Seeing the Point in Trans

Posted on June 27, 2010 by Dan

I am somewhat worried that during this post I’m going to want to use the phrase “I’ve been on a journey” but with the extreme level of cliché that would entail I shall do my best to avoid it. So recently I’ve been on a journey…

Today I was asked about the point of the ‘T’ in LGBT. It was the same question I was asking myself a few months ago. I just couldn’t see the point of it, couldn’t see the similarities with LGB and although I was never transphobic as such I certainly was very trans-ignorant! Over the last few months however, I have the pleasure of spending time with some really lovely and interesting people who’ve helped change my mind about this and I now consider myself pretty good on the issue. Admittedly ’good’ is a rather bad word to describe it but hopefully it is obvious what I mean.

I still struggle to understand trans issues. In the sense that as a cisgendered person (my gender identity matches my sex) I cannot hope to understand what it’s like to be trans. In that regard I have made absolutely no progress. I still cannot understand why someone would be trans and I struggle to see what the big deal is about it. Of course this all seems somewhat contradictory to my claim of being ‘good’ with the whole trans thing.

What has changed is that I now don’t care whether I can understand it. It doesn’t matter that I don’t really see the point. What matters is that there are people out there who are trans and our current society is massively unfair to them. It annoys me to no end that straight people don’t get what it’s like to be gay. Obviously some can empathise and thankfully progress is slowly being made in terms of gay rights across the world. The problem is this took way, way, way too long. We had the mad rush of civil rights for black and ethnic people. We finally made progress in this area and although there is still a way to go the majority of people view racism as a bad thing and we bemoan our previous generations for the mistakes they made. To a much more limited degree this is happening with homophobia. Slowly it is fading and gradually the younger generation is judging previous generations for their mistakes. However, there was no natural transition. People still struggle to see the similarities between the black rights movement and the gay rights movement. People didn’t suddenly ‘get’ what it is like to be black or gay or a woman. They saw injustice and finally started to object to it after years of failure.

Effectively what I’m trying to say is that I support human rights. Now this may mean that I focus a lot of my attention on LGBT rights but that is only because it is something close to my heart that I see needs fighting for. One of the main reasons I have for doing this is because in 40 years time (or however long) when homophobia is something that the majority of people reject I don’t want to be embarrassed about what my generation did. I want to be able to say that I did all I could to fight against it. Now this is all very well and good and I am aware that I sound a little bit holier than thou (I honestly don’t mean to be) but perhaps it isn’t instantly obvious how this relates to trans issues.

The point I’m trying to make and, characteristically the point that is taking me far longer than it should to make, is that it doesn’t matter if you cannot understand something like transgenderism; if you can see people being discriminated against you should object to that. As long as the human right being fought for doesn’t hurt anyone it is worth fighting for. We shouldn’t need time to work out whether we understand or can empathise. If someone feels discriminated against and we can prevent that we should. It shouldn’t require generations of failure to finally rectify our mistakes. It is 40 years since the fight for gay rights really kicked off and we are still only just approaching the point where equality is on the horizon. We can’t afford to make the same mistakes again.

Now I don’t mean getting overly PC about stuff. We all dread the phrase “political correctness gone mad” but trans discrimination is so easy to avoid. You can avoid using gender pronouns and use someone’s name or ‘they/their etc’ instead. You can stop asking for people’s gender when it is completely unnecessary. You can accept that not everyone is cisgendered and, if you meet someone who isn’t, not question that. All of these things and more require such little effort and certainly don’t harm anyone but make such a huge difference to trans people.

You don’t need to understand why people are trans. You don’t need to see the point of it all. All you need to do is see the really easy ways you can make a positive impact in people’s lives and help make the world a more tolerant and inclusive place.

I am so glad we ‘lump’ the T into LGBT. It may not be exactly the same but it is still the same fight. It is about allowing people to live their lives as they want to and not enforcing cisgenderism on people the same way we enforced heterosexuality on people in generations past.

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An Unchangeable Shade of Green

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Dan

It is interesting to consider how much of our lives we control. We are privileged (the fact that you are on the internet implies you fit within this ‘we’) to control a lot of things some people can’t. We can, for the most part, control what and when we eat or drink, where we go, what we do and to a certain degree who we are. We can, indirectly, control who runs the country, who represents us in Europe and, of course, who will win Eurovision. However, we are brilliant at ignoring all these privileged areas of control and focusing on what we cannot control.

