This is just disgusting

Low demand

I don't know about you, but I usually don't make comments to peoples' blog postings about news. Or, apparently I do know about you, because you don't seem to be commenting on these postings I make about the news/current events, either. So, I'm going to take a poll: How many of you want me to keep posting on this blog, seeing as how the only postings on it are about news?

Jerk...

I hate politicians who go back on what they already stated publicly. It really pisses me off, especially when it's Giuliani inflicting real pain on the GLBT people who counted on him and liked him as mayor of New York City. Why, Rudy, why???

Giuliani dismisses pro-gay views as irrelevant to presidential bid

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani on Thursday dismissed his liberal social views—including support for gay rights—his divorces, and his former aide's imbroglio as irrelevant to a presidential bid. Asked about a leaked political strategy memo that cited such issues as potentially insurmountable obstacles to a campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Giuliani said, ''That is not going to be the issue.''

''I sure have strengths and weaknesses,'' Giuliani said on ABC's Good Morning America. ''I think that sort of puts me in the same category as just about everybody else that's running. Are my strengths greater or my weaknesses worse? I don't know. You have to sort of examine that. That won't be the issue.''

Giuliani, who formed a presidential exploratory committee last year, said he is still weighing whether to run for president. ''You have to feel inside yourself there is something special I can do—some kind of special experience I have had or background,'' said Giuliani, who became known as ''America's mayor'' for his response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Giuliani made headlines last week when a copy of his nascent campaign's strategy paper made its way to the New York Daily News. Aides claimed the 140-page document was pilfered from a piece of luggage when a staffer changed planes. The document acknowledged the obvious: a moderate Republican who has supported abortion rights, gay rights, and gun control may be a tough sell to GOP primary voters.

It also cited his stormy divorce from Donna Hanover, one of his former wives, and his ties to scandal-plagued former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik as potential obstacles. (AP)

Go us!

Here's an article about what is called "Generation Next" (which, I assume is the group of people ranging from 18-... whatever) that I found on Advocate.com. It's very interesting. And as true as can be (at least, for me):

Report: 'Generation Next' more confident, more progressive, and more supportive of gays

The young adults of Generation Next are more optimistic, more tolerant, and more likely Democratic voters than their predecessors, according to a new study. They are also more accepting of same-sex marriage: Forty-seven percent of those age 18 to 25 favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry, while 30 percent of those 26 and older favor same-sex marriage.

The group's tilt toward the Democratic Party is far different from the previous younger generation, known as Generation X, who grew up during the Reagan administration of the 1980s and was more inclined to support Republicans. ''This portends a significant political impact as they get more engaged,'' said Scott Keeter, a researcher from the Pew Research Center. ''If they carry their party leanings with them, that will make a big difference.''

Forty-eight percent of young adults age 18 to 25 said they were Democrats or leaned that direction while 35 percent said they were Republican or leaned that way in 2006, according to Pew polling.
While they are a generally optimistic group, large majorities think that casual sex, binge drinking, illegal drug use, and violence are more prevalent among young people today. Asked about their generation, most say getting rich and being famous are top goals.

The study found that the young adults:

*Are less inclined to vote than older generations, though young voter turnout was up significantly in 2004. About 54 percent of those from 18 to 24 voted in 2004, and 74 percent of those 25 and over voted, Keeter said.

*Have more liberal views than other generations on questions of race and homosexuality and immigration.

*Read the newspaper and follow the news on television and radio less than those in older generations.

*Keep in close touch with their parents, both for advice and for financial help.

*Are inclined to use online social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. More than half had used one of these sites.

*Tend to most admire people they personally know rather than the famous. Entertainers were twice as likely to be named as political leaders.

*Have often gotten a tattoo, dyed their hair an untraditional color, or had a body piercing.

The study, a collaboration of the Pew Research Center and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, is based on Edison-Mitofsky exit polls, past Pew polls, and a Pew survey of 1,501 adults, including 579 people from ages 18-25, taken September 6-October 2. The study had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 5 percentage points for the young adults. (Will Lester, AP)

I think it's cool. What about y'all?

p.s. Linkage: http://advocate.com/news_detail_ektid41031.asp

Cool

Woot for Boston's 7News anchor Randy Price and his partner Mark Steffen! They just got married! Here's the article:

Boston news anchor marries partner on statehouse steps

Boston's 7News anchor Randy Price married his longtime partner, Mark Steffen, on the steps of the statehouse Friday, one day after a proposed ban on same-sex marriage advanced in the legislature. "Our timing couldn't be better," Price told BostonHerald.com, referring to the marriage ban. "But actually it's pure coincidence since [today] is our 30th anniversary."

Price said he and Steffen wanted to swap vows on the capitol steps for "symbolic reasons." "We're certainly not defiant people, but we believe that we should have the right to marry like anyone else," Price said. "Right now it's right for us. And we've got as good a track record with vows and commitment as anyone else." (The Advocate)

And here's the official link: http://advocate.com/news_detail_ektid40889.asp

I'll never leave you

... but I am moving. No, not really. I'm just spreading my horizons some. What I mean is, I have a new blog, called Boi. I think you'll like it. It's gonna be different than this one, because it will only be my personal journal entries. Little Bits is a mix of both those and my analysis-es of news. Boi will be like my bedroom, where all my personal odds and ends are kept. Little Bits will still be here--only, it will be more about the news and events that happen that include me (or not) but are not just about me. That is what Boi is for.

