we should be allies

N.H. Senate panel rejects transgender bill - The Boston Globe

This sucks.

When are we going to make the saftey of all people a priority? When are we going to start working toward preventing violence? When are we going to, as a people, say to the transcommunity "you are worthwhile; you are worth protecting"?

I am a cisgender gay female. I hope I can be counted on as an ally to the transgender community, but I have a lot of learning to do.

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GISG: IT Issue Edition

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I got a call from a Ricoh tech names “Abel”.

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She is amazing. And happy!

A World of Variation

I’ve been dissatisfied for several years at the language we use when discussing and writing laws about non-mainstream (read fully heterosexual) sexual identities. “Sexual preference” thankfully has seen a significant decline in use. “Sexual orientation” however remains. Both of these terms whisper and hint at choice. I do not believe that attraction is a choice, although I also believe that there may be people in the world that do choose their “orientation”. The majority of people find their sexual choices driven by something innate. I have been looking for a new term and complaining all along the journey to find one. My eureka moment, I think, has come.

While listening to a podcast on Charles Darwin, I was thinking about how absurd it is that discrimination and hate can be based upon variations in sex characteristics, and how we very well could have evolved large women and small men (like the Black Widow). Okay, so I dorked out hard core. The point is I landed on a term that seems to work for me. “Sexual Variation”. With sexual variation, we get a few things that we don’t get with the other two:

General Benefits

• The idea of choice is taken out of the equation. Even if you do choose to orient yourself one way over another, that choice is still found under the variation umbrella.
• A broader spectrum of sexuality can be encompassed here rather than the gay-straight-bi Venn Diagram.
• It opens up conversation again about how sexuality fits into our lives and our identities (I will admit that this benefit might be for a limited time only).

Personal Benefits (that I hope are general)

• My love of language specificity and evolution are satisfied all at once.
• I’m more inclined to ask someone “What’s your (sexual) variation?” than I am “What’s your (sexual) orientation?”. The question feels less threatening.
• When answering that question, I don’t feel a need to shove myself into a box or a category that doesn’t quite fit.

So. What’s your variation?