another rich f*** gives money to HRC

Ok… so Bruce Bastian gave money to the HRC. Not just money, but ::conjure dr. evil here:: one million dollars :: press pinky to lip:: I’m quite beginning to think the organization is evil. The more I read and the more I pay attention, the more I think the organization is simply trying to tell us what we should think, what we should want, and then get us to give them money to do what they want to do. Marriage equality is so at the end of everything for me, and a last resort as far as obtaining equality goes. How equality-forward of LGBTQ people is it to join an institution that perpetuates inequality? Not. That’s my point.

Sleep Paralysis and Del Shores

I *woke* up this morning to an episode of sleep paralysis. Haven’t had one of those in years… They’re always really creepy, and always bring me back to that disorientation thing. It’s like the ultimate in what I’ve always told my counselors (you know, we all need those, and I”m thankful for free ones through school – especially my counselor in undergrad – Maggie was phenomenal!) – that I live inside my head. My whole body is literally paralyzed and my brain is working overtime, especially when it comes to fear/terror. Living in your head can be a bad thing, apparently.

disorientation

disorientation is important. and this time, it’s about how disoriented i feel every day in my own home. It’s about physical space this time. I learned when putting the floor in my mom’s trailer that a trailer is never completely square. the construction is quite shotty, so when a trailer is hitched to a truck and moved, it loses its squareness. Mind you, it was square when it was built and warehoused. Everything about a trailer’s construction feels and looks unstable, unfinished, and temporary.

a place to start?

so, I keep looking at this old handout, something derived from The Meaning of Difference by Rosenblum and Travis. They lay out stages of identity development for both people in privileged statuses and people in stigmatized statuses. and I keep wondering where the hybrid of these two are – how it is that some LGBT people end up being a part of the mainstream in some way, even if not completely, while others are completely locked out. and how their identities differ because they are at least partly a part of the broader society… a place I’ve never been. And then while I’m reading Queer Phenomenology, I also think about Ahmed’s descriptions of the “straight” line being a family inheritance – heterosexuality as a family inheritance/expectation rather than an essential orientation, “straight” as a family/society-produced line people take. Then assimilationism and liberationism become lines, as well, and which families push their children toward one line over the other? and which people choose these different lines? and who has the resources to choose their lines and who doesn’t have the option?

issues of membership

So I must also deal with issues of membership – what makes it okay for me to belong. Forgive me for another spew-rant, but I need these right now, and I think they’re entertaining. One day, they’ll be called poetry… but not today. today, they’re just words in random order. More after the jump:

what makes me southern?

So, I’m editing Trailer Park Queer, that piece I posted earlier, and turning it into something longer with actual, you know, academic citations and stuff. But first, I needed to figure out what exactly makes my experience of TPQ southern. So, I did what I always do: I spewed what I was thinking/feeling/thinking-feeling/feeling-thinking onto paper in semi-words. It’s after the jump.

Deadline Week

Okay, so starting a new blog project may not have been the greatest idea as my publication hits its August deadline. But, I’m not always one for great timing. I had hoped to write more here, and there is more to write, but time is of the essence when a newspaper must be published.

I am currently the Associate Publisher and Creative Director of an LGBTQ monthly publication that focuses on being a local,  community paper. The Associate Publisher title means I do the business stuff and the Creative Director title means that I do the graphic design work for our print issue. Thank goodness I don’t have to do the web stuff, our webmaster is incredible. There’s a link to the right to the publication, it’s called Out In Asheville. I also sometimes write, but not during the school year. The last two issues have been heavy on my writing, but I have very little, nay, none in this next issue. I needed the break, mostly because of the sinus/ear infection. ugh. my head still swims, but i’m feeling better bit by bit.

Sinus/Ear Infection – and no insurance

I went to the doctor today. I’ve been putting it off for almost two weeks, hoping I just had a cold. I went to one of the few places in town, besides urgent care, that will take new patients without insurance. My wife went with me. I make her sit in the room because I’m so nervous about doctors since the diagnostic process for pseudotumor cerebri started back in November. Every time I feel slightly sluggish, I’m more than slightly convinced I’m dying. The nurse today said, “it feels like that when you have a sinus infection.”

That’s part of why there haven’t been new posts in the last day and a half or so. I’ve been feeling quite generally icky. But, now I have an arsenal of Levaquin (thank goodness for free samples sometimes, though I have issues with the way pharmaceutical companies push drugs on doctors), a new humidifier, and something called Rondec DM, which I think is theraflu on steroids.

Experience first, then theory

I was struck recently by something Holly Boswell wrote in 1997 (at least, it was published then, she may have written it long before). Holly lives around these parts… in fact, I saw her today at a barbecue… though I neglected to introduce myself, I suppose she’s somewhat of a local celebrity, and I’m sometimes intimidated by the thought of saying “by the way, i read something you wrote, and loved it/hated it,” whichever way the axe falls that day. Though I did send her an e-mail right after I stumbled upon it, in response to something she had sent, to let her know I found it thought-provoking.

The piece is titled “The Transgender Paradigm Shift Toward Free Expression,” and was published originally (as best I can tell) in Gender Blending (1997). Here’s the quote:

For us, the experience comes first, then our conceptual explanation of it – unlike the academic approach of postulating a hypothesis that must then be proven.

More after the jump…

Freaks Talk Back

In 1999, Joshua Gamson’s book Freaks Talk Back was published.

Here’s a quote:

middle-class activists are moving toward the demonstration that gay people are regular, civilized, unthreatening, reasonable, conforming folks (186)