Sometimes I dream about moving somewhere like New York or London or Buenos Aires. And then I remember the Kid, and that part of the reason we live here is that Seattle (and Washington state) is fairly progressive and compared to cost of New York or London affordable.

Recently there’s been a national brouhaha over whether to include trans people in LGBT anti-discrimination efforts. My opinion is that there is no such thing as too much inclusiveness. the more people we’ve got coming to the table, the better.

So today I read this story. Basic jist of the story is this- A kid wants to try out for the cheerleading squad which is open to both boys and girls, but the kid is listed as a boy on the birth certificate and wants to cheer as a girl. After a letter from the ACLU and a few other questions about transgendered athletes, and WIAA (Washington Interscholastic Activities Association) decides a policy needs to be adopted to include transgendered youth.

The good points: YAY! Trying to figure out an acceptable policy to include kids in sports who don’t fit into the traditional gender binary! I hope Jai makes the squad this year.

(Disclaimer- I was a cheerleader, a bad-girl cheerleader who smoked and showed up to competitions still partly drunk. But I loved getting to dance and do gymnastic type stuff without having to starve myself into tininess like ballerinas or gymnasts. Oh and my squad was competitive and more highly ranked than the football team we cheered for- so all the haters that think it’s not a sport can kiss my ass).

The bad points: these are children, not adults. Most have not had surgery because they are children. Using the Olympics rules seems like too high of a hurdle for kids.

I was also not fond of the pronoun use in the article itself. If Jai identifies as a girl- shouldn’t she be called a she? I want to give Seattle Weekly the benefit of the doubt and I will hope that they asked Jai what pronoun to use, but I could be wrong.

But overall- yay for WA state for becoming the first state to decide that an inclusive policy is needed now. I don’t have a transgendered kid, but I am happier knowing he goes to school in a place where beings trans is ok.

Shorter Bush: Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. Democrats are slow. Won’t give me what I want. Terrorism. We don’t torture. This is a bully (pulpit).

Dammit- blogger is not letting me upload pics. Wah.

I so love this series at Jezebel!

I have been on the receiving end of oh-so-many of these. I should develop a standard response template.

Dear ____:

I am sorry you feel hurt. I do not return your feelings. I thought that by telling you that before and then never ever returning your emails, phone calls, text messages, etc. that you would get the point that I’m not in love with you.

You are now bordering on creepy stalker type behavior. Please stop.

RQ

I have 2 research papers due this quarter. One is about the increasing rates of arrest of victim-defendants in domestic abuse situations. Not a fun paper to write- especially since it is supposed to include a synthesis of an event or situation in my own life. Digging that crap up and putting it on paper for a favorite professor to read has not been easy.

So for my second paper- I’m going with something snarky. I have decided to take a bunch of evo-psych, sociobiology crap that has been interpreted to keep women in their place (oh women prefer the color red- must be left over from those days of gathering red berries- that’s why they are better grocery shoppers than men) and reinterpret it from a matriarchal view. Might almost be as good as the “8 Easy Ways to A U.S. Sponsored Coup” paper (that one was done in the style of an infomercial).

So anyone with a study they would like turned upside down in the snarkiest way possible should send me a link.

One of the first classes I took when I went back to college was American Government. It was an easy class with a crazy-fabulous professor. He assigned us the African American History Calendar as part of our reading and was hands down the best person I have ever seen at taking down an idiot’s arguments without the idiot realizing it (though everyone else did).

But all classes have problems. There was one day when a couple of Seattle police officers came to talk to the class about civil rights and explain miranda warnings. They were, as many officers are want to be, full of cock swagger and machismo. One of them asked, but never answered the question “Can you rape a whore?”

I raised my hand, but for some reason I give myself away when I’m about to tear someone a new one (might be the flaring nostrils and steam coming out of my ears). I still follow the rules of a polite society and raise my fucking hand, but I don’t get called on. (This happens all the fucking time in my economics class- I think the proff knows I could tear his minimum wage arguments to bits in under 30 seconds) .

So I never got to comment on “Can you rape a whore?”

Apparently a judge in Pennsylvania has answered the question for me with a big giant NO. Even if the woman was held at gunpoint and gang raped- it’s just theft of services.

I think I need a really big drink now.

The scene- this evening, a group of students gearing up for our first physical anthropology exam. We are nervous. The exam review sheet is ROUGH. You know what happens when a group of people is collectively nervous?

Completely inappropriate ideas. Like instead of having a normal Halloween costume, how about a dirty, sweaty, sticky group meiosis party. Meiosis, for the non-sciencey is the technical term for cell division in sexual reproduction.

“I’m gonna come as a bitchy mitochondria diva!”

“Hey baby, can I replicate some proteins for ya?”

“Oh you naughty boy, I’m not gonna recombine my DNA with just anybody!”

And now I realize that my dorkiness is not nearly as well closeted as I imagined. What will I do if they find out I like trashy sci-fi TV shows? I am so gonna lose all my cool points.

No surprise- I pass with flying colors.

Radiohead put out their latest album on the web and let fans pick their own price (even free if they so choose),

And from the looks of it- they aren’t going broke. I have a feeling the record companies are going to be crying over this. I’m not feeling any pity though.

For way too long record companies have been fixing prices, dominating airwaves, and screwing artists. Oh and suing poor single moms for downloading a couple of albums. $17.99 is not the price the free market thinks a record should be sold at, and $1.50 per album is not enough reimbursement for an artist.

We music lovers get that artists need to make money. You can’t write songs on an empty belly. But we also don ‘t like getting screwed by a giant industry. So when downloading songs from p2p networks became feasible- people flocked to it. Bands like it (their music gets out there) and they can make money doing what bands are supposed to do- playing music live.

In every class, there is that one guy who takes over and derails the class into what he wants instead of what the class is trying to focus on. And that one guy is always always always a guy, women don’t do that very often.

Ruth (a genius brainiac math major) and I were talking about that one guy the other night. The current guy driving her to distraction has been nicknamed “Hairlip” not because he has one but because she says “If you saw him, you’d understand”. He likes to interrupt when other people ask questions in order to change the focus to him.

I don’t have a nickname for the guy that’s bugging me, but the way he derails my physical anthropology class every fucking time has started to get to me. The first night of class he made a comment about how “we all can agree that there are too many women having babies that they can’t raise”. Uhm – no we can’t all agree on that.

As class has progressed, it’s become really fucking obvious that this is a Nice GuyTM who is trying to find biological justification for why women won’t fuck him. He derailed the class the other night to talk about how we are biologically programed to choose a mate and that studies have shown that women all over the world want men who are 3 to 5 years older than them and financially secure and that men want youth and beauty. The professor (god love him) tried to tell him that it might be culturally based and not biological, but the guy just kept screaming about studies in babies. I interrupted his rant. “All of those attributes are culturally determined, name one country in that study where women have greater economic power than men- name one. You can’t and until women have economic power of course they are going to choose men with money over men with looks”. He continued screaming about babies for a minute. Then we took a break (It’s a 3 hour class).

Outside, a young woman, maybe 21 thanked me for interrupting the guy. Ruth, who interrupted Hairlip after another woman asked a question that Hairlip derailed, also got a thank you. Ruth and I both agreed that there was a sense of “fuck yeah” after finally getting the assholes to shut up for a second.

I wonder how long I can hold out until I just scream out in class that “the reason you’re not getting laid is cause you’re an asshole, not because of biology!” We’ll see how it goes.