People of Color issues are rarely expressed or addressed on the blog partly due to the lack of a clear spokesperson (or token) on these issues being on the contributor list. I am aware that Bil has made efforts to address this absence and the blame for the absence cannot be thought to rest with any individual but instead with the community. After all, we are a community blog.

I have tended to use the categorizing strategy of marking pretty much every post I write as having multiple categories. However, the site has been having a malfunction with multiple categories so they get grouped under the first one I selected. Its funny how when we are dealing with issues of identity and social justice categories really matter. Some might say to me does it really matter that much where posts end up being posted. I have actually had comments like that addressed to me in regards to ensuring that gender identity and transgender friendly language makes it into documents aimed at capturing stories of discrimination from the lgbt community. These comments of course came from white gay folks who the language was directly aimed at reaching. I always want to scream in the face of this blatant privilege. "If language doesn't matter why aren't civil unions acceptable?"

I have been thinking about this most of the day and thought of a strategy that might begin to help. We (the contributors) could begin using "Tags" as a method to sort posts. This allows for increased contributor control over categorization and a larger diversity in groupings. For the time being we could attempt to ramp up the tagging system and run it along side the category system. Perhaps, eventually

However, onto Bry*lo*'s point about the frustrations of the category and the dangers of removing it.

The very existence of a transgender category presents the challenge that on an "lgbt" blog there is no category for "lesbian," "gay," or "bisexual." The separation of transgender into a distinct category packs certain repercussions for the cohesiveness of "lgbt" as a conceptual framework for organizing both our experiences and our understandings. Often times being a representative of a transgender organization leads to me being looked at like the strangest animal in the zoo. My trans colleagues and friends articulate their experience in similar ways and this categorical separation continues the "othering" that is endemic in the lgbt community.

However, the absence of a distinct transgender category would result in transgender issues disappearing into the blog. This issue of trans-visibilty in lgbt settings is a reoccurring and very present one for transgender activists. The gay folks who often are in charge of lgbt spaces tend to trot out trans issues at moments that are necessary to prove their "good liberal" motivations or to explain to outside folks how inclusive they are of the entire lgbt community. Since a large part of my work with INTRAA is to educate the gay community about transgender issues and gender identity as a concept, I see the existence of the category at this point as a necessary evil.

An evil that we won't make any progress on overcoming by renaming or removing the category, instead we should focus on restructing our larger social dynamics as an LGBT community to decenter the focus of lGbt away from being white and exclusively gay male focused. Until then I have to say that with the blogs point and audience in mind the best solution would have to be renaming "transgender" to be "transgender and intersex issues."

I am curious and would like the women and the other bisexual or queer folks to express their opinions on this. I am at the moment taken with the fact that we may need to add a bisexual category to the list.