(no subject)
Jan. 9th, 2019 02:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* I continue to support both harm reduction and kindness. "'Tragic street theatre' in downtown Vancouver:" https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-46786860/how-vancouver-is-helping-opioid-addicts
* "RCMP set up ‘exclusion zones’ for public and media as raid on B.C. camps start:" https://aptnnews.ca/2019/01/07/rcmp-setting-up-exclusion-zones-for-public-and-media-as-raid-on-b-c-camps-start/
* "Surprise twist puts murder-for-hire case in Mueller orbit:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/surprise-twist-puts-murder-for-hire-case-in-mueller-orbit-1421678147908
* "Paul Manafort shared 2016 polling data with Russian associate, according to court filing:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/paul-manafort-shared-2016-polling-data-with-russian-employee-according-to-court-filing/2019/01/08/3f562ad8-12b0-11e9-803c-4ef28312c8b9_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c694916f5d3b
* "Veselnitskaya, Russian in Trump Tower Meeting, Is Charged in Case That Shows Kremlin Ties:" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/nyregion/trump-tower-natalya-veselnitskaya-indictment.html
* "Carbon emissions up as Trump agenda rolls back climate change work:" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/08/carbon-emissions-trump-agenda-climate-change
* If Cory Gardner or Susan Collins is your Senator, please thank him for his support for ending the government shut down. These are our best bets so far as I can tell. If you have a Republican senator, especially one up for re-election in 2020, now is a good time to protest.
If you can not protest in person, here are some other options:
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* "Van Hollen: No other business until vote to re-open gov't:" http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/van-hollen-no-other-business-until-vote-to-re-open-gov-t-1421580867572
* "Trump 'emergency' idea would take military money for wall:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-emergency-idea-would-take-military-money-for-wall-1421678147724
* "Wallace: Trump shouldn't lie about where crime comes from:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/wallace-trump-shouldn-t-lie-about-where-crime-comes-from-1422364227808
* "Trump struggles with humanitarian crisis of his own making:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-struggles-with-humanitarian-crisis-of-his-own-making-1422404675563
* "Ocasio-Cortez rips Trump for systematic attack on immigrants:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/ocasio-cortez-rips-trump-for-systematic-attack-on-immigrants-1422378051711
* Some of us were asked about what the '80's were like with specific reference to the queer experience in a context I don't want to get into. I think some of the stuff I wrote might be of interest to some of you who are too young to really remember or who weren't alive yet. This shit is pretty dark and there are references to slurs and violent queer bashing, so skate at your own risk. Since this was part of a long conversation with more than one person, in some spots I'm responding to comments from someone who's comments you can't see. I'm often answering questions that are specific, so certain bits are narrower than they might have been if I hadn't been answering a specific redacted question. We are talking about what people specifically in 1989 might have lived through, so there are some references that circle that date, but the commentary goes into the '90's because culture doesn't draw hard lines at decade's end. I am shaving off some of the identifiers and making similar small edits for privacy and clarity. If you quote me, credit me. No other permission required.
I think it's important we talk about this stuff because otherwise the history gets lost.
People literally died to get us here. WE DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK!
I can't speak to west coast high school and college experience in the '80's and my East Coast College didn't have frats, though it did had a dorm that everyone joked was one. East Coast style, you sort of had this big split between the guys who were here and queer get used to it, and this large body of people out quietly to friends but not loud about it. Things were more open in a few years, but the '80's gay yuppie mindset was people were literally getting fired if the wrong people knew about it, so the guys I went to school with were publicly downlow, but had political consciousness and friends who knew. (A particular lawyer)'s fear of his practice collapsing is entirely rational. Most judges are older white guys. Clients flee, courts discriminate. He's DONE if the wrong person finds out.
Bi guys were super stigmatized generally because they tended to get blamed unfairly for the Plague. The guys I knew open about it were very brave in a way never openly acknowledged.
Cops used to hunt and group beat gay men and trans women in Philly. Down in Conchy friends of friends got beaten or disappeared, likely into the river. I knew a butch lesbian disappeared out of Germantown. Police were way not safe. The obvious gay man I knew down in the Neighborhoods who was safe was safe because he had a bunch of tough hetero friends who sort of body guarded him and because he had this woman he could pretend to date. Everyone knew nothing was happening there, but it saved face. Like they could all pretend they didn't know.