We can’t really control what we look like, how we feel or others around us and yet that is often what we worry most about doing. There are multi-million pound industries dedicated to areas of our lives outside of our control. People will pay through the roof to tell someone their problems in a bid to control how they feel about their life. I wouldn’t have the audacity to suggest this doesn’t help people but it is interesting how desperate we are to change the unchangeable.

It is probably worth qualifying the word unchangeable with the caveat of ‘mostly’ unchangeable. You can change the way you look with serious commitment (or surgery!) and you can change the way you feel with extensive therapy. The question is; is it worth the effort?

Now obviously with the examples I’ve given above you could easily talk about people losing weight to benefit their health or indeed someone who is clinically depressed seeking treatment. However, when one considers the person who has surgery to deal with an imperfection of their appearance (as an example of an arguably non essential change) one has to ask oneself if that change is really necessary.

For the most part, the conclusion is yes. Obviously if someone can improve their quality of life then they should do so. It is just worth considering whether the improvement is due to the change made or merely the fact that the person changed something ‘unchangeable’. It is important to remember how much we do control before getting too hung up on what we can’t.

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Seeing Green Without Eyes

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Dan

I just watched Derren Brown’s new show – ‘Derren Investigates’ (available on 4oD for a month) where he, in this episode, investigates a teaching method that allegedly allows the blind to see. I shan’t go into too much detail about the method that was, unsurprisingly, rebuked as complete fallacy. It basically involves using energy gathered from the urogenitary system (i.e. one’s crotch) and using it to power a ‘computer’ inside one’s head to visualise the non-material world (where do I sign up!?). This system is taught to vulnerable and often desperate people who pay hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of Euros to the teachers of the method.

The reason it concerned me is not so much the unfairness of extorting money (whether intentionally or not) for a phoney system but the fact that they tried to suggest it was scientifically rigorous. Many people throughout the word use the word science (and derivatives thereof) completely incorrectly. People mistake ‘science’, which should refer to the scientific method, with the scientific community or current theories or simply a rejection of the supernatural. The fact is, that although these things are often associated and interlinked with the scientific method they are very much secondary to it and therefore to reject the scientific method based on those things is wrong.

The scientific method, to oversimplify it slightly, is to prove something by experiment where the experiment can be repeated under the same conditions to produce the same result. There are many people who reject ‘science’ and therefore this method outright. It is of course a great shame for those people but at the end of the day there is little that can be done to convince them otherwise. The far more worrying phenomenon is pseudoscience. That is, people who believe that they are doing things scientifically when they are clearly not.

A famous case of this is the creationism vs evolution debate where creationists tried (and indeed are still trying) to force creationism to be taught as a scientific theory. It is somewhat disconcerting to know that some people believe that the world is only a few thousand years old and that God created it in 7 days but really that is down to the individual and although whole swathes of children are being educated in this way it is nothing new. What are really worrying are the people who think that ‘intelligent design’ is a scientific theory. It cannot be proven with experiment and certainly one could not repeat an experiment based on ID. To call it ‘science’ gives it credibility that it doesn’t deserve and that is really worrying.

The reason pseudoscience is more of a problem than non-science is because people believe that what they think/believe/do is logical and/or reasonable and therefore can justify doing it. Of course, people who practise non scientific things also believe this but once you have convinced someone of the merits of the scientific method they can easily see the flaws in non-science. Pseudoscience hides behind a veil of supposed logic which makes it far easier to sell (often literally) to people who often do not know any better.

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Seeing Perfection

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Dan

I am a perfectionist. That isn’t to say everything I do is perfect, but that I often will avoid doing things unless I know I can do them well. This makes writing a blog somewhat of a challenge. I will often think of things to blog about but either I won’t be in a position to blog at that instant or I will convince myself that the subject isn’t worth an entry. I’m sure we can all agree the excess amount of pointless blog entries out there but I would like to write a bit more than I do at the moment. So I have made a pact with myself. A pact which unfortunately you are helping me succeed in.

I am doing something that newsreaders do. They will read out the headlines and at the end they will include a little snippet of interest without really explaining what it is about, just so you sit through the rest of the news (Ellen sums this up brilliantly in this video). The worst part about this is when you are watching rolling news (á la BBC News Channel etc) you have to watch the main story –  hearing everyone’s opinion on something that’s probably not that important to start with – then you get the secondary headlines (often in the style of the generic news report as explained rather well by Charlie Brooker here). Then you get the joy of the headline summary where you get to hear all that you just heard repeated back to you in slightly less detail. You are probably then treated to the sport section (my one chance to go to the toilet when the news is on) or the business or entertainment sections (not too bad in themselves but if the story’s worth listening to it’ll probably be in the main section). Finally after about 40 minutes of the same news story you get to hear the thing that you ‘just wanted to quickly see before switching the news off’ and chances are it’s a 2 minute piece you could have found out about instantly via Google. Of course by this time it is so close to the hour that you decide to keep on watching to see the headlines. Despite the fact you already know them. Of course, you then see that little teaser and so the process repeats ad infinitum until you are somehow forced to turn off the TV (powercut/hurricane/someone screaming very very loudly in your close proximity) and the cycle finishes for the day.

I think it was perhaps slightly optimistic of me to use the word ‘you’ so often in that previous paragraph but I hope that the above insanity is not just something I do although chances are that is the case. What I am doing is stalling. I mentioned the pact I made with myself earlier and I have been deliberately avoiding revealing what it was. As I said at the beginning of this entry, I am a perfectionist. I avoid writing in this blog because I fear what I write won’t be interesting enough to be worth it. So I made a pact – a pact to write a boring, mundane entry so that I could break  the cycle of not writing. Unfortunately you can’t escape the fruits of this pact. You’ve just read the boring, mundane article and for that I am truly sorry. It could be worse though – I could have told you what I had for lunch today…

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I see Trees of Blue, Flip Flopping Too

Posted on April 17, 2010 by Dan

I’m angry. Yes, the sentence I have decided to use to break my extensive bloging silence is admittedly not the most enticing one in the world to make you want to read on but as we know, what’s written is written and can’t possibly be undone. It’s the only plausible explanation for the Twilight ‘saga’.

I’m now about to make mistake number two which is inadvisable at best. I’m angry about politics. This blog introduction is much like stepping into a hot bath. You had the disappointment of knowing that this will be a rant and then you had the ongoing suffering of hearing that it’s a political one. However, I urge you to submerge yourself and hopefully it won’t be too unpleasant an experience.

Unless you have been comatose for the last few months, nay, years (and I must say I’m honoured that you chose to visit my blog of all things) you will know we are in the throws of an election. Unlike America our elections are far less glamorous and we don’t have the joy of a choice between Obama and oven chips but a decision that seems one Irishman short of a bad joke.

I think it is interesting how people handle politics. I certainly don’t see it in the same way I say religion/belief (or lack thereof) in that I don’t think it’s a fundamental right to not have your political beliefs questioned. One of the great things about democracy is that we can all support who we like and have heated discussions about why we feel how we feel. Having said that I don’t think that screaming at people in the street to vote one way or the other is good either but a healthy debate about the options is a good thing in my opinion so drop yourself deeper into this hot bath of political anger.

I am angry about one man. Well, one man and his party. You may or may not have heard about Chris Grayling’s comments the other week. For those of you who didn’t I shall briefly summarise what happened. Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary (i.e. the person who will become Home Secretary if Conservatives come into power) was secretly recorded saying that he believed B&B owners who run their business out of their own homes should be free to turn away gay couples. He has also previously voted against gay adoption. Now, I could write a long piece disagreeing with that but I’m not going to here. What has got me angry is not these comments (flawed as they may be) but his ‘apology’ for them. He appeared about a week later on Channel 4 news and said (after much coaxing) that he was wrong. In fact it wasn’t clear if he admitted he was wrong or if he admitted the view he had expressed was wrong but nevertheless he now says he believes that anti discrimination laws should apply to B&Bs and that he supports gay adoption. Great. Case closed. He supports the right thing, let’s all go vote Conservative. As the slogan says; “I’ve never voted Conservative but…”!

It may be unclear about why this has got me so riled. In order to understand that one needs to consider what he has actually done. Let’s forget the gay adoption thing for the moment and concentrate on the B&B issue. We must assume that if he was being secretly recorded that what he said was what he thought. If it wasn’t then he’s a liar before we even start considering the issue and to be honest I really doubt that’s the case. That is to say, I don’t doubt he’s a liar, but I doubt that he was lying when he made the offending comments.

Now, if it is the case that he was telling the truth and now he has apologised one of three things can have occurred:

  1. He has had an epiphany and realised the error of his ways. Something so drastic and life changing happened to him that he could change his moral views in less than a week and he wanted the whole world to know.
  2. He didn’t mean for this to get out and would never had viewed his true opinions in public. He apologised to cover up a view of his that he realised, or was told to realise, is not in keeping with Conservatives new campaign of alleged support of LGBT people.
  3. He doesn’t consider this a moral issue. He doesn’t really see the significance of this and therefore when there was public uproar he thought he might as well change his mind.

