Today isn't about fear, isn't about how boo hoo tragic all these circumstances are, isn't about another reason for another marginalised group of people to be told to hide in the damn house in case they bother someone and end up dead.

It's about remembering. It's about telling stories, everyones stories and it's about living.

Few people have written good words on it that I want to link to. Emily @QT writing about how to mourn and about Witnessing. Gudbuytjane has written something similar here that also focuses on the conflict with the hijacking and cisdominant narratives potentially attached to the day and how to refocus - not death, life. Helen has a good piece here at Bird of Paradox and Ruth Moss has a good piece over here talking about how to make a difference as a Cis person, as does Caroline here. And Last of all, you can check out the events around the world at the TGDOR site here.

And now a couple of misc links:

Wheelchair Dancer wrote this kickass 'how to push a wheelchair' piece for walkies that I found really useful and is well worth a read.

Anna at FWD/Forward has good things to say on the archetype of the Bad Cripple and the damage it does. I hear a lot of this at work, and found myself having to own some of my own shit as well.

Even better, I'm under orders NOT to stay in contact with the office while I'm gone ... they want me to have a break. This has been simultaniously slightly nervewracking and hugely liberating ... I'ma gonna enjoy this hugely.

Before I go though, I thought I'd talk about a couple of things that've been getting my goat recently:

1. The 'Free Roman Polanski' movement.

Rape is Rape is Rape is Rape is Rape. What the fuck is wrong with you all? When someone drugs and Rapes a 13 year old girl, confesses, is found guilty THEN flees the country to avoid punishment they are a Rapist and a fugitive and deserve to recieve the full penalty of the law. This guy lived the high life in France, hobnobbing with high society, continuing to work, quite probably getting up to equally dubious things elsewhere and you're protesting that he's 'suffered enough'?

Rape is Rape and Justice is Justice, and society needs to see justice done. As far as anything else goes, just don't talk to me, seriously.

2. The pile of steaming butthurt and racist analogy going on inside the M/M romance writing community.

I am playing the world's smallest violin for all of you. An organisation who run awards designed to promote Queer literature decide to change their focus to support Queer literature by actual Queers? Good on them. Queer voices are more marginalised than yours, even if you are writing gay romance. this announcement of a change of focus was made well before submissions started this year for the awards, and you all need to stop making all kinds of shitty racism analogies (talking about not letting you drink from our water fountains? the hell?) and shut the hell up.

There's some dead on commentary from Shemale and Likespring here (with the latter containing some of the more dubious quotes from various M/M authors and community people) and a rather nice piece from Strangetwn_God" here which touches on the endless championing by these people of that godawful Brokeback Mountain as being some sort of progressive queer literary triumph as well ... get off my internets!

(I also want to link to a rather nice post from a big 'ole slash fan who actually gets it as well.)

So finding this glorious little video linked on Shakesville really tickled me. It's set to 'Fuck You' by Lilly Allen and is gloriously non-worksafe and queer. It's really given a lift to my day.

Which was improved upon even further when a phone conversation between Ezekiel and Captain Horatio revealed that we'd all been big fans of Gauntlet back in the day, so after a wee bit of a nostalgic gigglefest, I dug up this rather nice remake and gave it a whirl ... every time I heard 'you have shot the food' I felt like I was seven and sitting in my friend's conservatory playing Nintendo again. If you were a child of the Gauntlet era as well, go check it out. It's passed the virus and malware checker gauntlet and is exceedingly good fun.

Next up, Ezekiel has introduced me to Sarah Haskins and her info-mania spot, Target Woman, where she gives a very amusing and more than a little satirical commentary on a Gillette advert that we'd been discussing that made me look at it a little differently. If you like what she has to say, the link I've given you there turns into a happy little rss feed when plugged into google reader - you know it makes sense.

After all that levity, a quick finish on something serious. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, or DSM, currently in it's 4th edition (or is it 4.5? it's all a bit dungeons and dragons) is currently under review by the great and good so they can figure out which of us they intend to pathologise and why this time. A rather controversial figure named Ray Blanchard (famed for a lot of appallingly shitty and phobic writing about queers of various stripes) is taking a key role in revising the section on Paraphilias, and seems to be trying to brand everything other than PIV/PIA sex between able bodied, cisgendered adults as being a great big filthy peversion. I never liked the man before, and have even less reason to now.

Read more at Why feminists should be concerned with the impending revision of the DSM by Julia Serano on femilisting.

Andrade guilty on 1st degree murder and hate crime charges in Angie Zapata case.

Good.

A confession is not, and should never have been a defense. Seeing this foul little argument rejected by a jury so completely fills me with quiet satisfaction. Seeing a successful prosecution of a bias-motivated crime in a case like this makes me want to cheer. The more clearly the message is sent that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law, that none of us are disposable, the safer the world is.