(Here follows a passage I can't figure out how to anonymize with some examples of people in west Coast situations that were similar but with different details). There sometimes was a "no one beats up my little brother" or a "he's on our team sort" of mentality. It's sort of a mascot situation. (That one exceptional person is protected, but anyone else who looks not cis/straight is in danger.)
(Regarding ACT UP and Queer Nation) Being out was activism and activism was still punk.
From a 1989 perspective, things really did start to get noticeably better a few years later, and when the protease inhibitors came onto the market, things changed dramatically because people could focus on things besides triage.
A lot of stuff was word of mouth in the 80's. There was a sort of queer whisper network that would let someone find the safest places or services and where was less safe to go.
I think the thing that's really hard to convey to people who aren't our agish is how fundamentally unsafe everything was. We pretty much assumed that if the Plague didn't get us, the bombs would right up until the Soviet Union collapsed. There was this fundamental background sense that we wouldn't make it to thirty. People reacted to this in different ways, but it's the Generational subtext.
Xers are like that for a reason. Cops were dangerous unpredictable people who might help but also might beat and murder us. I think this is why my sympathy for things like the Black Lives matter movement is so visceral. Of course I have a fundamental sympathy for people still living that reality.
I loved the hair, clothes, and music, but it was fucking terrifying to live through it. You lived your whole life under constant threat of sudden violent death in a culture where your safety from toddlerhood was considered entirely a matter of your personal responsibility. People could pretty much do anything to you at any time and victim blaming said it was your fault. If you were not a rich straight able bodied cis male, there was no guarantee at all that authorities would care if something terrible happened to you. What safety you had, you had to make usually through organizing or safety in numbers. There was this sort of huddling together of queer folk and allies.
I think the generation lines are in the wrong place. Divider for Boomer/Gen X should be whether or not you or your high school friends were in danger of being drafted or not. Divider for X/Millenial should be whether or not you grew up assuming you'd die from bomb and/or plague before you were 40.
The first person came who out to be explicitly when I was 15 literally didn't have non-pejorative language for herself until I gave it to her. (Early '90's) My only friend on my floor in my first dorm at my first West Coast College was the out bi RA. I was their only friend on the floor too. Everyone else was pledging Greek and they were so alien to us and vica versa we had no common ground at all.
(This is in response to someone else's story about the violent gay bashing of a straight student for being to pretty) A guy in my first dorm at Second College was metrosexual a little before it was cool. Alternative style. Gorgeous, mixed race. Straight. He got beaten up by a frat coming home to the dorm at night and we had to organize protection for him walking him to and from things like the library at night because he was terrified it would happen again. I was tough and knew martial arts, so I used to be one of his guards. They called him "Faggot" when they beat him. Campus cops would do nothing. Project Safe Ride wouldn't take him because he was a man. And this was the '90's. It was the bi RA recruited the unofficial guards BTW. Queer folk taking care of their own. Even though the guy was straight he counted as one of our own.
I often say the only thing I want back from the Eisenhower Era is the top tax rate. With the '80's it's just some music and style stuff. I never the fuck want to have to live like that again and that's why I have been pretty much constantly white hot furious since November '16. I do not like not knowing if 45's going to blow us up because nuclear wars are "fun and easy to win." I am a little too young to personally remember back alley abortions, but that's living memory and I don't want to go back there and to the whole people having to talk doctors into medically necessary birth birth control because you can't just get it for sex thing my Mom's generation went through. I do not want to go back to the constant LGBTQIA+ bashing and the police murdering us for fun with no consequences. I do not want to lose what progress we've made on civil rights, accessibility, and the environment.
