It's always curious when a politician does something you wouldnt normally expect.

Continue reading "Ahnold!" »

Thank you Facebook!

I would personally like to thank Mark Zuckerberg and his incessant need to consistently alter Facebook's platform and settings any chance he gets. Without this, I would never have crossed paths with folk singer and accomplished painter, Natalia Zukerman.

About two months ago, in my attempt to like Natalia's page, I had actually friended her. I quickly sent a follow up email apologizing for my mishap. She promptly returned my message with a note welcoming me to both her "Fan" and "Friend" page. A week later, we met at one of her shows in Brooklyn and have been in touch since.

The other night, before Natalia headed off onto her northeast tour, she and I bonded over a glass of wine and dinner. After confessing my love for social media, I asked her if she would be willing to let me interview her about her strategies and how she uses each platform to connect with her fans. She kindly agreed!

Before reading on, check out one of my favorite songs.

Continue reading "Queer music Friday: Interview with Natalia Zukerman" »

This picture of Chris Colfer from Glee posing with several leather daddies is absolutely adorable. It's from Rolling Stone's photo spread of this season's "best characters and most memorable scene-stealers."

(Hat tip to JMG for this find)

Wars always have tragic consequences. Over 4,400 American soldiers were killed during the 7 years of combat missions in Iraq. Thousands more were wounded. These men and women dedicated their lives to defend and serve our country which is self-sacrificing, even if I don't agree 100% with their choices or the choices of our former President to go to war in the first place.

You can be sure that among those soldiers who were injured or died in battle were LGBT Americans. Americans, who because of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy, sacrificed their personal freedom of expression to be a part of our nation's military.

Continue reading "Wars always have tragic consequences" »

A Chicago dentist has taken to the airwaves with the first 2012 Presidential campaign ad. While the next election is still a few years away, I guess there's something to be said for getting started early.

Clinton has not responded to the ad.

Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw is a canonical work in the world of postmodern gender criticism. The book is fifteen years old, though, and that is a veritable eternity in the realm of gender theory and trans* lives. Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman, picks up where the original work left off with a collection of essays gathered from different corners of the trans* community.

No punches are pulled. This book presents the trans* community in all it's glorious, infamous, funny, angry, sexy, ugly, empowered, debilitated, and otherwise blazing glory. These are our stories - they do not ring of sensationalism, or apologism, or attempts to pander to the "outsiders" to our trans* world - and yet they remain accessible to everyone. The book is at once a liberating and empowering experience for anybody who has either thought about the gender spectrum or lived in the nooks and crannies between "boy" and "girl."

Best of all, the book is fantastically entertaining.

Continue reading "Book Review: "Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation"" »

I've been saying for a while that perhaps the word (if not the concept) of "homophobia" should be replaced since it doesn't really describe the whole of the concept. I'm not making the Amelia Bedelia argument that homophobes are not necessarily "afraid" so then the word doesn't apply (does hemophilia mean someone really loves blood?), but that it says nothing about biphobia and transphobia and queerphobia, all of which are about the fear and disgust people feel towards transgressions of gender and sexuality rules and the resulting anger. While it's important to understand the distinctions between gender and sexuality and sex, as well as the distinctions in the ways people break the more fundamental rules that come with "A doctor said you were X, so you must live your life a certain way," and the associated reactions from others, it's also important to understand and underscore that these are all coming from the same place lest we get lost in distinctions that aren't relevant to what people are seeing or feeling.

Take, for example, this story out of Israel from last week that some people in the LGBT blogosphere said demonstrated homophobia among Arabs:

Continue reading "Homophobia and transphobia aren't clear-cut, separate concepts" »

What does it mean to live with HIV?

That's the question Positively Aware magazine wants you to answer on September 21. The magazine is creating an online photo essay about living with HIV in America. Whether you're HIV positive or negative, you're encouraged "get in the picture."

On Sept. 21, take a snapshot of a moment from your everday life. Use your digital camera or cell phone camera, and capture a scene: Getting ready for work. Hanging out with friends. Spending a quiet moment alone. Caring for someone with HIV. The idea is to come up with your own response to the question, What does it mean to live with HIV?

Once you've taken your picture, email it to artdirector@positivelyaware.com. Include your name (and the names of anyone else in your photo) and phone number (so that we can call to verify you are who you say you are), your HIV status (if you want), and a caption describing the scene, giving your location and the time you took the picture. Also, please indicate whether you want your name and HIV status included in the caption we publish.

Photos can be in JPEG, TIF, or RAW file format, and must have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi at 4 x 5 inches. They can be color or black and white photos. Cell phone camera photos are acceptable, provided that they meet resolution requirements.

Check out A Day with HIV in America for more info.

Is it safe to be gay under the Big Sky?

Fuck no.

Tim Ravndal, a Montana loud-mouthed Right-wing Tea Party darling hosts a conversation on his Facebook page where he comments on an article by the Billings Gazette on the lawsuit by the Montana ACLU by seven same-sex couples, condones torture and hanging of "fruits" and makes explicit inference to Matthew Shepard's murder.

Am I serious?

Dead serious.

Transcript after the jump.

Continue reading "Montana Tea Party Advocates "Hanging Fruits"" »

The suit to force California to appeal Judge Walker's Prop 8 decision from earlier this week has already been rejected:

A California court has refused to order Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to appeal a ruling that overturned the state's gay marriage ban.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal on Wednesday denied a conservative legal group's request to force the officials to defend voter-approved Proposition 8.

Presiding Justice Arthur Scotland did not explain why the appeals court turned down the request filed two days earlier by the Pacific Justice Institute.

Probably because Scotland is too polite to say what he really thinks.

Comic books are largely a static medium. Captain America will always be the straight-laced, optimistic, idealistic soldier. Superman will always be the incredibly powerful yet distant hero. The X-men will always be the oppressed minority. No matter how many new twists comic book writers throw in there (I'm looking at you, Electric Superman), the characters by and large come back to home base.

So what has baffled me for a long time is that in a fantastical world with insane technological advances, magicians who can rewrite reality, and people who can reform matter by thinking too hard at it... Barbara Gordon can't get her spine fixed. While I'm of the opinion that Babs is more interesting as Oracle, the info-hacker extraordinaire, on top of the fact that she can absolutely hold her own despite being wheelchair bound... it doesn't really follow internal DC logic that someone wouldn't have figured out a way to make our favorite red-headed crusader of the night (sorry Kate) all walkable.

Comic artist and illustrator Erica Henderson has wondered the exact same thing and produced a light-hearted and fab comic piece addressing this exact issue [source]. Check it out after the jump!

Continue reading "Women in Wheelchairs: A Case Study in Inequality" »

Somehow the participants at these things always seem to remind me of something. Now what could it be....

Continue reading "Dont Make Me Turn This Peace Talk Around!" »