We're on the Move!

Hello, ducks! Thanks for coming by--but I have to tell you, we've moved!

I decided to retitle the blog before it got too big, and before I had more than two readers. So you can now find it at The Second Awakening. I explain why it's been changed there.

Thanks for dropping by, ducks! Now go on to the new place--we're having punch!

Happy Mother's Day

At least there's one day a year we're supposed to commemorate how wonderful the first woman in our lives are! Happy Mother's Day to the woman who is my inspiration, counselor, friend, and support: have the happiest of days, Mom!

Preggers and Old Uns: Hit the Bricks!

Mustachio'd libertarian mouthpiece John Stossel showed up on The View today. (Yes, ducks, I was watching--I overslept today.)

I've long held that libertarianism is a luxury only the privileged can afford; if you're a victim of institutionalized prejudice, you tend not to be so sanguine about the idea of folks just doing what they want to do--like, say, issue literacy tests before you can vote, or decide that a penis was the most important instrument in a symphony orchestra.

Among the views Iron John elucidated:

There should be no laws to protect pregnant women in the workplace, because of the "unintended consequences." You might not hire a woman! Because of the Babies! Even Elizabeth Hasselbeck--Elizabeth Hasselbeck!--had a problem with that. "If you don't protect these women, aren't they more at risk?" she asked. Whoopi asked why the laws should be chucked instead of "tweaked." "Because tweaking never works," huffed John. I could swear I saw him twirling the ends of his mustache, but that might just have been me being blinded by outrage.

We protect seinors waaay too much because we spend 6-1 on the elders versus the young. Oh, and Ponzi scheme! Medicaid-paid for Viagra! The elderly have a higher net worth than the rest of the population! (Well, yeah, John, and if Bill Gates and I are in the same room together, our average net worth is higher than yours; most seniors I know are very worried about making ends meet nowadays.) Joy asked if he would income test Social Security at this point; when John said he would, she told him he was taking a very "liberal" position. "I'm a classical liberal," he smirked.

Sherri then wondered "If the government isn't taking care of seniors, then who is?" John's reply was that we should take care of ourselves, by saving. Let me tell you, ducks: my parents worked very hard in their lifetime; they each had made a major change in vocation in their thirties, and so had to make up a lot of time. In addition to the full-time jobs they both held, they taught college part-time, and for years had their own test prep side business. Because of that, when they retired they had a tidy little sum to carry them through their old age--my dad was even able to retire early.

Of course, the two Bush stock market crashes caused their net worth to drop pretty precipitously each time; both of them now work part-time. And they're the kind of success story Stossel wants everyone to have! Oh and Free Markets! Yeah!

Poverty is the natural state of all human beings. This came towards the end of the segment; the discussion of social security naturally blended into general social policy. Stossel gave the classic libertarian answer as to the purpose of government: it should do what only it can do: keep us safe, keep people from stealing things. (I've noticed that American libertarians always make national defense a priority, even though it would seem to be a logical inconsistency: shouldn't we all be able to defend ourselves? Certainly the Founding Fathers thought a standing army was the greatest instrument of tyranny known. Oh well.) In any case, Joy wondered about the Great Depression, and asked John about that, leading to the quote above, plus: "free markets!" (Ah, history blindness is another great privilege of the privileged; a lot of people at the time of the Depression saw it as proof of the failure of capitalism--and it certainly wasn't free markets that lifted us out of it, but massive government spending, first from the New Deal, then from World War II.) Oh, and private charities. (Whoopi: "are there no workhouses? are there no orphanages?")

Professional atheletes should be allowed to use steroids, oh and by the way the link to heart disease and cancer hasn't been proven. Right. Whatever.

The way to save endangered species is to eat them, since there's no shortage of chicken, and by the way when we allowed people to raise bison for food, didn't that bring them back from extinction? Of course, the great cause of extinction nowadays is habitat destruction--I wonder how you're supposed to build a rainforest to keep your valuable, edible frog herds alive?

I first encountered Stossel way back when I was in high school. I think I thought he made sense, until he did a piece on why giving to charity was counter-productive. (He told Ted Turner, who has given millions to the UN, this theory in an interview, and Turner nearly decked him; I'm aware that it doesn't take much to do that, but still.) He's been dishing out his libertarianism-light for years now, and getting praised for being a maverick and "telling uncomfortable truths." And yet, there's not a similar position from somebody on the far left: 20/20 doesn't have any segments where a socialist talks about the evils of government non-intervention. But I'm assured that the media has a liberal bias.

