Becky’s Blog

I’ve been writing a book. Oh don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with the details of trying to create something readable out of a bunch of disjointed thoughts, ideas, and stuff I’ve already written. No, what I want to talk about is a question I keep asking myself as I write it, one I find myself asking over and over.

“Just how much of this stuff do people really care about?”

It’s not self-deprecating as much as it is trying not dwell on uninteresting details, putting in the stuff that really matters and keeping out the kind of information that will cause a reader to have to painfully slog through in order to get to the good parts. The problem with writing a book is that the more you write, the closer you get to it, and the harder it is to look at objectively.

I also wonder if we transfolks, and really LGBT people in general, sometimes try so hard to educate straights about ourselves and our lives that instead of the result being people becoming more in tune and more supportive of who we are and what matters to us that we sometimes alienate straight folks by offering so much information that eventually even the average non-homo/transphobic person reaches a saturation point and finally says “Enough already!”.

How much does the average straight person really care about same-sex marriage or LGBT employment rights, anyway? I wonder how many hets who might support our rights in principle get turned off or even antagonistic toward us for no other reason than they’re just tired of hearing about it? We may consider these issues critically important, but does the suburban soccer mom really give a shit? Is it possible we’re actually hurting our cause in the minds of average Americans by putting ourselves in their faces as much as we do?

Sometimes, of course, it can’t be helped. You can’t effectively advocate for equal rights by remaining invisible. Yet, most of the time when we plead our case for support, it’s not to Mom and Pop America, it’s to elected officials. That’s a different issue entirely. Elected officials are being paid to listen to and represent the interests of the people who elected them. It’s their job. Politicians, however, know and understand this going in. Even if they don’t agree with us, they’ll often at least hear us out. Unlike most people, these folks make their careers doing this kind of thing. Regardless of ideology, talking politics with an actual politician isn’t even close to the same thing as talking politics with a cab driver or a waitress.

Let’s be honest here, forget about the Queer issues for a second, isn’t it always that guy at the party who never stops talking about himself who’s always considered the biggest bore there? Can we really be sure that by heeding the popular advice we get from so many of our big-name activist organizations to talk to everyone we know about how important our rights are to us that we’re actually making these people less like to stand up for us when the chips are down and we really need their support? Are we really so certain that we’re not hurting our cause by talking about ourselves so much that straight people just eventually just get sick of it?

I’m not saying we should just shut up and hope for the best…that would be idiotic. Nor am I saying that we shouldn’t be a presence in both straight and community-relevant media. My point here is that we are, in fact, all over the media now. We’ve done the ground work. The average American knows who we are, what we want, and the way we live our lives. Is it really necessary to bring these issues up as often as we do in our daily lives though?

Think about it: How often have you found yourself explaining some community-relevant topic to a straight person? And when you have, how often has it been in response to a question they’ve asked and how often has it been you who’s instigated the discussion? How often is it we ourselves who are forcing the issue? Perhaps even more importantly, how often do we do this with little or no regard for whether or not the person we’re talking to is even interested?

One thing I think we can all be fairly sure of that by now most people know us and our issues well enough to have made up their minds whether or not they support our goals or not. Given that, how likely is it that beating these topics to death person-to-person is going to cause a non-supportive straight person to change their mind?

Perhaps it’s time for a different tactic. Instead of spilling our guts to anyone within shouting distance, maybe we should wait for them to come to us more often than we do? That’s not to say that when we need them to act, to vote positively on a ballot question or somehow show their support for us on other ways, that we shouldn’t make it a point to to do so. Yet, at the same time, maybe we should save the nitty-gritty details for the politicians and the media pundits more often than we seem to.

Of course, we talk about this stuff amongst ourselves all the time, as we should. We rightly put it out there in the media because media is a participatory thing. In order to hear what we have to say in the media, someone has to proactively watch or listen. It’s not forced on them nearly as much as people come to it themselves of their own free will. The media is a chosen thing, and because it is, people are usually paying attention because they want to, not because they’re in a situation where the topic is being pushed on them, possibly against their will.

The truth we all know is that if someone’s really dead set against supporting what we want and believe in, no amount of pestering and browbeating is likely to do anything except give them more ammunition to use against us. Chances are, except maybe in the most unusual of circumstances, we’re wasting our breath. Wouldn’t it be better by far to expend that same effort on getting a Congressman to change his vote on an important bill or sitting down with your employer’s HR rep to try to get them to adopt an anti-discrimination policy?

