Small Town Gay Blog

thepoliticalpartygirl: Ave Maria (Franz Schubert) - Jessye...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:48:35 -0800

Ave Maria (Franz Schubert) - Jessye Norman

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” - Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name

Listen to a maiden’s prayer…so indescribably beautiful

doree: I mean… I MEAN… WASHINGTONPOSTOMGWTFWHAAAAAAAT!@!()#$*$ [head explodes] A Nov. 26 article...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:08:42 -0800

doree:

I mean… I MEAN… WASHINGTONPOSTOMGWTFWHAAAAAAAT!@!()#$*$ [head explodes]

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

Didn’t Fear of a Black Planet come out in the early ’90s?? For fuck sake…

wordsandsteel: i-am: jax, let’s watch it togeva!...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:42:49 -0800

wordsandsteel:

i-am:

jax, let’s watch it togeva! <3

jackiemaegan:

phatlip:

thedailywhat:

OMG! Adorbz Movie Trailer of the Day: First official trailer for Thomas Balmes’ Internet-ready do-coo-mentary, Babies: The Movie.

A release date has been set for April 16, 2010.

[via.]

This is for you, Cretin. You mama you!

Cutie Patooties!

Oh dear. This trailer disturbed the puppy (who couldn’t figure out where the crying was coming from) as much as it did me.

Obviously the Asian baby is the cutest, although the Namibian babies sure give em a run for the money.

Gross. babies. gross.

apsies: RNPS IMAGES OF THE YEAR 2009 - A young girl jumps rope...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:25:43 -0800

apsies:

RNPS IMAGES OF THE YEAR 2009 - A young girl jumps rope on the sidewalk next to her family’s belongings after she, her parents, and her four brothers and sisters, received a court order of eviction that was carried out by McLennan County Deputy Constables in Waco, Texas, December 31, 2008. (via)

The incredible resilience of children at work…

allcreatures: benhasten: The Last Wild Wolves Photo by Ian...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:52:38 -0800

allcreatures:

benhasten:

The Last Wild Wolves

Photo by Ian McAllister

“For seventeen years, Ian McAllister has lived on the rugged north coast of British Columbia, one of the last places on the planet where wolves live relatively undisturbed by humans. This book describes his experiences over that period following two packs of wolves, one in the extreme outer coastal islands and another farther inland in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest.

The behavior of these animals - which depend on the vast old-growth forest and its gifts - is documented in words and pictures as they fish for salmon in the fall, target seals hauled out on rocks in winter, and give birth to their young in the base of thousand-year-old cedar trees in spring. Most interestingly, scientific studies reveal a genetically distinct population of wolves - one that is increasingly threatened by human incursions.”

Image via Design You Trust

thanks to wolfandfox and loups

"I don’t imagine that 1970s feminists envisaged the rejection of educational opportunities, the..."

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:47:05 -0800

“I don’t imagine that 1970s feminists envisaged the rejection of educational opportunities, the refusal of family planning options, and the graft of bringing up children alone and on the breadline, as brave-new-world female choices for a post-liberation era, any more than they envisaged the advent of boob-jobs, pole-dancing supermodels and store-card bankruptcy. Actually, it is a big fat irony that feminists are now obliged to defend the right of lone mothers to stay at home with their young children, when the initial idea was to liberate women from the obligation to, well, stay at home with their young children.”

- Is feminism really killing the family? (via gauntlet)

There we go. Another dig at pole dancing. SO SICK OF IT.

Hello. I AM A FEMINIST AND I POLE DANCE. I am sick and fucking tired of one of my favorite activities being used as THE example of faux feminism, faux empowerment, the failure of feminism, etc.

HOW ABOUT PUTTING DOWN THE JUDGMENT and learning what the fuck you’re even talking about before taking pot shots??

(via amberlrhea)

You’re so fabulous, Amber. Everything you post makes me smile.