Thank you, Peterson, Alex, Willie, and Diana (sorry if I missed any readers/commenters) for a great two months and several days of reading and commenting and supporting and such. It's been great fun. But, remember, it's not ending! Just come on over to Boi! Check out my stuff for the first time (again)!

Laramie and Drag King Dreams

I'm in a strange mood today. I'm feeling a little downtrodden (because I don't know if I'll have enough money to go to Georgia this summer, and because I may be starting to see a therapist who specializes in gender but I'm nervous because she uses this test of sorts called the Standards of Care (which are used to diagnose Transsexualism) with the patients of hers that want to have legal documentation to have hormones and surgeries, but it seems that to get said legal documentation, you have to be diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, which is classified as a mental health problem, and I don't know if I will be diagnosed because I'm not what is called a "classic" Transsexual), but I'm also in a great mood for doing some serious activism. Only problem is, I want to march and scream somewhere, and it's raining, and I'm not doing that kind of stuff alone, because my town isn't a good place to do that in. Lots of people with rifles around who don't take too kindly to someone like... me.

So, to support the strange mood I'm in, I'm listening to Amy Ray's "Laramie", which is a song about Matthew Shepard, who was killed in Laramie, Wyoming because he was gay. I was also reading a passage from Leslie Feinberg's Drag King Dreams a little while ago. I read the part about the funeral of a good friend of the main character (Max) named Vickie. She was a cross-dresser, and she was murdered.

"I was the last friend to", I hesitate, "to be with Vickie. Just before she got on the train to leave me, she asked me a simple question. She asked me where I live in relation to where we were standing. I told her it wasn't far, just a few blocks away.

"But I've gone over and over that question in my mind since her death--thinking about where I live in relation to her life. And now I wish I could go back to that moment and answer her differently."

Everyone in the church is watching me. It's so quiet in the room.

"I live in Jersey City on a corner where two streets meet: Maple and Birch. I'm on Maple when I'm in my living room, and Birch when I eat my breakfast. Across from my window I can look out and see the skyline of Manhattan. Most days I spend more hours on that side of the Hudson River than I do in Jersey.

"But as I kept hearing Vickie's question in my head, I began to dig deeper. And the more I searched, the more I discovered that I live where flesh has been torn and scars still bleed. And scars are memories.

"I discovered that I live on top of a seam of pulverized rock that may be the wound where Africa and North America tore apart 220 million years ago. It's a giant geographical scar where red-hot magma bled, and when it cooled, it rose to form the precipice on which I live.

I live on land where, just a few hundred years ago, the Lenni-Lenape still hunted in the forests. Their blood, spilled by settlers, still drenches the soil. And a short walk from my apartment is a small, overgrown park where the end of slavery was first announced in my town. All around that little park today live people who still yearn for freedom.

That one simple question Vickie asked me just before her death led me to feel connected to this past. To see how it shapes my present. I'm lost until I figure out where I live in relation to others.

But my relationship to Vickie, that was hard for me to figure out. Vickie was the kind of person other people just couldn't help but respect. She was so principled. So clear in her political vision. I loved that about her. And I loved her as a friend. But deep down, I never felt a connection with her as a cross-dresser.

"Which you might think would be the most obvious." I look down at my own suit and tie, "because so am I.

"But Vickie and I weren't the same kind of cross-dressers. She was fluent in two gendered languages. That's how she conveyed who she was. But this is the only way I articulate who I am."

Estelle nods, head still down.

I take a deep breath. "I regret my last interaction with Vickie. I saw her going home to a good job, to someone who adored her."

Estelle looks up at me, yearning for more information, her hands tightly clasped in her on her lap.

"And in that instant, jealously flared up in me because I thought that she could just take off her wig and her dress and move through the world another way--a way I thought of as closeted. But it takes to pronouns to even approximate Vickie's life. And she wasn't just half and half of anything. She was trying to be understood for the whole of who she was.

"Now I wish that Vickie could ask me again, once more, where I live. I would tell her: I live at the intersection of oppression. And you and I were neighbors. The same sky above us. The same earth. The same red blood, metalic tasting on our tongues. You lived under the sun. I live under the moon. I was sometimes envious that you could walk in the daylight, welcomed by smiling strangers. And I wasn't a very good neighbor sometimes. For that, I am truly sorry, Vickie.

"My aunt Raisa taught me an old Sephardic Jewish proverb: Dime con quien conoscas, te dire quien sois--Tell me who you know; I'll tell you who you are."

My voice cracks. "I knew Vickie."

Part of my Extended Literary Analysis that I wrote for my English class was about this book. I compared a relationship in Feinberg's other novel, Stone Butch Blues, with another relationship from Drag King Dreams. But the relationship that I used from Drag King Dreams was not this one. Now I kind of wish it had been.

Maybe it wasn't the fact that I wanted to do some physical activism today that made me listen to "Laramie" and read this passage from Drag King Dreams. Perhaps, instead, it was the song and the part in the book that evoked passion from me. It may sound strange, but hearing that song and reading the words in Feinberg's latest masterpiece make me want to fight for the person that Vickie was based upon, because even if Feinberg didn't personally know anyone who was a cross-dresser and killed like Vickie was, I made the promise when I became an activist to avenge the members of my Chosen Family who die at the hands of people who despise the GLBT community, not just to do my best to love and protect the ones who are still alive.