I'm going to go pour myself a drink now.

Ezekiel has been away visiting the Rt Hon Horatio Monkeypants this weekend, leaving me to my own devices, desires and preoccupations. In recent months weekends like this have been a little strange to me ... I had started to feel as if I had forgotten how to exist properly as a single entity and had spent my time being quite strange and hermit-like here in my cave. This weekend, however, has proven me wrong in a delightful fashion.

It all started on friday, where despite a morning that neither of us enjoyed particularly, we were able to set things more right before she departed northward and I departed townward to run a few errands, eventually ending up curled up behind the counter of my friends shop, drinking mock-coffee and talking about all kinds of everything. We used to do it all the time but since work took me to the other side of the city it hasn't been possible nearly as often and we've both missed it. It's a good way to catch up with a lot of other people too as everyone seems to come through the door there sooner or later .

It continued that evening when, despite the sadness of discovering that someone I've been introduced to recently (who I am hoping will turn out to be a good friend) needed to cancel plans we had made the next day, Nick and Maggie (who make a ridiculously cute couple ^^) and I decided to descend on london the next day and have lunch and a wander around Bloomsbury together instead.

The sun decided to smile on us all afternoon and, in spite of some ridiculous rail fail that saw the tubes turned into communter time sardine tins all day and my taking a pleasantly sleepy potter down the liverpool street route (leading to my acquiring the rather cute bag pictured above) rather than skipping into Kings cross on the express we had a fantastic time. Having all made the daft decision to climb mount russel (the very long spiral emergency staircase next to the lifts in the tube station), we piled into the Brunswick and found a place selling interesting little mixed fruit concoctions and smoothies to go through while we got our geek on and chilled out a bit. Once we'd recovered, we wandered on over to Hare & Tortoise, a little london noodle chain I'd never heard of who served the most fantastic food at distinctly non-london prices (Anyone who ever suggests the overpriced japanophile trap Wagamamas to me again is being dragged into one of these post haste!) and kept us supplied with green tea and plum wine while we talked the rest of the afternoon away.

It was about half past four by the time we emerged in a sleepy post-prandial daze so we decided to take a brief wander around the nearby streets, ducking briefly into Gay's the Word to pour over some UK small press published gay comics and, in my case, acquire a fantastic novel by Tove Jansson, Fair Play, a series of snapshots from the lives of two female artists, lifelong partners, living and working together in their old age. I love it more than anything when a book gives you a glimpse into the life of a relationship that has lasted years, the interplay between two people who know how they fit together and have crafted an enduring and lasting love together - you really don't see it often enough. Usually we see either the fireworks and passion of first romance or the crumbling of a love neglected, leading the protagonist to run off and meet someone new. More Please! The translation is very smooth and pleasant and makes me wish that more of her adult books had been translated (there are only three in English that I know of, other than the Moomin series of childrens books). The foreword talks a lot of 'Love and Work, Work and Love', an idea beloved of Jannson while she was alive which is expressed in beautiful simplicity between these covers.

Returning hope and doing a little research showed me that Tove Jannson was a lesbian, living with her partner, the artist Tuulikki Pietla ever since they met while the latter was a student. It feels a little silly, but this makes the Moomin stories I read when I was young more precious to me than they were before. They stayed together the rest of their lives and reading that makes me so happy.

We parted from each other by the tube with the intention to do this again soon surrounding us. A brief case of having little sense of the date lead to my catching up with the Raindog on the phone who seemed to have had an equally good day before pottering home again to spend today pottering around the house, putting things in order and enjoying the sunlight in the garden. With this restful start I am looking to the coming week as positively as possible, ready to accept whatever it chooses to give me.

I finish this one by saying hello to a new reader, a friend of mine from the Virtual Pilots Association! Please feel free to comment here if you wish, a blog is more than a monologue though not quite a dialog and you are most welcome to join in. Though if you are not so inclined we can always save the conversation for Frankfurt in September, yes?

I hope you have all had a good weekend too, namaste everybody.

Any Trans person who has not been through the rigmarole required to recieve a government Gender Recognition Certificate (through choice, through worries about the central list of trans people they will then be placed on, for financial reasons or because they don't want to divorce a previous partner (a requirement for issuing a GRC) or because they haven't been transitioned for long enough yet) will need to hold two cards, one in each gender. One will be in the details of their birth gender and be used for travel in Europe, the other will be in their actual gender and be used for everything within the UK.

Given that it is currently simplicity itself to recieve correctly named and gendered passport and drivers licence documents without having to obtain a GRC this is a backwards step. One which opens people to harrasment at border checkpoints, suspicion from foreign security services for carrying two sets of ID and, to add insult to injury, will require them to pay two sets of fees as well (yes, the UK government are going to charge all of us to carry these things, doesn't that just add insult to injury?).