Won't Somebody Think Of The Menz!

My goodness, duckies! President Obama might nominate another woman to the Supreme Court, and the media gasbags are all in a dither that he might not pick the most qualified candidate because of that! Since, obviously, the most qualified candidate by definition could not be a woman, queer, or a person of color.

I guess I can understand that: I mean, if he appoints another woman, the Supreme Court will tie its previous high for number of women on the Court. With two.

Elizabeth Edwards and the Faux Double-Bind

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards (ex-senator from NC, ex-Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, ex-Presidential candidate), has a new book out. Edwards, in case you've forgotten, suffered a terminal relapse of breast and bone cancer during her husband's campaign.

Also, it turns out, during the time he was cheating on her with a "videographer" that he paid over $100,000 to. And had a kid with.

In her book, Resilience, she says that her husband should not have run, and that she tried to talk him into dropping out after he admitted to the affair. It also turns out that he was less than honest with her: he told her it had been a one-time dalliance, even while he had his mistress stashed away, and his staff scrambling desperately to cover up evidence of the affair.

So, for those of you playing at home, here's the scorecard: second bout of cancer turns out to be terminal; husband cheating on her; husband lying about cheating on her; husband still delusional enough to think he can be President.

All in all, that's pretty terrible, and I have a lot of sympathy for Ms. Edwards, who seems to have gotten the shortest of short ends of the stick. But what makes this story of interest to this blog is the backlash I saw today.

First, Michael Goodwin weighs in for the New York Daily News:

...the temptation is to shout, "Leave the poor woman alone."

That's easier said than done. After all, Elizabeth Edwards helped to perpetrate a fraud on voters, namely, that her husband was fit to be President.

She knew better and now says she told him to drop out because of the affair. He didn't and she tried to get him elected, raising money and stumping with and for him. She excoriated the media for giving "the Cliffs Notes" of the truth about candidates.

If only we had known the truth she was hiding.

Ah. Way to empathize. Let me ponder, what, exactly her choices were once John refused to drop out. Leaving the campaign trail would have been--no doubt about it--a major distraction. The question would have been why, after not stopping campaigning despite being diagnosed with breast cancer, had she suddenly vanished. It would have been a staggering blow to an already staggering campaign. And, if as seems to be the case, she didn't realize the extent of the affair, then maybe--maybe--she really did think he was qualified to be President. After all, many Democrats still think fondly of Bill Clinton, and he was a serial womanizer as well. (In fact, weren't many of us wringing our hands about how a person's personal life didn't have to reflect on his ability to do the job at the time?)

Goodwin winds up with:

"Her illness has put a halo over her head and it doesn't belong there," another reader posted. "If she were not sick, there would be far more criticism of her for hiding this kind of news . . . By participating in his charade, Elizabeth is mighty guilty herself."

Me? I second both emotions.

Which leads nicely into Maureen Dowd's column in the Grey Lady:

But now Saint Elizabeth has dragged him back into the public square for a flogging on “Oprah” and in Time and at bookstores near you. The book is billed as helping people “facing life’s adversities” and offering an “inspirational meditation on the gifts we can find among life’s biggest challenges.”

But it’s just a gratuitous peek into their lives, and one that exposes her kids, by peddling more dregs about their personal family life in a book, and exposes the ex-girlfriend who’s now trying to raise the baby girl, a dead ringer for John Edwards, in South Orange, N.J.

So, to update your scorecard:

Bill Clinton, serial adulterer, perjurer, and not as liberal as you think--the greatest President since World War II, at least according to Al Franken.

John Edwards, serial adulterer, class hypocrite, not as liberal as you think but unable to even be Vice President: lying cad.

Elizabeth Edwards, cancer survivor, adultery survivor, cancer victim, way smarter than her husband: whiner who is needlessly exposing her family to ridicule for unknown reasons.

What I'm getting at is that this is a completely fake double-bind, and I call sexism. Bill Clinton wrote an enormous autobiography, which talks about his affair, but because he's a Serious Politician (and Has A Penis), that's statemanlike. Elizabeth Edwards, who, as Dowd says, "would have made a wonderful candidate herself. But she poured everything into John[...]" writes a book about the most wrenching time of her life, and she's accused of dragging herself shamelessly back into the spotlight, not to mention her family, and O Won't Somebody Think Of The Children, and after all, she doesn't have a penis.

If she did, maybe she'd get more respect. Though if she did, her husband couldn't have run for President.

Hell, he'd not even be her husband.

Except in Massachusetts, Vermont, Iowa, and (yay!) Maine, that is.

This Week on Seth Rogen Watch

The amazing Sady of Tiger Beatdown, whose work I absolutely adore, has an article about the vile "date rape is hy-larious" comedy Observe and Report on the Guardian's Comment Is Free website.

Go read it. Then like I did, go and read the entire archives of Tiger Beatdown. It's worth it, even if it does! make you! use lots of! exclamation marks! Also: colons.

Sady is a one of a kind wonder, and her posts always make my day a bit brighter.

Your RDA of Morning Show Outrage

Today, on Morning Joe, they're talking about Bernie Madoff. Apparently, his 17th floor headquarters were "inviolable," leading Joe Scarborough to make this pithy observation:

"I was expecting there to be these financial wizards, but it was just a bunch of young, naive, women."

Yah.

Shut Up, Nasty Sports Lady! Alex Is My Bro!

Lately I've been watching the morning news shows more, something I haven't done in over a decade--this is because I have to take care of dilation after breakfast, and I like to watch TV during that time, and an hour long episode of any show I've recorded on my DVR will only cover the dilation period, not breakfast, and aren't you sorry you started reading this paragraph? (Yes.)

Anyway, this morning there was an interview with Selena Roberts, the author of a new book that accuses Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez of using steroids for much longer than he's previously admitted. (He came clean this year that he used after joining the Yankees; the book alleges he'd been using since high school.)

The interview took basically this form:

Interviewer: Nasty sports lady, you're mean to my friend Alex!

Roberts: Um. You see, if you read my book...

Interviewer-Tool: How do you know he could only lift 100 pounds as a sophmore? He might have been modest.

Roberts: Um--I have interviewed people on the record...

Tool: You don't even like him. You hate my bro!

Roberts: Um. What the hell?

...which doesn't even capture the nastiness and hostility of the interviewer. He was practically cross-examining her.

Now, I understand that a book about A-Rod is going to catch flack because of his popularity--the interviewer was a New Yorker, and the Yankees are practically a cult there--but I have to wonder: would he have been so hostile had the book been written by a guy? Would he have challenged her objectivity and reporting techniques had she possessed her own, um, bat? Fer eff's sake, he got after her for reporting that Alex was vain, asking his trainers if his "pecs looked good." (Rodriguez's vanity is something consistently reported in all accounts by people who played with him.) He (the interviewer) actually said,

"Is that vanity, or is that professionalism perhaps?"

OMG. What a sentence to unpack. I mean, there's thesubtext of homosexuality--only ladies like to look good! You're saying he's like a lady! That means he's gay!--as well as casual misogyny, i.e. if a guy works on his appearance, it's professionalism. If a woman works on her appearance--which costs more, is more time-intensive, and frankly is far more expected of her than it is of men--she's still vain.

The interview finishes up with him asking Roberts about the picture on the back cover (Rodriguez lighting a cigar and looking pretty arrogant.) He asks Roberts if she chose the photo; she didn't--authors have surprisingly little say in the covers of their books, but that doesn't keep him from attacking her about it, and then attacking her professionalism again: did you interview A-Rod about these things?

No, Roberts calmly explains, we made that request and it was turned down. And then she talks about one of the interviews she did make with him, where A-Rod talked about how he's calmer now than he was when he played in Seattle, much less worried about being perfect all the time. Which is really the heart of the matter; like Barry Bonds, A-Rod's story is largely about a great player wanting to push the envelope past mere greatness, and willing to cheat to do that. It's a very American story of overreach, and when you look at the Masters of Greed on Wall Street, you see the same kind of arrogance.

And then the interviewer accuses her again of not liking A-Rod. Cause, you know, she's a lady, and can't possibly understand how dudes give each other a free ride, cause they're like, you know, dudes! Bros! And they're all on the same team, really.

Good morning, misogyny: how are you going to fuck up people's lives today?

Your RDA of Outrage

It seems that you can add "gadgets" to your Blogger Bloggerific Blog. I added Ze Blogroll to your right--updates coming, but enjoy their home cooking!

So I searched for "women" in the Gadget Registry. Back returned the Great Gadgetzoo--one hundred and fifty hits! Excited, I leafed through them:

"Hot Babes"

"The Hottest Women of Sports"

"SI Swimsuit Model of the Day"

"Sexy Women of Playboy"

I then did a search for "feminism."

