We've moved--again!

Most lovely ducks! And readers of a non-anatidean persuasion!

At long last I've moved to my own url and completely updated the look of the blog--I hope you like it!

You can now find me at www.thesecondawakening.com.

Thanks for following me so long, and hope to see you at the new place!

Mass Resistance Made Me Mad Enough To Vomit

In the spirit of spring training, I am apparently having an Away week, as all most posts so far have originated elsewhere!

Today's offering appears at Shakesville:

First Event is an annual conference held in January by the Tiffany Club of New England, a transgender support group. Like any conference, it consists of workshops, cocktail parties, and banquets with awards ceremonies and occasionally pompous keynote addresses. About the only difference between it and, say, a Linux convention is that there will be slightly more trans people at First Event. (There may also be more computer engineers, for that matter.)

But that's not all. According to Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group Mass Resistance, First Event is what America will look like in the horrifying post-Homosexual Agenda^™ world soon to be imposed upon the honest, godfearing citizens of These United.

And to prove their point, they made a video....

 Fight the power!

And Now In GaGa Studies...

Hey, I have a post up at Tiger Beatdown about Lady GaGa! It's about the 11 things I learned from watching the "Telephone" video...many of which weren't all that useful, actually.

All I Ever Needed to Know* I Learned From "Sex in the City"

* for the set {being a woman, being a writer, living in New York, things that are totally inaccurate}

1. It is possible to rent a large one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side as a writer whose only paid gig is a column for a newspaper that is a) free b) more annoying than the free morning paper they hand out in subway stations and c) couldn’t beat the Village Voice’s circulation even when you had to pay for the Voice.
2. In addition, you will be able to afford a closet full of designer dresses and shoes.
3. And also only take cabs to places, because real New Yorkers don’t ride the subway.
4. The worst thing that will happen to you in a mugging is that the mugger will take your shoes.
5. Writers only take their inspiration from the messed up lives of their friends.
6. The most likely person for a highly-motivated, highly-overworked, and highly-educated lawyer to end up with is a bartender.
7. Who will make her move to Brooklyn.
8. And be the primary caretaker of his ailing mother.
9. Every woman needs a gay friend to have a truly complete life.
10. Gay friends come in two flavors: nebbishly queeny, and outrageously queeny.
11. There’s a third type, the incredibly hot underwear model, but within a few years that character type will be straight anyway.
12. Female friendships are all-consuming, have no boundaries of time, subject, or privacy, and absolutely necessary for life because your girlfriends will support you no matter what.
13. They will also, however, mock your grooming habits and sexual partners.
14. Women need to be strong, self-actualized, and firm in their knowledge of who they are.
15. However, they should also change their lives completely for a man. Such changes include but are not limited to: changing your boro of residence, changing your city of residence, changing your religion.
16. You will start out by declaring your sexual freedom from the past. You will plan to enact this by having the same soul-less, commitment-less relationships of the douchiest of guys.
17. You will then spend the next several years doing completely the opposite.
18. A gentle, caring man who is a committed artist, interested in you and your career, and supportive of your friends and life-choices will enter your life. You must reject this person.
19. A man who alternates between a creepy sexual obsession with you and treating you like an afterthought to his social calendar will enter your life. He will specialize in sending mixed signals. He will ignore your needs and career. He will break up with you, get married, and only then declare his love for you. He will enter and exit your life with a total disregard for your feelings, and refuse to ever discuss any of these points and how they relate to your relationship. He will, in short, treat you as an amusing accessory. You must cling to this man like a drowning sailor to a life preserver.
20. There will be a television show about four female friends who engage in frank discussions about their sex lives. Often these discussions will take place during a meal. A frequent subject will be the difficulties of dating at their age. In the 1980s that age will be the late 50s. A decade later, the age will be the mid-30s. This will be considered progress.

In Reality

Oh, yeah, you know what time it is...time for REALITY TELEVISION:

OK, I'm dense: but "I Want to Work For Diddy" wasn't on my radar two years ago, and anyway, having a trans person on a reality show isn't that big a deal anymore; we're like the gay folks in the "Real World" reruns from the '90s, only with a lot less flannel shirts and Hole albums in the background.

So I don't know much about Ms. Cox, except I admire her for her success and for turning her 15 minutes of fame into a full half-hour. Kudos, ma'am, kudos.

But: is it good for teh Tranz?

You go, person of any gender!

What It Means

Today is Blog for International Woman's Day. It is also about two years since I started living as a woman fulltime, and one year since I made my body finally align with my head.

It is hard, to come to grips with what that all means. It is hard, to talk about what being a woman means. Not just for me, but for all women. But I do know this, and it is something that bonds me with all other women: I sure have a lot of people willing to tell me what I should think it means.

In a lot of ways, I can really not remember ever not being a woman. The things that I did, that happened to me, before transtion: a lot of the time they feel like things that happened to some one else, some one I once knew but isn't around anymore.

I cannot describe how good that feels.

Other times, I am conscious of all the differences between me and the great majority of women out there; I am reminded that I am a woman who was never a girl, and that there is a great gulf between me and the other women of my background, one that I'll never fill. That no matter what I do, I'll always be an outsider.

But. There is this too: I know that I am a woman, and a feminist woman. I know that I struggle against the same oppression as any other woman. I know that I have many, many sisters throughout the world, and their struggle is, should be, must be, will always be mine. I know what it feels to look out upon my culture and see no place for me, for what I feel, for my desires and needs and thoughts. I know what it feels like to be ignored, commodified, boxed in, defined, talked to, talked down to, talked to not at all. To be unheard, unnoticed, unregarded. To be only seen for what I look like, to be only heard when I say what they want me to say, to only be expected to know what they want me to know.

I've stood in a bookstore and been deafened by the volumes of men's voices around me, all the books and books and words words words written by men, and so few thoughts by women.

I've despaired at the billions of women history forget, ignored, suppressed, oppressed, killed, raped.

I've feared the same for me.

I fight against that. For me. For my sisters. For our daughters, nieces, mothers, grandmothers, granddaughters. Because I must.

Because I am a woman.

Listen, Sister....

Hey, did you know that I am kinda sorta now on the Tumblr? And that it is also a good place to get your daily Sady Doyle fix on those days she is not conquering the internet in other places?

I am not so "hip" as these modern kids with their facey-spaces, but Tumblr  has been amusing me of late--and this was too good to miss: