Starry-eyed assumptions about the modern world

For those of you who aren't familiar with Newfoundland's famous George Street, I'll describe it briefly. It's about 200 feet long and has nothing but bars on it, well and one tiny little pizza take-out place. When something's going on, like mardi gras or the end of summer bash, there are just throngs of peple on the street. Even on a cold snowy saturday night, there are throngs of people on the street. Anyway, imagine a street like this, only with fancy restaurants, leather stores, shoe stores, sex stores, art galleries, handicraft stores and of course, bars, with throngs of lesbians roaming around.

I'm serious. The only time I ever saw that many dykes was at new york pride in 2003 when I watched the Dykes on Bikes go by. It was amazing! attention all canadian lesbians: get your sexy little asses down to Provincetown, MA! It's fan-fuckingtastic!

It brought a lot of things to mind - I'm so used to sticking out like a sore thumb where I go to school - I'm the lesbian, the butch chick, the most aggressive girl in the room - "don't fuck with her"... here I was totally unremarkable, barely categorizable as butch - not that i'm really into categories - they amuse me, and I like being in that foggy realm of soft butch/androgenous, but here there were so many flavors of gender expression and dyke fashion. It was a feast for the eyes! Anyway, it made me wonder about my own outward expression of gender, and made me question whether I try too hard to be 'masculine' or if I'm holding back. I always feel like I'm on the threshold of two worlds of perception - the perception that I'm gay, and the perception that I'm straight.

It's true that I want people to perceive me as gay - I am aware that I have an extroverted dykish vibe and if I don't allow it to hang out there, I feel like I'm hiding part of myself like a guilty secret. I don't know... I have this desire to wear men's clothing and then run around sticking out my boobs and toss my hair at all the pretty girls, or pretend to not be the goof that I am and be all stoic and aloof, hoping that I'll come off as tantalizing and mysterious. (At least I'm over the fact that I'll never stop worrying about what other people think! :p )Anyway, I am convinced that I generally look better in guys' clothes, but I don't know if that's an aesthetic thing or if it's because it more congruent with my unconscious gender expression.

Anyway, it was a real vacation - my gf and I were totally free to make out wherever we wanted to - on the street, on the beach, in a restaurant, at the bar, wherever the fuck we wanted! At one point, we were sitting on some steps and there was a straight man carrying his toddler son who pointed at us and said excitedly, "Look, Daddy!" I had just kissed my girlfriend, and felt the familiar tingling sensation I get when I anticipate some sort of homophobic action. The dad glanced in our direction and said, "yeah, that's a lot of mailboxes!" "Look at them all!" the kid said. I looked over my shoulder and saw a cluster of eight mailboxes.

A bunch of mailboxes were more remarkable than two lesbians cuddling. Wow.

I like looking up medical disorders and finding similarities between my own life and diagnostic criteria. If you take me to be utterly normal mentally (and who is, really?) then everytime i do this, it demonstrates the broad spectrum of human behaviour and traits, and begs the question: when does someone cross the line into having some sort of abnormality?

Today's topic: Asberger's Syndrome

(I decided to look it up when I read it in passing and realized I really had no idea what it was).

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One problem with modern democracy that has always struck me is that adhering to the majority's opinion is not always the best thing too do. If we always did that, inter-racial marriage might still be illegal!


People who are anti-gay believe that homosexuality is immoral, and many believe that it is harmful. It goes against their religion, and probably makes them feel quite nauseated I'm sure. However, the fact that those of us who do not subscribe to those beliefs are being oppressed by them is an effin' travesty.


I don't understand why people who are against homosexuality are so threatened by it.

An article rebutting conservative arguments against gay marriage appeared on slate.com a little while ago. My position is pro alternative family - I'd like one of my own some day - so I thought I'd review the article.

Lesbians of Mass Destruction from slate.com


William Saletan does an effective job of rebutting the moralists when it comes to same-sex couples and parenting. The ever-conservative Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter has been making headlines again for deliberately getting pregnant with the intention of raising the child with her long-time partner, angering moralist groups, which has apparently provoked Saletan to write this article. He refers to the sixty-seven abstracts on family research by the American Psychology Association and provides the reader with all the references necessary to give his article a strong factual foundation.

If you don't want to read the article, I've summarized it( Collapse )


My article review is quite long, and I forgot how much people dislike long posts on their friend pages, so I'm putting in an lj-cut. ( Collapse )

Saletan's article is well-researched and well-written. Unfortunately, the article is most likely preaching to the converted. It is doubtful that many anti-gay people are going to read this article, and even more unlikely that it will change their mind when they do read it. However, Saletan makes a few good points, and his article is very accessible for his readers. The article would be alot stronger if he tried to find research to disagree with his views, and if he didn't hang gay male parents out to dry. It relies a little too heavily on good writing and not quite enough on strong arguments, but Saletan's analysis are sound, but his position makes his choice of foudational research suspect, since he only reviewed research that seemed to agree with his position. The next time Saletan writes in defense of gay parenting, finding more research that supports the moralists and then analysing it will greatly aid his cause. Otherwise, we'll always keep coming back to the question of whose science do we trust? Ours or theirs?