SmartAss Commentary: Liberal Crip Goes to the Gun Show

Submitted by anonymous on 14 June, 2011 - 11:25
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The Indy 1500 has a terrible web page – there is very little you can do there but find out the dates of upcoming shows, sign up for a mailing list and $1 off $10 admission, and see some photos of previous shows. However, it is a decent show as far as I can tell. I had a decent time there. I want to talk about my own gun history, some of the social issues at the gun show, and the accessibility for people with disabilities.

I should probably spell a few things out here before we get started. I am a Second Amendment liberal. I believe in both state protection via police and sheriff departments and self defense. I find the arguments about the intent of the Second Amendment to be more semantic than practical. When the Bill of Rights was created, the gun was simply a tool of survival in early American culture, as in many others. Small, unfunded local defense militias depended on each member to have their own arms. They did, both for hunting and defense. So I find that if a person has a solid answer to the separation of militia and culture – that answer may well be their opinion on the matter rather than a historical fact.

I grew up around gun folks. My mom’s first husband (my adoptive dad or ADad*), her father and several of her brothers all served in the military. The first gun stories I heard were from ADad as he explained the AK scar he acquired in Vietnam. He was shot in the shoulder by a [enemy combatant – I will not use the word he used] and he returned fire, killing the man. My mother was very anti-gun. My grandfather and multiple uncles were enlisted military men. My husband was a military kid, and very comfortable with guns. My boyfriend grew up in a rural social network that was also very easy with firearms – his father was a police officer and is now a correctional officer.

Christina Engela's picture

I Woke Up This Morning

Submitted by Christina Engela on 13 June, 2011 - 11:30
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I woke up this morning, alone. The space beside me, cold and empty. You should have been there, but you weren't. Your pride was too strong and you were too good for me, remember? Well, I do. How could I ever forget?

You said you could handle my past, you said you could face the future by my side. But somehow both issues became just too steep for you to climb over. What I am and what I was before was just too much for you to accept or deal with, your misplaced faith that I could be anything else just too much for me to give in to, or capitulate.

Nothing in this universe could stop the process I went through to become who I am, nor turn it back to what I was, nor make me perfect enough for me to be acceptable to you. And so here we are, two opposites in a world of opposing forces, assigned labels like 'good' and 'evil' simply for how we come into this world, how we cope with it, and how we go out from it. In a world where we are taught too much that it matters, how can I blame you any further?
Alex Karydi's picture

Helping Our Gay Youth

Submitted by Alex Karydi on 12 June, 2011 - 20:27
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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu-QrjtjhWw&feature=player_embedded


Walking down the hallway back to the Vice Principal’s office, again, for another detention I wonder will life ever be any different. Sitting staring at his lips wondering what he and his wife will do on the weekend (wanting to be anywhere else but here), he is delighted to give me another lecture on how thin I am and whether I will eat a candy bar with him. He fears that I have an eating disorder and is trying to trick me into getting fat.

Sitting in my office fifteen years later I feel relief those days are behind me. You could not pay me enough money to go back to high school or be a teenager. As far as Mr. Jones, well, he was right I had a sever eating disorder and I was not about to give in to anyone and eat that candy bar. After all it was the only thing I felt I had control over.

Most days I felt that I lived outside my body and was so very much alone, and it seemed that my father was the only person that could see through me. He would say, “You are different Alex and this world doesn’t like those that are unlike them. Try not to be so different because I don’t want you to suffer for it. I want you to have a good life.”

