Janet Mock: It Gets Better
Janet Mock is an associate editor at People magazine. She began life as "Charles." I found this statement haunting and compelling. See what you think -- it's less than three minutes long.
Something to think about over the weekend.
Something to think about over the weekend.
posted by JimK at 2:03 PM
27 Comments:
I found it neither haunting nor compelling.
I found it to be sad.
that was quick
I'm finished thinking about it
Janet’s video is a wonderful counterpoint to the ubiquitous Christian propaganda about transwomen being “mentally ill,” and Ruth Jacob’s website devoted to making people think trans women are mostly AIDS infected prostitutes.
As a successful and professional transwoman, I’m sure she will be an inspiration to a lot of young trans folks trying to cope with the ubiquitous harassment from the undereducated.
Have a fantabulous weekend.
Cynthia
that person doesn't even remotely resemble a guy so it's hard they've had any "ubiquitous harassment to cope with"
time for today's reason that Barry O won't be re-elected:
"There’s no need to look beyond the headlines this month: both the jobs report and the unemployment numbers for May are telling the same grim story. A pathetic 54,000 new jobs were created last month — that’s significantly below the pace needed just to keep up with population growth — and unemployment went up, to a gruesome 9.1%.
Statistically speaking, both of these numbers are flat. But flat is, obviously, not remotely good enough in an economy where all stimulus — both fiscal and monetary — is coming to an end and where the single most important indicator of whether we’re successfully recovering from the Great Recession is in the employment figures.
If you do want to go beyond the headlines, things look if anything even worse: the average duration of unemployment, for instance, just hit another new record at 39.7 weeks; a full 44% of all unemployed people have now been jobless for more than six months. And on top of that, it turns out that the government’s statisticians were overly optimistic for the past couple of months: the payrolls numbers for March and April were revised downwards by 39,000 jobs."
Obama has failed and his failures have left us weaker.
He's retiring in 2012.
Back when we were spending stimulus dollars, economic indicators improved and we began to climb out of the Bush recession
Now that we're on the GOP's austerity program, economic indicators are getting worse and we are falling into another GOP-caused slump.
you might be able to make that case in a couple of years
right now, we have a 2% payroll tax exemption in effect (BO's idea), historically low interest rates and a trillion dollar deficit
what more stimulus is even possible?
the "GOP austerity program" is mostly talk, even the cuts Obama agreed to a few months ago was nothing but smoke and mirrors
the biggest problem is that Obama's plans for government control and dimunition of American influence are so scary that businesses are acting rationally and saving cash to ensure their survival
Obama has shown little capacity for leadership and is not inspiring confidence in those who need to take risks to make our country go again
look at David Cameron in the UK
if he were in America, he would be in the Tea Party, as he is slashing government spending by 20%
Obama needs to go back to being a community organizer in Chicago
you know how Jim is always trying to associate pro-family groups with Westboro Baptist Church?
to him, all groups that believe homosexuality is not a part of God's plan are related
time to turn the tables on him
on Memorial Day on Arlington Cemetery, WBC turned up to protest
TTFers will be glad to know there was a counter-protest
by the Ku Klux Klan
TTF and KKK
working for the same side
the similarities are amaaaazing!
David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American white nationalist activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was also a former candidate in the Republican presidential primaries in 1992, and in the Democratic presidential primaries in 1988. Duke has unsuccessfully run for the Louisiana State Senate, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and Governor of Louisiana.
A former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Duke describes himself as a racial realist, asserting that "all people have a basic human right to preserve their own heritage." He is a strong advocate of opposition to Zionism as well as what he asserts to be Jewish control of the Federal Reserve Bank, the federal government and the media. Duke supports anti-immigration, both legal and illegal, preservation of what he labels Western culture and traditionalist Christian "family values", strict Constitutionalism, abolition of the Internal Revenue Service, voluntary racial segregation, ardent anti-communism and white separatism.
doesn't sound like a tea bagger to me
sounds like a TTFer
sexist, racist, ethnocentric
Anon, you know that is ridiculous, right?
You don't have to be TTF to see that the Westboro Baptists are bad people.
