Becky's Blog

Are We Listening?

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:16:26 GMT

It's times like these when even though you're proven right, you take no joy in it.

Back in February, I wrote that in my opinion same-sex marriage is overall a loser issue in this country right now and that our community would be far better served by focusing on getting basic civil rights protections like ENDA and hate crimes passed first, before taking on the much bigger and far more lengthy battle for same-sex marriage rights. I took plenty of flack for my position in the comments on that post, but I think yesterday's results back me up.

The problem, made obvious yesterday in Maine and in the California Prop 8 fight last year, is that while there is a significant amount of support for SSM, sometimes even enough to get a law passed initially, that support is generally soft among the electorate and a well-organized repeal effort has always proven successful at the ballot box thus far. Conversely, support for (non-SSM-allowing/affirming) anti-discrimination protections seems to be growing increasingly stronger, as voters in Kalamazoo, MI successfully rejected an attempt to repeal an anti-discrimination law protecting their LGBT citizens.

What does this tell us? Nothing really new, just a confirmation of what we've known to be true for a long time and which continues to be: There is significant support for SSM in this country, enough to get these bills voted on and sometimes even passed, but it's soft support, not solid enough or active enough to protect those laws from repeal when our opponents get them placed on the ballot.

Conversely, Kalamazoo teaches us that what actually is becoming popularly considered to be a basic civil right by more and more Americans is the right to be protected against discrimination in one's daily life, in the workplace, in public accommodations, and in housing. More and more we see these kinds of laws (as opposed to those granting SSM rights) gaining and maintaining support around the country even when challenged.

In my opinion, it's about, and it's always been about, religion. It's about people using Jesus to justify mistreating those more harshly oppressed than themselves and hiding behind Biblical quotes to validate their bigotry. I'm not a Christian, but I wonder how ol' JC would feel about that? If we are to take the events depicted in the Bible as literally as the most vocal of those opposing SSM do, I'd bet he wouldn't be too happy to see his name and his words used in this way.

I suspect that the difference in how these initiatives do at the ballot box is reflected by how they do in the state and federal legislatures. Politically speaking at all levels of government, it's far easier to successfully make the case that it's wrong to assault and murder LGBT people because of who and what we are or that it's wrong to deny someone a job or an apartment just because they're LGBT then it is to argue successfully in favor of SSM. While there certainly are some who will oppose our interests no matter what the issue may be, it's clear that a significant portion of the electorate remains staunchly opposed to SSM, enough to make it to the polls to vote against it in an off-year election, but that number declines sharply when the issue is one of legal protection for LGBT's against discrimination.

In short, even in post-Bush America it's still a lot easier to make a successful religion-based case against granting same-sex marriage rights than it is to make such a case against granting anti-discrimination protections to LGBT people. The numbers (not to mention common sense) confirm that this is the case nationally. We're certainly seeing that hard reality wear away slowly, but it's a slow process, and I doubt it will be completed in our lifetimes.

What I believe we can take heart in here is that we're winning on the basics. It's becoming more and more the cultural wisdom in this country that no one should be singled out and treated badly just because they're different. In fact, American culture, as it has so many times before, is evolving once again and embracing us as never before. Would Rachel Maddow or Ellen Degeneres have their own mainstream television shows and be getting the ratings they do ten or fifteen years ago? Could Hilary Swank have won an Oscar for "Boys Don't Cry"? Could "Trans-America" have even been made and released in mainstream theaters? "Brokeback Mountain"? Thirty years ago, the closest to out and open we had was David Bowie, Sylvester, and Joan Jett, none of whom really fit the bill. Could Barack Obama, a Presidential candidate who openly supported LGBT civil rights initiatives (forget his race) ever have won the White House? Now we've got daily representation in major media, our own television channels, and let's not even get started on the Internets.

The reality is that we've reached the point where the vast majority of Americans believe it's wrong to hurt, kill, or discriminate against their fellow citizens just because they're LGBT. We're not yet far enough along that road, however, for a solid majority of voters to support the extension of marriage rights to lesbians and gays in most areas of this country, even in areas traditionally considered more liberal and progressive than most. Much of the support marriage equality enjoys is indeed soft support, and as we've seen most recently in Maine and California, it can be swayed against us with an effective oppositional campaign.

I believe we've been receiving a message from the American electorate in regards to our issues over the last couple of elections, a message that's being accurately reflected in the Democratic Party's current federal legislative agenda, and that message is this: "We think you should be protected from hate violence. We think you should have the right to work and to live where and how you choose. We think you should have the same basic civil rights as everyone else. We're not so sure about the marriage thing, though. Our religious leaders tell us God says it's wrong, and many of us take that very seriously. A lot of us just aren't ready to go there yet."

There's no question, of course, that time is on our side. As time goes on, the electorate becomes increasingly more liberal and progressive, just as it has throughout American history. It's the children of the 60's and 70's who are now increasingly taking the social and political reigns of power in this country as the children of the 40's, and 50's retire and die off, and it's steadily pushing American culture toward the left. Over time, we will have marriage equality in this country. While some of us may not live to see it in our lifetimes, I believe it's inevitable given the history of our nation and the evolution of its laws and culture. At the same time, I also believe that we've got more groundwork to lay in order to make it a reality sooner rather than later.

If we are ever to be socially and politically potent enough to be able to reliably sway these kinds of ballot initiatives in our favor in the future, the first thing we must do is establish an equal economic playing field, or at least as close to equal as we can manage. The foundation of that effort must be getting an inclusive ENDA passed into law. We can argue from now until Doomsday about the relative effects ENDA would have in actually preventing workplace discrimination and in helping America as a nation become less hostile to its LGBT citizens, but what ENDA would do in the most practical sense would be to help put more money in the pockets of American LGBT workers. LGBT's with more money in their pockets can make more donations, do more lobbying, attend more activist events, and generally make themselves much more influential in the political process than those who are unemployed or underemployed and just scraping by.

We're winning on the basics, and we need to capitalize on that, right now. We need to focus our efforts like a laser on getting ENDA passed into law during this session of Congress, brooking no more delays or excuses. Once we have that, the country probably won't change as much as we'd like or hope right away, but it will set the stage for things becoming easier and progress becoming more rapid as the American LGBT community and our activists find ourselves with more time and money to devote to the movement for full LGBT equality as the economy improves and businesses start hiring again. ENDA will help relieve at least some of the economic pressure on many in our community who might be willing to contribute to the cause but remain silent and uninvolved because they cannot afford the time or the amount of discretionary income needed to participate.

It's also worth remembering that it's not just transgender people who are greatly impacted by the lack of federal workplace anti-discrimination protections. While gays and lesbians are protected in more states than transpeople are, the reality is that all LGBT's living in most areas of the United States are still without even the most basic of civil rights protections. The passage of an inclusive ENDA isn't just a trans issue, or even a low-middle-income issue. It's an issue that strikes directly to the heart of the question of whether or not we're going to be strong enough as a community and as a cultural and political force to beat back the next attempt to roll back our civil rights.

Simply put, if we want to see anything approaching relationship equality in this country anytime soon, we need to ensure our economic equality first. We won't get one before we get the other and start making it work for us. It's a lot easier to credibly argue that we deserve to marry the person we love once we've already established as a matter of law that it's not acceptable to kill us or beat us up, or to deny us a job or a place to live just because we're different. Even though we may have to grit our teeth in acknowledging that bitter reality, it's time we started making it work to our own advantage.

Socially, politically, and even just at the average American kitchen table, it's the only plan that makes any real sense at all.

Low Blows In The NJ Governor's Race

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:44:24 GMT

Here in New Jersey, politics is a contact sport and the participants are not shy about drawing blood. It's been this way throughout my adult lifetime and I don't expect it will ever change. It's just the way politics is done around here. Despite that, there are some places where Republicans fear to tread in this state.

We have elected Republican Governors in this state several times these last few decades, but often more as a rejection of the incumbent Democrat than as an endorsement of the Republican agenda. This is evidenced by the fact that despite the changing faces in the New Jersey Governor's chair over the last couple of decades or so, our state legislature is overwhelmingly Democratic and has been so for a very long time.

The Republican Party in New Jersey has traditionally been pretty anemic in terms of running candidates against a lot of New Jersey elected officials. A few elections ago, the GOP ran a candidate against Congressman Rush Holt in my home district. They did their best, but it was no contest. Rush Holt is well-loved and well-supported in our district because he's a great Congressman and he represents our district in a way that reflects the values of (most of) the people who live here. He won the race easily and I don't think there's been a credible candidate run against him since.

That's the kind of political climate we have here. This is a state that went for Obama by a fifteen point margin, a state that has a law protecting it's transgender and gender-variant citizens (as well as LGB, of course) from unjust discrimination, and a state that's expected to legalize gay marriage soon. There are a few conservative strongholds here, but generally speaking we're one of the most politically and socially liberal states in the union and I can tell you from personal experience that it does make a difference.

So you can imagine my surprise when I got something in my mail I'd never received before, even in the midst of the most heated political battles, a political mailer from the GOP decrying Governor Corzine's support of same-sex marriage rights. In the same batch of mail was a mailer from Garden State Equality with the opposing view. The next day, a letter from the New Jersey Stonewall Democrats on the same topic, signed by their President (and new DNC member) Babs Casbar Siperstein.

I know this kind of thing is common in other areas of the country, but this is a first in my memory. We get political mailers about taxes, property values, and highway tolls, we don't get them about social issues. In my experience, while it often takes them time and some pushing to get to where we in the community need them to be, there's a tendency in the New Jersey state legislature (read: the New Jersey Democratic Party) to lean toward inclusion and equal rights for all. It took a major political incident to get the transgender rights bill introduced in the New Jersey legislature after two years of being ignored despite strong support, but once introduced it passed overwhelmingly and was signed into law by Governor Corzine soon afterward.

While enjoying strong public support, same-sex marriage really just isn't a very important issue for most New Jersey voters. Issues like taxes, budgets, roads, and rooting out corruption in our government are of far more interest to most New Jersey voters. Those who believe Jim McGreevey was forced to step down as Governor because he's gay miss the point. McGreevey had to step down because he acted irresponsibly as Governor. The fact that he happened to be acting irresponsibly in regard to protecting and facilitating a gay relationship he was having was completely irrelevant to the question of his fitness for office, and I believe that's largely how it was seen here.

Chris Christie is really the first candidate to try to make same-sex marriage an election issue in this state, and personally I think it's a losing strategy. The bulk of the New Jersey electorate just doesn't care very much, if at all. Most are fine with same-sex marriage because they understand that while it has no real impact on their own lives, it's important to other people. It's still more evidence that the GOP hasn't gotten any more in tune with what New Jerseyans or even Americans in general are looking for in our elected leaders. In a nutshell, and without trying to sound like an elitist jerk, I'm proud to be able to say that we're better than that here in New Jersey, and our progressive and still-evolving civil rights laws prove it.

Still, nothing could have prepared me for last night. I pick up the phone and it's a robo-call from Sarah Palin endorsing Chris Christie. I guess it's a good thing it wasn't a real person because I couldn't stop laughing. It almost makes you wonder if Chris Christie is serious about wanting to be Governor. Does he honestly believe Sarah Palin is going to be popularly seen as credible in this state? It might work if he were running for Governor of Alabama or Texas, but hello, this is New Jersey, fifteen-frakking-points-to-Obama New Jersey. If the GOP really thinks a Palin endorsement has any traction here, we can rest assured they'll continue to be nothing more than a tiny minority party in this state.

I will frankly be stunned if Christie wins this, no matter how close the polls say it is. And if he does win, if a Republican can still win in New Jersey, we may all be in for a much tougher road ahead.

When Government Does Right

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:47:34 GMT

Finally, we're in.

The body of federal law of the United States of America now formally recognizes and protects its citizens from violence driven by hate based on sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time in American history. While both of these steps are critically important ones in our ongoing fight for equality, I'd like to suggest that the inclusion of gender identity, and therefore by extension the formal acknowledgment of Transgender-Americans in federal law, is even more important than the inclusion of sexual orientation. For the first time ever, we exist in federal law now, and that's going to make things a lot easier down the road.

For one thing, as I and many others have noted in the past, the days of feigned ignorance about trans people and issues by politicians are over. Support us or don't support us, but the politicians can't claim they don't get it anymore, at least not the ones who want to appear informed and therefore credible.

For another thing, Congress isn't stupid either, especially not those on the left. They remember what happened in 2007 and they don't want another revolt on their hands, particularly because they know we don't stand alone anymore. Not only do we have staunch friends and allies in Congress, but we've also become allied with the greater grassroots progressive movement. Transpeople and others who believe that social and political progress in this country must be inclusive are now connecting with the grassroots left in this country in a way that the wealthy elites of the Human Rights Campaign crowd have never been able to do.

Many in Congress do see what's happening, how our movement is evolving, even if the White House is clearly still pretty slow on the uptake. I suspect that as time goes on, the Obama Administration will come to understand that if the President wants to speak to the true heart of the American LGBT community (and the bulk of its voter base), a speech at an HRC dinner or in front of a roomful of handpicked Queer elites at the White House just isn't going to cut it anymore.

The passage of the Matthew Shepard Act changes everything. There's proof now: Transpeople are not political pariahs. Legislation that protects transgender people CAN be passed in this Congress IF members of Congress, President Obama, and our activists put enough effort into making it happen.

And while I'm someone who's rarely hesitant to bash any politician who deserves it, regardless of party, I will say this: At this exact moment, right now, today, I'm proud to be a Democrat. I just hope I'm able to continue feeling this way for a long time to come.

The old excuses are no longer valid. It's a new day. Now that our government has acknowledged that murdering us because we're gender-different is wrong, we must demand that they also understand that we have a right to make a living and provide for ourselves and our families free from unjust bigotry and discrimination. Not ask, not encourage, not hope, not educate, demand. Because if it is truly now accepted as a given in our country's laws that we have the right to live, it must also follow that we have the right to survive. It is therefore self-evident that if we have the right to live and the right to survive, then we must also have the right to work and provide the basic necessities of life for ourselves and our families.

So often, I find myself at this keyboard complaining about politicians, and more often than not, Democrats. Yesterday, we got a small taste, just a whiff, of what true equality in America might be like someday. Yesterday, I was reminded of how truly amazing it can be when government really works for the people. We can rightfully complain that this bill should never have taken a decade to pass into law, but we also should not forget that this Congress (as well as the last one) did pass it and what really made all the difference in the end was that Barack Obama, a Democrat, is our President.

As Rachel Maddow said on her show last night, it just goes to show that elections really do have consequences.

What He Really Said

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:22:12 GMT

It seems like each time I write something about Barack Obama some variant of the following sentence is included in the first paragraph: The man knows how to deliver a speech.

Was there any real news to gleaned here? Well, maybe if you squint and look at it kinda sideways. Obama did use the word "transgender" once, the first time a sitting President has done so with major media coverage as far as I know. It may seem like a little thing to some, but Obama's use of the word may signal to Congressional Democrats that he wants a fully inclusive ENDA.

Obama's repeated use of the word "inclusive" was a signal to us, the LGBT community, and to transpeople in particular. He and his people know what LGB and especially T people understand the word "inclusive" to mean when it's used in the context of LGBT civil rights. Using "inclusive" was Obama's way of communicating his support for transgender inclusion in LGBT civil rights legislation to the community without actually saying it out loud. He even threw in a "gender identity" just for seasoning. It's a hell of a lot more than we ever got from Bill Clinton or any other President, but still a hell of a lot less than we deserve.

Why does it matter? It shows we're on his radar. Obama understands that as President and as an advocate of ENDA's passage, he must take a position on transgender inclusion pro or con and he knows he must communicate that position to us and to Congress. He did both artfully with this speech, but he also demonstrated that he's not quite ready to come out of closet with full-throated support for transgender rights yet.

The near-complete invisibility of transpeople in this speech should not be surprising to anyone, and in fact was probably good political strategy given the timing. Obama gave the far right more than enough ammo with this speech, and neither he nor we would benefit from a strong public statement of support for transgender rights being used by the right wing to rile up their base against him and against us as Congress prepares to take on ENDA. Don't forget how the right wing used Obama's public statements on marriage during the Prop 8 battle to add his apparent endorsement to stripping same-sex couples of the right to marry in California. I doubt anyone on the Obama team wants to see anything like that happen again, and especially not while ENDA is still making its way through Congress. I strongly suspect that once hate crimes passes and the first legal recognition of transgender people in our federal laws is on the books, it'll become safer politically for the President and for us for him to express his support for transgender inclusion more openly.

He's close, but he's not quite there yet. Just as there are those who theorize that since Obama was in favor of same-sex marriage as an Illinois state senator and only started opposing it when he began his campaign for the US Senate, once he's successfully won a second term as President he'll come out strongly in favor of full marriage rights for gays and lesbians, I also believe that we'll see a much more courageous Obama on LGBT civil rights in general and on transgender rights in particular during his second term.

Does that mean we should let up on Obama until 2012? Hell no! And there's still Congress to consider, we know there's work to be done there. The more we can accomplish now in laying the groundwork, the easier the road ahead will be.

This was without question the most transgender-inclusive speech any sitting President has ever delivered and maybe even the most transgender-inclusive speech Obama has ever delivered. It just wasn't immediately obvious because our inclusion was slipped in through the rhetorical back door. We knew what he was talking about, but it's likely to escape the notice of many on the right. In the end, though, it really doesn't matter. Hearing the President say the T-word on television and talk about us might make us feel good for a moment, but that's not the goal here. The goal is pass an inclusive ENDA. The best way to make sure that happens is to not give the right wing an excuse to stir up anti-transgender bigotry.

I know, I know. I wanted more too, but I also understand why we can't have it...for now. Once ENDA is the law of the land, though, I'm going to start expecting a little more from him.

Why Maddow Matters

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:58:44 GMT

The first time I ever listened to Rachel Maddow on the radio for any length of time was when she guest-hosted for Michelangelo Signorile on his Sirius OutQ afternoon drivetime show a few years ago. It wasn't that I didn't have an interest, mind you, it was that Rachel's own show was live early in the morning, not what you'd call prime talk radio listening time for me and not on a station I could receive well on my car radio from Central New Jersey. Still, I knew who she was and I always looked forward to hearing her on the air when I could catch her. When she filled in for Signorile, though, was when I truly became a fan not only of her and her work, but I also came to understand that she and her success represent a lot more than many of us realize.

During that show, Rachel told a story of how she'd been hassled at the airport getting on a plane because of her gender-variant appearance. As I was listening, it occurred to me that this was a story that none of Sirius Out-Q's regular, conventionally-gendered hosts could have told in the first person, but I had no doubt that for scores of transpeople and gender-variant gays and lesbians it was a very familiar one. For me, it underscored the point that even in mainstream media specifically intended to serve the LGBT community there's really still precious little out there that speaks directly to and from the experiences of the unconventionally-gendered.

After Rachel's appearance on Out-Q, I began playing closer attention and when she started on MSNBC I instantly became a loyal viewer. Over the time she's been on MSNBC, she's referred to her partner Susan a number of times and she's made jokes about her non-classic-feminine body image on her show. The most important part of all that is really the fact that when she mentioned these things there was a massive earth-shattering yawn. No one except those on the farthest reaches of the right-wing care that she's a lesbian. No one's freaked out because she doesn't present an ultra-feminine on-air figure ala Norah O'Donnell or Andrea Mitchell. What matters is that she's great at what she does and viewers love her...and that's all that matters.

This is actually a bigger deal than some may realize. Aside from Rachel and Ellen Degeneres, how many openly LGBT mainstream television or radio hosts can you name? If you're having trouble coming up with names, there's a good reason for that. There just aren't very many, and the few of us who actually are out there can generally be found online, emanating from non-mainstream sources and usually working for free.

While I do chastise myself for being such a cynic, I must admit that Rachel Maddow has become successful in television despite my expectations. As Dr. Laura, Michael Savage, and so many others have taught us so well, that which is perfectly acceptable on radio may well prove intolerable on television. Michael Savage can denigrate LGBT's all he wants on his radio show, but when he does it on the third night of his MSNBC television show he's out of there, end of story, no questions asked. Dr. Laura may lose all of her sponsors and hence her television show because of reaction to her anti-gay views, but those same sponsors will continue eagerly writing checks for ad spots during her still highly-rated radio show.

That being the case, I fully expected Rachel Maddow to remain a strong and respected voice in left-wing talk radio. It never occurred to me that she'd ever have a shot on television because of her butch presentation and because she's an out lesbian. Traditional commercial media in general is notorious for being unwilling to take risks and break new ground, and I expected Rachel would be just too much of a departure from what had come before for her to get a television show. Not only did she get the show but MSNBC's bet on her has paid off bigtime. She may not be the number one show on the air but she's a major player, on a par with any and every other pundit out there.

Yes, it matters, even though it shouldn't. No one would think to judge Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, or Bill O'Reilly by anything other than by the quality of their work and their record of delivering the viewing audiences their sponsors are seeking to attract. As much as we might wish it were otherwise, the reality is that a gender-variant and openly lesbian host is likely going to have a tougher time of it and have to put up with a lot more crap than a middle-aged heterosexual white guy, regardless of their politics.

Luckily, Rachel Maddow seems more than up to the task. Despite the criticisms of some, she doesn't cast herself as a cheerleader for LGBT rights issues, but she does take them on from time to time on her show as they arise in the news cycle, including features and interviews regarding Don't Ask, Don't Tell and other LGBT-relevant topics. In my opinion, that's a very good thing. There are plenty of people like me, like us, who are creating shows and other media by, for, and about ourselves. That's critically important, and we need that kind of media to be and to remain a vibrant, healthy, and informed community. Yet we also need people like Rachel Maddow who are mainstream pundits taking on mainstream issues who just happen to be LGBT but don't make that their focus. If we truly want to be an integral part of modern mainstream America, we won't get there by continuing to talk only amongst and about ourselves.

In Rachel Maddow I see reason to hope that sometime soon she and Ellen won't be exceptions anymore, that we may eventually live in a world where you'd be as likely to find someone like Rachel or Ellen or even me as you would to find a middle-aged white guy when you turn on your radio or television. It may still be a while off right now, but the success of the Rachel Maddow Show on both radio and television portends well for the future, not necessarily of LGBT media per se, but certainly of media made by LGBT's.

From a personal perspective, as a transwoman with a fairly feminine appearance but a rather masculine speaking voice who's been trying to land a paying gig in radio for the better part of a decade now, I can't help but hope that Rachel Maddow's success has pushed the door open at least a little wider for those of us who exhibit some form of sexual or gender variance and are still trying to land their first (or first big) media job.

It may be years longer before the playing field begins to level for us in any detectable way, but it's no longer a given that hiring an openly LGBT person for an on-air position on a mainstream media network is a bad idea. In fact, not only has it been proven that it's not always a bad idea but also that it can be a very good and highly profitable idea if done correctly.

The best news about Rachel Maddow is that she's not news. It's the quality of her work and the loyalty of her audience, not her sexuality or her gender presentation, which define her to her audience and to the public at large. For openly LGBT and gender-variant people trying to break into this industry, those of us who hope to perhaps follow her into mainstream media someday, that has to be the very best news of all.

Sorry I Haven't Written

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 04:17:43 GMT

It's been a busy summer. Between trying to find the parts to fix my 20-year-old car (after three months we were successful and the car is being worked on as I write this), looking for some paying work as a writer, and some other interesting happenings in my life, blogging has been getting the short shrift. Hence, no posts in a while. Now that I'm ready to start posting again, I figured I'd catch up a bit and at the same time catch you up.

Barney Frank: I've said it before and I'll say it again: The man is nothing if not consistent. People are furious with him for not being willing to sign on to legislation supporting the repeal of DOMA. Frank says it's not yet the right time for Congress to take on that issue, citing hate crimes and ENDA as more urgent. I personally agree wholeheartedly, but what I'd really like to know is how many of those calling out Frank for this were among those who dutifully nodded their heads and went along when Frank dumped transgender people out of ENDA in '07 for pretty much exactly the same reasons.

ENDA: On the one hand, we know all too well the foolhardiness of too much hope untempered by a strong dose of reality. On the other, it seems like victory is so close you can almost taste it, certainly we're significantly closer than we've ever been before. And the closer we get, the more we learn. If Barney Frank is to be our guide (and he has been a pretty good one this time around), we're doing our part to make this happen, just as our friends and allies in Congress are. As we provide the backup, it's time for our first-stringers, Frank, Baldwin, Polis, Nadler, Weiner, Holt, and the rest of ENDA's co-sponsors to get the ball over the goal line.

Will they be able to do it? I don't know, but I do believe that the chances have never been better. I also believe that there will be an honest full-out push by the Democratic leadership to pass the bill as it stands, and there won't be a serious attempt made to cut protections for Transgender-Americans out of the bill. The reason I believe that is because Congressional Democrats haven't forgotten what happened the last time they stripped transfolks from ENDA. They not only remember our protests, they also remember who protested with us. While the GOP may still be perfectly happy to continue using transgender people as boogeymen, it's highly doubtful that any but the most conservative of Congressional Democrats are going to risk putting themselves at odds with the AFL-CIO and other powerful and influential progressive organizations.

Me: A lot of people have asked about my show, so here's the deal. It's not dead, we're retooling. The reason it's been taking as long as it has is because this retooling so far has involved not only replacing my old and slow PC with a spiffy fast new one, but also my producer Mike Scott moving his entire studio piece-by-piece and reassembling it at his new digs, establishing a strong and stable net connection from his new place (this has always been an issue for us as Mike lives in rural Arizona), and oh yeah, we're adding video, too! We're hoping to be back on the air in time to do a holiday show. That's as close to a time frame as I've got right now, but trust me, it'll be worth the wait.

More Me: I've gotten involved with another MMO, Fallen Earth. My last such adventure, Eve Online, ended a little less than two years ago, and I haven't really been spending very much time in Second Life lately at all. I don't know why, I just haven't been.

Fallen Earth is a game with a post-apocalyptic theme. It's not at all like the standard medieval swords-and-sorcery themes of World of Warcraft and similar games. Unlike Eve, I've never seen so much as a hint of homophobia or transphobia on their forums or in their public chats. In fact, I'm so comfortable in this game that I almost accidentally outed myself by being too social.

What happened was one of the players is forming an online music and game information radio station and he put out the word that he was looking for DJ's. Without thinking it through, I told him I was interested in a slot. When he got in touch and wanted to start getting it set up the light bulb went off:: The second I turn on my mic and start talking I out myself to my entire Clan. Sure, for a fleeting second I considered just lying or neither confirming nor denying my actual gender, but I quickly discarded those ideas. I'd rather be outed against my will than lie about who I am. I left those days behind me long ago and I'll never go back into hiding. I've outed myself in the past in order to make a point, and I'll do so again when and if the need arises.

The truth is, though, as much as I hate to admit it, I like the anonymity of passing, whether it's online or in the real world. I like that I don't get the funny looks anymore and I like that for the most part I'm accepted as I wish to be without hassles. I value that, and when I realized that doing a show for this station would threaten that, my first instinct was to protect it. There's no real need to out myself to my Fallen Earth Clan, no advantage to be gained or point to be made by doing so. That being the case, I prefer to keep my mouth shut about it, something I obviously can't do if I'm on the radio.

So, I bowed out of a music radio DJ slot because I didn't want to out myself. Honestly, I never thought I'd see the day. Truth be told, if there'd been an actual paycheck involved I'd have outed myself in a heartbeat and with a smile. There isn't though. This is all about having fun, and the way I have the most fun is by keeping my mouth shut about stuff which isn't relevant to the game.

Funny, I thought I was done living two lives.

Hopemongering

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:09:21 GMT

Yesterday, like so many others I was tuned into the live White House video feed to watch President Obama’s speech at the White House reception in honor of LGBT Pride Month.