* "Kid-scaring Namahage among Japanese folk rituals approved for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list:" https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/11/29/national/kid-scaring-namahage-among-japanese-folk-rituals-approved-unesco-intangible-cultural-heritage-list/#.XDRvOy17nIX
* "Rashida Tlaib's "Impeach the Motherf**ker" Comment & Great Pacific Garbage Patch Cleanup:"
* "The Government Shutdown and Trump's Escalating Wall Gambit:"
* Monday I was short sleeped for errands. The last couple forageswere not particularly good. Today's wasn't really any better. I needed some super specific essentials from a particular grocery near there. My legs were mostly done while I was waiting to check out, and I had to get someone from the store to carry my bag for me and I had a hell of a time getting back in the car, but after a rest, I drove downtown because my bloodwork was due for real, and the Library was soft reopening today so I could collect the holds trapped there since end of December. Most of the system was still down Monday night, but they hope to be full service in a day or two.
I am trying not to freak out about 45's decision not to let us eat in February over his boarder wall shit, because this is the last funded month of Food stamps, unless the tantrum ends.
I am still in the middle of the alarmingly bad AS flare, my eyelid has been twitching since...maybe Thursday? And today, I'm pretty sure my usual five vial draw knocked me into mild shock for a few hours. There will be no proper sleep for several days. I am falling down on the news again, but really between everything, my concentration was just shreds Monday night.
I have a first thing in the Morning Wednesday thing at the Doctor and I'm likely just going to sleep after until I can't anymore. I'm not even going to try to forage. If I don't post, I'm trying to get my body to function at a bearable level.
* O.o "Sunday Sweets Makes Sure You Eat Your Greens:" http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2019/1/6/sunday-sweets-makes-sure-you-eat-your-greens.html
* "Things I Have Mistaken For A Feeling Over The Years:" http://the-toast.net/2016/04/04/things-i-have-mistaken-for-a-feeling-over-the-years/
I'm pretty sure "A smell I can’t place but reminds me of something" IS a feeling.
*****
* Full list of Resistance and charity links has been migrated to my profile as it was getting out of hand.
* Trans Helplines: https://www.translifeline.org/
* Want to complaint about Betsy DeVos's plan to coddle college rapists? https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/11/29/2018-25314/nondiscrimination-on-the-basis-of-sex-in-education-programs-or-activities-receiving-federal#open-comment
* "Trump’s New Wall to Keep Out the Disabled:" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/opinion/trumps-disability-public-charge.html
They are soliciting public comment on these draconian regulations until December 10th here: https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=USCIS-2010-0012-0001
* Donate to HIAS to help refugees: https://act.hias.org/page/6048/donate/1
* Want to contribute directly to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services fund? "Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services:" https://www.raicestexas.org/
* Support Kids at the Border: http://brigdh.tumblr.com/post/175022384240/support-the-kids-at-the-border
* A list of organizations to help you run for office: http://lovingmyselfishard.tumblr.com/post/167330144634/psst-hey
* Have something you want to tell your Congress Critters? If you can not protest in person, here are some other options:
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
* This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
* Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* This is a cool person and the swimsuits are being made from an ethical source. LGBTQIA+ swimsuits: https://www.etsy.com/shop/NerdyKeppie?ref=l2-shopheader-name§ion_id=24021616
* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com or paypal.me/Gwydion
* Birthday/Solstice master list: https://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/1925021.html
* "RCMP set up ‘exclusion zones’ for public and media as raid on B.C. camps start:" https://aptnnews.ca/2019/01/07/rcmp-setting-up-exclusion-zones-for-public-and-media-as-raid-on-b-c-camps-start/
* "Surprise twist puts murder-for-hire case in Mueller orbit:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/surprise-twist-puts-murder-for-hire-case-in-mueller-orbit-1421678147908
* "Paul Manafort shared 2016 polling data with Russian associate, according to court filing:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/paul-manafort-shared-2016-polling-data-with-russian-employee-according-to-court-filing/2019/01/08/3f562ad8-12b0-11e9-803c-4ef28312c8b9_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c694916f5d3b
* "Veselnitskaya, Russian in Trump Tower Meeting, Is Charged in Case That Shows Kremlin Ties:" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/nyregion/trump-tower-natalya-veselnitskaya-indictment.html
* "Carbon emissions up as Trump agenda rolls back climate change work:" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/08/carbon-emissions-trump-agenda-climate-change
* If Cory Gardner or Susan Collins is your Senator, please thank him for his support for ending the government shut down. These are our best bets so far as I can tell. If you have a Republican senator, especially one up for re-election in 2020, now is a good time to protest.