The Girl Effect

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:42:07 -0800

The Girl Effect

It really doesn’t get much better than this...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:22:39 -0800

It really doesn’t get much better than this …the holiday celebrations in the town of GUERNEVILLE, CA! Move over DC, we’ve got the annual lighting of the Guerneville Christmas tree tonight and, tomorrow night, the incredible PARADE OF LIGHTS!! (Video is from 2006, but it’s pretty much the same every year.)

apsies: thepoliticalpartygirl: President Obama reacts beside...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:23:35 -0800

apsies:

thepoliticalpartygirl:

President Obama reacts beside daughters Malia and Sasha and First Lady Michelle Obama as they light the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in Washington December 3, 2009. (via)

"I am convinced those people got into that white house state dinner because they are white. I..."

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:57:06 -0800

“I am convinced those people got into that white house state dinner because they are white. I attended a state dinner during the Clinton administration and they did such a thorough background check before I was even allowed to RSVP that I was coming I thought they were going to ask me for a stool sample — we are talking DEEP BACKGROUND — and I am fucking famous. And I was fucking famous then. White people always look more INVITED than non white people.”

- Margaret Cho on the Salahi’s gate-crashing

roads2roam: (via meltinyourmouth)

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:47:56 -0800

roads2roam:

(via meltinyourmouth)

"I think the struggle to stop slut-shaming and the struggle to stop whorephobia are related. While..."

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:13:00 -0800

“I think the struggle to stop slut-shaming and the struggle to stop whorephobia are related. While enjoying sex isn’t grounds for supporting sex work, I think that harmful stereotypes about women who like and have”that kind” of sex are linked.”

- Sluts, slut-shaming, and sex work « good girls don’t. (via amberlrhea)

fuckyeahlgbt: lemiaou: shaanmichael: ihatethismess:tiredofbein...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:03:07 -0800

fuckyeahlgbt:

lemiaou:

shaanmichael:

ihatethismess:tiredofbeingignored:loki1181:crannybananny:

At 15, Lawrence King was small—5 feet 1 inch—but very hard to miss. In January, he started to show up for class at Oxnard, Calif.’s E. O. Green Junior High School decked out in women’s accessories. On some days, he would slick up his curly hair in a Prince-like bouffant. Sometimes he’d paint his fingernails hot pink and dab glitter or white foundation on his cheeks. “He wore makeup better than I did,” says Marissa Moreno, 13, one of his classmates. He bought a pair of stilettos at Target, and he couldn’t have been prouder if he had on a varsity football jersey. He thought nothing of chasing the boys around the school in them, teetering as he ran.

But on the morning of Feb. 12, Larry left his glitter and his heels at home. He came to school dressed like any other boy: tennis shoes, baggy pants, a loose sweater over a collared shirt. He seemed unhappy about something. He hadn’t slept much the night before, and he told one school employee that he threw up his breakfast that morning, which he sometimes did because he obsessed over his weight. But this was different. One student noticed that as Larry walked across the quad, he kept looking back nervously over his shoulder before he slipped into his first-period English class. The teacher, Dawn Boldrin, told the students to collect their belongings, and then marched them to a nearby computer lab, so they could type out their papers on World War II. Larry found a seat in the middle of the room. Behind him, Brandon McInerney pulled up a chair.

Brandon, 14, wasn’t working on his paper, because he told Mrs. Boldrin he’d finished it. Instead, he opened a history book and started to read. Or at least he pretended to. “He kept looking over at Larry,” says a student who was in the class that morning. “He’d look at the book and look at Larry, and look at the book and look at Larry.” At 8:30 a.m., a half hour into class, Brandon quietly stood up. Then, without anyone’s noticing, he removed a handgun that he had somehow sneaked to school, aimed it at Larry’s head, and fired a single shot. Boldrin, who was across the room looking at another student’s work, spun around. “Brandon, what the hell are you doing!” she screamed. Brandon fired at Larry a second time, tossed the gun on the ground and calmly walked through the classroom door. Police arrested him within seven minutes, a few blocks from school. Larry was rushed to the hospital, where he died two days later of brain injuries.

McInerney has been charged as an adult with premeditated murder with enhancements of discharge of a firearm and a hate crime. He is being held in lieu of US $770,000 bail, and faces a minimum sentence of 53 years imprisonment to a maximum life sentence.