And you don't have to be TTF to see that you are the embodiment of the word "troll."
yes, everyone agrees WBC are bad people, but for different reasons
I think their tactic of disturbing funeral services is despicable
TTF lumps them with pro-family groups and hates them because they dare to point out that the fact that homosexuality does not meet the plan of our Creator for us
that fact, btw, is perfectly evident in the way we're designed but that whole "design" concept is also problemattic for TTF
but, then, we actually weren't talking about WBC
we were talking about TTF's frequent use of the propaganda tactic of lumping everyone that disagrees them together
and since they like that tactic so much, they'll have to accept that it puts them in league with the KKK, who also hates WBC
btw, TTF recently came out against NPS rules against dancing inside national memorials
seems a sensible rule to not to disturb the atmosphere of solemnity that these memorials were set aside for
that's also the case with the solemnity of funerals disturbed by WBC
so, both TTF and WBC agree that the solemnity of memorial services is not important if there is an opportunity to draw attention by disturbing this peace
so while TTF pretends to be on the same side as the KKK regarding protests at memorial services, their position is actually closer to WBC
TTF, KKK, WBC
they definitely have their commonalities
Anon, KKK, and WBC all share a mistaken belief that God's homosexual creations do "not meet the plan of our Creator for us."
God does not make mistakes, but mere mortals like Anon, the KKK, and the WBC sure do.
"Anon, KKK, and WBC all share a mistaken belief that God's homosexual creations do "not meet the plan of our Creator for us.""
God didn't make homosexuality. Casual observation is enough to demonstrate to any objective observer that the human body wasn't designed for such activity.
"God does not make mistakes, but mere mortals like Anon, the KKK, and the WBC sure do."
I'd agree with that but it's interesting that you don't mention the fallibility of TTF, the KKK's and WBC's soul mates.
Remember, everyone: the main objections most people have to WBC is that they disturb the solemnity of memorial services for our soldiers.
TTF favors disturbing the solemnity of memorials to our founding fathers.
See the similarity?
WBC claims "God hates fags"
Anonymous claims "homosexuality does not meet the plan of our Creator"
WBC and Anonymous believe their God does not love homosexuals or forgive them for their sins like He does all His other creations.
Anon, you have twice talked about the design of the human body as proving that God's intention was for people to be heterosexual. Let me mention two anomalies and see what you say about them.
First, the clitoris is the organ that triggers orgasm for the female and makes sex pleasurable for her. Yet it is placed outside the vagina, where the penis does not stimulate it during sexual intercourse. Clearly this design does not favor heterosexual penile penetration -- stimulation of the clitoris is just as easy for a woman as for a man to do.
Second, the prostate gland in a man is situated just inside the anus, where it can be pleasurably stimulated during anal intercourse. There is no other way to reach it.
If God designed the human body for straight sex, he sure went about it in a strange way!
Anon, cat got your tongue?
"WBC and Anonymous believe their God does not love homosexuals or forgive them for their sins like He does all His other creations."
don't know that much about what WBC believes
I only know that, like TTF, they seem to not feel that the solemnity of memorials is important
Anonoymous, however, believes that homosexuals can be forgiven of their sins just like everyone else
"If God designed the human body for straight sex, he sure went about it in a strange way!"
this is a minority opinion
Regarding the anatomy issue....the Anon who wrote that is very obviously not a heterosexual woman and has not the slightest clue what goes on between a man and a woman.
A minority opinion? How uninformed are you?
"In 1992, a study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that only 26% of men 18 to 59 and 20% of women 18 to 59 had engaged in heterosexual anal sex; a similar 2005 survey (also conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) found a rising incidence of anal sex relations in the American heterosexual population. The survey showed that 40% of men and 35% of women between 25 and 44 had engaged in heterosexual anal sex. In terms of overall numbers of survey respondents, seven times as many women as gay men said that they engaged in anal intercourse, with this figure reflecting the larger heterosexual population size. According to the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB), although anal intercourse is reported by fewer women than other partnered sex behaviors, partnered women in the age groups between 18-49 are significantly more likely to report having anal sex in the past 90 days.
In a 2007 report entitled Prevalence and Correlates of Heterosexual Anal and Oral Sex in Adolescents and Adults in the United States, published in the Journal of Infectious Disease, a national survey of Family Growth found that 34% men and 30% women reported ever participating in heterosexual anal sex. The percentage of participants reporting heterosexual anal sex was significantly higher among 20- to 24-year-olds and peaked among 30- to 34-year-olds. Another survey in, 2008, focused on a much younger demographic of teenagers and young adults, aged 15–21. It found that 16% of 1350 surveyed had had this type of sex in the previous 3 months, with condoms being used 29% of the time. However, given the subject matter, the survey hypothesized the prevalence was probably underestimated.