There were nine hits.

One was for the "Love and Marriage Quote of the Day."

Possession is Clutter; or, Why I Am Not Allowed To Buy More Books (With A Nod To Dick)

I have too many books. In fact, I have too many unread books. In fact, I have so many unread books that I can't find several unread books that I know I bought recently (including two Atwood novels and an Olivia Butler novel.)

Like a lot of Metropolitans of a literary bent, my apartment is not so much Where I Live, but Where I Keep My Books. I have, at present, two full-length (height?) Ikea bookshelves, and two columns of built-in bookshelves of roughly the same capacity. And I still have books overflowing off the shelves! And this was after I got rid of at least a third of my books when my ex and I moved in together!

I have a theory as to why people keep books, that breaks them down into three classes:

I. Useful Books

These are books you keep for reference purposes or utility. This would be, in my case, my collection of computer reference books (I like "cookbooks" which don't purport to teach you how to program all over again, just tell you how to handle individual problems); my history books, language books (I collect languages and am generally in the process of trying to learn one; right now I'm teaching myself Hindi), and dictionaries/thesauruses (thesaurusi?), my rhyming dictionary, and even that big book of literary criticism that I keep around just in case I need to deconstruct something in a hurry. Also included in this category is my vast collection of genre books that I re-read whenever I'm too tired to engage more challenging stuff.

II. Books of Sentimental Value

We all have those: the book of poems that you don't even like anymore, but they reminded you of what you felt like when you were young and in love. (Or not in love, as the case may be--woe is me!) The novels that used to be in Category I but have dropped into here because you won't reread them, but they remind you of who you were when you were just learning how to read. The inspirational book that led you into a religious fad for several years. They have only limited utility, but you keep them anyway because of their associations.

III. Books That Make You Look Smart

Maybe it's a Metropolitan thing, but a lot of people have books on their shelves for the sole reason of letting people know that they are the Kind of Person who would read that Kind of Book. For example, I have a copy of Ulysses on my shelf. I read it on my own while in my junior year at college, without notes, and comprehended maybe 10% of it--which I thought was a decent batting average, all things considered. (I chased it with Paradise Lost to clear out the Joycean syntax--my god, the things I could do when I was young!) Now, I'm never going to read Ulysses again (heck, I may never read Gravity's Rainbow again, and that was a book I enjoyed infinitely more than Ulysses.) Even if I wanted to, I couldn't with the copy on my shelf--it's missing several pages in the "catechism" section towards the end of the book. But--and this is the key--I want people to know that I've read Ulysses, that I'm that kind of grand master reader of capital-L Literature. And so I keep Ulysses and Don Quixote and my Faulkner novels on my shelf.

The thing is, you're justified in keeping everything from Category I; most of the stuff from Category II (it shouldn't be all that big, anyway); but why in the hell should you keep anything from Category III? Sure, you'll end up with a bookshelf of detective and sci-fi novels, plus a few computer books, but that shouldn't matter, right?

Of course, there are problems with this schema. For example: my three-volume copy of Shelby Foote's The Civil War. Category I? I have re-read it at least three times. Or maybe Category II--I read it during the heyday of my bout of Civil War, an affliction that remains in remission but still plagues me with periodic outbreaks. And what about the rest of my military history collection? And am I even interested in this stuff anymore, when I could be reading Judith Butler or Julia Serrano?

Philip K. Dick, in his remarkable Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep (much weirder and more visionary than Blade Runner), talks about "kipple":

Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.

No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot.

Now, this is actually an observation about entropy, and how the universe will eventually end up in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium called the heat-death of the universe. It also shows that Tom Pynchon wasn't the only smart-ass virtuosic writer in the 70s to make a career out of writing about entropy--just the one reviewed in the New York Times.

In any case, it's clear that books are my kipple. I occasionally find a book I had forgotten purchasing, lying clean, pristine, and unread: in a perfect state of literary thermal equilibrium.

In other words, I need to stop buying books until I've reduced the kipple in the apartment.

But, you say, O gentle reader, what on earth does this have to do with your blog? We thought this was going to be a place to hear about feminism, and specifically trans feminism, and so far your last two posts have been about what shows you like to watch, and how messy your apartment is? What gives?