Well I’m pretty sure we can rule out the first one. I think he would have mentioned if this had been an epiphany and to be frank I don’t think it’s all that likely that this was one. I think that leaves us with the conclusion that is must be a combination of the second and third. Both are equally as worrying.

This is not a debate about whether B&B owners should accept gay couples. That is an important debate but inconsequential in this instance. It is undeniable that this issue is a moral one. It is the question of who has the greatest trump card; LGBT people as a whole group or individuals who oppose them within their own homes. What Chris Grayling has done is flip flopped on a serious moral issue. This is quite frankly intolerable.

How can we trust a man, or a party who supports said man, whose moral compass is either so crooked that he can change his view based on saving his own skin or so weak that he can’t see this for the complex moral issue that it is. It is this way of thinking that reflects the current state of the Conservative party. They have mastered the art of spin at the cost of realistic promises or moral fortitude.

It doesn’t matter what your morals are as long as you have them and you stick by them. Obviously this isn’t always going to win you public favour. If you look at the BNP no one can argue they don’t stick by their views. The fact that they are hideous, bigoted views means that (hopefully!) they stand little chance of gaining power but at least they stick by their guns. Chris Grayling can’t even do that. He is able to flip flop on something as fundamental as morals. How the hell can we trust him to be Home Secretary? How the hell can we vote for a party that allows one of their most senior members to do this? How the hell can we be expected to vote Conservative?

I’ve never voted Conservative but… now I know I never will.

I see trees of Blue,
Flip flopping too,
I see the doom,
For me and you,
And I think to myself…
What a wonderful world.

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Old Blind Server

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Dan

Having just looked up ‘seeing’ in the dictionary (something we all must do at some point in our lives), I have quite firmly established that the definition of seeing is:

Having vision; not blind.

It is therefore somewhat of a natural asumption, that if something is not seeing, it does not ‘have vision’ and is therefore blind.

With this logic squarely behind me I have come to the conclusion that my old server has gone blind. It has decided to no longer See Green or, for that matter, any colour of the visable light spectrum. As much as it may be able to see ultra violet light, that doesn’t really help matters, and for the purposes of this non sencical post we can assume that the server is blind full stop.

So I had no other choice but to up roots and switch to a new server which will hopefuly be a bit more reliable and better at seeing that lovely colour we have all grown acustomed to.

This has annoyingly cost me a cosiderable ammount of time, money and effort but I hope that my loyal fans will be eternaly greatful. Or, failing that, my one vaugely loyal fan will be mildly pleased.

I’m very glad the whole relocation ordeal is over, and I’m left with only one thought…

I wish I had gone to Specsavers!

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Really Simple Syndication: Is it really that simple?

Posted on August 16, 2008 by Dan

I thought today I would do a post explaining RSS (Really Simple Syndication). In really simple terms, RSS is used to serve a user stuff from a website. If this is your first time here why not read some of my previous entries, hopefuly that will convince you that the site is worth ‘being served’ and you can come back here for an explanation of how. If you are a regular here then read on to find out how to get the entries hot off the virtual press!

RSS is, by nature, really, really simple. It has only two components; the feed and the reader. The feed is whatever you are accessing through RSS (i.e. this blog) and is maintained by the site. The reader is the method you use to access your feeds. In this post I’m going to focus on iGoogle as this is my favourite reader but there are hundreds out there to try so don’t just take my word for it.

To start, you will need a Google account (if you don’t already have one). If you already use iGoogle you can skip this step. Click here to get one. Once you click the create account button at the bottom after filling in just a few basic details (email and country of residence) you will be taken to a fresh iGoogle page. You can play around with the options or not, but either way, click the “See your page” button.

The default comes with some good gadgets already, but if there is something you don’t like just click the X to remove it. From here you can click the “Add stuff” link to add some more gadgets or proceed to add your first feed.

When you’re ready, you can add the Seeing Green RSS feed to your page. Click this link to access the feed already in Google (if you want to use another reader use this link). To complete the Really Simple final Step just click the “Add to Google homepage” button. The feed will then be added as a gadget to your Google page and you’re done! From now on whenever a post is added to the site it will appear on your Google page. If you stay logged into Google, your iGoogle page will appear every time you access the site.