One thing's for certain, Barack Obama knows how to give a speech. It was the clearest and most direct statement on our rights from him that we've heard in a while. Unfortunately, given what we've been hearing since he took office, that's not really saying all that much.

Thing is, we all know he talks a good game. He can make LGBT Americans feel welcome and included like no other President, maybe even no other federal politician in history, ever has. Other than his lack of support for same-sex marriage the problem the LGBT community has with Obama has never been about what he says, the problem is with what he does - or doesn't do.

Even knowing that, I'm still heartened by this speech. Not just by what he said, but by the way he laid his agenda out there and basically told everyone in that room (and by extension the rest of our community) to hold him accountable for it.

During the campaign, Obama called jokingly called himself a "hopemonger". I think it may be perhaps one of the most truly accurate descriptions of him. His words can't help but fill you with hope for the future. But hope does not, in fact, spring eternal. Hope has a limited life span unless it's nourished with progress toward the hoped-for goal. And when hope dies, it's often replaced by anger.

Congressional Democrats have failed to nourish our hope by passing anything significant on LGBT rights as yet, and the Obama Administration made things infinitely worse by offering that horrific DOMA brief and (thus far) failing to withdraw it. Not just a failure to nurture our hope on the part of the Administration, the DOMA brief was political equivalent of spraying it with a highly toxic poison, causing it to wither quickly and dramatically, inspiring a corresponding and predictable surge of anger from the LGBT community in response.

Obama's speech yesterday was certainly an attempt to undo or at least lessen some of the damage done to the Administration's and the Party's relationship with the LGBT community. Not true progress in any real sense, this speech was more of a palliative effort to buy himself and Congress a little more time to get things done.

I'm inclined to think we've made our point, but by no means do I think we should stop pushing or stop holding the President and the Democrats accountable for failing to deliver. In fact, I think it's time to keep the pressure on like never before.

By denying the DNC donations, we deny the entire Party, which I believe is appropriate at this time. In order to corral the votes of skittish Democrats we have to be to demonstrate that it will cost them just as much to oppose our rights as it would to support them. Aside from our actual votes, withdrawing monetary support is the single best way to demonstrate our dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party and its failures.

Conversely, there should be a resumption of support once truly significant progress is made, but that support should be clearly and directly tethered to continued and consistent progress on LGBT rights. Much like the Democratic Congress did with the bailout money by requiring the automakers to demonstrate viability as a precondition to receiving the funds, we need to tie our support of the Democratic Party to actual, measurable success in delivering on their promises to us.

As the Democrats in Congress have clearly demonstrated over and over, particularly in the Senate, the only time they can be counted upon to do anything significant on our issues is when there's a political gun pointed at their collective head. We have to be the ones holding that gun and we have to keep holding it right where it is, ready to fire at a moment's notice, until we get what we want and need from these people.

It would be nice if we could just trust that all will be well in time without forcing the issue like this, but after all the history - not just this century, but even just this year - it's the only strategy that makes sense anymore.

While the Senate is attaching the hate crimes bill as a sweetener to a defense authorization spending bill that contains money for F-22 jets the President doesn’t want and has said he will veto, another transwoman is violently attacked in a hate crime in a state where the hate crimes law doesn’t cover people like her.

Obama’s words may make us feel good, but feeling good just isn’t enough. Americans are losing jobs and careers and being denied opportunities for no good reason. Americans are being thrown out their homes. Relationships are being denied legal recognition to detriment of thousands of law-abiding, taxpaying Americans, their friends, and loved ones. Americans are being violently attacked and even murdered in the streets of our cities for the crime of being who they are.

This is happening right now. Today. It has been going on unabated for decades, centuries even. With Barack Obama in the White House and strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, there’s no longer any rational excuse for failing to pass equal rights for all Americans into law, and there’s no excuse for delaying the process even one second longer than absolutely necessary. Not if the supportive words we’re hearing from this President and this Congress are to have any real meaning at all.

The “New” NJ Trans Drivers License Regs, Part 2: Buying My Identity

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:09:45 GMT

The first part of this story can be found here.

Shortly after my first unsuccessful attempt to take advantage of the new, less stringent regulations regarding changing gender markers on drivers licenses in New Jersey, I met with a gender specialist to get the form signed, certifying that though born biologically male, my gender identity is in fact female.

While certainly an easing of the previous regulations, which required proof of genital surgery, these new regulations eliminate that requirement but still require the signature of a licensed gender specialist.

Of course, having lived fulltime as a woman for over 12 years, the doctor knew just after a few minutes of talking to me that I was for real and not only signed the form for me, but also gave me something I’ve never had (or really thought I needed before), a “carry letter”, a letter from the gender pro on official stationary which you show to cops/officials to prove that you’re a bona fide transsexual.

All together including gas, just getting this form signed cost me just over $500, almost two entire week’s worth of unemployment payments. I was damn lucky the doctor was willing to take payments over 3 months (apparently this is a common issue in her practice) or I don’t know how I’d have survived until my next unemployment check.

Then, a week later (after my next unemployment check arrived because I was nearly flat broke after seeing the doc), signed form and reams of ID in hand, I went to my local Motor Vehicle agency. Two hours of waiting was broken up by odd looks and questions, scratching of heads, and waiting, waiting, waiting, for someone who had a clue about the new regulations. Then after still some more waiting, I paid an $11 fee for my new license (which I had just renewed two weeks previously for about twice that much) to top it all off.

Finally, after all that, I am now (at least as far as New Jersey is concerned) legally female.

Now, with my new identification safely in my purse, I can’t help but think about all the transpeople in New Jersey who, like me, live hand-to-mouth, often barely squeaking by, especially in today’s economy. I’m very fortunate in that I don’t have to pay rent where I live, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have expenses. As rough as this was for me to pull off financially, I can only imagine what it would be like for someone else in the same situation but in even more desperate financial straits than I am.

The reality is that a lot of us just don’t have half a grand to shell out for something like this, no matter how much we may dream of being legally recognized in our chosen genders. When the choice is getting the right gender marker on your driver’s license or eating that week and paying the rent, there’s only one possible realistic choice, the one that keeps you alive and a roof over your head. The problem is that it’s also the choice that forces you to continue to present identification in your daily life that will help to ensure your continued second-class citizenship and potentially invite even more bigotry and discrimination into your life every time you have to present it.

That’s really the worst part of all this: For many of us, it’s a Catch-22: You can’t get a job with a livable income unless you can successfully pass in your gender of choice. You can’t successfully pass in your gender of choice unless you can present legal ID that confirms that gender. Without a livable income, you can’t afford the cost of obtaining legal ID that confirms your chosen gender.

I was able to break that cycle because I was in a position to come up with the money by cutting my normal expenses to the bone for a couple of weeks, and I’ll have to do it again twice more when I make my next payments to the doctor. Not easy, not fun, but doable. A lot of people aren’t so lucky. If I were paying rent where I am, there’s no way I’d have been able to pull this off.

That’s the real problem with this, and frankly, a big problem with New Jersey politics and politicians in general. Politicians in New Jersey don’t seem to realize that there’s a significant lower class in this state and that we have needs too. These people seem to think that everyone who lives in Jersey is upper-middle-class, living in a nice two-story colonial with a BMW in the garage, a white picket fence, and 2.3 children.

Our Governor, Jon Corzine, while a good guy and very progressive (when it’s to his political advantage to be), is also a Wall Street multi-gazillionaire, so I guess it’s not surprising that he’s apparently just as out-of-touch with the needs of average working-class New Jerseyans as the rest of our state elected officials.

I remember during the last gubernatorial election I got a call from the Corzine for Governor campaign asking for my vote and financial support. The woman on the phone told me that Jon Corzine supported efforts to improve schools and increase benefits for senior citizens. I responded that I was 45 and had no kids (nothing about being transsexual), and asked what did then-Senator Corzine have on his agenda as Governor that would benefit single working-class folks like me? Dead silence was my response.

The woman had no answer for me, none at all. It was quite obvious that the only issues she knew enough about to promote were those concerning the very young or the very old. Those of us who are not seniors and don’t have children were apparently just not considered important enough by the Corzine campaign to bother coming up with a supportive agenda for. I hope they’ll do a better job this time around, but given my experience with these new license regulations, it doesn’t seem very likely that anything’s changed much in that regard.

I say all this not to attack Governor Corzine or our elected state representatives, but rather because I believe it’s long past time that politicians in this state finally realized that not everyone who lives here shares their privileged lifestyles. It’s time our state officials started taking into account the actual real-world needs of those of us in a lower tax bracket than their own, not their own obviously uninformed imaginings of what they might be.

Wishful thinking perhaps, but personally I think it’s the very least we should be able to expect from those elected to govern our entire state, not just the wealthier parts of it.

The Great PC Purchase: The Finish Line

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:09:01 GMT

My new PC, after being sent back for repair, is delivered around 3PM last Friday. Just like last time, I set it up, I push the button, and nothing happens.

Now I'm really pissed off.

Of course, I call CyberPower tech support. After a brief wait on hold, I speak with a woman who tells me that she's not sure I'll be able to speak to a tech today. I tell her that if I do not speak to a tech today I will be reboxing and returning the PC the following day.

About half an hour later, the phone rings. The tech, Mike, is extremely helpful, but nothing we try will get it to start until at his direction I use a screwdriver to cross-connect the power switch leads. This gets the computer to start and all seems normal except for the non-functional start button. he tells me that I'll need to reinstall a new faceplate, which he'll send me, but that until it comes and I do that I'll have to use the screwdriver method any time I want to start the computer. I accept figuring that I can live with it.

The reason I decided I could live with it is one of complete, utter, and unabashed self-interest. Now that it's functional, now that I've had a chance to use this computer for a few days, get the feel of it (Vista is in a few ways very different from the XP I'm used to), try a variety of different tasks, now, at long last, I can finally tell you what I think of the computer:

This PC is without question the fastest, most capable computer I've ever used. We're talking leaps and bounds here. Now, granted my last PC was a 2.0 gigahertz hand-me-down from a friend with a lower-mid-range video card, so when compared to the 3.0 gig quad-core and near-top-of-the-line vidcard in this puppy it's not surprising that I see a major improvement in pretty much every way possible. So far, it's handled everything I could think of to throw at it. Games play flawlessly, software is lightning quick, and it's very quiet. All the software seems to be installed and running properly. Even the lights on the front of the case are pretty, now that I can see them. It's a pity I didn't see them earlier, though. I'd probably have saved myself a whole lot of trouble.

When I started writing this review, I promised myself at the outset that I would report honestly and accurately no matter what, so in fulfilling that promise I must report that I've discovered something that makes me feel like an complete idiot...but not just me.

Later that day, after speaking with Mike, I'd started the machine with the screwdriver method and sat down to start getting all my needed updates and installations done. At one point I looked up and realized that there was a small, crescent-shaped light on the bottom left of the case. Since this was actually the first time I'd looked at front of the machine with the power on, I'd never noticed it was there before. Upon closer inspection, I realized the light outlined the sides of a button...a button I'd never known was there.

I immediately shut down the PC and reconnected the power leads to the wire, but when I tried to start with that button it didn't work. Mike called again to let me know that he'd arranged to have a new faceplate sent. I thanked him and went back to updating and installing.

Even though the new button hadn't worked, it still bothered me and so a few hours later I decided to try one more thing. I shut down, took out the power button lead, flipped it over and reinserted it. I push the newly-discovered button, and...you knew this was coming, didn't you?...the PC started right up.

So, it's entirely possible that there was never anything wrong with this PC at all, but here's the thing: Both JohnY (the first time, before I sent it back) and Mike told me that the silver button behind the door was actually the power button and it isn't. Now I don't really blame either one of them. If you look at the manual for the case there's no indication whatsoever that it's there, and as I can testify, if you don't know it's there it's unlikely you'll notice it unless you have the machine powered on.

So, now I have a great computer, that likely always was a great computer, and any and all problems (at least thus far) were entirely due to the fact that not one of the three of us realized that I was trying to start the PC with the wrong button.

Duh.

It's interesting how much of a leap this PC really is for me. In some ways it's the little things, such as the fact that until I was actually using it I had no idea how many websites are designed to work best with Vista. Just surfing around the web I've discovered things I'd never seen or at least noticed before on some of the sites I've visited in the past with XP or the old Mac I was using for the last six months.

In other ways, it's the big stuff. Apparently, I made a pretty good choice in picking Fallout 3 as my first top-line game purchase. I'm having a blast with it, and hey, there's just a certain amount of real geek pride to be had when you see the game auto-detect your hardware and adjust itself to "Ultra High Quality Graphics". There's an even further sense of it when you play that game and there's not a hitch, not moment of frame rate loss, nothing that could detract from the experience of the game itself.

That's exactly what I was looking for when I decided to buy a new PC, and it's exactly what I got from Cyberpower. The only remaining issue I have with this company and the quality of their work is that no one there seemed to know that I (by myself and at their techs direction) was trying to start the computer incorrectly. As I said above, I can easily understand how this mistake could be made because there's no indication of this button in the manual for the case. I made the very same mistake myself. Then again, I'm the customer and as such my knowledge and expertise is always questionable. They're supposed to be the experts.

Aside from that, I'm happy, very happy in fact, with my Cyberpower PC. I got exactly the kind of computer I wanted at a price I could afford. If not for this one minor issue that unfortunately took a month to correct I would be giving Cyberpower a near-perfect rating.

And here's the most direct and honest assessment of Cyberpower and their product I can make:

When the time comes that I am once again looking to buy a new PC, I will go to CyberpowerPC.com first and I would buy from them again without a moment's hesitation.

Having been a Customer Service Representative (though not a tech), I know that there's not a CSR out there who hasn't had at least one "duh" moment. Personally, I've had quite a few. They did their best with the information they had, and I'm not in any way angry with them. Mainly I'm annoyed because it wasn't a real problem that needed actual fixing but rather just having better information on the hardware made available to their techs would have saved both Cyberpower and myself a lot of time and aggravation. At least, I'm sure that after reading this they'll never make this same mistake again with any other customers.