The fact is, we really do the vast majority of our most effective pro-Queer advocacy without saying a word. Just by being out there, visible, in the mainstream, day after day, we become inexorably more a part of the greater society, just another facet of that gigantic, multicolored jigsaw puzzle that is humanity. When we intentionally turn the discussion to Queer-relevant topics and issues with people who have no interest in hearing about them, we remove that piece of the puzzle from the whole and separate ourselves from everyone else just a little bit more. Sometimes, it’s the only way to get what we want and need, but is that really the case as often as we seem to believe it is? Isn’t it possible, maybe even likely, that we’d get more support from those who don’t really have strong opinions about us and our issues either way if we didn’t keep bringing them up when other people would much rather be talking about something else?

Part of it, I think, is just plain old selfishness. I mean, who doesn’t love talking about topics they care about, the things that matter most to them? At the same time, though, shouldn’t we be more willing than we often are to put our own issues on the shelf and discuss what’s important to the other people we engage in conversation?

In this, I think we should take a lesson from racial and ethnic minority communities. Sure, there’s plenty of information on issues relevant to these communities and no shortage of relevant media either, but none of these minorities have these issues in the faces of those outside of those communities as much as we do. We’re loud we’re proud, and, more likely than not, we’re pretty damned annoying sometimes.

There’s no question we should be speaking out about ourselves and our lives. The question is where, how often, and with whom. Even if our community-relevant issues are the most important in our own lives, they’re certainly not the most important for the rest of the world, and maybe it’s time we gave that reality a bit more consideration and respect than we often do.

We’re now in a time in this country where the social and political winds are beginning blow our way. Let’s try picking up speed by letting that wind carry us to our inevitable destination rather than insisting the entire fleet follow the course we’ve laid in for ourselves. With a little patience and a little trust, we’ll probably make it all the more likely that everyone will get to our destination together. If nothing else, it’ll almost certainly make the trip not only shorter, but also a lot more pleasant.

…and more, some stuff you might like to know.

First, starting Monday I’ll be a contributor at Bilerico. I’m very excited about this. The site is a great read, and it’s been a frequent stop on my daily news and blog web circuit for a while now. I’m both thrilled and proud to be a part of the great roster of contributors it boasts. Check it out through the link above and the one posted  in my links list.

Also, my live show is coming back, quite soon in fact. Producer Mike Scott is just about ready to return, and I’m working on getting some guests who I think you’ll find quite interesting and informative. There’s also many more changes in the works for the show as well. More on this, including webcast times and such, as I have it.

Another interesting and Queer-relevant thing’s going on as well. This one I’ve written about on my other blog, in which I talk about my thoughts and experiences in the online game EvE-Online, called Just A Girl And Her Thorax.

In the official discussion forum associated with the game, certain words are blocked by an automatic word filter. Among these are the standard curse words you’d expect, but it doesn’t stop there. Not only are relatively innocuous, commonly used words such as “crack” banned from appearing in print on this message board, but also both “gay” and “lesbian”. Interestingly, the words “transgender” and “transsexual” are not prohibited. I suppose, considering the fact that about half the characters in the game are female but the game’s actual playerbase is estimated to be 97% male, it would be hypocritical in the extreme, even with this oppressive level of moderation, for them to do so. Personally, I believe this is an intentional and direct homophobic attack on Queer identity on the part of the forum moderators, and I wrote a long post about it there. Check it out if you’re interested.

Also, I’d point out, just in case anyone’s considering signing up, that I don’t blame the creators of the game itself, I blame the forum moderators. The policies and attitudes within the actual game are far more positive and accepting than those players are subjected to on these forums. Shades of Sara Andrews, no? I’m actually considering taking this on as a topic for the podcast or the live show, so if you’re some form of Queer or supportive and play EvE or other online video games, I’d like you to get in touch with me (email: rjuro@verizon.net) and tell me about your own experiences, and I may ask you to join me on the air as a guest to add your own perspective to the discussion. Thanks!

So, let’s see, what else?

I’m planning to record a new podcast tonight or tomorrow, so keep an eye out. I’m still not quite sure what I’m going to cover yet, but I’ve got a few ideas, and maybe even a hint or two about what changes I’ve got planned for when the show returns.