Fear not: for part of my process tonight was to cull out several books that I haven't read (or need to re-read), all of a feminist bent. Which I am going to read over the next X weeks and report back to you on. Which should be interesting; I was, after all Professionally Trained in interpreting literature. Which is why I design databases today. Life is rarely neat.

Southland: I love LA

So based on some good reviews, I've been watching Southland, NBC's new policier. (I usually record it on my DVR and watch it while dilating in the morning. Is that gross? You're right!) I had some reservations, because it stars that guy from The O.C., one of the more amiably idiotic recent shows, and also because the previews made it look like it would concentrate mostly on beat cops, and I wasn't sure there was enough of a show there.

Happily, I'm wrong; Southland is the best new police show in years. And it also tells the stories of the detectives in the squadroom.

I have a weakness for two different kinds of crime-based programming: police procedurals, and amiable con-artists with a heart of gold. Thus: Law & Order, and The Rockford Files are both favorites of mine.

Southland is a both a primo policier (it takes a very gritty view of police work) as well as a character-driven drama. It portrays squadroom life as messy, complicated, and confusing--in fact, I'm still sorting out all the characters, because the same group does not appear in each episode. In trying to show a realistic view of the sometimes larger-than-life characters who inhabit the police station, it's easily the best show of its type since Homicide--a drama that while great in its own way, never lived up to the promise of its initial episodes. Southland holds out promise of not falling into the trap of falling in love with its own characters--all though we are gradually seeing them get fleshed out, they are still grounded in the everyday struggles of police work.

But that's not enough to earn a mention on this blog.

What I've liked so far is that there are signs that there will be several strong female characters, led by Regina King's Detective Lydia Adams. It was her character who solved the show's very first case, and in this week's episode, she fights to solve a case that normally falls through the cracks--the murder of an African-American prostitute--and vents her exasperation that LA has over 3,000 rape kits backlogged in their lab.

I like Detective Adams.

On the officer's side, in addition to Ben McKenzie's really not as annoying as I'd have thought Ben Sherman and Michael Cudlitz's amusingly no-nonsense Tom Cooper, we have Arija Bareikis as "Chickie" Brown, a single mother who wants to become the first female SWAT trooper.

I like this show.

Southland has three episodes left in this season; NBC has renewed it for next year. I may even like NBC now.

On Why the Cat Is Mad

For most of my life I've been folded safely in the arms of privilege.

I grew up in the suburbs of a Great American Metropolis. My parents were both college-educated professionals. I'm white, and at the time I was male. In America, it doesn't really get too much better than that--we were the norm you were supposed to aspire to you. (Even people whose income put them in the upper classes describe themselves as "middle class.")

In my case, though, there was one flaw in the picture: I was trans. As early as three or four I knew I wanted to be a girl, though it took a long time for me to put that plan into action. So much of my mental energy went into managing that problem, especially once I started to crossdress in secret during junior high. I got good at lying, dissembling, concealing; my social life was a disaster; I probably hated myself.

Nothing special there, though--any number of trans people could tell that story.

No, what I want to get to is that despite my transness and its conflicts and encumbrances, I still could retreat into the safety of my white, (apparently) cis, (apparently) straight, middle class privilege. Even after I moved to Metropolis and became a regular in the trans subculture, I still had the refuge of putting myself out to the world as a white man.

Now, even before I began to transition, I was becoming aware of my privilege. I encountered the work of helen boyd, who challenged me to become a feminist. In the summer of 2005, the last happy year of my marriage, I embarked on a reading binge that changed my personal feminist convictions from lukewarm to white-hot.

That didn't change through the early days of my transition. As I became essentially fulltime, my convictions were nothing if not reinforced. How could they not be? Misogyny began to be something I had to deal with at street level.

All that said, there was still a--detachment, call it--from these things. After all, I still had plenty of privilege stockpiled--still white, still (apparently) cis, still (apparently) straight. The Great American Metropolis has liberal attitudes, and misogyny was something no longer overt. I could still blithely glide over things, if I chose.

Being able to ignore things is the essential definition of privilege.

What changed, was: I had surgery. And since then, my feminist convictions have changed from an intellectual pursuit to something I feel in my gut; they have become a viewpoint, the criterion I use to make sense of the world.

And you know what? It sucks that it took my surgery to do that. It sucks that even living and identifying as a woman I was still able to traipse lightly over inconvenient truths. I'm not proud of the fact that I needed the surgery to reach this point.