On a ten-scale, I give my experience with Cyberpower and their product an 8 out of 10, with a point being deducted for the button issue and a point for the difficulty in reaching the techs and CSR staff at times. I emailed Mike after discovering the new button worked, telling him not to bother with the faceplate, but he apparently hasn't checked his email in at least two days and sent it out earlier today.

As for me, well there's whole new vistas for me explore now with my new PC (pun intended). These days, it seems rarer and rarer that I find myself completely satisfied with anything I buy, on or offline, but now that the issue I was having is solved, I've yet to have a real problem or to be dissatisfied in any way with my new PC. It took a little longer than I'd have liked, but in the end I got exactly what I paid for, and exactly what what I wanted.

In the end, I'm happy. The long path to get here will eventually be forgotten, but my happiness and satisfaction with my new PC will (presumably) continue on for a long time to come, and I wholeheartedly recommend Cyberpower to anyone looking for an affordable and capable gaming PC.

The New NJ Trans Driver License Regs: A Step Forward, If You Can Afford To Take It

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:02:57 GMT

Last Friday, I drove down to New Jersey Motor Vehicle Department headquarters in Trenton and tried to take advantage of the new, less oppressive identity regulations for gender markers on New Jersey driver licenses. I got a pretty rude awakening when I arrived, though. When this new regulation was released, everything we were told about it led one to believe that all that would be required to change the gender marker on a New Jersey driver's license in the future was a signed affidavit attesting to the fact that the driver intended to live in a certain gender identity and the change was not for fraudulent purposes.

Seems perfectly reasonable, doesn't it? It did to me too...until I actually tried to do it. I was handed a form that required a gender specialist signoff stating that they believe my gender identity to be either male or female and for that to continue for the foreseeable future. If this form had been handed to me even as little as six months ago, I would have had no problem getting it signed. The problem is that Dr. Aviva Nubel, the gender specialist who I'd seen for six years, the one gender specialist on the planet who could credibly testify to my gender identity, has moved out west and effectively dropped off the radar. Since Dr. Nubel treated many transpeople in New Jersey and surrounding states for decades, it's likely that I'm far from the only New Jersey transperson in this predicament right now.

Now I have to go to another gender specialist and spend who knows how much more before this new doctor who I've never met will sign the paper. The real-world result of these new regulations is that I've now got a whole new set of expenses to worry about at a time when I can least afford them.

Of course, I'll end up paying it, whatever it is. How could I not? Hopefully unemployment will at least get me far enough to get that paper signed. I'm probably not going to be able to establish a real ongoing relationship with a gender specialist for a while, at least not until I've got a decent job. My car is going to be repaired soon so hopefully (key word) that won't be an issue for all that much longer, but it's still going to be an additional expense that I really just don't need right now.

And then, there's the other part of all this. On the one hand, I know I should probably be grateful that things are easier than they were, and yet, on the other hand, it's hard for me to feel gratitude when the state is still saying to me and every other transsexual in New Jersey that unlike as in every other case involving attesting to the truth of presented information, my word as a citizen isn't good enough to attest to my own gender identity.

My sworn word is good enough to testify in court, vote, join the military and kill for my country (if I were still young enough), enter into a legally-binding contract, and on and on. Even a convicted mass murderer can be legally sworn in to testify in a court of law and then be held responsible for the truth of his testimony.Yet, as a transperson my own sworn word must be backed up by that of a gender specialist when I am testifying to the veracity of my own gender identity.

This, to me, is the greatest insult of all, perhaps even greater than the surgery requirement this new policy replaces. The old policy relied mainly upon the simple presence or absence of certain physical parts. The new policy presupposes that a transsexual person cannot trusted to know his or her own mind, that their assertion of their own gender identity must be backed up by someone else.

Let's dig even deeper. Obviously, it's not possible for one person to truly know the mind of another, no matter how intelligent they are or how many degrees they may hold. One can argue that a competent mental heath professional could certify someone sane or insane, but can they really know their patient well enough to be truly certain of that patient's internal gender identity and be able to certify it to the state? And if we allow for that to be possible, for someone else to be able to certify such an intensely and deeply-held personal aspect of another individual, how is it reasonable to presume that the assertation of the individual in question is any less reliable than that of the professional?

I guess my true core issue here is one of class. This new policy, while far easier to deal with for some, is still an unreasonably high hurdle for low-income transpeople, those who can't afford the services of a gender specialist to obtain that signature on the form. Thus the ability to change the gender marker on one's driver's license in New Jersey remains the sole purview of those who can afford to pay out-of-pocket for expensive professional care that most employee insurance plans don't cover.

I did six years of it when I was working and making a decent paycheck. Now the one person who could certify that is gone and I must start from scratch, all because the State of New Jersey will not take me at my word as it does myself and every other citizen in every other case where one might be called to offer sworn testimony.

For those who can't afford to pay a gender specialist and don't have access to one through other means, there's no practical difference between the old policy and the new one. For those who slip through the cracks because of lack of access to outside proof of gender identity, proper legal recognition remains just as unobtainable in the State of New Jersey as it ever was.

One might think I blame Governor Corzine, our community activists, or the motor vehicle department for this failure. I do not, not in any way. The new policy is indeed a quantum leap forward in some ways. It makes life easier for a lot of people, but not for enough people. It doesn't eliminate the high cost of legal acknowledgment for transsexuals in New Jersey, it simply lowers that cost somewhat so more middle class transfolks are able to afford it. Many of those on the lower end of the income scale will remain without access to proper and accurate legal identification.

There's no doubt that Governor Corzine's heart is in the right place. He's earned not only my vote but also my respect and gratitude for the way he's stood up for LGBT rights in New Jersey during his tenure as our state's chief executive. There's also no doubt that there were the best of intentions in mind when these new regulations were created. The problem is that there's still an undue burden being imposed exclusively upon transgender New Jersey citizens for no good reason, in the service of no compelling state interest.

How can anyone, regardless of their level of education and training, understand the specific inner workings of an individual's mind better than that person themselves? Unless that person has been certified incompetant (and in which case, why would they be applying for a driver's license anyway?), why shouldn't that same sworn personal certification that's accepted as legally-binding in a court of law and in all other legal matters have the same weight when certifying one's own gender identity? In the end, is there truly anyone other than the individual in question who can possibly certify their own gender identity with any real credibility?

For those who would argue that there's the possibility of fraud here, I'd respond that there's that possibility each and every time someone puts their signature to a legal document, and there are laws proscribing legal penalties for such crimes already on the books. For an adult citizen who has not been declared legally incompetant, their signature on a sworn statement declaring their own gender identity should be considered no less valid and no less legally-binding than any other legal document they may sign. To do otherwise is to set transgender citizens apart from other New Jersey citizens, defining us as different from everyone else, and then denying us equal protection and consideration under the law based solely upon that difference.

I know there are some who would say that this is best we can do and we should be thankful for whatever small victories we can manage. I don't disagree that we should honor and laud the gains we make and those who help us achieve them, but I also know that our true goal has to be not less discrimination but no discrimination at all. If not, then we have no real goals and we will always be settling for second-class citizenship.

Here in New Jersey, a significant step has been taken that will help many transsexual New Jerseyans live their lives facing less discrimination. Now it's time to take the next step and guarantee that benefit to all transsexual New Jersey citizens, not just the middle and upper classes.

And So, It's Wednesday

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:24:37 GMT

Yeah, I know...big freaking deal. Well, it kinda is actually, at least for me.

My new PC did indeed ship out Monday, and FedEx tracking shows it now making its way from California back to New Jersey with an expected delivery date of Friday. I knew I was right when I wrote it a few days ago: The closer it gets to delivery day, the more anxious I become. Just can't help it.

The Great PC Purchase: Interlude

Sat, 30 May 2009 18:45:19 GMT

So, by now my new PC has finished (and presumably passed) quality control testing and should be shipped back to me on Monday. It seems they've taken a bit longer with it in QC testing than they did last time. My feeling is that Danny, the tech who's been handling my repair, knows I wasn't too happy (he's read the previous parts of this review) and is going out of his way to make sure there's no problem this time. Needless to say, that's just fine with me.

More interesting is the flaming I've been getting on the Cyberpower forum from a couple of the members. Of course, these people, almost all of them men, have no idea I'm trans, but one of them attacked me in a way that definitely has a certain demeaning, hypermasuline, misogynist tone. His issues mainly seem to revolve around the inclusion of my feelings in my review, inferring that I'm not credible because I'm writing about the actual experience of buying this new PC rather than just spouting technical gobbledygook as he'd apparently prefer. In other words, he basically attacked me for for being a woman and writing like one. The other one accused me of using the fact that I'm writing a review as a way of currying favor with Cyberpower. As little sense as that makes given the problems I've had, this one seems to believe that I'm somehow looking for special treatment. Seems just a bit too late for that. Most of the people at the Cyberpower forum are not jerks, and in fact are friendly, pleasant, and helpful. It's just these two, at least so far.

So, if all goes as I hope, I'll finally have a new PC to play with by the end of next week. I can't wait...and yet, I'm forcing myself not to get too worked up about it, just in case I'm disappointed again. In all honesty, I believe that the folks at Cyberpower will do everything in their power to make sure there are no problems this time, but I can't help but be a little guarded. The first time I let myself be like a kid awaiting her big birthday present (it actually did arrive on May 7th, the day before my 47th birthday).

And yeah, I can't help it. I've been shopping online for games to get once I have the PC. I've already got my first purchase picked out, Fallout 3, but I'm not spending a cent on any new games until I have my new PC functional. I've already made that mistake once, and while it's not the end of the world, it is kind of a pain. I subscribed to Maximum PC magazine a few weeks ago and I just got the first issue today. It includes a CD filled with what will probably be some pretty useful stuff once I actually have a computer that will run it. It doesn't really take away from my enjoyment or the usefulness of the magazine all that much, but next time (if there is a next time) I'll probably make it a point to time my subscription to when I'm certain I can take fuller advantage of the content.

I have to remember that I can't go too crazy, though. Once I have the new PC (presumably in working condition), I'll have plenty to keep me busy for at least a while. One big game that I'm told holds as much as 100 hours of playtime just in the original game and many more hours with the available add-on content should hold me for a while at least. Plus, there's all the stuff that I haven't been able to use in months, like my podcast creator and other audio recording programs. I've invested a lot in PC software, and a lot of it is still useful just six months after I had to stop using it. I plan to recover as much as I can through "ghosting" my old hard drive onto one of the new ones. I'm going to need Robyn for this (she's got the program and knows how to use it), but hopefully it won't be too long before she can find the time. In addition, some software makers allow paid users to re-acquire their software after a crash or operating system reinstall and I'll be able to use that ability to regain at least a few key programs without waiting until Robyn has time to help me.

It just feels weird, ya know? This new PC is a very big deal for me and yet, I'm doing everything I can to keep myself from getting too excited about it because I don't want to risk being disappointed again. How fucking pathetic is that? I want to be optimistic, but to do so would require me open myself up to possibly being let down again. I'm generally not this emotionally fragile, nor do I want to be, nor, in the end, do I really intend to be. I've had far bigger letdowns in my life than this, just as every transsexual has.

If I'm honest with myself, the truth is that I already know that by the time it's due to arrive (probably next Friday if it's shipped on schedule) I'll be every bit as anxious as I was the first time.

One more week of Mac hell. One more week...I hope.

The Great PC Purchase: One Big Problem

Fri, 29 May 2009 18:42:13 GMT

I can't believe I forgot to post this here. If you read the first part you know that I'd originally intended this review to be in two parts, but due to unforseen circumstances I'll discuss below, I've decided it's best to break it down into multiple parts. This part was written about 3 weeks ago. I'm going to be writing and posting something on this shortly, but I realized I hadn't posted this here yet and I thought at least some would be interested. And hey, besides, it sets up the next part which I can promise you is going to have a bit more drama in it, and probably not the kind of drama you think.

My Cyberpower PC arrived by FedEx three days ago, and of course I was pretty excited. It looked terrific when I took it out of the box and the wiring, internal components, and the case looked picture perfect, even better than I'd anticipated. All the manuals and software were included and neatly packaged. I was completely thrilled with my new PC...right up until I hooked it up and tried to start it.

When I pressed the switch on the power supply I heard my speakers power up, but when I pressed the power button on the front of the machine I got nothing. No sound, no lights, no nothing. My long-awaited new PC which I'd spent months saving for and weeks picking out was dead on arrival.

The next thing I did was to unplug it and recheck all the connections I'd checked before, hoping perhaps I'd either missed something or I'd inadvertantly disconnected something myself. When this brought no results, I started a new thread in Cyberpower's customer service forum describing what had happened in the hope that someone there might have a possible solution.

Many forum members offered ideas on what might be the cause and several things to test and check. I tried them all with no success, with the single exception of a test done with by cross connecting two terminals on the connector between the power supply and the motherboard with a paperclip. I tried but the connector was tightly attached to its port and I was afraid I might damage something by accident if I used too much force trying to get it out.

The following day, one of the customer service agants, JohnY, posted in the thread asking me to send him a private message through the forum with my phone number and purchase ID number. I did so right away and we arranged for him to call me early the following day.

JohnY had me do the paperclip test I'd been skittish about doing myself, but with a little extra force and wiggling the connector I'd been afraid to unplug came loose. For the first time since I'd had it, I saw lights come on and the cooling fans begin to spin. Once I'd removed the paperclip, however, these parts immediately went dead again. This indicated that the problem was probably not the power supply, as I and many on the forum had initally suspected.

JohnY told me that he believed that since the power supply had passed the paperclip test it was likely that the motherboard was defective. He asked me if I felt I could install a new motherboard myself if he were to send me one, but told him that while I'm capable of minor hardware adjustments such as switching out a video card or perhaps a hard drive, I did not feel comfortable attempting to disassemble and reassemble an entire motherboard with all of the parts attached to it.

