the notion that ever word is literally true. Then I would usually be admonished for being obstinate and willfully difficult and wasting time on trivial technical questions.

But complaining about who gets to use the rainbow as a symbol of hope isn’t wasting time being obstinate over trivial things?

Queers aren’t the first people to latch onto the rainbow as a symbol of diversity, freedom, resistance to oppression, and so on. There are several reasons for this. Just because the International Cooperative Movement (since 1921), or the Peace Movement (since 1961), or the Rainbow Coalition (since the mid-sixties), or the LGBT community (since 1978) and so on use the rainbow as symbols doesn’t do anything to the rainbows that appear in the sky after a storm. Those rainbows that god talked about in the book of Genesis are still there. We haven’t taken them away. According to Fischer’s religion’s own holy book, the rainbow is given as a symbol to every living creature on the earth. It even literally says “every kind” of creature. If you think you have the right to tell any of us that the rainbow isn’t ours, well, then you just don’t understand the real meaning of rainbows or love or dreams…

Muppet Movie – The Rainbow Connection:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

More adventures in straightsplaining—bless your heart

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“Go ahead! Explain to us how you, a straight person, know more about homophobia than we do.”
“Go ahead! Explain to us how you, a straight person, know more about homophobia than we do.”(Click to embiggen.)
In a recent post I commented on the case of Andrew Shirvell, a former Michigan assistant attorney general who lost his job because he mounted a harassment and stalking campaign (using state resources) against an openly gay college student. During the post I commented on how Shirvell pings everyone’s gaydar and talked about the roots of his particularly vicious and obsessive homophobia. And a new commenter decided to explain to me how very homophobic it is for me to characterize Shirvell’s mannerisms and speech patterns as prissy.

Oh, straightsplaining again! Hurrah! Thank you, so much, anonymous straight person, for explaining homophobia to me. How foolish of me to think that my 50+ years of surviving the slings and arrows of homophobia gave me any understanding of it.

Okay, let me clarify a few things:

Fact the First: you are correct, not every gay man is a sissy. Bully for you for being so open-minded!

Fact the Second: there are actual studies that show that, while not all queer men are sissies, at least 75% of boys who exhibit the characteristics causing them to be labeled “sissy” during childhood grow up to come out as queer.

Fact the Third: no matter what their actual sexual orientation, every boy who ever lived in our society who exhibits any of those gender-nonconforming behaviors was bullied because of them.

So, whether you believe that Shirvell is a closet case or not, my assertion that homophobic bullying is part of the root of his insanely over the top obsessively vicious homophobic campaign against that college student is still valid. You’re barely technically correct that we don’t know Shirvell’s orientation for certain (though I’m 99.99999% certain that he is queer of one sort or another). But the sheer level of sissy behavior one sees in any of the video interviews Shirvell gave back when he was defending his campaign tells me that he wasn’t just bullied occasionally as a child, but quite viciously and continuously. And we know from many studies that enduring that kind of bullying is one of the sources of adulthood excessive homophobic attitudes and behavior.

While we’re on the topic of those studies: those studies also show that the more virulent an adult man‘s homophobic attitudes and opinions are, the more likely it is that their body will exhibit involuntary arousal at the sight of scantily clad men. In other others, the more homophobic, the more likely that they are a self-loathing closet case. Add that to the study above, and it’s possible that my 99.99999% assessment is too low.

Fact the Fourth: I was a sissy. My childhood bullies included not just my classmates, but many of the adults in my life: family members, some teachers, and many adults at church. Yes, during my early teen years I was verbally homophobic. In my later teen years the only reason I wasn’t was not because I had become enlightened, but rather because as I had given in to my hormones a number of times, I wasn’t willing to be a hypocrit. But I was still convinced that I was going to go to hell for giving in to those feelings. So I understand Shirvell’s situation.

I do feel sorry for Shirvell the child. I know he had a horrible experience, even though I don’t know all the details. However, he’s an adult, now. He’s been exposed to information about sexual orientation, including the medical studies that it is not a choice (and therefore, since part of the theological definition of sin is being a willful disobedience, that means homosexuality cannot be a sin). He’s had more than enough time to start coming to terms with his childhood trauma and at least make the decision not to be the kind of bully that made his childhood hell. He has very emphatically chosen not to do so. Shirvell the adult deserves not one iota of sympathy. Not one.

Fact the Fifth: Please understand, I’m not stereotyping Andrew Shirvell as a gay man, I’m stereotyping him as a self-hating closet case—and he’s given us so, so much ammunition. It’s not just about the way he prances or speaks, it’s what he says as he’s ranting about the imagined sexual depravities of the targets of his homophobic rants—he simply sounds like he spends an inordinate amount of time imagining queer sex.

And there isn’t a plausible heterosexual explanation for that.

Note: Comments on this entire blog have always been moderated. Specific commenters have been whitelisted, but everyone else’s comments sit in a queue until I approve them. And I don’t see any point in approving comments that are insulting, or obviously coming from sock puppets or—such as the comment alluded to here—indicate the person isn’t interested in listening.

The first openly queer person to run for U.S. public office and win was not who you think

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“This is the first time in the history of the United States that someone has run openly as a gay person and been elected to public office.” – Kathy Kozachenko, Ann Arbor, Michigan, April 2, 1974
“This is the first time in the history of the United States that someone has run openly as a gay person and been elected to public office.” – Kathy Kozachenko, Ann Arbor, Michigan, April 2, 1974
On April 2, 1974, forty-three years ago, University of Michigan student and Human Rights Party candidate Kathy Kozachenko was elected to the city council of Ann Arbor, Michigan, making her the first openly gay or lesbian person to run successfully for political office in the United States. Notably, Kozachenko was not the first gay or lesbian person to serve openly in public office; in fact, her predecessors on Ann Arbor’s city council, Nancy Weschler and Jerry DeGrieck, came out during their first and only terms, making them the first openly queer officeholders in the United States. (To be clear: the distinction is that Kozachenko was openly gay as a candidate, whereas Weschler and DeGrieck did not come out until after their elections.)

After serving one term, Kozachenko stepped out of the public eye, though not out of the activist life entirely. After meeting her life partner, Mary Ann Geiger, and having a son, Kozachenko retreated more fully into private life and her place in queer history went virtually ignored for decades.

In “The First Openly Gay Person to Win an Election in America Was Not Harvey Milk,” a 2015 piece for Bloomberg politics, Steve Friess explored the factors that contributed to Kozachenko’s diminished place in the history of gay liberation: geography, misogyny, timing, messaging. When asked why the groundbreaking gay journalist Randy Shilts referred to Harvey Milk as “the first openly gay elected official in the nation,” for example, Kozachenko “figures there was little fuss at the time because it was just liberal, small-city Ann Arbor.”

“I don’t think I was brave,” Kozachenko told Friess, “because I was in a college town where it was cool to be who I was. On the other hand, I stepped up and did what I felt needed to be done at the time. Maybe that’s the whole story, that ordinary people can do something that then other people later can look back on and feel really good that they did this.” #HavePrideInHistory #KathyKozachenko (at Ann Arbor, Michigan)

(Reposted from LGBT HISTORY ARCHIVES IG: @lgbt_history.)

Is it weird for me to think this is a cool coincidence one day after I write about a much more recent openly gay person at the University of Michigan?