If you can not protest in person, here are some other options:
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* "Van Hollen: No other business until vote to re-open gov't:" http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/van-hollen-no-other-business-until-vote-to-re-open-gov-t-1421580867572
* "Trump 'emergency' idea would take military money for wall:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-emergency-idea-would-take-military-money-for-wall-1421678147724
* "Wallace: Trump shouldn't lie about where crime comes from:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/wallace-trump-shouldn-t-lie-about-where-crime-comes-from-1422364227808
* "Trump struggles with humanitarian crisis of his own making:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-struggles-with-humanitarian-crisis-of-his-own-making-1422404675563
* "Ocasio-Cortez rips Trump for systematic attack on immigrants:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/ocasio-cortez-rips-trump-for-systematic-attack-on-immigrants-1422378051711
* Some of us were asked about what the '80's were like with specific reference to the queer experience in a context I don't want to get into. I think some of the stuff I wrote might be of interest to some of you who are too young to really remember or who weren't alive yet. This shit is pretty dark and there are references to slurs and violent queer bashing, so skate at your own risk. Since this was part of a long conversation with more than one person, in some spots I'm responding to comments from someone who's comments you can't see. I'm often answering questions that are specific, so certain bits are narrower than they might have been if I hadn't been answering a specific redacted question. We are talking about what people specifically in 1989 might have lived through, so there are some references that circle that date, but the commentary goes into the '90's because culture doesn't draw hard lines at decade's end. I am shaving off some of the identifiers and making similar small edits for privacy and clarity. If you quote me, credit me. No other permission required.
I think it's important we talk about this stuff because otherwise the history gets lost.
People literally died to get us here. WE DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK!
I can't speak to west coast high school and college experience in the '80's and my East Coast College didn't have frats, though it did had a dorm that everyone joked was one. East Coast style, you sort of had this big split between the guys who were here and queer get used to it, and this large body of people out quietly to friends but not loud about it. Things were more open in a few years, but the '80's gay yuppie mindset was people were literally getting fired if the wrong people knew about it, so the guys I went to school with were publicly downlow, but had political consciousness and friends who knew. (A particular lawyer)'s fear of his practice collapsing is entirely rational. Most judges are older white guys. Clients flee, courts discriminate. He's DONE if the wrong person finds out.
Bi guys were super stigmatized generally because they tended to get blamed unfairly for the Plague. The guys I knew open about it were very brave in a way never openly acknowledged.
Cops used to hunt and group beat gay men and trans women in Philly. Down in Conchy friends of friends got beaten or disappeared, likely into the river. I knew a butch lesbian disappeared out of Germantown. Police were way not safe. The obvious gay man I knew down in the Neighborhoods who was safe was safe because he had a bunch of tough hetero friends who sort of body guarded him and because he had this woman he could pretend to date. Everyone knew nothing was happening there, but it saved face. Like they could all pretend they didn't know.
(Here follows a passage I can't figure out how to anonymize with some examples of people in west Coast situations that were similar but with different details). There sometimes was a "no one beats up my little brother" or a "he's on our team sort" of mentality. It's sort of a mascot situation. (That one exceptional person is protected, but anyone else who looks not cis/straight is in danger.)
(Regarding ACT UP and Queer Nation) Being out was activism and activism was still punk.
From a 1989 perspective, things really did start to get noticeably better a few years later, and when the protease inhibitors came onto the market, things changed dramatically because people could focus on things besides triage.
A lot of stuff was word of mouth in the 80's. There was a sort of queer whisper network that would let someone find the safest places or services and where was less safe to go.
I think the thing that's really hard to convey to people who aren't our agish is how fundamentally unsafe everything was. We pretty much assumed that if the Plague didn't get us, the bombs would right up until the Soviet Union collapsed. There was this fundamental background sense that we wouldn't make it to thirty. People reacted to this in different ways, but it's the Generational subtext.
Xers are like that for a reason. Cops were dangerous unpredictable people who might help but also might beat and murder us. I think this is why my sympathy for things like the Black Lives matter movement is so visceral. Of course I have a fundamental sympathy for people still living that reality.
