Dr. B.'s Blog - GLBT Issues

The Internet Just Saved My Marriage

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:15:11 -0500

Ok, not really, but Michael Lopp over at Rands in Repose wrote a very cool piece on understanding nerd behavior called The Nerd Handbook. The post is very cool even though Lopp does make the heteronormative and male centered assumption that all nerds are men and that they have girlfriends rather than boyfriends. What about us female nerds with girlfriends...would that make Lopp's nerd brain explode?

The Handbook explains my unnatural connection to my MBP, my control issues, and my love of games just to name a few. I am going to immediately email this to Lisa and then print out multiple copies and tape them to the walls of the rooms in the house where she tries to talk to me and my nerd brain doesn't allow me to listen.

*On a more serious note, I really do listen to everything that Lisa has to say...otherwise she might hurt me!

Queer Tidbits of the Weekend

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:51:24 -0500

Scout leader who sue Berkley for the Boy Scouts' right to exclude gay and atheist troop leaders charged with pedophilia. Hey, but at least the queers and heathens don't have access to those young boys.

The Diocese of San Joaquin voted to secede from the ~~Union~~ Episcopal Church. The church was just getting to damned queer friendly. The ordination of a gay bishop was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Jim Watson Has Mad Cow Disease

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:12:18 -0400

Now this won't make much sense if you don't watch Boston Legal. William Shatner's character, Denny Crane, is a crazy, dangerous, but amusing character who clearly has Alzheimer's but only claims mad cow. He shoots at homeless people, accosts, women, and makes inappropriate racial remarks.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't think that Watson is either innocent or funny. He is clearly a racist nutbag who has lost his fucking mind. Alzheimer's has settled in and he no longer knows his usual cronies (who he's been sharing these viewing with all of his life) from the media. Doesn't anyone else think that it's interesting that he's only started going public with these comments in (aborting fetuses with gay genes, stupidity as a disease, etc) in the last 10 years? Yep, 70 is a good age for nutbag's mind-mouth barrier to break down.

When you think about it doesn't it make sense that a racist nutbag with a strong belief in eugenics would devote his life to mapping DNA? This is a perfect example for our students (and for us) of choosing research areas that we are deeply invested in so that we do solid work. Nobel laureate nutbag was probably pretty sure that he would be the one to map the human genome and be able to zap out gay, black, and stupid genes at the very least!

The sad this is that in this vein of thinking Senor Nutbag (because I am sure that he would want to be among the "Latin lovers") must now either go and stick his head in an oven or OD on Viagra since he has become one of the inferior/damaged brood.

Nutbag's apology and story at CNN.com

Watson, 79, an American who won the 1962 Nobel prize for his role in the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, told the Sunday Times he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really."

Willi Ninja has gone home

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 11:16:47 -0400

Willi Ninja, the father of vogueing , has passed away. I was first introduced to Willi in Paris is Burning and have, over the years, introduced a number of students to Willi, gay balls/houses, and notions of sexuality that they had no idea ever existed.

Rest in Peace, Willi.

via keithboykin.com

Willi Ninja, a legendary figure in the ballroom community and a star of the groundbreaking 1990 film "Paris Is Burning," has passed away. He was 45 years old. "As a friend and someone who loved him very much for all he has given us, I am really sad to write that Willi passed away this morning," Emanuel Xavier wrote on his myspace blog today.

Thanks to Lauren for blogging about her experience with PiB in one of my classes. It truly does my heart good to know that something got through.

Ready to Talk About It

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 12:08:56 -0400

Last week I talked to Wendy and Juliette about the new Flash based game "Border Patrol" (I won't link to it) which asks the gamer to "protect" the borders at any cost, but I couldn't bring myself to really talk about it. Now I am ready to give it a try.

In the game you are asked to shoot Mexican drug smugglers, nationalists, and "breeders" (pregnant women with children being led by the hand). Of course this game is being linked by all of the white power/neo-nazi sites, that is telling enough for me. ***The BP game site collects cash for ads with clicks so unless you want to play the game I suggest you go here to see screenshots and a few seconds (more than enough I assure you) of game play.***

Is this the high tech response to the immigration protests this month, new census numbers, or just another kairotic moment for ignorant, racist techies (or both)? Talk about rhetorical situation. Let's aim at all of the things that "threaten" america...loose borders, drugs, welfare, and over population (of colored folk), and any number of other things.

I waited a couple of days before I tried to blog about this and now I am finding myself sitting here pulling my hair between each sentence trying not to scream. This brings back memories of my first trip to Texas where some white folks thought that it was okay to bash Hispanics to me ! After centuries of oppression of folks of African descent in this country we are now finding ourselves more acceptable to those in the "inner sanctum"? Reason? Because according to our "friends" down in the Lone Star State at least we are all "american".

Damn, and I already bought my ticket to Texas for C&W next month! Ok, so here's the deal. I am going to wear my iPod everytime I am in public. My response to folks last time was "Are you out of your mind? Did you really think that I would be sympathetic to your "plight"?" After having a few years to stew about it (yes, I am much like a pitbull in that respect) and the new, rawness of Border Patrol I may be inclined to not be so friggin' nice this time around!