Oh yeah, and one other thing: I got into a pretty interesting discussion over at OurChart yesterday. It was all about the HRC/LOGO forum, stemming from a blog on the subject by OurChart President and forum producer Hilary Rosen. I thought it was both an interesting and educational discussion, including comments from women on all sides of the issues. Well worth checking out. During the discussion, I also invited her to be a guest on my show. No response as yet, but it is the weekend after all. I hope she does take me up on the offer…I think we could have a very good discussion on many issues of importance to Queerfolks. I’ll keep ya posted on that one.

Alright, I guess that’s about it for now, but only for now. I’m looking forward to the future with great anticipation, as I hope you are.

More soon.

As the Michigan Women’s Transphobia Festival comes to a close for yet another year, we see that for all our community’s so-called “solidarity”, there are still strongholds of hatred and bigotry not only in existence in heterosexual society, but also full endorsed and supported within our own community.

Any woman who might even think of calling herself a feminist knows that a bio-determinist policy, such as the “womyn born womyn” policy, which has been symbolically softened from refusal of admittance to transwomen to being willing to sell transwomen tickets to enter but still officially banning transsexual women, is an antiquated anathema to feminism’s most basic tenets.

It continues to amaze me how some women attendees and performers both, seem perfectly comfortable playing both sides if the fence, saying they’re against the WBW policy but are still willing to support the event with their participation. From my perspective, when I hear women talking about how positive and how freeing Michfest is, I feel roughly about the same as if I were listening to people talking about what a wonderful time they had at the last KKK Barbecue. And yes, before you ask, it is comparable.

We speak out against Beenie Man and his hateful music, why should the equally hateful policies of Michfest get a pass? Why should those who attend or perform at such an event be excused from their own responsibility in helping anti-transgender bigotry and discrimination to flourish within our own community?

Those who attend Michfest and then come back and tell you they support transgender equality are either liars or deluding themselves. Their attendance and support of this event validates it and ensures its continuance, along with its policies and the bigotry behind them.

You can’t spend a week in a land that welcomes some but excludes others for bigoted reasons and then come back and try to tell me it’s a positive thing. Michfest attendees and performers help hate and bigotry grow within our community. You can dress it up anyway you want, but the reality is that the organizers choose to identify the land as women-only space, identify who they consider women, and completely invalidate transgender identity. In other words, Michfest draws its own identity not by who it includes but by who it excludes, by who it defines as women and who it does not. It is base anti-transgender and anti-feminist bigotry of the first order.

You cannot attend or perform at Michfest and claim you support transpeople any more than you can attend that KKK BBQ and claim you support African-Americans. It’s only when people stand up and refuse to tacitly endorse hate with their participation in such events that real change finally occurs.

My take.

Get it here.

…unless you think the end-all-be-all of Queer civil rights is same-sex marriage.

Twenty-two out of the forty-three questions asked during the HRC/LOGO “smellskindalikeadebatebutreallyisn’t” forum-thingie were on this topic. No substantive question or discussion on the rights of Transgender-Americans whatsoever. No discussion of the Real ID Act. Nothing on AIDS. Health issues? Barely mentioned, and only in relation to same-sex relationships. Racial and ethnic Queer issues? One reference by Barack Obama, but otherwise invisible.

It’s time we simply stopped trusting the untrustworthy. By now we should all know that HRC always pulls this kind of crap when there’s a camera in the room. A good friend and I spoke earlier about an idea about how to respond to what I’m now calling the “HRC Presidential Same-Sex Marriage Gabfest”. It’s far too early to say more than we’re talking about it.

The simple truth HRC would prefer you not remember is that in reality it’s only a small portion of the GLBT community, around ten percent, who put marriage rights at the top of their wish lists. Thing is, it’s the ten percent with the most money, and therefore, the most power at HRC. Obviously, they’re also among the most selfish.

I mean, 22 out of 43? That’s a little more than half of the questions about an issue that’s of major concern to only a fraction of the community. This is what our community can expect from the Human Rights Campaign.

It has to be one or the other: Either they don’t get it or they don’t care…or maybe even both.

