Doubt you will. There's not much that I'm unwilling to talk about.
On a related note, my BFF and I are moving into a new apartment at the end of the month and I want to invite you and Jenny and co. round for a house-warming party. What days are free?
Dan Savage persuasively claims in Skipping Towards Gomorrah, which is otherwise a fairly lame book, that pride parades are on the same trajectory as St. Patrick's Day parades, which started as confrontational identity politics marches, and often race riots between the English and the Irish, and are now a time when everyone is encouraged to drink lots of green beer. In which case it makes sense that Pride, the Dyke March, and the Trans March are in the respective stages you've described.
Eh, I dunno, the ritual did get commercialized, but anti-Irish bigotry also pretty much ended.
The depressing thing about the end of anti-Irish bigotry is how Irish-Americans enthusiastically joined in to anti-Black bigotry, not that St. Patrick's Day parades turned into silly lighthearted merriment open to people of all ethnicities.
One of my friends recently let drop at lunch the fact that I read homoerotic fiction and you should have seen the looks I was getting from others. I would like to know how you reacted to this - to your friend, not the other people.
Personally, I would be incredibly upset, and have been in the past, when people have outed me like that. A friend of mine outed me as a smut-writer to my former boss, which was only okay because my former boss is incredibly cool and frankly, I was okay with him knowing. But a different friend outed me as a slasher to a group of our friends, and that just pissed me off.
Maybe it's because I'm slightly ashamed of my hobbies, and maybe I shouldn't be, but I think people should understand that these are sensitive topics that are not as easily discussed in public, and should think before outing people, or at the very least discuss it with the person beforehand to determine if it's okay for certain groups of people to know.
Or maybe I'm a huge prude and I hate everybody. :|
well, at first I had a moment of thinking omg how could you?! then I shrugged. it's not like I hide it, if you enter my apartment the shelf next to my kitchen (my place is TINY, you can see it from the front door) is filled with yaoi. it's only the spines of the books but is anyone pulled out one of them *shrug* as I said, I don't hide it. I don't advertise, of course, but if you know me a bit better you know this stuff. guys not so much as girls because...well, it's not really part of my real life, you know? most know on the periphery that I'm writing but no one has read anything, truly. I can't explain it, if I was asked directly I probably wouldn't deny it but I don't go and say hey i'm a writer and btw i'm writing gay porn.
You're mixing different parts of what I said. ;) I said that nobody wants to see a lumpy, under-construction body. The simple not-noticing of transsexuals is yeah, a subset of the not-seeing-gays problem. In terms of passing, that actually works in my favor -- because people go, "Wow, your given name is very feminine. You're very pretty. You have very delicate hands. And no Adam's apple." And still don't put two and two together, because transsexuality is just that unexpected.
Also, I wasn't trying to tell my writer friends that they ought to be writing trans characters, I was just saying that I should.
You shouldn't be skeezed about going to Thailand for that at all. I've actually known someone who's gone there for a sex change because of certain techniques they use, and she said everything was on the up-and-up.
Also, if you decide to get in on one of those tour packages, let me know. I'm actually leaving for Thailand in two days to travel with my sister, and I might have some helpful things to say.
Oh I know it's all good. I've been looking at the websites, and the fact that Thailand is one of the few countries willing to do sex change surgery doesn't make it any less reputable. Unfortunately, Thailand has a somewhat skeezy reputation abroad ("Go to Thailand? But I'm not interested in buying hookers...") and trannie stuff has long been shrouded in seedy underworld mystique, so the two in combination is particularly... dodgy.
Have fun in Thailand! BRING ME OMIYAGE. :D
PS - What are you doing after your JET contract expires? Are you staying out in the boonies for another year, or moving somewhere more exciting? I could get you a job in Tokyo with Nova~~~!
Pfft, Thailand's not for hookers. Thailand is for some of the world's best beaches, much of the world's best food at dirt-cheap prices, and at least as of a few years ago, drugged-out raves and full moon parties!
Well, I'm back from Thailand, and it was AMAZING. And I'm SO getting my open water diving license, because SCUBA is about the most awesome thing in the world.
I'll save you and Shelley some of the extra crispy coconut rolls that I brought over, because I might (or might not) be making a trip down to Tokyo towards the end of next month - if I'm really lucky. They're delicious, and they should keep well.
I actually recontacted, so I'll be here another year. After this year, though, I'll be heading to Tokyo to try and weasel my may into a Japanese game company. This job has just been too awesome for me, but I'll definitely be eager to move on and further my career in the games industry after this year. Plus, I managed to get into a really competitive Translation and Interpretation course (the qualifying test kicked my ass worse than ikkyuu), so I'll still be studying my butt off!