Yes, stories like this are heartbreaking. But I want it to be known that there is much more to it. Very few people talk about Lawrence’s wrongdoing, such as a constant harrassment towards mentioned assailant. While that obviously shouldn’t be grounds for murder, one has to keep in mind the ages and mental maturity of these two boys…along with the stigma places upon the young men of our generation. I ask that people take the time to read the ENTIRE story from BOTH perspectives before having a pity party for King. It’s sad he died, of course, but in a sense it was his own fault. It wasn’t just some random hate crime. There was fuel, there was pain, and there was reasoning.

I hate that this happened, but at the same time, I refuse to listen to anybody try to make him the posterchild for LGBTQIA rights advocacy. If somebody ‘normal’ were to antagonise another person repeatedly and god their ass beat down, nobody would think twice of it. But because he happened to cross dress, people try to idolise him.

Being yourself is one thing. Rubbing it in other peoples face who you are is a completely separate thing. My gay friends don’t walk around getting all up in the kool-aid (oh god i haven’t said that since like 2000) of every guy they meet. If you just do what you do without FORCING the attention on yourself, you should be fine. Should be.

Also, today, if I remember correctly, is supposed to be the beginning of the McInnery trial. JS.

Not exactly our poster child.

I am astounded at the victim blaming that is occurring here. It’s analogous to the victim blaming our society does when a severely abused woman is murdered and it’s discovered that she had commited violence against her abuser who has acted out of power, privilege and misogyny. “She provoked him to abuse and then murder her”…? Not only does society blame her if she had committed violence, but the crime is mitigated somehow if she was anything but a stereotypical “victim” and never fought back. There is absolutely no justification for this heinous act. It is most likely that Larry’s behavior had everything to do with the oppression and stigma that he experienced at school for defying gender norms. This is a hate crime and is not mitigated in any way by the fact that Lawrence was “rubbing it in people’s faces”. That phrase is so often used to justify bigotry, fear and hatred toward LGBT people, including justification to deny gay people marriage equality. I find it shameful that a gay person would not get this obvious point.

fuckyeahhappy: Us-Regina Spektor

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:44:52 -0800

fuckyeahhappy:

Us-Regina Spektor

newsandbooze: tylercoates: choire: “We have nothing to fear...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:40:05 -0800

newsandbooze:

tylercoates:

choire:

“We have nothing to fear from love and commitment.”

“[This vote] is about the fairness of people who are of the right age, of sound mind, who choose to live together, share everything together, and want to be able to have the protections that government grants those of us who have the privilege of marriage and treat it so cavalierly in our society.”

forwhenifeellikesharing: Kevin Rudolf - “Let It Rock” I’m...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:38:44 -0800

forwhenifeellikesharing:

Kevin Rudolf - “Let It Rock”

I’m finding out about this song a little late. I know.

(via ginobambino)

Surgery for Mental Ills Offers Both Hope and Risk (New York Times)

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:27:58 -0800

Surgery for Mental Ills Offers Both Hope and Risk (New York Times):

katharinec:

psychotherapy:

The great promise of neuroscience at the end of the last century was that it would revolutionize the treatment of psychiatric problems. But the first real application of advanced brain science is not novel at all. It is a precise, sophisticated version of an old and controversial approach: psychosurgery, in which doctors operate directly on the brain.

In the last decade or so, more than 500 people have undergone brain surgery for problems like depression, anxiety, Tourette’s syndrome, even obesity, most as a part of medical studies. The results have been encouraging, and this year, for the first time since frontal lobotomy fell into disrepute in the 1950s, the Food and Drug Administration approved one of the surgical techniques for some cases of O.C.D.

While no more than a few thousand people are impaired enough to meet the strict criteria for the surgery right now, millions more suffering from an array of severe conditions, from depression to obesity, could seek such operations as the techniques become less experimental…

In some sub-Saharan countries, HIV prevalance is as much as 50%...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:56:07 -0800

In some sub-Saharan countries, HIV prevalance is as much as 50%...

World AIDS Day 2009

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:50:56 -0800

World AIDS Day 2009

"What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to..."

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:54:26 -0800

“What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what they’d do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines. All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam “might” be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish — the full terror of which we scarcely know. When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles. We didn’t even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has.”

- Michael Moore (via azspot) (via robot-heart-politics)