I picked up on this one via Helen at Bird of Paradox, who has some very sensible things to say about the whole thing here. She also links to an online petition which, insamuch as these things are of dubious usefulness takes all of thirty seconds to complete and can be found here. The group Gender spectrum UK seem pretty switched on and have issued a press release here, and a suggested template/source of ideas for letters to the home office as well.

Aint you glad we have a government that does all these ... exceptional ... things for us for our own good?

Political Lesbianism and its Discontents - Winter at Text and the World is one of the few people talking Feminist Theory on the internet who don't leave me wishing I'd made it to university and studied the humanities .. or at least stolen a copy of the course reading list. Here she's written a very coherent response to the recent Guardian article on Political Lesbianism which helped me figure out how I felt about the subject myself.

bunny resistance - Queen Emily at Sexual Ambiguities has demonstrated quite clearly this week that sometimes the answer to life, the universe, discriminatory bullshit, feminist blog wars and the horrible crap slinging that goes with them is bunnies, and lots of them.

Amy is away this weekend - it's been less weird than last time (probably due to my having a visitor for a bit and having had some practice) but is still a little odd - she's back tomorrow. Am trying to think what I can do to make things as nice as possible for when she gets in ... there are vague plots involving baking. We'll see if she needs me to meet her at Peterborough or not.

There are a couple of things I wanted to link to this evening - the first is the news that Matthias Rath, one of the nasty little alt health magnates has lost his lawsuit against Ben Goldacre and the Guardian. This fills me with absolute glee - he was one of the shitheads spending money hand over fist in South Africa to paint antiretroviral drugs for treating HIV as some sort of nefarious plot of Big Pharma and the west, discouraging people from seeking life extending treatment that works so he could pedal his vitamin based non-cures to vulnerable people and make a profit. His actions and the actions of the various homeopaths and similar folk out there pulling the same shit - and the pathetic lifestyle press in this country that distort and excuse their actions sicken me and I'm glad to see the law stand against him. You can read Ben Goldacre's response and comments here.

In more cheerful news, I've been deeply amused today by a cute little NES style platformer ... with a very welcome mischevous dykey twist. My best time so far is 19min 24s, download it here and have a go yourself.

As an example, thanks to Daisy linking JJ, I’ve just discovered that the Canadian government has kicked out a badly written bill called the Unborn Victims of Crime Act which threatened to reopen the abortion debate and play into the hands of pro life groups, pledging to redraft and return with a law that increases penalties for attacks against pregnant women as they initially intended. Go Canadian Activists and go Canada! We can always use more good news; it helps make the world look brighter.

In less bright news, the US legal system has yet again affirmed the disposability of Trans people by convicting Terron Oates of Voluntary Manslaughter for his killing of Alexis King because as we’ve all learned, Trans Panic trumps blatant evidence of premeditation. Get ready for there to be no comment about this case when he goes out and kills someone the courts think actually matters.

Mildly more positively, Helen G passes on a report from the Croydon Advertiser that police are reviewing the case against the killer of Kellie Telsford to see if they can take any further action – hopefully something will come of this.

Less politically, I had a fantastic weekend, finished a very good book that I’m going to try and post a review of later and stumbled across a very exciting opportunity while I was out at the airfield on Sunday. I’ll post more about it later; for now I’ll leave you with this picture as a teaser ...

Tomorrow should be fun, the most esteemable Lerb and I are off to explore another part of Leicester and hopefully eat delicious Japanese food in the same little resteraunt we found on our last visit – I’ve been printing maps to prevent location fail while I potter about the internet this evening.

I think I mentioned this a bit previously, I recently found myself at a feminist group for the first time and one of the things we were discussing was what we wanted from the group, what our aims were and the kind of environment we wanted to create - it got me thinking. What I wanted was something where how we were changing the world mattered more than if we were all marching in lockstep – definitely something a complete 180 from the odd policing of some online feminist communities re: who could participate and who was the enemy. I didn’t manage to articulate it to myself or anyone else particularly lucidly and succinctly which was why I was so pleased to find two very good posts online today on the same topic.

Zenobia at the bead shop asks a couple of questions on this topic then gives her own answers, Winter at text and the world then elaborates and gives her own perspective, talking a lot about focusing on the work over the identity and some damn good comments about centring and privilege – If you’ve any interest at all these would be very worthwhile things to read.

I need to go and finish getting my shit together for tomorrow, but before I go, Tobi at No Designation has written a piece on the use of the term ‘Tranny’ by cis people that’d be a damn good read for anyone.