"It's about this gay geek in Texas who does really well in school until college and then starts screwing up horribly. Not sure yet where it goes from there
( ... )
That is much more than ten words. FIRED! XD Also, it would probably depend on who was telling the story. Approached with a healthy sense of irony and humor, I think anybody's story could be interesting. Unless it's a rinse and repeat of "I went to work. I came home and watched TV. I went to bed." Er... yeah no.
And the bad sex was half his fault, for being such a bloody starfish. The Japanese tradition of sex involves the passive partner being exactly that -- entirely passive. Which, if you're not used to it, is unnerving as hell because you're like, "Uhm... are you into this? At all?? GODDAMN IT, I'M INSECURE ENOUGH ALREADY
( ... )
Oh, I knew it was much more than ten words, but ten words was just too few.
You'd want to use a montage to skip over the repetitive bits. But even boring people have exciting moments-- birth, marriage, death, sex, that kind of thing.
Moments when the beauty and somehow, uh, "messy perfection" of the universe reach out and grab your attention do feel religious, whether you have any belief in the supernatural or not, and whether you're a bit buzzed or not.
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On a related note, my BFF and I are moving into a new apartment at the end of the month and I want to invite you and Jenny and co. round for a house-warming party. What days are free?
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(The comment has been removed)
Dan Savage persuasively claims in Skipping Towards Gomorrah, which is otherwise a fairly lame book, that pride parades are on the same trajectory as St. Patrick's Day parades, which started as confrontational identity politics marches, and often race riots between the English and the Irish, and are now a time when everyone is encouraged to drink lots of green beer. In which case it makes sense that Pride, the Dyke March, and the Trans March are in the respective stages you've described.
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(The comment has been removed)
The depressing thing about the end of anti-Irish bigotry is how Irish-Americans enthusiastically joined in to anti-Black bigotry, not that St. Patrick's Day parades turned into silly lighthearted merriment open to people of all ethnicities.
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I would like to know how you reacted to this - to your friend, not the other people.
Personally, I would be incredibly upset, and have been in the past, when people have outed me like that. A friend of mine outed me as a smut-writer to my former boss, which was only okay because my former boss is incredibly cool and frankly, I was okay with him knowing. But a different friend outed me as a slasher to a group of our friends, and that just pissed me off.
Maybe it's because I'm slightly ashamed of my hobbies, and maybe I shouldn't be, but I think people should understand that these are sensitive topics that are not as easily discussed in public, and should think before outing people, or at the very least discuss it with the person beforehand to determine if it's okay for certain groups of people to know.
Or maybe I'm a huge prude and I hate everybody. :|
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*shrug*
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Also, I wasn't trying to tell my writer friends that they ought to be writing trans characters, I was just saying that I should.
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You shouldn't be skeezed about going to Thailand for that at all. I've actually known someone who's gone there for a sex change because of certain techniques they use, and she said everything was on the up-and-up.
Also, if you decide to get in on one of those tour packages, let me know. I'm actually leaving for Thailand in two days to travel with my sister, and I might have some helpful things to say.
Good luck!
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Have fun in Thailand! BRING ME OMIYAGE. :D
PS - What are you doing after your JET contract expires? Are you staying out in the boonies for another year, or moving somewhere more exciting? I could get you a job in Tokyo with Nova~~~!
Reply
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I'll save you and Shelley some of the extra crispy coconut rolls that I brought over, because I might (or might not) be making a trip down to Tokyo towards the end of next month - if I'm really lucky. They're delicious, and they should keep well.
I actually recontacted, so I'll be here another year. After this year, though, I'll be heading to Tokyo to try and weasel my may into a Japanese game company. This job has just been too awesome for me, but I'll definitely be eager to move on and further my career in the games industry after this year. Plus, I managed to get into a really competitive Translation and Interpretation course (the qualifying test kicked my ass worse than ikkyuu), so I'll still be studying my butt off!
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And the bad sex was half his fault, for being such a bloody starfish. The Japanese tradition of sex involves the passive partner being exactly that -- entirely passive. Which, if you're not used to it, is unnerving as hell because you're like, "Uhm... are you into this? At all?? GODDAMN IT, I'M INSECURE ENOUGH ALREADY ( ... )
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You'd want to use a montage to skip over the repetitive bits. But even boring people have exciting moments-- birth, marriage, death, sex, that kind of thing.
Hah, doesn't matter if you're in a Japanese tradition or not, entirely passive sex is doing it wrong. Joke time! http://www.jokesaboutspring.com/spring-in-france.html
Moments when the beauty and somehow, uh, "messy perfection" of the universe reach out and grab your attention do feel religious, whether you have any belief in the supernatural or not, and whether you're a bit buzzed or not.
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