Wednesday, 18th July, 2007

"Resign or Else"

tranny stereotypes press

One of my morning RSS feed intake — morons.org — took me in the direction of an article on glaad.org about the New York Post publishing "a Delonas cartoon depicting openly gay former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey — envisioning himself to be 'the rightful Miss N.J.'"

NY Post Publishes Yet Another Gratuitous Vulgar Anti-Gay Cartoon

Clad in a bikini, high-heels, crown, and sash, McGreevey stands in a room holding a threat letter while a man waiting in bed is spotlighted in the background.

This not the first time that the New York Post has provided space for Sean Delonas to perpetuate dehumanizing anti-gay stereotypes.

morons.org are equally critical...

The cartoon McGreevey is wearing either a bra and panties or a two piece woman's swimsuit, a tiara and a "Miss New Jersey" sash... because gay people are apparently all cross-dressers and imagine themselves to be femal[e].

Obviously, I agree. In fact, I'm rather shocked that a mainstream publication can — in this day and age — even contemplate peddling such homophobic bullshit. To rely on such outdated stereotypes, to characterise gay men as 'imitating women' for particular ends, to masively misconstrue gay culture and identity, is not only lazy and crass, it's also considerably offensive and perpetuates myths and prejudices that serve (for some people) to justify their persecution of the gay community — sometimes violently.

But

I might be reading too much into things (which is unlike me, of course), and taking offence when there's none implied, but I can't help but feel a little narked at the way in which morons.org (and I guess, glaad.org) are justifying their criticisms of the NY Post.

because gay people are apparently all cross-dressers

...and...

dehumanizing anti-gay stereotypes

Maybe I'm being a little over-sensitive here, but I read those lines as suggesting that it's wrong to depict gay people as transvestites "because OMG! Trannies are, like, teh weirdoes" — rather than just because it's not true.

It reminds me of one of my pet peeves — that ghastly justification of crossdressing that I hear some people using from time to time: "Yes, I'm a tranny, but it's OK because I'm not gay" — but in reverse.

There is — of course — no link between transvestism and homosexuality. What clothes you find yourself preferring has no bearing on your sexuality (and vice versa). And while it's true that our 'communities' overlap at times, and there is a shared cultural history, there's no causal link between the two.

Justifying an absurd attack on one community though, by shifting the absurdity onto the other community is not, I believe, the right way to construct a rebuttal.

But again, maybe I'm being over-sensitive

Derbyshire's Finest

I'm sorry, but this just creased me up

(via The Register)

Oh poo

photo

I don't have a fridge in my office, I have to hope that the milk will stay fresh enough to put in coffee all by itself. But it's a bit too warm today for that, and my coffee now has bits in it.

Think I'll stick to booze

point out the goofy inaccuracy of the cartoon

I know Nick And I was worried that what I'd writen could somehow be construed as taking away from your intentions, which is why I thought I was probably over-reacting.

I guess my point was, perhaps, that the cartoon is as offensive to me — in that it stereotypes my behaviour — as it was to you, for the same reasons maybe. My nit-picking was — I suppose — just an extension of the way I tend to jump down the throats of people of my 'persuasion' who claim that what they do is OK because they're not of your 'persuasion'.

(If you get my drift — I've probably phrased that really badly )

So basically, I wasn't angry, just raising my eyebrow and smirking in a friendly "*ahem*" kind of way.

PS. "run-of-the-mill cross-dresser" — don't dig a hole there for yourself

Unaccustomed, As I Am

I hate speaking in front of people. Really. I fucking hate it. Even (blimey) in front of students — which (if you take my job on face value) you'd probably expect me to be able to do no probs.

But hey, when I have ever lived up to any of your expectations?

My illustrious colleague — Mr Cubist Scarborough was in London today (for some thing or another), and so I found myself filling in for him, and giving a "talk" to some of our colleagues on what he and I are up to in Second Life at the moment, and why we'd like them to get involved too.

I say "some" — I actually mean a hundred. Which is a lot. For me.

I've kinda been looking forward to it really — I mean at last! An audience to listen to my car-journey-ramblings which I never actually get to do to people's faces! People who have to sit there and listen to me wittering on about Second Life without the option just to click through to some other bloke in a dress's blog!

But also, I've been shitting myself about it too

But hey.

I practiced a lot last night. I built myself my First PowerPoint Slideshow ever!™ and ran through it a few times. I discovered — along the way — that it's a lot easier to give a presentation if (a) you're doing it to a mirror rather than Real People™, and (b) you're a bit bloody drunk when you're doing it.

Neither of those two things were an option today though, so a very sober, 'audienced' and wet¹ me was stood in front of a room lecture theatre² full of people, mobile phone in hand, with a Heath Robinson affair of cables stringing out of my laptop.

I mean, I say "my" laptop — actually, it wasn't. I had a sudden realisation in the car on my way into work this morning that for some reason my laptop has an inability to show the red channel when connected to VGA devices, so I had to transfer everything onto one of the other ones, and install all manner of gubbins just to make it behave like mine.

And the other thing — the Heath Robinson thing — GOD it annoys me that the expectaions that are forced onto you whenever you turn up at 'lecture' spaces all revolve around you having some kind of .ppt thing that'll run on a PC. Almost every week I have to get called down to some venue because someone has arrived with all their stuff, and the support guys are all scratching their heads wondering what these things with half-bitten pieces of fruit festooned on their cases are.

But I'm prejudiced (and right)

Anyways. That's bseides the point — which is namely that it went OK.

Apparently there were a lot of people who were extremely skeptical about the whole SL thing going in to my talk. But a lot of them told me that they were quite excited by the end — partly (they said) because they found it a bit refreshing to hear someone stand up and confess that they were a bit skeptical too.

I think they were anticipating some kind of frothy nonsense — some kind of evangelical bullshit — and were quite surprised to hear someone say "you know, I have no idea yet what the value of this is, but I'm trying to find out".

Also, they were a bit cool with me introducing what I've been up to by starting off with the 'repliaction' stuff — confirming what I had in my head that those kind of things help serve as a 'mental bridge' between this world, and the possibilities of The Other™

But anyway, I just wanted to say "*yay me!*" I did a talk and it went down well.

Were we a truly digitally-embracing institution, I would ahve streamed the whole thing live...

¹ Typical. Gorgeous morning. Beautiful lunchtime. But the minute Siobhan needs to walk 500 yards doen the roads, the heavens open and start spitting gobules of watery phelgm onto her from on high, ruining my hair, and completely screwing up the "but I do look a bit like her" part of my "Hi, I'm Ksa" talk.

² I've never spoken in a lecture theatre before. I usually give lectures in our studio.