I got way out of control at College Bowl tonight. One of the other players had written the questions we were using, and one was about Jamie Lee Curtis. It said she was born with a syndrome (I think it actually said birth defect actually) that makes her a what? Well, of course I knew she was born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, but what does that make her? I puzzled over it for a few seconds and then it hit me - an intersexual. The student who wrote the questions came around and looked at our answers, and told me mine was wrong. As he turned away to reveal the answer, I signed (to nobody in particular) “I am right, and if you said hermaphrodite I will kill you.” So he shows the answer, and it says “Hermaphrodite (do not accept transsexual, shemale, or transvestite)”. Everybody always contests answers, so everybody started protesting. I leapt out of my chair and started yelling, “I OBJECT! I OBJECT! I VERY STRONGLY OBJECT!” (This is all in sign, btw.). Everybody else settled down, and I kept demanding to file an objection. The guy who wrote the questions tried to shut me down, but the coach said “it looks like she knows what she’s talking about.” So the student let me stand up and explain my objection. I got up and ranted “that is an old greek word, of course. But it is NOT APPROPRIATE anymore! It is considered DISCRIMINATORY and derogatory! It is not accepted by the medical establishment or the people themselves!! It is not appropriate!!!”. The guy who wrote the questions said something to the effect of “yikes, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend” and apologized profusely. I said “okay, thank you” and sat down, saying “oh, but, I’m not one, though.” Which was kind of unnecessary to say and implies that there’s something wrong with being intersexual. I think I said it because I was overexcited. At the end of practice, I got the guy’s attention and apologized for getting so overexcited. He said “oh no, I’m sorry I offended.” I said “well, I really could have said it more calmly and nicely, so I’m sorry.”

And that was my little freakout for the evening.

I’ve been told that this column will disappear in a week or so when it is replaced with a new one, and I wanted to preserve a copy as well as share the information. This is originally from Wayne Besen’s column. It explains why I will never go to Jamaica, and if I’m on a cruise that stops in Jamaica - which I will avoid booking in the first place, but if I dock there - I won’t get off the ship.

It’s Time to Boycott Jamaica
by Wayne Besen
Gay bashing in Jamaica is so prevalent that in 2006 Time magazine wrote an article about the island headlined, “The Most Homophobic Place On Earth?” The New York Times this week showed that the anti-gay climate has only worsened, with the island caught in a downward spiral of outright psychosis. It is time to hand an ultimatum to Jamaica’s public officials: Stop allowing rampant abuse of gay people or your economy will be crippled.

The Times story is downright chilling. It details how last month five gay men were having a dinner party when a mob appeared at the front door – kicking it in and attacking the men. While screaming homophobic epithets, between 15-20 thugs beat the victims senseless with sticks and cut them with machetes. One man is still missing, but police found blood at the mouth of a deep hole near the yard.

This was not an isolated incident. The Times went on to report a shocking attack on a gay man’s funeral last year, where hooligans trashed the church with rocks and bottles as the service was in session. Of course, this unholy barbarism occurred in the name of God. Interestingly, Jamaicans have turned their sex-fueled island into a heterosexual bathhouse and ganja den, but seem to get sanctimonious and discover the Bible when it comes to homosexuality.

Prior to these incidents, two of the island’s notable gay advocates, Steve Harvey and Brian Williamson, were murdered. Time Magazine reported that a crowd celebrated over Williamson’s disfigured body. Time also recounted an incident in 2004 where a teen was nearly killed when his father learned his son was gay and urged a mob to lynch the boy at his school. In the same year, it was reported that police heartily cheered on another mob as it stabbed and stoned a gay man to death in Montego Bay. In 2006, a Kingston man drowned after a horde screaming “batty boy” (a Jamaican slur for gay people) chased him off a high dock.

On American docks, six hundred miles west of this homophobic hellhole, tourists regularly line up to board massive luxury liners destined for Jamaica. The tropical island earned $2.1 billion from tourism in 2006, an increase of 24 percent over 2005. More than three million people visited Jamaica in 2006, with 1,025,000 arrivals from the United States.