At this point, I knew I had two options: I could send the entire package and contents back for a refund, in accordance with their 30-day money-back guarantee, or I could send back just the unit itself and Cyberpower would do the replacement and send it back, with a promised turnaround time of 3 weeks.

It was a tough choice to make but I was impressed with the way it was set up with the single exception of the apparently faulty motherboard or switch. I also knew that if I chose to get a refund I'd likely have to wait a while for the money to be credited back. Once that happened, I'd have to start the process of buying a new PC all over again, and I'd probably end up spending more if I bought elsewhere.

After a moments consideration, I was still on the fence about what to do, but JohnY told me that if I sent it back for repair Cyberpower would cover the shipping. I decided to accept JohnY's offer and send the PC back for repair. I told JohnY that I was willing to do this once and once only, and if the PC returned to me still non-functional I would be insisting on a full refund.

I also knew that if Cyberpower were unwilling to accept the PC back for a full refund once a repair had been tried unsuccessfully, I could still contact the credit card company I'd used and ask for a reversal of charges on the basis of delivery of a defective product and an unsuccessful attempt to make the necessary repairs. Given that, I decided that sending back the PC for repair was worth a try.

After speaking with JohnY, I repacked the PC for shipping and awaited the promised shipping label. Much later in the day, I received a call from Mike, one of Cyberpower's technicians, who wanted me to try more things to see if we could get it working. I declined his offer as I'd already packed up the PC in anticipation of receiving the shipping label and getting the package to the local FedEx as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, even though it had been promised to arrive much earlier, the label still hadn't arrived by the time Mike called.

Because it was so late in the day when the label actually showed up in my email, about fifteen minutes after Mike's call, by the time I got the package to FedEx I'd missed that day's pickup and now my PC will now sit there until it's picked up for delivery on Monday. Considering that my birthday plans were ruined because I had to spend the day at home awaiting this label and on top of that I now had an extra three day wait because it hadn't not been sent when promised, I was in a particularly foul mood by then.

While I did make the choice to go with the repair, since then I've been reconsidering whether or not I made the right choice. Upon reflection, I guess the thing that bothers me most about this is Cyberpower's quality control or perhaps lack thereof.

While I do have a good amount of general informational knowledge about PC's and PC components from my time as a salesperson and customer service agent for electronics sellers, I really don't know much about actually building a PC or installing anything more complicated than a video or sound card.

That said, from my layperson's perspective it's difficult to understand how a problem as basic as a PC being unable to start and boot up could possibly have been missed by Cyberpower's QC testers. I mean, I just don't get how a problem that was evident to me about three seconds after I pushed the power button could have escaped their detection, or how this PC could possibly have passed any QC test at all if it could not even be turned on.

I'm forced to ask the obvious questions: Is it even reasonable to assume that this PC actually went through any quality control testing at all? And if it did, how is it possible for it to have passed when it could not even be powered up?

This, more than anything else, bothers me the most. It's what causes me to reconsider if sending it back for repair and then having the success of that repair verified by the very same people who were responsible for assuring its proper operation the first time around was really a smart idea on my part.

I'm now far less confident in Cyberpower than I was when I wrote the previous part of this review. If I'd had a little more time to think this through I might well have chosen the refund. I've made my choice though, and I'll give Cyberpower the benefit of the doubt as far as defective parts go. I know defects and problems like mine happen all the time with retail electronics of just about every kind, but I also know that this is exactly the kind of thing a Quality Control team is supposed to be able to reliably detect in order to catch these kinds of problems before the merchandise is delivered to the customer.

Three more weeks at minimum I'll now have to wait for a working PC, and a lot longer if I must get a refund and start from scratch. In either case, the bottom line is that I put my trust in Cyberpower, and I'll now spend the next three weeks or so wondering if I made the right move.

One thing is for certain: If they let me down a second time, there will be no third chance. My (non-gamer) friends are all mocking me for buying from this company, telling me I should have bought from HP or Dell like they did. They think Cyberpower is just yet another slick-looking but dubious online seller and that I was suckered by all the pretty pictures into buying from an unreliable company. Sadly, at this point I find myself unable to credibly disagree with their assessment.

I hope they're wrong. I hope my first instinct about Cyberpower was correct, that when this PC returns to me the problem will have been fixed, I will have a great PC, and I'll feel that my money was well spent.

That's my hope. The problem is that I can no longer honestly say it's my expectation. I'm keeping an open mind right now because really, what other choice do I have?

This review will have a final chapter no matter what the end result. I hope Cyberpower will enable me to end it on a positive note. I really do. A positive outcome would be best for everyone. That said, there's no longer any margin for error here as far as I'm concerned.

My trust and my goodwill are now used up. Once I get it back, I will either have a properly working PC or I will have my money refunded. There are no longer any other options as far as I'm concerned.

I don't like having to deal with it this way and dwell on such negativity, but in the end it all boils down to one thing:

Right now, I'm just not happy, not happy at all.

Rethinking Barney Frank

Sun, 24 May 2009 18:29:04 GMT

As any LGBT who follows American politics knows, with the Democrats running things in Congress and Obama in the White House it's supposedly a new day in America for LGBT people and rights. At the same time, however, we also know that a lot of the Democrats in Washington are the very same people who've been there for years, even decades. When you're talking about politics, though, you know that in the end it's not as much about which individuals happen to be in which seats in Congress as it is about how they are likely to behave, and especially vote, in a given political situation. Such is the case, I believe, with Congressman Barney Frank.

I've never met or interviewed Barney Frank. In fact, the closest I've ever come is when we literally nearly ran into each other at a National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention in Brooklyn a few years ago. For all of the public complaining and attacking Frank's politics I'd been doing at the time, when I suddenly and unexpectedly came around a corner rushing toward a seminar and found myself face-to-face with the man I couldn't think of anything coherent to say to him until hours later. Looking back, perhaps it's just as well.

Over the years, Congressman Frank hasn't helped his own case much. His gruff manner and his willingness to take what many, including myself, saw as the easy way out, seeking to gain rights exclusively for wealthier and more politically potent gays and lesbians and his willingness, perhaps even eagerness, to achieve that goal by sacrificing those very same rights for transgender people to help entice the votes of skittish Democrats in Congress not only left me with a bad taste in my mouth just in general, but also sent the message that when push comes to shove, Frank believed that some animals are indeed more equal than others.

And then came 2007. Frank wrote and introduced the very first-ever transgender-inclusive version of ENDA that summer, but by late September and into early October of that year, trying to follow where Frank, the Human Rights Campaign, and other left-wing political players actually were on the issue of protecting transgender Americans from discrimination could give you whiplash. One minute Frank introduces the furthest-reaching federal anti-discrimination bill protecting transgender people in the history of American federal politics, the next he's on the floor of the House asking members to vote against that very same bill, telling his colleagues that transgender people who believe they should be protected against discrimination in the workplace like other Americans are living in Oz and belittling the ideal of equality for transgender Americans by making jokes about his weight. While his oratory may have seemed entertaining to some of his Congressional colleagues, to the average transgender person, probably unemployed and almost certainly facing at least some sort of discrimination as part of their daily life, Frank's wit and sense of humor probably did not play well at all.

It's not at all surprising that over time transpeople have come to see Barney Frank as every bit as much a villain in the ENDA saga as the Human Rights Campaign which quickly and enthusiastically supported his every move, right up to and including his stripping of transgender protections from the bill. For over a year afterward, transgender people and our allies have worked doggedly to promote inclusion in ENDA, lobbying Congress, making our views known in the media, protesting the Human RIghts Campaign at their dinners and other events. Finally last summer, in the heat of the Presidential campaign, Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama was repeatedly expressing his support for the inclusion of protections for gender identity and expression in ENDA. The tide began to turn yet again, and Barney Frank was among the very first seeking to capitalize on it.

At the Congressional hearing on transgender rights and equality he was instrumental in organizing, Frank was just about everything we could have hoped for. He was sharp, he was funny, he was devastatingly on-point, every bit the committed advocate we've always needed him to be. The rest of the Democrats in attendance were equally supportive, particularly Committee Chairman Rob Andrews, who deftly eviscerated Alliance Defense Fund Senior Council Glen Lavy's religion-based arguments against ensuring equal rights and treatment for transgender people. Most of all, what that hearing showed everyone, laymen and polititican alike, was that the rights of transgender people have significant and increasing support in Congress.

As angry as many of us are or have been with Barney Frank in the past, it's in these last several months since the prospect of an Obama and Democratic Party landslide became the popular expectation rather than simply a hope, that Barney Frank apparently decided that the time was right to begin in earnest the process of formally introducing transpeople to Congress as a valid minority constituency as well as one in need of legal protection from discrimination. He arranged the hearing, he spoke at the hearing, he's made positive statements in the media, he co-founded the LGBT Congressional Caucus, he's put a transgender person in a high-profile position on his staff. He's done pretty much everything you'd hope someone in his position would do to make sure that when anti-discrimination legislation is debated on and (hopefully) passed in this Congress it will be transgender-inclusive.

Anyone who reviews the history with a objective, critical eye comes to understand something about Barney Frank. We may not always like what he does. We may see him as someone who tweaks his public positions on certain issues to suit the politics of the moment a little too often for our tastes. But Barney Frank has proven remarkably consistent in at least one thing: He goes for as much as he thinks he can get.

If Barney Frank honestly didn't think transgender inclusion was viable, I doubt he'd be lobbying for it now. With yet another set of Lobby Days approaching, Congress will hear from transpeople again at just the right time, just before it's time to start voting on our rights again. When you step out and take a look at the bigger picture, the way all of these events have unfolded so neatly in concert with Democratic political successes, you wonder if perhaps this wasn't Frank's ultimate plan all along.

Considering that no one really expected any significant progress on LGBT rights to be made as long as Bush and his veto pen remained in office, it makes sense to believe that the strategy to get hate crimes and ENDA passed centered around getting them actually passed into law this year, in this Congress, with this President.

Barney Frank is a consummate politician. It's important to remember that this is not a bad thing. It means he knows how to get things done in Congress. It doesn't mean he was right to dump transpeople out of ENDA in '07, but it may mean that doing so was part of a strategy on his part which may well lead to our inclusion when these bills finally do become law.

I know, I know, after everything we've seen it's hard to consider giving Barney Frank the benefit of the doubt, particularly when it involves tacit approval of the '07 ENDA strategy. Yet, maybe it's the right thing to do. And before anyone gets on their high horse, let's also remember this: It was the anger of the trans community and the response to the stripping of the bill which got the trans community out and active at a level we've never seen before. Think about it: If you wanted to inspire more transpeople to be out, proud and politically active, how would you go about it? How about if you were a member of Congress who wanted to ask your colleagues to support transgender rights but didn't want to have to ask them to risk anything else in order to do so?

And then of course there's that other question: If this truly was Frank's plan, was HRC and their support for the non-inclusive bill part of that plan?

Yeah I know. It's enough to make your head explode. I have no way of knowing if I'm completely right, but I do believe I can't be completely wrong either. By the time the 2009 Christmas recess rolls around, I expect we'll all know the answer.

The Great PC Purchase: Ordered and Waiting

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:11:55 GMT

It’s now been six days since I ordered my new PC from CyberPower. It’s due to ship on May 1st and I’m looking forward to it like a kid expecting a new toy. For some people, buying a new PC can be a relatively minor thing, but for me it’s been an involved and intricate process to get from interested potential buyer to customer awaiting delivery.

Whether it’s blogging, my Internet radio show, my addiction to video games, or socialization and networking, a significant portion of my life happens through my computer in one way or another. When it became time to get a new PC, I knew I wanted to get something good, something that would serve me well in every aspect of my life. Since I’m not an expert on the hardware or software technology of PC’s I’m writing this from what I’ll call a “semi-knowledgeable user” perspective. By that I mean someone who knows enough to at least have a basic idea of what they want as a user (gaming machine, media center, commercial graphics workstation, etc.) but doesn’t know enough (or perhaps have the desire) to physically build a PC themselves.

I’m not going to get bogged down talking about benchmarks, clock speeds, or other such technobabble. Not being a true techno-junkie but rather more of an experience-junkie, in the end I really don’t care if my processor or video card is the best or the fastest on the market. What I do care about is being able to squeeze the maximum amount of usefulness and enjoyment from the games I play and the software I use. For me, as I expect it is for a lot of us, it’s all about the user experience. The hardware is just what I need to get that experience at its best possible presentation quality and keep it going. It’s the difference between transportation and destination. To my way of thinking, better hardware stats and capabilities are only truly important or useful in as much as they also represent an enhanced user experience.

The Hunt Begins

I originally approached this quest from an entirely different perspective on what I wanted than where I eventually ended up. When my last PC began dying part-by-part, my first plan was to buy the parts and a friend and I would build my new PC together. This idea quickly fell through, however, because right now Robyn’s too involved with school to really participate, and there’s no way I could ever build the thing myself without her help. I do know a little about computer hardware, probably more than most, just from selling PCs and doing some minor hardware upgrading, but by no stretch am I technically expert enough to completely build a PC myself from scratch. I didn’t want to wait until Robyn was free, so I moved on to exploring the next logical option: buying a pre-built system.

My first stops were HP and Dell, just to see what they were offering, but neither site really impressed me much, certainly not enough to consider paying the prices they ask for their middle and upper-range machines. I’d decided early on that if I was going to invest the time, money, and effort into buying a new PC for the first time in my life (instead of rebuilding yet another hand-me-down as I always had before) then it was going to be the kind of PC I’ve always wanted, one that was powerful and capable enough that I wouldn’t have to go through the video game racks checking the system requirements on every game I was interested in. I don’t need to have the very fastest thing out there, but I do want the kind of computer that lets me walk into the video game store, pick out a game, and the only question I’ll have to worry about isn’t whether my computer can handle the game but whether I can.

Robyn got herself a sweet Alienware just before Dell gobbled the company up and she’s very happy with it. Based on her experience and what I’d been reading online, I decided I wanted to go with a “boutique builder”, a smaller company that will custom-build you a PC to your specifications, the kind of seller that’s often favored by gamers looking for the fastest and most capable setups. There are a number of these places across the country, many of which sell online. I spent several days checking out many of these sites, but I quickly discovered that the vast majority of these boutiques were simply out of my price range. Then there were others that just made me a little nervous, too nervous to risk my $1300 on. Still others were close enough to my budget to consider but just didn’t have the choices I was looking for.

To make matters worse, the computer I was using to do all this research, the same one I’m writing this from right now, an ancient Mac I’ve been consigned to for about two months now, is terribly slow. I mean really slow, like “click on a link and your browser freezes for thirty or forty seconds before the page loads” slow.

I decided to go back to some of the sites I had previously visited. Returning to IBUYPOWER.com, which is priced roughly about the same level as CyberPower, I was completely turned off. I have no idea whatsoever if they are actually a good company or not, but their website, everything about it, just screamed “cheap” to me. That’s not “cheap” as in “inexpensive”, but “cheap” as in “shoddily-made” and “slapped together”. I know it was simply my emotional impression of the website and had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they actually make a good product (I have no idea), but when you’re considering dropping a lot of money on something, particularly a high-ticket item, those kinds of feelings can definitely have an impact on your sense of a site’s credibility and ultimately the decision to buy there, especially when you’re dealing with a company for the first time.

This PC, by at least a factor of ten (maybe more), is the most expensive thing I’ve ever purchased online. When I’m spending this much money on anything I’m not going to be spending it with a company that doesn’t make me feel at least reasonably confident that I’m making a good purchase from a reliable seller. Buying online, spending money on something you can’t actually see or touch before you buy, can be difficult enough when you’re buying clothes or video games, but something like this can be even tougher.

One major advantage to doing business at a brick and mortar store is that you can usually at least look at and play with a display model to get some idea of what to expect when you get it home. Shopping online means you only get to see what can be seen on your computer screen, the rest must be taken on faith. In other words, you must pay first and then find out if what you bought is worth the money you paid for it. Add in the fact that in many cases you’re dealing with a company that’s physically thousands of miles away from where you live, adding the risk of long-distance shipping into the mix, and you need to be able to muster a certain amount of faith that the company you’re dealing with is going to deliver what they promise and offer good customer service. There were those that offered more consumer confidence and those that offered better prices, but none of the sites I’d visited offered both at the same time to any degree. Frustrated and increasingly resigned to being forced settle for something less than I really wanted, I decided to revisit the CyberPower website.

Target Sighted

CyberPower was among the first of the boutique sites I’d found while Googling, but the flashy front page of the site caused me to quickly write it off the first time around. I spent a lot of time at other boutique sites trying various combinations of components or “builds”, but nothing I liked at any of these places came realistically close to my budget. It became clear that if I was to buy from one of the more high-end boutiques I was going to have to put my plans on hold for a while and save up some more money or go with something that was really less than what I wanted.

The first thing I noticed, of course, was the prices. CyberPower was less expensive than almost any of the other boutique sites I’d been to, putting it on a par with what it would have cost if I’d stuck with my original plan. CyberPower’s website does have a certain definite commercial Internet slickness about it, but it doesn’t exude the same “cheap” vibe I got from IBUYPOWER. I spent some time trying some Intel Quad and i7 builds, checking out the specials, and realizing that no matter what CyberPower base model I chose to work from I’d want to customize heavily. I also thought I had a basic idea of what I wanted, though later I discovered that in reality I didn’t have a clue.

It was the lower prices that drew me back to CyberPower. What kept me there and eventually made me a customer were two things: The first was the discovery that I actually could have the kind of computer I wanted at a price I could afford if I went with this company. The other was that CyberPower has a message board where I’ve been able to interact with fellow CyberPower customers, get advice on my build, learn a lot about how to choose the right components, how to test the system when it arrives, and a lot more. It may be a silly thing in and of itself, but CyberPower’s forum and the people and information on it helped me become more comfortable with the idea of buying an expensive piece of equipment from a company I’d never dealt with before.

Also impressive was the fact that in just about every case where I saw a complaint voiced on their board or in other tech discussion areas on the web, a CyberPower representative had responded, offering to help resolve the problem. Of course it’s impossible to know what happened as a result of most of these contacts, but it’s encouraging to see the effort being made so consistantly.

I also read the comments of some pretty unhappy customers. However, when factored in with the company’s reasonably high marks with Reseller Ratings and the Better Business Bureau and the fact that many of the complaints I read were spread out chronologically over the last several years with the rating trend running toward higher scores and better service over time, it seems likely to me that what’s in play here is the classic business reality that it’s almost always going to be those who have an issue, not the happy and satisfied customers, who are going to tend to be the most publicly vocal. Through the message board I’ve met both kinds of customers and that’s been very useful in making a final decision to buy from CyberPower.

Now, with that decision made, it was time to figure out exactly what I was going to buy.

Making a Monster

Like probably many who choose to build their own PC online must do when starting out, most if not all of the builds I’d tried up that point had been with Intel processors and Nvidia graphics cards. I’d had experience with both brands in previous machines I’d owned, and I was very happy with their performance and comfortable buying those brands again. Doing similar builds at CyberPower, I soon found myself making some fairly significant concessions on speed and capability in order to bring the machine to within what I had to spend on it. It was clear that going Quad or i7 Intel and Nvidia within my budget of about $1300 was going to limit me to mid-range in terms of capability and speed.

Throughout the process, I bounced many ideas off the CyberPower forum membership and received some excellent advice, personal build advice as well as featured forum posts which offered good common-sense advice on choosing components and building a system. Also very helpful were the ongoing discussions about various builds and component combinations and how they were working out for those who were already using them. Over time, I began questioning some of my own presumptions, such as presupposing that a more popular, well-advertised, and more expensive Intel would automatically be significantly better for my purposes than a comparable AMD model or that an Nvidia graphics card would necessarily be better for what I wanted to do with my PC than a comparable but somewhat less expensive ATI.

Eventually, I arrived at where I am now, where I should have been all along: Getting the fastest and most capable PC possible within my budget. My final build, the PC I actually ordered, features a top-of-the-line AMD quad-core processor (Phenom II X4 940) and a near-top-of-the-line ATI video card (Radeon HD 4870). If I’d gone with Intel and Nvidia I wouldn’t have been able to touch a system with similar capabilities at CyberPower for what I had to spend, and if I’d gone elsewhere and done the same I’d likely have gotten even less for my money.

I decided to build the system with a power supply that’s not going to be powerful enough to run two video cards together if I should ever decide to do so. The other components of my system are compatible with doing so in Crossfire mode, but I’d have to upgrade that power supply unit before I install another card. I made that sacrifice knowingly and intentionally in order to help keep within my budget, and for now, I’m ok with that. Considering that software that’s being programmed with quad-core processors and the latest video card technology in mind is really just beginning to reach the marketplace now, I’m pretty confident that I’ll be happy with what I’ll have for at least some time to come.

Waiting Time

Since I’ve placed my order, CyberPower has updated my order status screen to reflect their receipt of my order and an expected ship date of May 1st, six days later than the time estimate posted on the site before I placed my order. This doesn’t really bother me very much. I’d much rather wait a few extra days if that’s what they need. As a veteran of both face-to-face and phone retail sales with a fair chunk of that time spent selling PC’s and related products, I know the pitfalls of electronics retailing, and one is that the more complex the equipment you’re selling, the more possible it is that there’s going to be some sort of problem between the time the company takes the order for the item and the time the customer has it installed and working. Some customers have called CyberPower’s quality control into question while others have lauded it, and if the company feels it needs to take a few more days with my PC, I’m ok with that.

I called CyberPower yesterday to check on the status of my order. The representative who took my call was unable to tell me the status of my order and asked me to call back and speak to someone named Danny the next day. Not quite what I was hoping to hear, but also not necessarily reason to be concerned either. I called and quickly got through to Danny this morning and he confirmed to me that my order is on schedule with no problems reported. A check of the order status screen reveals nothing new except a notation that I called to check on the status of my order.

So far, I’m pretty happy with the way things have gone thus far. I’m getting the kind of PC I set out to buy, even though I ended up making some major changes to my personal definition of exactly what that means. I came pretty close, but I didn’t quite break the bank doing it. I’m happy with my choices, comfortable with the price I paid, and at least reasonably confident that there’s no reason to anticipate any problems. In all honesty, I’m not sure I’d be saying that now if I’d done this any other way.

Of course, the real proof is in the yet-to-be-delivered pudding. Right now, all I have is an order, a ship date, and anticipation. Assuming there’s no major problems between now and then, the second part of this saga will be written after my order arrives and I get a chance to actually experience and judge this PC and this company’s product for myself.

The Great PC Purchase: Getting Close

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:21:25 GMT

I’m still figuring out exactly what I want in my PC before I take the big plunge. The problem is that it seems like that answer changes almost daily.

In an odd sort of way, it’s almost like playing a puzzle video game. I’ve got a certain amount of money to spend and I have to figure out how to spend it most effectively in order to get the best result I can. I’ve decided to do the one thing that can help make things a little easier, which is wait to another week or so until I have a little bit more to spend. In the meantime, I’ve been spending a lot of time at the Cyberpower website trying different builds, trying different options to see what will give me what I want or at least close to it without breaking the bank.

Originally, I was going to go with an Intel Quad processor, then I was thinking about the new Intel i7, and now I’m leaning toward a high-end AMD. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best and fastest is nice to have, but the reality is that it’s probably more than I actually need. With money being an issue, AMD offers great speed and performance that’s not quite up to Intel’s but it’s also significantly cheaper than going the i7 or even the Intel Quad route.

Going AMD also allows me to bump up a few other components that will make for a better gaming experience, RAM, the hard drives, and of course the video card. Sound I’m not worried about. I already have a high-quality outboard sound card that I use for my show (coming back tomorrow night!) and it does just fine for everything else as well. With a top-flight processor the show will (should) sound better than ever.

After more than a week of doing these PC builds, it’s become apparent to me that if I want to go Intel I’ll have to go mid-range, but if I go AMD I can go top-of-the-line. The more I think about it, the more going AMD makes sense to me.

As you can no doubt surmise, this project has been taking up a lot of my time, and with good reason. It’s only due to an unexpected flurry of luck and circumstance that I find myself in a position to make this purchase. I seriously doubt I’ll get another opportunity to do so and if I do it probably won’t be for a very long time. Therefore, I know that I’m going to be living with the result of this decision for a long time to come at minimum.

A lot of my life and all of my (current) work depends on my computer, as well as a lot of my entertainment, some of which, like gaming, depends on having a fast and reliable PC. Simply put, I can’t afford to fuck this up. I need to make sure that I get not only what I want from this PC, but most importantly that I get what I need.

Of course, I’d also be lying my ass off if I didn’t admit that this process is also a hell of a lot of fun too. When my new PC does finally arrive and I take it out of box and set it up, the first thing I’m going to be testing isn’t going to be MSWord. I’ll load up something nice, dark, and violent with a high frame rate and see if all those expensive parts do what they’re supposed to.

And there’s something else to this that makes me a tad obsessive about getting everything right. With the exception of the time I bought a new Subaru Impreza and then defaulted on the loan (it was during my coming out period…fill in your own blanks) this is really the first time I’ve ever bought something new and expensive for myself. I know that’s probably bizarre to hear from someone who’s less than a month shy of her 47th birthday, but it’s nonetheless the truth.

More as I have it…

Power Shopping

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 05:27:05 GMT

It’s interesting that in the midst of a recession and being unemployed, I find myself in a position to be preparing to purchase a relatively big-ticket item, a new PC computer to replace the one that died on me a couple of months ago. The tough part of shopping for something like this, as you’d expect, is that money is limited. Yet, thanks to some rather well timed help I do have at least a reasonable amount to spend on this thing.

For the past week or so, I’ve been spending a lot of my Internet time surfing from site to site trying to figure out exactly what I want and how I can get the most for my money. Because I have a retail background, including a few years in electronics, I know that there have been and still are lots of rip-offs out there. There’s always the big boys. Best Buy and a few other brick-and-mortar stores as well as Dell, HP, Sony, etc.. Chances are, you’ll get good quality equipment and at least decent customer service from the big guys but you’ll also pay more and get less too.

After a week of shopping all over the net for the kind of machine I want, I have a pretty clear idea of what that is and how much I can spend on it. Fortunately, it seems that I’m at least close to being able to make them match.

I’ve been spending a lot of time going to custom gaming PC builder sites. These are sites that offer base units at various price points and you customize it by upgrading or downgrading the various system components to your liking. I’ve been picking systems, customizing to my taste (or at least within what’s affordable and not complete overkill), and then seeing if I could keep it within my own financial parameters.

Interestingly, no matter which system I choose or I seem to be coming within $100 either way of $1100 over and over. With the financial assistance help I can now expect for this project from the Bank of Mom, that figure is theoretically doable.

*****

Tonight, I went over to Todd’s to pick his brain. He and I both think that the custom shop is the way to go. We did a few builds at Cyberpower to see what would work within my budget but kept ending up around $1200 or a little more. Unless I want to wait a few more weeks (and I am seriously considering doing so) I’ll have to give up something I want on my machine in order to fit my budget.

The first thing I tried giving up was the gaming performance hard drive I wanted. When I switched it back to the standard LG that comes with the package, I noticed that my running total for the build had changed to exactly $1100. Hmm, feels kinda like fate, but I still haven’t decided if the faster HD is worth an extra couple of weeks of waiting or not. In the meantime, I keep trying to put together the ultimate build within my budgetary constraints. I only get one shot at this, so I’m content to get a hell of a lot of practice before I play for keeps.

For those who might be interested, here’s my $1100 Cyberpower build. Comments and suggestions welcome.

