2002-08-19 - 11:27 a.m.
This weekend, I went to my friend G.'s insanely fun birthday party. Bowties, ruffles, sequins, and other fabulous accessories abounded, and I did more kareoke in one night than I've done in my whole life (which wasn't hard, since I'm terribly kareoke-shy). My favorite rendition was our Prince-tribute quartet singing a disjointed "Kiss." "Act your age, not your shoe size" may be the best line ever written, and it should probably be uttered with much more frequency than it is.
Since my pronoun change, I've been dealing with what happens with pronoun mess-ups. I remember when D. wrote about erasure of one's transgender and the ways in which others observe it as an issue of "respect." It's interesting, the extent to which terms such as "respect" and "offense" work themselves into discussions about gender and transgender. Although they are distinct cases with different things at stake, these terms also turn up in discussions about race, class, and various other oppressively structured hierarchical organizing categories. I get increasingly nervous when people backpedal after asserting a position and say, "I hope I didn't offend you," "I didn't intend to offend anyone," or "I didn't mean any disrespect." Not only because this method of sidestepping accountability is annoying, but also because it firmly anchors the exchange in the terrain of the emotional, the feelings, the prevention of sadness or anger and the maintenance of one's personal dignity and pride. As soon as that is accomplished, the degree to which communities, bodies, and identities are policed and hierarchies are reproduced is cast aside. And the latter, much more than the former, is the thing that makes me quesy. Unfortuantely, the quesy-look always seems to beckon the "Oh god, I'm so sorry I offended you" response.
I read what I hope to be a sci-fi satire prank on missruckus' livejournal ( here ). It isn't really, though. The U.S., beginning on this coming September 11th(!), will fingerprint visitors from so-called "high risk" countries. I think this was announced last June or so, but I had high hopes that some sort of sense might jimmy its way into the brains of U.S. officials. There are some articles here, here and the scary press release here.
Speaking of September 11, the friendly Seattle-based Mischievous Fruit Brigade is planning on putting together a zine. It's purpose (this from an email I wrote) is to counteract notions of U.S. innocence, to dispute and complicate "anti-terrorist" positionings, and to reflect on the current political climate over the last year in the U.S. with regard to the resurgence of patriotism (and sadistic jingoism) that has swelled only in relation to its xenophobia. If you have any interest in submitting anything to be printed in the zine, or if you have anything you'd like to have reprinted, please contact me .
Acting somewhere between my age, my shoe size, and my psychic height,
Boots