Clearly, the answer to Jamaica’s love affair with lynching is an aggressive campaign designed to put the clamp on tourism – particularly the cruise industry. The goal should be to strangle Jamaica’s economy and force the island to change or suffer severe consequences. With tourism Jamaica’s second largest source of revenue, such a campaign could have a powerful impact that achieves tangible results.

It appears that four major cruise lines are the main conduits in which people infuse Jamaica’s economy with blood money. They are Carnival, Costa, Celebrity and Royal Caribbean. The ports where the ships leave are Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Port Canaveral and Galveston.

It is imperative that one of the GLBT international groups or a major U.S. gay rights group create a campaign to shame these corporations and the passengers that travel on their ships. With so few ports, it would be relatively simple to call for a boycott and picket, while handing hand out informational flyers to cruisers. A “Boycott Jamaica” advertising campaign would greatly strengthen these actions. Billboards would need to be strategically placed along I-95 between Miami and Fort Lauderdale with the bold headline: “JA-MURDER.”

Undoubtedly, there are many passengers with gay friends and family members who are unaware of Jamaica’s sickening and immoral violence against GLBT people. Once informed, many individuals would opt to vacation elsewhere. There is no doubt that with a concerted effort, Jamaica could be brought to its knees.

To lift such a boycott, Jamaica would have to abolish its “buggery” law. Public officials would have to undergo sensitivity training. The police would be required to set up daily undercover stings – where officers would dress in stereotypically gay clothing and arrest would-be attackers. Finally, Jamaica’s public officials would have to openly welcome gay and lesbian travelers and offer enthusiastic support for homosexuals living within the country.

It is time we stopped vacationing from our responsibility and started holding Jamaica and its corporate enablers accountable. Until anti-gay atrocities are no longer the norm, Jamaica must be seen as an international pariah, rather than the faux paradise it presents to the world.

©365Gay.com 2008

I’m finally catching up.

• I hate Jennifer Schecter. I’ve hated her since the beginning of the series, and now that she’s a neurotic psycho hose beast, I hate her even more
• It’s still weird for me to see such blatant nudity and sex on TV. I’m not used to pay channels, man. I sure like watching Shane go at it though.
• I can’t believe they had Bette sign the old word for transgender. What’s the point?
• I kind of like Marlee Matlin using her voice. See, for her, I don’t consider it offensive. It’s just Marlee, it’s who she is, and she’s not afraid to communicate how she wants to. I’m sure if she didn’t want to speak for herself, she would tell the producers that. I don’t think she’s hurting the Deaf community or anything - she’s making her own decision for herself, and if she wants to talk, who has the right to say she shouldn’t? Besides, she has a very definite accent, and Bette is always signing in response, so it’s not like anybody is going to forget she’s Deaf.
• Pam Grier walking down the jail hallway was just so rad. Takes a girl back.
• I’ve always hated Jenny, but Helena doesn’t bother me nearly as much as she used to when she first joined the show. Her new girlfriend, the gambling addict, though…ew.
• I always wonder how the actors feel about making out with each other. As far as I know, Leisha Hailey is the only gay star, but nobody else seems to mind constantly rubbing all over each other either.

I could go on, but those are my recent thoughts anyway.

So we’re house-sitting at my in-laws’ for a couple of months while they’re on vacation, and they get all the Showtime channels. Last night and tonight I have been watching The L Word, and I just have to gush about Marlee Matlin. She is hotter than all things hot…she doesn’t make my jaw drop physically (although she is beautiful) but she is just hot. And she’s playing a lesbian who smokes pot and has tattoos and…mmmmm she’s so yummy. Her “interpreter” kind of makes me squirmy by interjecting his own opinions while he’s on the job, but I don’t care. Marlee is just so fucking yummy on that show. I would love to meet her someday so I can hump her leg tell her how awesome I think she is.