It’s really hard to believe how open and how blatant the HRC’s hypocrisy is. After soliciting questions from the community, these were barely used. The opportunity to have a truly productive presentation was squandered in favor of continued beating on that same unyielding wall. There was virtually no news here, no progress made, just HRC basically asking the candidates the same already-answered question in different ways over and over.

In my opinion, last night HRC clearly demonstrated that nothing has really changed at that organization in terms of agenda, that they’re officially trans-inclusive only because they know it’s no longer disadvantageous politically, even as they continue to marginalize and exclude us from their leadership ranks…one transperson on the Executive Board is a beginning or a token, not an end.

For the most part and for most people, this forum was a joke, an exercise in futility, for anyone in the LGBT community who’s needs and issues aren’t exactly in concert with the wealthiest 1%, and especially if you might be trying to gage as a transperson how the candidates might really feel about supporting your basic civil rights, or really, if you wanted to know even the slightest detail about how the policies they’d support and enact while President might affect your life. Nope, we’re sorry transfolks and pretty much everyone else in the community, but the Human Rights Campaign is just too busy exploring every nuance and subtlety of the candidates reasons for refusing to support same-sex marriage to expend even five minutes of the two hours allotted on issues directly affecting the likes of you.

How much longer? How much longer do we let these people keep treating us this way? For every nickel we donate to this organization, we make their agenda more prevalent at the expense of that of the rest of us…the other 90% for whom marriage just isn’t a major concern right now. I submit that there are other groups out there which are far better suited to the task of speaking out on behalf of not only the trans community, but also just average middle-class Queerfolk of all varieties. I believe it’s time we left the ivory tower political ideologies where they belong, on the scrapheap of history and began truly speaking out, by ourselves and for ourselves, but also with our friends, families, and allies at our sides.

It’s only by remaining focused on the real goals, the attainable goals, that’s we’re going to be able to really make progress here. The only way that’s going to happen is if HRC isn’t bogging things down with elitist agendas that most GLBT’s don’t care alot about. We need the candidates to talk to us about employment and housing rights, about health care, about our basic civil rights under the law, and HRC refuses to give us even so much as one question on this critical topic.

Of course marriage equality is important, but it’s not the only issue. It’s time the rest of us got a chance to say our piece to those in power. We’re going to see what we can do about that…stay tuned.

Have we had enough?

Is it finally time?

Is it time for the Queer working middle class to wrest control of our community’s political agenda back from the tuxedo boys and the champagne lesbians?

Have we finally reached the point where the majority finally goes beyond the politics of convenience of the wealthy elite and takes over full control of the movement?

I think so. It’s time to dump HRC. We can make our own media. We’ll do a better, fairer job of it than they ever will, anyway.

Boys, girls, everyone else…it’s time to take our movement back!

…though really, I don’t suppose we should have expected any better.

Can we call it progress when we go from it always being the the case that whenever HRC is calling the shots and there’s some kind of political public event going on, transpeople are rendered completely invisible to now being able to bask in oh-so-inclusive glow of mere near-invisibility? One transgender-relevant question, a softball pitched by Joe Solmonese to John Edwards asking if he knows anyone transgendered. Oh gee thanks, Joe…and um, do ya think maybe you might ask him his thoughts on our being protected under the law? I don’t need to know his social calendar, I want to know if he’s going to work to ensure my basic civil rights.

Ok, and now, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone else, Melissa Etheridge..? I mean seriously, this woman had no business out there. I don’t need to know how much you care, I don’t want to hear your stories, I want you to get the hell over yourself and ask the candidate a fucking question! An unbelieveable waste of time that could have been far better used in additional questions for the candidates. I love the woman’s music, but she’s no journalist and had no place on this panel.  It seemed to me that she thought she was on a talk show, rather than on a panel to question candidates who want to be the next leader of the free world.

Joe Solmonese, I’ll admit, impressed me more than I expected he would, asking some good, tough questions on gay marriage, DADT, and other issues. Too bad he didn’t save any of that incisiveness for his question to Edwards about his level of interaction with the transgendered.

 That’s it. That’s all we got. Thanks a bunch, HRC. It reminds me of George Bush, still actively trying to repress minorities, even as he and those like him become less and less a signpost of modern America and more and more sink into the disdained, antiquated, politics of division and hatemongering. Bush’s approval ratings hover just above those of Nixon now,. As we speak, the country has learned, and continues to learn, one of it’s most valuable lessons: If you give the bad guys the keys just because you think they’ll keep you safer, eventually you discover that the bad guys are no less dangerous to you than the people you hoped they’d protect you from.