# *BASE_PRICE: [+859]
# CAS: Apevia X-SniperG Mid-Tower 420W Case [-3] (Black Color)
# CPU: (Sckt775)Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8500 CPU @ 3.16GHz 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache 64-bit [-40]
# CD: Sony 20X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive [+7] (BLACK COLOR)
# FAN: XtremeGear Ultra Heatpipe Cool Copper Heatsink CPU Cooling Fan (Extreme Silent at 20dBA & Overclock Proof)
# HDD: Single Hard Drive (500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
# MOTHERBOARD: EVGA 750 SLI NVIDIA 750i SLI Chipset LGA775 Supports LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,&7.1Audio
# MEMORY: 8GB (4x2GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory [+79] (Corsair XMS2 Xtreme Memory w/ Heat Spreader [+99])
# NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
# OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
# POWERSUPPLY: 800 Watts Power Supplies [+44] (CyberPowerPC XF800S Performance ATX 2.0 Power - Quad SLI Ready)
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 CORE 192 896MB 16X PCI Express [+80] (($40 off Mail-in Rebate) EVGA Powered by NVIDIA [+5])
# _PRICE: (+1100)

What We Can Learn From Rush Limbaugh

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:13:46 GMT

There's been a lot of talk lately about Rush Limbaugh's level of power and influence in the Republican Party and the conservative movement, but there's another aspect to Limbaugh's rather sudden rise from radio star to bonafide political player that hasn't been taken into account. It's not only about the influence of Rush Limbaugh on the conservative rank-and-file, it's also about the power and influence of popular media in our lives, and more specifically the power and influence of talk radio in particular. As we seek to promote our own ideologies to the public at large, there's a lot we can learn from Limbaugh's success.

Anyone who's a regular listener of talk radio knows something that most people who aren't probably don't fully appreciate as much as they should. Unlike television, where there's almost always an impenetrable barrier between presenter and audience, talk radio is a far more personal medium, and therefore is more likely than television to have a significant impact on the average person's psyche and outlook on life.

When I've heard people both inside and outside of the LGBT community complain about influence of well-known media figures like Limbaugh on popular opinion, I've always come back with the same basic response: Influential media figures and opinion-makers, no matter what kind of rhetoric they espouse or political ideology they promote, the audience they speak to, or the media they work in, don't just spring up magically from nowhere and insert themselves into the public discourse. That right must be earned, not only by hard work to become skilled enough at what they do to draw interest and credibility, but also by being willing to put themselves out there as opinion leaders, by having both the insight and the courage to say what the average person is thinking but doesn't have the courage or willingness to say it out loud themselves.

Many of the best pundits, in fact the vast majority of those who have become stars on television, got their start in radio. Personally, I don't believe this is at all a coincidence, but rather underscores the importance of talk radio as a medium to engage and influence audiences. At its most basic, the difference between television and radio punditry is in many ways the difference between talking to an audience and talking with one, but there's also more to it as well.

Most of us will never have the opportunity to get into it with Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, or Bill O'Reilly directly if they say something we find worthy of comment or debate, but your local or community radio talk show is another story entirely. When a radio host gives out his or her call-in number, at least some listeners can and usually will call in and interact with the host directly. Not only does that give the caller a sense of importance and engagement by actually becoming part of the show, perhaps even a springboard for further discussion once their own call is over, but those listeners who don't pick up the phone hear people like themselves engaging the host on their own terms and feel more a part of the show themselves, often inspiring strong feelings of ownership, community belonging, and loyality to the show, the host, and in large part, the ideas and perspectives presented.

Anyone working in media in any capacity knows that localism sells, but being local isn't only about geographic location. It's also about localism of thought, be it political ideology, common experiences such as race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender variance and identity, or any other social or political label people tend to unite behind. Those who are best at uniting like-minded thinkers under their own banners will be those who will have the greatest success as pundits in drawing loyal listeners and therefore as shapers of public opinion, and, as a result, the greatest popularity and financial success in commercial media.

The real question which any aspiring pundit seeking mainstream success must ask him or herself, of course, is how to get there, and the answer can be different for each, depending on the medium, the subject matter, the time of day their show is on, and most importantly, the audience. Rush Limbaugh doesn't speak to the same audience as Rachel Maddow, nor even is Olbermann's audience identical to Maddow's or LImbaugh's to Sean Hannity's. All of these people, as with anyone who takes on such a role, have differences in how they present the topics they speak about and their opinions on those topics to their audiences.

Aside from having not only the competency to do it well but also the good fortune of being given the opportunity to practice their craft before the largest possible audience, any and every popular and successful commercial media spokesperson of any stripe also has one other critically important skill upon which their success will eventually depend, no matter how competent they are in their subject matter or who they're speaking to: They're entertaining to watch, read, and listen to.

When you're someone like me, a person who does not reflect the face of that which is currently available in mainstream opinion media programming and you decide to attempt to make a career in that field, you quickly discover something that, once understood, becomes the bridge between dedicated follower, participant, and lover of the medium to a potentially serious candidate to work professionally in that field. Simply put, it's the understanding that commercial media is a business.

Commerical media does not exist to give anyone an opportunity to speak their mind, to promote a certain social or political viewpoint, or even to serve the public. Commercial media is a saleable commodity like any other, and it's there to make money, to keep you entertained enough to keep paying attention until the next commercial break. In the end, neither your local radio station nor the major networks really care if you've got something important to say, they care that you're going to able to keep people tuned in to their stations long enough and consistently enough to justify the advertising rates they charge their sponsors. To truly be successful as a pundit in commercial media, you've not only got to be damn good at what you do in terms of knowing what you're talking about, you also have to be equally adept at keeping asses in their seats.

This, of course, is not an easy thing to do, otherwise everyone would be doing it. In addition, it's only part of the equation for a successful commercial media career. Commerical media, and particularly commerical radio, is notorious for refusing to take risks, try new things, or veer too sharply away from that which has already been tried and done successfully before. Those like myself who are currently trying to build an audience for our shows without the benefit of the resources and audience draw of commerical media in the hopes of landing a paying commercial gig one day can't simply depend on our talent and communications skills to ensure success, no matter gifted we might be at either. We need to be more than just talkers, more than just competent, more than just well-informed and in tune with the audiences we speak to. To be truly successful in this field, we also need to be entertaining.

Yes, Michael Steele is right (believe it or not). Rush Limbaugh most certainly is an entertainer, as are Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, and anyone else who goes before a camera or a microphone and tells you what they think, even me. All of us know and understand that if you can't get people to pay attention to you in the first place, what you have to say doesn't really matter because no one's listening.

What this means for those of us outside of mainstream media and particularly for those of us in new media who have even greater roadblocks to overcome in being heard in commercial media than your average straight white guy is that we have to be better than most just to be taken seriously by those making the decisions in commerical media, and we have to be better than just about anyone else in order to get those media elites to take a chance on hiring one of us and putting us on the air. It means we not only have to know our topics and our audiences, but we also have to be able to consistantly create interesting and engaging media that keeps the public coming back for more. Again, not an easy task or many more would be doing it.

Rush Limbaugh isn't as influential or popular as he is because he's a master political pundit, any more than Howard Stern has the notoriety and the audience he does because he's the world's greatest comedian (he isn't). Limbaugh, like Stern, is who and what he is because he entertains millions every day, keeps them coming back for more, and has been doing so successfully for a very long time. Once the bully pulpit from which to pontificate has been secured, in the end it's the audience itself which will determine who succeeds and who fails, who has true power and influence outside the realm of their own shows and who does not.

If we want the power and influence of a Rush LImbaugh speaking for our side, we need to earn the right to have one. The way to do it is by creating media which not only challenges those who oppose us and what we have to say, but does so in a way that's consistently engaging, informative, inspiring, and above all, entertaining. Regardless of his politics, Rush Limbaugh is, above all else, a master of engaging and entertaining his chosen audience. We'll see left-wing and progressively-oriented opinion and punditry rise to his level of popularity and influence only when and if we are able to offer our own audiences the same. Blogs, AirAmerica, cable news, and online LGBT and progressive media are the launching pad, but we've still more work to do before we can say anyone on the left has achieved Rush's orbit.

Despite all the roadblocks, the social and political winds are blowing in our direction as never before. Even in our current economic situation, there's a real hunger for truly progressive and left-wing media voices out there, but all of us, creators and consumers alike, not only have to demonstrate that we want those voices on the air, but also that we'll support those voices and those shows once they're available. Sponsors pay a pretty penny to advertise on Limbaugh's show and for good reason. When we can draw those kinds of audiences, which we can and will do once the programming is there to draw and keep them (Olbermann, Maddow and many others have already proven it can be done), we can do in reality what the right-wing has been accusing the left-wing of doing for decades now, and credibly boast the audience interest level in our own opinions that Limbaugh, Hannity, Michael Savage, and other right-wingers currently enjoy. Once that happens, the talk radio playing field will level and begin to lean to the left, in accordance with where American popular opinion already is.

None of this happens, however, unless and until we fully support not only those on the left who have already made it successfully to the mainstream, and at the same time also demand more of the kind of viewpoints we want to hear in commercial talk programming. Support those you like, regardless of how many others are listening or watching them right now. Participate in the shows when you're inspired to. Let mainstream media know what you want and who you want it from. If you want it, ask for it and keep asking for it. If enough people do, eventually we'll get it.

Oh and hey MSNBC? That open 10pm eastern weekday slot? Well, I know this raging left-wing transsexual online talk radio host and blogger who looks like a woman, sounds like a guy, and needs a job...

NJ Gov. Corzine Announces New Regulations For Transgender Drivers

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:17:42 GMT

Transgender drivers in New Jersey will have an easier time changing our documents to conform to the genders we live in thanks to new regulations regarding gender marker changes on New Jersey driver's licenses NJ Governor Jon Corzine announced on Saturday.

Details are sketchy and unconfirmed through offical sources as of this writing, but according to available information all that will now be required to change the gender marker is an affidavit attesting to a New Jerseyan's gender identity, instead of proof of sex reassignment surgery which has been required to change a gender marker on a NJ State Driver's License in the past.

According to Babs Casbar, transgender activist, President of the New Jersey Stonewall Democrats, and Political Director of the Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey, transgender New Jersey drivers will now only be required to fill out a simple administrative form attesting to one's gender identity and (presumably) the intent to continue living consistantly in that identity for the rest of their lives. Casbar says the new policy is modeled on one already in place in Massachusetts.

Casbar credits the new regulations to a "team effort" among New Jersey activists and organizations and says that Governor Corzine wanted to announce the new regulation at an LGBT event but didn't want to wait until the Pride season to do so, hence the announcement Saturday at this year's Legends dinner sponsored by Garden State Equality, the state's largest LGBT actvist organization.

This is groundbreaking news for transgender New Jersey citizens, many of whom (including myself) have been forced to live and work with official documentation and identity documents that do not reflect the genders we present consistently to the rest of the world.

There's no official information as to exactly when this new regulation will go into effect, but expectations are that it will happen soon. Casbar and other activists will be gathering the details and making them public as soon as they are available.

Waiting...

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:10:04 GMT

...sucks.

And yet, waiting is what I am doing. Everything is in a holding pattern right now. Three possibilities for enough of an income boost to get a new PC, but so far none have actually come through. In all honesty, I have no idea if any of them are going to materialize. At least I know I'll have unemployment coming in soon. It's just enough to get by on but it's better than nothing.

Since I'm still on the Mac, I've intentionally avoided writing anything for wider public dissemination than LJ. The truth is that all of my bookmarks for the publishing backends of the blogs I write for are on my PC drives. Yes I could get them all by contacting the webmasters and if I find myself consigned to this Mac for longer than I expect I'll have to. For now though, I'm intentionally taking a little time off from all that, and the only blogging I'm doing is personal stuff like this.

I might talk a little politics in these but probably not a lot. It's going to be about another two weeks before the show is back with a reliable connection. It's also going to be at least a little while before I'm able to do podcasts again on a PC or figure out how to pull it off on this machine.

So in the meantime, here I am, typing away, saving it all up for when I let it loose once again.

^^^^^
I just found out that at least one of those three possibilities is not going to materialize. Unfortunately it was the one with the largest potential return. Oh well.

Macs Suck and Old Macs Suck Even Worse

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 23:19:20 GMT

My PC is finally history. It was only a matter of time, and even though it technically still functioned, it was getting progressively worse every time I used it. Now Im using Robyn's mother's old Mac.

First, let me say that I officially hate this thing. All of my peripherals are designed to work with a PC so those that work don't work well. In addition, most of my software is now useless. Literally hundreds of dollars worth of stuff I can't use. And of course, I have no money to go buy new software. This totally blows.

To make matters worse, this thing is so old that even most Mac software doesn't run on it. All of my files are inaccessable or just won't run. In some cases, I've been able to download older versions of a few programs that will work with this thing, but that problem combined with the reality that about 95% of the software out there is only for PC makes this a true pain in the ass.

No I-Tunes (and therefore no music), lousy video, slow browser (have to use Firefox 2 not 3), about half the function keys on my keyboard don't work right or don't work at all, I can't use my trackball mouse (not enough USB ports), keyboard and mouse aren't really smooth (can't get the latest drivers because its too old), and on and on.

I miss my PC. I can't wait to get rid of this thing.

There is hope on the horizon though. I may be coming into some money in the near future. How much I have no idea, but there's a good chance of it happening. There are three possiblities. If at least two of them come through I should be able get myself a new PC with the proceeds.

Fingers crossed.

The Coming Of Pods

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:00:30 GMT

One way, the other, or maybe both ways, the pods are coming. Really.

Regular readers know that its been a while since I've waxed philosophical and otherwise on my print, radio, and podcast work, so I hope you'll bear with me (and even add your thoughts in the comments if you're so inclined) as I muse a bit. For some reason, I find myself working these things out in print for all to see. I'm really not sure why, other than perhaps I just love the process (which I do).

I must confess that none of my various ways of expressing myself in the public domain has really been given the kind of attention it deserves. For example, for the last year I've been ostensibly writing a book. Yet, after a year I've got nothing to show for it...nothing I'm happy with anyway. I've restarted the thing like four times now, and I'm getting ready for attempt number five. This is something that's important to me. As much as I enjoy blogging, podcasting, and radio hosting, I think I want to be a published author most of all.