In 2009, Kimberly R. McBride published a clinical report in The Journal of Sex Research which stated that changing norms may affect the frequency of heterosexual anal sex behaviors and suggests that there is a role for the exotic in the sexual repertoires of some heterosexuals" "[F]or a certain number of heterosexuals, anal intercourse is pleasurable, exciting, and perhaps considered more intimate than vaginal sex...". McBride and her colleagues investigated the prevalence of non-intercourse anal sex behaviors among a sample of men (n=1,299) and women (n=1,919) compared to anal intercourse experience and found that 51% of men and 43% of women had participated in at least one act of oral–anal sex, manual–anal sex, or anal sex toy use. McBride and Janssen found that the majority of men (n=631) and women (n=856) who reported heterosexual anal intercourse in the past 12 months were in exclusive, monogamous relationships: 69% and 73%, respectively."
Why?
"The abundance of nerve endings in the anal region and rectum makes anal sex pleasurable for many women and men. Some men get pleasure from anal penetration that stimulates the prostate gland, which lies between the rectum and the rest of the male reproductive organs."
And
"Many people find anal sex pleasurable, and some may reach orgasm—through stimulation of the prostate in men, and clitoral and G-Spot leg stimulation in women. However, many people find it painful as well; in some cases extremely so, which may be due to psychological factors in some cases."
It would have been a simple and obvious thing for God to put the glans clitoris inside the vagina if He intended for women to enjoy penile intercourse. Instead He put it where it is easily accessible to both men and women -- an arrangement that results in seventy five percent of women being unable to attain orgasm from heterosexual intercourse.
And there is no sensible reason to put the male prostate in a place that can only be stimulated by insertion of something penislike into the anus. In fact, there is no reason, given the function of the prostate, for God to have made direct stimulation of that gland so goshdarn pleasurable at all.
This is not my "opinion," those are simple obvious facts.
"A minority opinion? How uninformed are you?"
yes, it's a minority opinion that God's design of humans is "strange" if his plans for us was heterosexuality
rattling off stats about heterosexual anal sex is irrelevant
"This is not my "opinion," those are simple obvious facts."
what, that homosexuality is more pleasurable than heterosexuality?
I don't know if that's your opinion or not but it's certainly not factual
it's well-known that homosexuals use drugs to deal the pain of anal intercourse
is there some type of pleasure also involved?
who knows but most guys don't think the routine doctor's examination of the prostrate gland is a barrel of monkeys
maybe gays mix pain and pleasure, which would explain their tendency toward S&M
Anon, I am only saying that the human body seems to be designed -- if you want to think it was "designed" -- with something other than penis-in-vagina intercourse in mind. Your religious argument fails, is what I'm saying, the design of the human body is optimized for something other than straight sexual intercourse. You can continue to believe that God frowns on alternative sexualities, but your argument from the design of the body fails.
And as far as things being "well known" about gay people using drugs for the pain of anal intercourse, here's a question -- do straight people use drugs for the pain of anal sex, since they practice it many times more frequently than gay people? This "fact" is only well-known to you, and perhaps the kid on the playground you told it to you.
And you will find that sadomasochism is practiced very much more by heterosexuals than gays and lesbians, as well. Your attempt to associate gays with kink is transparently naive.
My conclusion from your assertions here is that your spouse must be royally frustrated and bored.
"Anon, I am only saying that the human body seems to be designed -- if you want to think it was "designed" -- with something other than penis-in-vagina intercourse in mind."
I'm only saying you're wrong.
Extremely arrogant of me, I know, but most people agree with me.
It's not even worth an extended discussion.
I agree, there is nothing to discuss. You're right because you believe you're right.
it's not me that's right
it's every major system of morality in the world
Anon claimed:
“God didn't make homosexuality. Casual observation is enough to demonstrate to any objective observer that the human body wasn't designed for such activity.”
Casual observation of the human body by the objective observer provides plain evidence that that if said body was “designed” in any sense, it was clearly designed by a government committee, and not any kind of omnipotent God.
Nothing else could explain why a sewage treatment plant was run right through the center of a world class amusement park.
Have a nice day,
Cynthia
the ever clear cry of the gays:
God didn't do a good job
that says it all
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