I loved the hair, clothes, and music, but it was fucking terrifying to live through it. You lived your whole life under constant threat of sudden violent death in a culture where your safety from toddlerhood was considered entirely a matter of your personal responsibility. People could pretty much do anything to you at any time and victim blaming said it was your fault. If you were not a rich straight able bodied cis male, there was no guarantee at all that authorities would care if something terrible happened to you. What safety you had, you had to make usually through organizing or safety in numbers. There was this sort of huddling together of queer folk and allies.
I think the generation lines are in the wrong place. Divider for Boomer/Gen X should be whether or not you or your high school friends were in danger of being drafted or not. Divider for X/Millenial should be whether or not you grew up assuming you'd die from bomb and/or plague before you were 40.
The first person came who out to be explicitly when I was 15 literally didn't have non-pejorative language for herself until I gave it to her. (Early '90's) My only friend on my floor in my first dorm at my first West Coast College was the out bi RA. I was their only friend on the floor too. Everyone else was pledging Greek and they were so alien to us and vica versa we had no common ground at all.
(This is in response to someone else's story about the violent gay bashing of a straight student for being to pretty) A guy in my first dorm at Second College was metrosexual a little before it was cool. Alternative style. Gorgeous, mixed race. Straight. He got beaten up by a frat coming home to the dorm at night and we had to organize protection for him walking him to and from things like the library at night because he was terrified it would happen again. I was tough and knew martial arts, so I used to be one of his guards. They called him "Faggot" when they beat him. Campus cops would do nothing. Project Safe Ride wouldn't take him because he was a man. And this was the '90's. It was the bi RA recruited the unofficial guards BTW. Queer folk taking care of their own. Even though the guy was straight he counted as one of our own.
I often say the only thing I want back from the Eisenhower Era is the top tax rate. With the '80's it's just some music and style stuff. I never the fuck want to have to live like that again and that's why I have been pretty much constantly white hot furious since November '16. I do not like not knowing if 45's going to blow us up because nuclear wars are "fun and easy to win." I am a little too young to personally remember back alley abortions, but that's living memory and I don't want to go back there and to the whole people having to talk doctors into medically necessary birth birth control because you can't just get it for sex thing my Mom's generation went through. I do not want to go back to the constant LGBTQIA+ bashing and the police murdering us for fun with no consequences. I do not want to lose what progress we've made on civil rights, accessibility, and the environment.
* "Kid-scaring Namahage among Japanese folk rituals approved for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list:" https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/11/29/national/kid-scaring-namahage-among-japanese-folk-rituals-approved-unesco-intangible-cultural-heritage-list/#.XDRvOy17nIX
* "Rashida Tlaib's "Impeach the Motherf**ker" Comment & Great Pacific Garbage Patch Cleanup:"
* "The Government Shutdown and Trump's Escalating Wall Gambit:"
* Monday I was short sleeped for errands. The last couple forageswere not particularly good. Today's wasn't really any better. I needed some super specific essentials from a particular grocery near there. My legs were mostly done while I was waiting to check out, and I had to get someone from the store to carry my bag for me and I had a hell of a time getting back in the car, but after a rest, I drove downtown because my bloodwork was due for real, and the Library was soft reopening today so I could collect the holds trapped there since end of December. Most of the system was still down Monday night, but they hope to be full service in a day or two.
I am trying not to freak out about 45's decision not to let us eat in February over his boarder wall shit, because this is the last funded month of Food stamps, unless the tantrum ends.
I am still in the middle of the alarmingly bad AS flare, my eyelid has been twitching since...maybe Thursday? And today, I'm pretty sure my usual five vial draw knocked me into mild shock for a few hours. There will be no proper sleep for several days. I am falling down on the news again, but really between everything, my concentration was just shreds Monday night.
I have a first thing in the Morning Wednesday thing at the Doctor and I'm likely just going to sleep after until I can't anymore. I'm not even going to try to forage. If I don't post, I'm trying to get my body to function at a bearable level.
* O.o "Sunday Sweets Makes Sure You Eat Your Greens:" http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2019/1/6/sunday-sweets-makes-sure-you-eat-your-greens.html
* "Things I Have Mistaken For A Feeling Over The Years:" http://the-toast.net/2016/04/04/things-i-have-mistaken-for-a-feeling-over-the-years/
I'm pretty sure "A smell I can’t place but reminds me of something" IS a feeling.