Writing a book (at least, one worth reading) is hard, getting it published can be even harder, but once you have that you have a kind of permanence in history, maybe if you're lucky a small impact on the culture, and if you're luckier still you may allowed to write and publish more and perhaps even make a living at it. In all honesty, it's hard to see that for myself. I think I'm pretty decent writer, but am I that good? Do I have enough good ideas to make more than one book worthwhile? I don't know.

What I do know is that I need to write my first book, the book I've always wanted to write. I can't describe it to you because despite four attempts I haven't quite been able to successfully extract it from my mind and onto the printed page yet. This I have pledged to begin no later than March 1st with an intended completion time of who the fuck knows when.

The live radio show isn't going as well as I'd like, mainly because we've had to miss so many shows due to technical issues. I have to admit it's been kinda frustrating, even though there's really not much that can be done about it until Mike gets his new studio set up. That will be soon but in the meantime he's hopefully going to be able to upload some of the podcasts of previous shows soon. That'll help but really I think I need to create some new content. To that end, I've been slowly but surely getting something ready to go.

I've decided to bring back the podcast. It's been a while, and I stopped doing it for a reason, but I think it's the right time for it. This time though, I've got a new idea and if it works it may be my best idea yet. On the other hand, it may be crap. At this point, I'm not quite sure. Some demos are definitely in order. Yeah, I'm being a little obtuse about this tidbit because I'm still working out the details but if it works it could be great.

I've got the technical podcast set up already since it uses the same hardware as the live show. I've got the software I need, I just need to make sure that the programs will work together in the way I need them to. Really what I need to do is test it out and see what happens. I just haven't gotten around to it, and I should. This week.

There's so much I want to do. So much I haven't done. Now that I'm not working, I should be getting this stuff done...and I will.

Freedom To...Starve?

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:03:16 GMT

I don't know about you, but I'm long past sick of the elitist tunnelvision of these so-called marriage equality advocates.

America is in the beginnings of a massive recession. Americans are losing their jobs by the millions. LGB and especially Transgender-Americans, often the last hired and first fired even in good times, are hurting and hurting badly economically. An inclusive version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is due to be introduced in Congress later this year. And what do we see from our so-called activist elite? This nonsense.

Let's be clear: LGBT Americans, like the rest of the country, need jobs, we need them right now, and a lot of us need those jobs right now a hell of a lot more than we need the ability to file joint tax returns.

Anyone who pays attention to national politics, or even anyone who subscribes to the most basic common-sense American political realities, knows that same-sex marriage is going nowhere federally for a long time at best. Even if all of our realistic wishes in that regard come true and SSM becomes legal in New Jersey, Vermont, and again in California, it will then be legal in just 10% of American states.

Compare that to the potential impact of the passage of a fully inclusive ENDA. With an inclusive ENDA as the law of the land, it would be illegal to discriminate against LGBT Americans in the workplace in all 50 states, not only directly affecting a far greater number of LGBT Americans, but also directly impacting far more basic needs for most of us then the ability to get married.

After all, of what use is the ability to become legally married when you can't afford to clothe, feed, and house yourself and your family? How does the ability to get married help those who can't afford health insurance or even a single prescription or visit to the doctor when they become sick? Obviously, the ability to get legally married is of most value to those who already have nice homes and well-paying jobs, those who don't go to work each day wondering when their own pink slip is coming or those in even more desperate straits, already unemployed and increasingly unable to provide the basic necessities of life for themselves and their families.

Yet here come the Queer elites once again, touting same-sex marriage, potentially generating a renewed surge of religion-based anti-LGBT bigotry at a time we can least afford it, getting the right-wing worked up against us all over again just before the matter of our right to work is due to be taken on in Congress. I mean really, just how selfish and shortsighted can these people be? Have they learned nothing from the last time they tried this? What, 45 states banning same-sex marriage and a nearly-passed Federal Marriage Amendment as a result of their last attempt wasn't enough of a clue, they need to risk our chance to finally be protected from discrimination on the job too?

It makes just about as much sense as when Republicans promote failed Reagan-era theories of massive tax cuts, rather than targeted government spending, as viable economic stimulus. Everyone knows, even if they refuse to admit it, that same-sex marriage is overall a loser issue politically in this country right now and that will probably continue to be the case for decades to come. To promote this proven loser issue and risk riling up the right-wing at a time when what we need most right now is for Congress to be able to muster the political will to protect LGBT workers and their families who depend on their incomes to survive from discrimination is beyond simply irresponsible, it's downright unconscionable.

Isn't it interesting how we don't see this kind of effort and these kinds of online events directed toward getting an inclusive ENDA passed (until we get fed up with the selfishness of the elites and do it ourselves, as with UnitedENDA)? Where are the blogging contests and cash prizes offered for speaking out on LGBT Americans right to work? You won't see them coming from us, of course. Most of us are just too busy saving every dime we can scrounge just to get through the week.

Perhaps if these self-involved Queer elites put 1/10 the effort they do in promoting their (currently) lost cause into something that can make a real difference in people's lives like protecting the right of LGBT Americans to make a living, we'd be better able to advocate for same-sex marriage in the future when it's more politically palatable and when people have more money to donate and more time to give to such a cause. Unfortunately, what we see is these elitists emulating the GOP, continuing to push an issue which is not only guaranteed to fail to draw popular support politically but carries with it the very real risk of diluting hard-won and long-awaited political support for a more basic need of far greater and far more immediate importance to a far larger number of people.

As unfair as it is, no one's going to die because they can't get married. Tragically, the same can't be said of those LGBT's who can't get work or provide basic needs for themselves and their loved ones. It's time these elitists took their heads out of the sand and realized their own narrow and selfish agenda is not what our community or our country needs right now.

There are people dying out here, right now, right in our backyards. LGBT Americans are losing jobs, homes, families, and yes, even lives, to legally-sanctioned hate, discrimination, and bigotry. Real LGBT lives are being lost, real LGBT families are suffering in poverty and homelessness. It's all happening right now and it's been happening for generations. Even more importantly, there's now a real chance of fixing the problem or at least of starting the process of fixing it, hopefully this year.

Lives are quite literally on the line here. We need jobs and we need them now, just like the rest of America's workforce. We need our ability to provide for ourselves and our families protected from discrimination under the law. Most importantly, this is a basic, fundamental need shared by all LGBT Americans, one which we can have a real and lasting positive impact on if we act right now. I'll put those priorities above anyone's joint tax return any day of the week.

Catch Me On Twitter!

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:11:10 GMT

Yes, I finally broke down and have been "tweeting" for about a week or so now. I've decided to use it as a source for putting out show and blog updates and other things. You can follow me here. If you know me, you know I'm bad about getting show promos out on time so this will be the best way to know what's going on with my blog and my show...and probably with me too. I can also pretty much guarantee that if you follow me on Twitter you'll learn about upcoming guests and show features before anyone else in a lot of cases. Take that for whatever it's worth.

Is It Justice Yet?

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:35:36 GMT

Nope, not yet.

So here we are, as of this writing just over one week into the Obama Administration. While it would be insane to expect anything to get done legislatively on much other than the economy at this point, what's reasonable to expect on LGBT rights in at least the semi-near future?

By Barney Frank's estimate, it's pretty fair to expect that by this time next year we should be protected from discrimination in the workplace and covered by a federal hate crimes law. Yet, we all know it's just not that simple, don't we? How many times have we heard such promises before only to discover the truth later on? And yet, despite the history here, we also know that the cards are now stacked in our favor like never before. For the first time since Bill Clinton's first couple of years in office, we've got a significant Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress and a supportive President...but we also know how it turned out last time.

So, it's quite fair to ask: What do we do now? Do we blindly give Democrats the benefit of the doubt once again when their record of standing up for us is so downright abysmal? But if we do withhold that overt support would it negatively impact the reception in Congress of any attempt to actually get anything done on our issues this year?

What to do, what to do...

Don't expect any help from our friends in DC on this one. They're much too busy trying to rescue the economy at the moment, as well they should be. I'd bet we're not going to hear more than the barest peep about action on our issues until at least April or May at the earliest. In the meantime, we need to figure out our own next moves. As you might imagine, I've got a few ideas in that regard.

1. HRC Needs To Put Up Or Shut Up

It's really no more complex than that. Since the "Great Sellout of '07", the Human Rights Campaign has been for the most part notably silent on ENDA and hate crimes, aside from the occasional lukewarm expression of support for inclusion once it became clear that Barack Obama (and not the candidate they threw their support behind, Hillary Clinton) was likely to become our next President. At the same time, HRC still has not yet publicly withdrawn their support for a non-inclusive version of ENDA.

Clearly, one of two things needs to happen: HRC must publicly come out firmly in favor of inclusion and only inclusion as well as openly demonstrate their commitment to that ideal in a concrete way, or the rest of us, the vast majority who believe wholeheartedly in inclusion and in acting inclusively, must from now on actively exclude HRC from our greater movement's political efforts. As an organization that has repeatedly proven it cannot be trusted to interact honestly or reliably with the greater community, without a public commitment there is no valid reason to consider this organization to be one working on behalf of the interests of anyone other than extremely wealthy, white, non-gender-variant gays and lesbians.

According to Donna Rose, we shouldn't expect much. She writes on her blog:

"...HRC really isn’t interested in rebuilding the relationship with the broader trans community. Sure, they’ll take it if they can get it but they’re not willing to do anything to earn it. Rather, they’ve got a small group of transpeople who provide the illusion of inclusion and that’s as far as they’ll go."

Assuming Donna's right (and in my experience, she usually is), trying to work with HRC now is just a waste of our time. We know who our true allies are and it's in our own best interests to keep the protests going. What's more, since HRC is clearly trying to convince others that they are inclusive without being willing to make any real effort to actually act inclusively, it's important for the rest of us to counter that message publicly with the truth. Just as the right has been extremely successful in using LGBT's as boogeymen to generate support and donations, so too are we using our own self-defined black sheep to strengthen our own side. The more public and active we are about pointing out the inherent unfairness of exclusion, which we can illustrate extremely well using the behavior of HRC as an example through protesting their events and speaking out against them, the more progressive grassroots support we'll gain.

As a community, it's time for all of us to say to HRC, once and for all, "You're either with us or you're against us.", that they need to pick a lane and stay in it. And if they are against us, then they don't get to credibly call themselves or be seen as LGBT activist leaders because in the end they're really leading no one but themselves anymore.

Enough with these people and their petty political games. It's time to move on.

2. Build More And Stronger Bridges

We've made amazing strides in this over the last couple of years, but there's more work to do. Let's grow those budding relationships with progressives and organized labor into solid working alliances. Let's bring them and their influence with us when we go to lobby Congress, and let's continue including them as we continue protesting HRC dinners and events. We need to make it clear to Congress, in no uncertain terms, that when a Democrat turns his or her back on treating transpeople fairly, they're also turning their back on a lot more than simply a relative handful of minority votes. There's a reason why the Mayor of Los Angeles refused to cross that union picket line in San Francisco and we should not hesitate to capitalize on it. Our new alliances with liberal and progressive activists and causes are powerful tools we've just recently been handed. Let's use them to best effect to benefit ourselves, and let's also not forget to return the favor when the opportunity arises.

3. Lobby, Lobby, Lobby

As things seem to be getting better politically for us and money starts getting tighter, it's easy to come up with good reasons for not going to DC to lobby. After all, for some of us (like me) a trip to Washington is simply unaffordable right now. While I'd argue it's probably better in terms of impact to make the trip to DC if possible, if for no other reasons than networking and to be able to show up at a Congressman's office with more than just oneself, visits to a Congressman's local office and appearances can and will help immensely as well. The more Congress sees our faces, hears our stories, and truly understands who we are, what we need from them, and why we need it, the harder it will be for them to say "No" again.

4. Get Out There

Not just to Congressional offices, but everywhere. If your local LGBT or transgender organization has an event or happening, make sure your local community newspapers, websites, and other media know about it. If you're contacted for a media interview and you believe it won't portray yourself and the rest of us in an exploitive way, go for it. Publicly challenge media which fails that standard. Blog, write letters to the editor, protest...you know the drill. Help keep us and our issues in the public as well as the political eye. Don't be afraid to speak up, even if you feel you must do so anonymously.

5. Don't Give Up

Remember, the election of Barack Obama brought with it probably the single greatest political slap-down in the history of of our movement, the stripping of basic civil rights from California citizens through the passage of Prop 8. Obama can't save us, nor do should we really expect he'll make any effort to try. As he's demonstrated by his repeated flip-flops on marriage equality over the years, Obama is not above turning his back on his publicly-touted principles in order to score political points. Obama has also taught us, through his promotion of anti-LGBT hatemongers Rick Warren and Donnie McClurkin, that when push comes to shove supporting LGBT rights and fair treatment under the law ranks pretty low overall on his agenda, especially now that he's President.

If there's anything that's abundantly clear, it's that if we are to finally gain full rights as citizens of this country we must continue to demand them relentlessly until we succeed because if we don't we can be damn sure that no one else will. The many supportive members of Congress notwithstanding, if we are to win this we will have to ensure that the political price that might be paid by some members of Congress for supporting us and giving us what we deserve will be nowhere near as steep as it would be for them to continue taking the coward's way out. Yes, we need to force the issue, and we need to follow-up if we don't get what we want. If we need to actively and publicly shame reluctant members of Congress into doing the right thing, then we must not hesitate to do so.

The way I see it, what we must do now is not as much about waging war on those who may oppose us as it is about showing Congress and straight America in general that we've grown up as a movement and as an American minority constituency. Congress needs to understand that we will not consider it a win unless all LGBT Americans can share in the victory. Those not fully on board with that ideal must be disempowered and left behind as the majority of our movement charts a new inclusive course for all of us.

There can be no more equivocation, no more excuses for cowardice or failure to act. The time to stand up and demand our proper place as full and equal citizens of this country is upon us and we must not shirk that responsibility. The political stars are as aligned as they are ever likely to be in our lifetimes. It's now or quite possibly never. We've got about three months or so, more than enough time to do what needs to be done.

The time is now. Let's bring it home.