Up next from the same developers?

Protect Marriage: Stop the dykes and fags on the way to the alter.

"White" House: No nigger president for america.

Proper Edukkkation: Keep liberal rhetoric out of "our" schools

'Nuff said

More on WoW

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:58:19 -0500

I have to say that I am having a good time arguing abot this over at Utopian Hell: The Great Gay Controversy! I know, who woulda thunk I'd like to argue anything!!

Toril over at thinking with my fingers has weighed in with her post "That's so gay..."

You Brought it On Yourself: Being Queer in WoW

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:07:23 -0500

A story is richocheting around the blogosphere that World of Warcraft, the 5.5 million-strong virtual world that rivals some of its MMOG cousins in the East, has a pretty unfortunate policy concerning its Lesbian, Gay, Transgender and Bisexual players: don't ask, don't tell. A guild advertising itself as "GLBT friendly" was asked to remove such a proclamation because it might provoke other players to break the company's sexual discrimination policy.

The interesting thing now will be to see how Blizzard responds. [edited to add: See Blizzard's response here and scroll up to see the WoW community discussion]

How queer: WoW and their unfortunate LGBT policy (Guardian Gamesblog)

See the extended conversation at Terra Nova and LawGeek

[Edited again to add: Lambda Legal stepped in to speak up for the guild and got this response.

I Went to Sleep in IN and Woke Up in The Handmaid's Tale

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 10:00:51 -0400

I didn't blog about this yesterday because I was hoping that it would just go away. No such luck!

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant "by means other than sexual intercourse."

Only women who are married will be considered for the "gestational certificate" that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the pregnancy. Further, the "gestational certificate" will only be given to married couples that successfully complete the same screening process currently required by law of adoptive parents.

Now I'm with Lauren when she says I've often ~~thought~~ joked that some people should be tested before giving birth, but this is ridiculous. With stories of "good, married" folk molesting, beating, and killing their children on the news every day these idiots have nothing better to do than to say that queer folks and single women can't use reproductive technologies? It's bad enough that it's already illegal to artificially inseminate at home, but this is completely idiotic.

Let's all come together and thank Sen. Patricia Miller (R)
(317) 232-9400
(800) 382-9467

Read more of her proposal here (PDF)

Via Pandagon:

Starbucks Cups are Too Gay!

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 11:27:13 -0400
According to the christian right and Baylor University Starbucks' "The Way I see It Cup" famous quotation cups are too gay . This week Baylor ordered the cups pulled from it's campus..."one of the phrases being used is from Armistead Maupin. Maupin, whose "Tales of the City" chronicled gay life in San Francisco's homosexual in the 1970s and 1980s, is quoted on the cups as saying 'I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short.' "
If you read my blog and you live in an area directly affected by this (you know who you are), I am sending you positive vibes to counter all of the negative bullshit!

Children's Lit. is Subversive

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 12:43:40 -0400
Obviously it is in MA. One father was arrested for trespassing after he refused to leave his six year old son's school. It seems sonny boy brought home a book called "Who's in a Family" and pops didn't like the fact that it included gays and lesbians (it also included extended families and mixed race couples, but that wasn't so problematic to him). So pops went to school and demanded that his kid not see this kind of filth and that he be pulled out of all discussions on homosexuality, planned or spontaneous. Absolutely ridiculous! Pops was subsequently arrested and barred from all Lexington schools. He is now awaiting trial
Hey Pops! I have an idea. If you truly want to raise a kid as ignorant and prejudiced as you why don't you pull him out of school, home school him, and make sure that he doesn't have interactions with anyone that doesn't think like you. And if he's lucky when he grows up you can marry him off to his cousin in order to keep that bloodline pure.

Quitting Over Domestic Partner Benefits

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 13:05:49 -0400
No not me. Just in time for my visit to UW-M next week. University Dean Quits Over Same-sex Benefits. I commend this woman for her actions. When I came to Purdue 5 years ago there were no domestic partner benefits and we needed them. We stuck it out as it was "promised" that things were in the works. We do now have DP benefits (even though the way they get computed as salary is fudged up*) and it's definitely better than paying $500 a month for insurance. Folks just don't understand. It's truly not about just having the benefits, but about knowing that your institution respects who you are as a person and is willing to prove that to you by offering you benefits even if you don't use them. I know that when I was on the market there were jobs that didn't appeal to me because there were no DP benefits. These were places that felt unwelcoming to me and I was out during the whole job search. I always made reference to my partner and if it was a place that I knew I was interested in I took her to the campus visit so that she could look around as well (but not to any of the official stuff). The job search was definitely a joint process for us!