They say they’ve changed. They swear they have. But every time the chips are down and the spotlights are pointing its way, the Human Rights Campaign reverts back to its default position, a position that all but ignores the interests of anyone other than those of their ultra-wealthy major donors.

I’d like to say I’m surprised, but…

I suppose  that’s what we’re really going to find out. In a little less than two hours from now, the HRC/LOGO “smells kind of like a debate but really isn’t” Forum-thing will be starting. Yeah I’m looking forward to a though and incisive cross examination on the issues by, um, Joe Solmonese and Melissa Etheridge….oh yeah and that financial reporter too.

 HRC has a lot to prove here. I know what I expect, but I’m still willing to be convinced. I also know I’m not the only one. This should be interesting, to say the least.

More after.

…well, not quite in those terms, but that’s the gist of what a friend said to me the other day. She’s hardly the first person to say it to me, either. I have to admit I’m starting to think they’re right.

This friend, in addition to other things, is herself a writer and editor in Queer community media, and she’s by far not the only person who works in either of these positions to tell me that they like my writing. You don’t get published in the Washington Blade because the editor likes your podcast. The reality I really didn’t want to confront but now think I have to own up to and live with is that I’m much more marketable as a writer than I am as a radio host. This is by no means an confession of any sort that I don’t think I’m a good radio host, but in terms of creating marketable media, that is, work which I can make some actual money from, I’ve got a much better chance of doing it behind a keyboard than behind a microphone, at the moment anyway.

It’s really not as much a matter of quality of work as it is about marketability. There’s a hell of a lot more places interested in publishing my writing than those which are interested in putting the kind of content I produce on commercial radio. Right now, the reality is that commercial LGBT-relevant radio is barely a speck on a really huge wall as compared with our community’s print media industry. Currently, there’s only one 24/7 LGBT radio channel in the entire country versus I couldn’t even begin to guess how many newspapers, magazines, websites and other commercial print media which publish LGBT-relevant content.

The honest truth, the one I’ve chosen to ignore as I’ve directed my efforts almost exclusively toward making a career for myself in radio, is that while I put an incredible amount of time and effort into making my on-air work the very best it can be, working in print and being successful at it comes far more easily to me. I’ve yet to make a dime doing radio, but I’ve already made money from my writing many times, up to and including being a staff columnist for an LGBT community media company. I know that if I’m willing to put the kind of time and effort into my writing that I’ve been putting into my radio work over the last couple of years, it’s very likely that I’ll be able to make substantially more.

That’s not to say I’m giving up on radio. I don’t think I could really do that…I love it too much. What I do think I probably need to do, at least for a while anyway, is shift my priorities a bit and primarily focus on getting my writing published commercially instead of putting virtually all of my efforts into finding a way to make money doing radio. Really, I’ve known this for a while, but I think it’s only now that it’s finally sunk in. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that several of the people who actually do LGBT radio professionally, the hosts on OutQ, were well-published writers before they ever started in radio. Michelangelo Signorile, Larry Flick, Diana Cage, and Derek Hartley were all professional writers long before they were hired for OutQ. I think perhaps that’s the path I too will have to take for a while before I’m able to make an actual living wage doing what they do.

I’m a good writer. I know this. Far too many people have told me so for me not to believe it. My biggest problem with being a professional journalist isn’t getting editors to publish my work, though finding the right editor has proven difficult at times, it’s making enough doing it for me to live on. Even when I was the trans topics and issues columnist for EXP Publications and doing biweekly columns for them, I had to also hold down a full-time job in retail at the same time to actually be able to pay the bills because I made so little from it. And yet, like radio, I write because I love doing it, more than any other reason. Why else would I write two different blogs and spend as much time as I do writing, usually without making a cent for it?

I still believe there’s a future for me in commercial talk radio, and I’ll continue to strive to make it a reality. It may be soon, it may not. In the meantime, though, if I really want to be a professional mediamaker right now, I have to be willing to make the kind of media I can get paid for, and the one way I’m able to do that is by being a writer, so that’s what I think I’m going to do.

And hey, having my byline in the Washington Blade is pretty damn cool anyway.

A little about Edwards and a lot about some other stuff.

Get it here.