Following the ribbon-stealing incident I posted about earlier today, grail76 suggested a “Support Our Gay Troops” magnet. I immediately thought of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, and how that would be a great fundraiser for them. I e-mailed them and suggested it, but then I realized - I can just do it myself, and give them the cash! This is what it looks like:

This post is a solicitation. The more custom magnets ordered, the cheaper it is per magnet, so I need YOU to help! If you would be interested in having one of these magnets for your car, refrigerator, and anything else, let me know! You can comment on this post, send me an e-mail, or anything else you like. I am thinking to charge $10 for one magnet and $8 for each additional magnet. This is over the actual cost of magnet + shipping, but it’s going to SLDN, which is doing essential work during this period of wartime. Donations over and beyond the price I’m charging are welcome, I am not planning to make ANY profit, this is all going to SLDN, because they need it. (International shipping is extra, BTW - if you’re outside the U.S. just let me know and I’ll figure out the additional cost.)

We were channel surfing, or had just turned on the TV, or something - anyway, we ended up on Logo, which was airing their “Click List” show that I’ve never bothered watching before. But for some reason we stayed on the channel, and we were treated to two astonishingly bad music videos. Both videos were bad, both songs were bad…it was just wrong! The first one was by Keo Nozari, his video was “Question of Monogamy” - which is just as silly as you’d expect from the title. The second was Jonny McGovern’s “Somethin’ for the Fellas” - which was so hyperactive it made even my head spin. Now, I can tell from looking at McGovern’s Gay Pimp website (worksafe) that he’s doing it tongue in cheek, so that may be okay…but Keo Nozari’s video was just inexcusable. You can catch both videos here on the Click List website.

For some reason, when I read As Nature Made Him a few months ago, I didn’t look up David Reimer on Wikipedia or anywhere else. If I had, I would have found out that he committed suicide in 2004. I got the news from an anti-circumcision website, where he was reported as a “long-delayed death due to circumcision.”

For those of you who aren’t familiar with David Reimer’s story, he was born as Bruce, an identical twin boy. His circumcision was botched and his penis was accidentally removed. This was in the mid-1960s in Winnipeg, and his parents didn’t know what to do - their doctors recommended putting him in a dress and raising him as a girl. Because the babies were twins, Brian and “Brenda” became famous as an example of how gender roles were learned rather than present from birth; psychologist John Money viewed “Brenda” as his greatest achievement. But as we all would find very obvious now, putting a boy in a dress does not make him a girl. After an emotionally troubled childhood, “Brenda” shed her female role at age 15 and became David Reimer.

After years of hiding the truth, he went public, appearing on Oprah and working with John Colapinto on a 1997 Rolling Stone article that became the book As Nature Made Him: The Boy who was Raised a Girl. He was motivated by sexologist Milton Diamond to speak out to prevent babies from suffering the same fate he had. But unfortunately, too many things were going wrong in David’s life. Despite the anti-circumcision website’s assertion that he died as a result of his circumcision (presumably due to the trauma it caused him throughout his life), he was also suffering the effects of a divorce, a bad relationship with his parents, and the overdose death of his brother Brian in 2002. Colapinto, who knew David well, wrote about the real reasons for his suicide. It was a tragic end to an ultimately unsatisfying life, but hopefully lessons learned from David Reimer’s experience will keep this kind of treatment from happening again.

I’m crocheting again, making this vertical stripe scarf in a deliberately bright gay rainbow pattern. I wasn’t able to find any decent rainbow scarves that I liked, so I went to the store and bought yarn to make my own. (I have a few half-balls of primary colors, but I wanted to get a good matching set.) Unfortunately none of the soft and lush yarns came in all six colors that I needed, so I ended up with good old Red Heart (or was it Caron?) sport yarn. It’s not super soft, but I think it will be okay for a winter scarf.

I haven’t crocheted anything in a long time, much less started a new project. I think the most recent thing I crocheted was a couple of years ago when I worked on little dresses for our American Girl dolls; I ended up making one and a half dresses - and the half-a-dress is still sitting around in my closet. This scarf should go pretty quickly, though, as I’m using a P hook. It’s probably about nine feet long, though; once I’d made the chain and started doing the first row I stood up and wrapped it around me - it’s going to be a big scarf! I have no idea how many stitches are in the chain, I’m just doing two rows of each color and then a border in either white or black (haven’t decided yet).

The highlight so far has been giving my wife a quick peck on the lips outside a Japanese bakery, and having a passing preteen boy turn around and gape at us. Bet he wasn’t expecting lesbians on Fifth Avenue!