Friday Music Meme- East Lansing Edition

Fri, 13 May 2005 03:37:28 -0400
What's influencing what I'll say about the direction of our FYC composition program at the Composition Symposium at Michigan State University tomorrow afternoon? Here it be:

Change Clothes -Jay-Z
Takeover -Jay-Z
Everything Right Is Wrong Again -They Might Be Giants
In Her Family -Pat Metheny
Pride -Earth Wind & Fire
Love Is Blindness -Cassandra Wilson
In A Little While -U2
Little Girl Blue -Nina Simone
What A Difference A Day Makes -Bobby Blue Bland
Wouldn't Matter Where You Are -Minnie Riperton

All while staring at the 30 second pay per view clips on the tv (because the cable has been out all day)!! I did spend a couple of hours (yes, damn you a couple of hours) at the LYS (or should I say local yarn mega store) before giving in to the cold that the evil Lisa says is allergies and spending the rest of the day in my room watching 30 second clips, listening to music, and SLEEPING (allergies don't wipe you out like this). It could have been the fact that I left for the airport at 3:30 this morning with no sleep and spent the next 7 hours (6 actually) getting to East Lansing (yeah, I coulda drove faster).

Knit for Choice: More on the Culture of Li(f)es

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 22:47:43 -0400
Doctors say Kenya's strict abortion laws have forced thousands of women and girls to the backstreets where charlatans use all manner of sharp instruments -- metal wires, knitting needles, forceps -- to penetrate the womb and kill the foetus.
I know that this is absolutely insane. It's where we have been in the U.S. and where we swiftly headed back to. As the daughter of the woman who ran a women and children's clinic in the 70s and 80s and who had seen the horrors of botched abortions (her not me), I knit with a purpose. I knit:
1. to honor my grandmother who taught me to before I was too young to really appreciate it;
2. to honor my maternal grandmother (she sews and her mother knit) who tells me great stories of refusing to continue to take in laundry for white folks who refused to pay and went to work in the cotton fields of Alabama after dropping out of 3rd grade in order to help support her family after her father was killed (the radical runs deep in my family and I often wonder if I'll meet an equally poetic end on train tracks);
3. to remind to to remain vigilant so that a woman won't die on a kitchen table after trying to abort a fetus with knitting needles, wire hangers, or kitchen knives;
4. because it allows me to get to know a wonderful group of women that I may have never gotten to know and never discovered how much we have in common once we get past all of the surface shit (and even if we don't we get to revel in our wonderful difference);
5. to help me to relax and to keep me from killing random folk;
6. because it challenges everything people think about me (and about gender and racial stereotypes in general), who expects an angry Black dyke from "the D" to pull out knitting needles?; and
7. because I like to DAMMIT!
Reuters AlertNet - FEATURE-Kenyan women take risks with backstreet abortions

Surprise!

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 07:25:37 -0400
It's the Thursday 6 a.m. post and I'm not feeling especially snarky yet today! I am, as usual, listening to my music far too loud and waiting for the Starbucks in the Student Union to open.
On a more potentially snarky activist note, I came in to find the card of a book rep from Mc-Graw Hill. Woo-friggin'-Hoo!! In so many ways I hope she comes back today so that I can happily tell her that I wouldn't use a McGraw Hill text right now if they were the only publisher on earth!
Are ya'll aware of the M-H fiacso ? The publisher caved to right wing pressure from the Texas school board and is publishing texts for them that "define marriage as a "lifelong union" between a man and woman." Texas school board members wanted to remove what one woman called "asexual stealth phrases" such as "individuals who marry." (Holt, Rinehart and Winston ain't so innocent either, they agreed to include a definition of marriage as a "lifelong union between a husband and a wife.")
Don't get me wrong, I know that this was a financial decision for M-G and that Texas buys more books than almost any other state in the union (if not the most), but it is also a decision that they must be prepared to deal with the reprecussions of. Not only is this a personal issue for me as a human being, but as a teacher/citizen/mentor how can I supprt a company that caves in to promoting abstinence when studies show that students taking abstinence pledges are four times more likely to engage in anal sex , and six times more likely to engage in oral sex ?
That's right parents, tell your children to avoid the abstinence pledge at all friggin' costs!!
WooHoo!! We have acheived snarkiness! And I thought that this might be a pretty calm day. Okay, off to read!

Women's Sports and Sexuality

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 10:56:26 -0500
Rebecca has started me to thinking about sports and sexuality again (it had been a good 20 minutes). How do I feel about an underdog team whose university actively speaks out against lesbians and feminists making it to the Sweet 16? I'm torn. On one hand good for them, I'm all for well played sports. On the other hand, wake the hell up. You can't have women's sports (or even knitting groups for that matter) without having lesbians.
This brings up bitter memories of the WNBA and the now absorbed ABL . The ABL was good and true and welcoming to lesbians. They advertised in LGBT magazines and realized that queer families made up a huge part of their fan base. Then there was the WNBA, the female branch of the NBA where men beat their pregnant wives and no one blinks an eye as long as they are playing well (*cough* Jason Kidd *cough*). The WNBA wanted no part of the queer thing. Clearly some of the WNBA players bat for my team, but that would never be said in mixed company. I giggle and then get pissed every time I see that all of the welcome publicized WNBA players are wearing so much makeup and girly clothing that they damn near look like drag queens.
Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love women's basketball, but I haven't been able to bring myself to buy season tickets until they recognize that I am their market base and that they need to woo me too, damn it!
Edited to add: The Lady Flames got extinguished by LSU (and to add a link to the univeristy which must not be named, LOL!)