I would lay in bed crying most nights hating the body I was in and the thoughts that raced through my head. I could not figure out what was different about me, except that every piece of me felt alien. I guess that is what being a teenager is all about.

arvan's picture

Indigenous Peoples In the Sex Trade – Speaking For Ourselves

Submitted by arvan on 10 June, 2011 - 18:37
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(I saw this today and felt it needed as much exposure as possible)

We as Indigenous peoples who have current and/or former life experience in the sex trade and sex industries met on unceeded Coast Salish Territory in Vancouver on Monday April 11th 2011. In a talking circle organized by the Native Youth Sexual Health Network we wish to share the following points about our collective discussion so that we may speak FOR ourselves and life experiences:

-We recognize that many of us have multiple identities and communities that we belong to – some of us take up the title of “sex worker” while others do not see themselves this way.  We have a myriad of experiences in the sex trade, everything from violence, coercion, to survival, getting by, empowerment, and everything in between.   We want to give voice to these issues so that those who are CURRENTLY involved in sex work and the sex industries feel supported and are the primary place where decisions surrounding our lives are made.  We should not be made to feel judged, blamed, or shunned from ANY of the communities we belong to or are coming from. We are the best deciders of what we want our lives to be.

Buck Angel's picture

Buck Angel's Family Acceptance PSA

Submitted by Buck Angel on 8 June, 2011 - 11:10
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My new Public Service Announcement from my Mom. To help family members who are having a hard time with acceptance of a GBLTQ son or daughter.

For help, check out the resources on http://www.pflag.org

closed captioned for the hearing impaired

Check out more of Buck Angel Entertainment at www.buckangelentertainment.com

Christina Engela's picture

Christo-fascism Anti-fun Police At Work In SA

Submitted by Christina Engela on 8 June, 2011 - 10:15
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In recent times I began pondering more deeply about religious matters. Having come from a Christian background, I am more familiar with the way things work in what Pagans tend to describe as a "book religion" - by this is meant - a religion which is defined by a set of rules in a book, and a dogma which is taught and enforced in its temples, homes and wherever its adherents go.

The concept is firmly aimed at extending control over its adherents. You're not allowed to question or challenge anything. You're not supposed to innovate or find your own path or "cherry-pick" which principles in the book you're going to adhere to, and which not - which oddly enough is precisely what the fundamentalists do, even though they certainly won't admit to it. You're not supposed to think, argue or challenge anything - and least of all, to test it for yourself. You're supposed to do nothing but follow, keep your mouth shut, trust, have faith - and above all, to obey the doctrine.

Anyone who doesn't comply is outside the church, outside the law and out of "the grace of god" - or so they clam. When you begin to pick at the stitching holding this bag of nuts together of course, it begins to unravel somewhat dramatically.

The entire concept of a book religion is a house of cards - built on the foundation of the book itself. Therefore it can never be more firm than the foundation upon which it is set. It is claimed that the book is the work or writing of the foundational god of the book religion itself - and once you realize that "hang on a minute, some blokes wrote all this stuff down" - it's pretty much a domino effect from there. That's right - for a book to be entirely produced by the central deity of the religion - i.e. a set of laws given by it to Humanity itself, would amount to tantamount proof of the existence of that deity. Unfortunately, not one single copy of the Christian bible (or any other holy book) has been found with any signs that it was written by anything other than ordinary mortal men - no matter what their adherents claim. Oops.

Things that Make My Life Easier: Pill Card

Submitted by anonymous on 7 June, 2011 - 14:35
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I bought the Pill Card on Amazon, but it was sold and fulfilled by SplaceCo. I paid a total of $2.99 ($1.99 + very reasonable shipping).

The Pill Card is exactly what it says on the tin. Actually, it didn’t come in a tin, but you know what I mean (or at least TV Tropes does!). Delivery was timely. While it seems that the Pill Card comes in several colors, there is no option to choose color when ordering. Mine is brown.

Sticker says:
Re-Pillable Card
A Wallet Pill Card
Place over the top
Credit Card, it fits!
Pills are a wallet reach away.
Read and remove.


Note: I can’t see a reason to remove the sticker, which is a good thing, since it is a really stuck on there sort of arrangement.