*****
* Full list of Resistance and charity links has been migrated to my profile as it was getting out of hand.
* Trans Helplines: https://www.translifeline.org/
* Want to complaint about Betsy DeVos's plan to coddle college rapists? https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/11/29/2018-25314/nondiscrimination-on-the-basis-of-sex-in-education-programs-or-activities-receiving-federal#open-comment
* "Trump’s New Wall to Keep Out the Disabled:" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/opinion/trumps-disability-public-charge.html
They are soliciting public comment on these draconian regulations until December 10th here: https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=USCIS-2010-0012-0001
* Donate to HIAS to help refugees: https://act.hias.org/page/6048/donate/1
* Want to contribute directly to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services fund? "Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services:" https://www.raicestexas.org/
* Support Kids at the Border: http://brigdh.tumblr.com/post/175022384240/support-the-kids-at-the-border
* A list of organizations to help you run for office: http://lovingmyselfishard.tumblr.com/post/167330144634/psst-hey
* Have something you want to tell your Congress Critters? If you can not protest in person, here are some other options:
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
* This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
* Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* This is a cool person and the swimsuits are being made from an ethical source. LGBTQIA+ swimsuits: https://www.etsy.com/shop/NerdyKeppie?ref=l2-shopheader-name§ion_id=24021616
* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com or paypal.me/Gwydion
* Birthday/Solstice master list: https://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/1925021.html
I'm sure by now you've seen this
Date: 2019-01-09 01:05 pm (UTC)https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/08/usda-funds-february-snap-benefits-1069641
Re: I'm sure by now you've seen this
Date: 2019-01-10 08:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-09 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-10 04:09 am (UTC)But yeah, Gen X pretty much grew up with 'there will be a nuclear war and we will all die, probably before 2000' and 'Any sexual contact is potentially deadly, so are things like getting blood transfusions.'
On the other hand, (and some of this was just being a few years younger) gay-bashing was always, to me, something happening somewhere else, not something anyone I personally knew had to worry about. That time was the start of the national arguments about whether or not to ordain gay people in the church and that was certainly painful and I do not want to go back to it (though it seems we keep circling back again and again, so I don't really have a choice).
The gay men I knew from my grandfather's generation were in theater (and lived in San Francisco and London). Maybe they worried about police or attacks where I couldn't see, since I mostly interacted with them as a child. The people I knew through RHPS and BBSes and gaming stuff likewise moved through the world pretty openly (but, again, Los Angeles/Pasadena/Hollywood), and maybe they were a lot more worried where I never heard about it. Or maybe it was just a few years made a big difference. But most of that crowd was also pretty middle to upper-middle class, which I think helped. It was sort of the years of discussing whether and how much to 'freak the mundanes'.
And then college in mid-90s was in St. Paul and the twin cities are one of those exceptionally progressive areas in a lot of ways. They had a local, long standing, LGBT magazine which was easily available all over the place. They had a lot of openly queer businesses. My college had a very active LGBT club.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-10 08:41 am (UTC)Philly was so bad the first openly gay cop there killed himself in less than a year. (It was right after I went away to college, I think, but can't swear to exact year). Police pretty blatantly lured and murdered a trans woman of colour, coluded to destroy evidence, and refused to investigate it in the late '90's, and dumped another from a car to bleed to death instead of takeing her to the hospital as late as 2002. I'm sure it was better in places like say, San Fransisco or smaller college towns. One of the other people in the conversation with incredibly violent stories about people they knew was from a small town. I'm not saying it was unrelentingly bad universally or even in places where it was particularly bad, but the degree of how much better it is is stunning.
When I went to the Doctor this morning they had updated their demographics polling for the new year with a non-binary option and you should have seen the orientation options. Even five years ago, I wouldn't have checked the non-binary box even if it had existed (which it didn't) because I would have been completely barred from trans specific health care.
The amount of change in my lifetime is huge. Is it close to enough? No. Does class and geography still matter? Unfortunately yes, but the good is spreading. Philly hosts trans conferences now and has made massive strides on human rights. I can check the non-binary box and still expect services.
I am just terrified we'll lose what we've gained.