But I did. The major change I've noticed since the operation is that I no longer have reservations or doubts about being a woman. Not that I wasn't before: my womanhood is not transactional, and can't be limited or reduced.

Before, though, that was an intellectual conviction; today, it's something I feel in my soul.

And now, when I see misogyny, when I see stupid shit directed at women simply because they are women, I get pissed: "Hey! They're talking about me!" Again, it completely sucks that I took so long to reach this place. I am humbled by the women I know and admire who had to endure this from birth.

That didn't, couldn't happen to me. And maybe that's why I've become so engaged: that having seen, firsthand, how privilege can invisibly change your life, it's left me a bitter foe of it in all its manifestations. Not so much to lift my boat--this isn't an attempt for me to reclaim my lost male privilege. You can stuff male privilege.

No, it's more this: having had privilege, lost privilege, gained others (many would privilege me over other trans people because I am transsexual, have had the surgery, look female, etc.), I no longer want privilege to exist at all.

Maybe that's a radical position. Call me a Marxist, a bomb-thrower, a lunatic. Tell me that I only feel this way because I hurt so much and regret losing my former advantages.

I won't care. Because it doesn't matter how I got here; what matters is that I'm here now, and ready to start to pitch in.

And thus I dedicate this blog: to be a record of my implacable, boundless outrage; my mouthpiece to the world; my voice crying in the wilderness, adding itself to the chorus of other women everywhere.

I wasn't born to the fight; but I'll fight now forever.

Triple Threats

The News From WOUTR, all Outrage, all the Time:

I have Saturday Night Live on. This is mostly nostalgia, though I'm not quite sure what for; I started watching the show during the Dana Carvey/Phil Hartmann/Jon Lovitz years, which were not exactly a great epoch in the history of television comedy. If I have nostalgia, it is from watching the "Best of" shows that Nick at Nite showed in the very early years of its existence, which were culled from the work of the original cast.

But in any case, I'm home on a Saturday (outrage intereferes with your social life, and my boyfriend is located in a different timezone anyway) and awake in the early morning, so I have SNL on.

Not that long ago, "Weekend Update" had Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and was a bright spot on the show; now both have moved on to greener pastures, and we're left with Seth Myers' minor-league douchebaggery, which isn't particularly outrage-inducing--or rather, it seems to be hard to pick out against the normal background noise of douchebaggery on television.

The guest this week is Tracy Morgan, returning to his old haunts. I was never a particular fan of his, so perhaps it's odd that I'm dedicating the first real post of the blog to him.

Right in a row, there were three separate sketches:

• A parody of "Big Love," the show about traditionalist Mormons. Morgan played what looked to be a trans prostitute, picked up by the clueless paterfamilias to be the newest wife. (The character, played by morgan in a horridly bad blond wig, is seen shaving with an electric razor; which is so stupid--I mean, everybody knows you can't get a close shave with one of those things! The Mach 3 is the pre-electro transpeeps' best friend.) The closing credits for the spoof: "Yeah. It's a dude."
  
• A fake commercial for a pill that would keep men from getting sexually aroused in inappropriate situations, like picking up your high-school aged niece and her cheerleader friends. I'm...not sure what to say, except, gross--the other example is a Santa worried about a stray erection costing him his job.
  
• A short film where two guys go to a party and make disparaging comments about the people there--but here's the catch!--their comments are shown to be literally true; so "look at those Jokers" cuts to three guys dressed as the Joker. You get the idea. One of the guys is described as a serial rapist; the cut is to a guy busily humping a box of cereal. Hy-larious! (To be totally fair, the bit ends with one of the guys saying, "look at those two douchebags" and the image is the two of them looking into a mirror.)

So: trans-shaming; a reminder that men! always get boners! whenever they look at anything female!; and a nice little dollop of rape humor. All right!

Yes, this is pretty much how this blog is going to go.

Introit; or, Why I Am Bothering To Blog

It is a truth universally acknowledged that people with nothing better to say will start with a Jane Austen allusion.

Now that's out of the way, we can begin.

I've chosen anonymity here for reasons both good and bad. I am a woman. I am also trans, recently post-op. I am a feminist. I am (or was) both a writer and a blogger.

The crucible of my transition has left me...well, transformed, yes, obviously; but profoundly shaken. I have emerged from it more committed than ever to feminism, more implacably opposed to privilege in all its forms (including my own) than ever, and filled with an insane amount of free-floating outrage.

So I'll take it out on you, Dear Reader. Why? Because I'm on the internet, silly.