At 2.25 inches tall, 2.25 inches wide, the card is flat, and the compartment sticks out about .25 inch. Most OTC NSAIDs I tried worked fine. An 800mg ibuprophen is a tight squeeze, and a CitriCal Petite (which must be named ironically, I think) does not fit. There is a divider inside the compartment, so you could store, say, aspirin on one side and your Rx med on the other.

arvan's picture

Butch Voices 2011 | Oakland, CA

Submitted by arvan on 6 June, 2011 - 20:20
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BUTCH Voices is a grassroots organization dedicated to of all womyn, female-bodied, and trans-identified individuals who are Masculine of Center*and their Allies.  The organization will hold the second national BUTCH Voices Conference on August 18th– 21st, 2011 at the Oakland City Center Marriott. 

Submissions are now being accepted for workshops, performances, presentations, skill shares, photography/visual art and video. The submission deadline is June 1, 2011. Early registration has begun and is $100 for regular attendees, $125 for VIP and $50 for students. Volunteers can register online and are needed in all areas of the conference. Volunteers pay regular registration price and receive all the benefits of VIP status in exchange for at least four hours of their volunteer service during the conference.

The second national conference of it’s kind, BUTCH Voices 2011, is produced by a team of critical-thinking, open-minded, gender-bending social justice activists who share a common goal of increasing positive visibility. Activities throughout the conference will highlight those who share their voices through activism, performance, media, oral history, spoken word, art, photography, film and other collaborative means.

BUTCH Voices seeks to bring together people of various identities who are often divided by gender, sexuality, language, biology, race, age, size, ability, religion, geography, and class to honor and explore diversity by creating a safe space to discuss, examine, and deconstruct commonalities, differences, and the places they intersect.

Christina Engela's picture

Bed-knobs And Broomsticks

Submitted by Christina Engela on 6 June, 2011 - 19:32
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If people today think of anyone who is sexual, or who enjoys sex, as "immoral", "deviant" or "undesirable" today - it is because of religious indoctrination. If we think of people who abstain from all sexual activity, and those who remain virginal through their lives, living by a code that sex is for procreation and not enjoyment, it is because of the puritan hangover left us by folks who were too afraid to see themselves naked lest it cause them to think sinful thoughts - and with an obsession about the afterlife and where they would spend it - instead of enjoying and celebrating the life they had.

Older civilizations did not suffer this afliction. Historians can bear me out when I say that the Roman, Egyptian and Greek civilizations did not fall because they were sexually wanton by today's "Christian" standards, or because they were "morally corrupt" or "sinful". In fact, Rome fell because it had become militarily weak, and ironically enough, at this time the state religion was Catholicism. Hmm.
Many people today spend a great deal of time meddling in the lives of others, working to limit their options, delineate their freedoms, and suspend their liberties - and they do so from a blatant and overt hyper-religious angle, attempting to force other people to embrace the same litany and adhere to the same liturgy as they hold to themselves. Of course, we all should know that not everyone is the same, looks the same or feels the same about everything, so why should people all be forced to think, feel, believe and speak or act the same way? And how can one group, in all fairness decide that IT should be the model which all others should adopt and be held accountable to?
Bekhsoos's picture

Call for Action: Tell IGLYO to Get Out of Israel

Submitted by Bekhsoos on 6 June, 2011 - 18:13
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Call for Action: Tell IGLYO to Get Out of Israel

Dear LGBTQ organization/group/activist,

We Palestinian queer activists from alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian society, Aswat — Palestinian Gay Women, and PQBDS (Palestinian Queers for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions), are writing to you to express our disappointment with the International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization’s [IGLYO] decision to hold its General Assembly for 2011, this December, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Even after we contacted IGLYO expressing our deep concerns about the problematic political implications of holding the conference in Israel,  they published an ‘Open Letter – 2011 GA‘ emphasizing that they are unwilling to reconsider, and even more, defending their decision and misleading LGTBQ member organizations into normalizing and providing a cover to the Israeli apartheid and oppression of the Palestinian people — IGLYO didn’t only decide to hold their General Assembly conference in Tel Aviv, but they also accepted Israeli government money, participating in a world wide campaign to re-brand Israel and pinkwash it’s crimes. We are therefore calling upon you to help us communicate to IGLYO why their action is unjust and unbecoming of an organization devoted to furthering the rights of queer people and human rights in general.

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