If you run Mozillia Firefox it’s incredibly simple to add feeds to your Google page. When you see the orange RSS icon in the address bar of a site click on it and you will be taken to the feed page. Just select Google from the drop down list and click subscribe now. You will then be taken to the same page as the above link and given the option to add the feed to your Google page. What’s more, if you pick Google as your default the number of steps gets even less.

Unfortunately Internet Explorer doesn’t suport external readers so to use iGoogle you must click this link (while logged into iGoogle), then click “Add feed or gadget” on the left side of the screen. You should then paste the link to the feed you want to add. This can be obtained by clicking the RSS logo on the toolbar and copying the address of the page it takes you to. It’s much simpler in Firefox but it isn’t too hard in Internet Explorer either.

I hope this post helped anyone who didn’t know about RSS before, and I hope you now want to subscribe to my feed to see the new posts first!

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Batman may wear black, but he’d look far better in green…

Posted on August 9, 2008 by Dan

I’ve just returned from seeing the Dark Knight. I’m not going to bore you, with a review of it you probably don’t want, but I would urge anyone who hasn’t seen it to go do so, even if, like I did, you think it’s not your thing. Unsurprisingly enough, I’m now going to talk about Heath Ledger’s acting. I don’t want to dwell on it too much though, as it isn’t necessarily what I want to focus on. As you are no doubt aware, the world has gone crazy about the acting of the late Heath Ledger. So, when I went to see the film, I was expecting amazing things.

I thought all the acting was fantastic, but with Ledger’s performance, I was always expecting more. I was always expecting there to come a definitive moment, when he showed why the world has gone nuts about him. That moment never came. Despite the fact that his acting was outstanding throughout, I was never quite satisfied, because I was always expecting more. I was therefore somewhat disappointed with the one thing I didn’t expect to be disappointed by. The reason for this is obvious; when something is hyped beyond all proportion, we can never be satisfied by the original. The hyperbole that has surrounded Ledger’s acting, the exaggeration of, what was, an already pretty flawless performance, meant that the original could not compare to the descriptions of itself.

It follows that when we expect something to be perfect, we are always let down. Nothing in life is perfect, we can only hope to find things so close, that we cannot see the gap.

The problem is, what follows that. By the logic that shows us optimism doesn’t work, we can argue that when you expect everything to go wrong, you will be pleasantly surprised. If you expect the worse, what you receive will be better than what you expected.

Now in this logical mindset, there is no problem at all, we get better than what we expect therefore we are always pleased with the results. However, it is not as simple as what it appears to be. If we live life pessimisticly, always expecting the worst, our lives will not be happy ones.

I don’t believe in karma. I don’t think that there is some supernatural force that punishes our wrongdoings, and rewards our good deeds, but I do believe that the ideas behind karma are vital to a good life.

First off, by thinking something bad will punish you for your bad actions, one, somewhat selfishly, is far more reluctant to do these things. By the same token, you are more likely to help others and do good things with your life. This is great, but unless you actually believe in a supernatural force then it would seem this method of living doesn’t work as the motivation to do so isn’t there.

However, a supernatural force is not required to affect your life in ways you cannot consciously perceive. If you live your life expecting the best, you will be disappointed, but your will subconsciously do things that will lead yourself in a positive direction. If you live your life expecting the worst you won’t get disappointed, but your life will spiral downwards, until the pleasing result you get from what you do, will be so close to worst case scenario you won’t even notice the difference.

The message here is that optimism works, but expecting perfection will lead to disappointment. By aiming for 99% rather than 100, you will be far more likely to achieve your goal. Oh, and most important of all, avoid hype like the plague, and see all movies the hour they come out!

For an entry on another Heath Ledger film ‘Brokeback Mountain’ , check out this post.

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A Short Blog Entry

Posted on June 4, 2008 by Dan

Today’s entry will be a short one (in case you hadn’t gleaned that from the title). I often end up writing far longer blog entries than I intend to, which probably put people off reading to the end, so I will make sure I keep this entry short and sweet.

I have been doing some behind the scenes work on the site, the home page now redirects to the blog and I will leave it that way until I think of something useful to put there. I’ve also added some rudimentary error messages (404 etc.) which all redirect back here as well.

I hope to find some time, maybe over the summer, to really get the site off the ground and to add a home page and perhaps add some content outside of the blog. Suggestions for what I could do will be greatly appreciated as always. These can be left as comments on the blog.

Thanks for reading, and if it’s your first time here why not check out the other entries.

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{insert minority here}

Posted on May 18, 2008 by Dan

I was looking in the Radio Times earlier, and I noticed that Brokeback Mountain is being shown on Channel 4. This is film that annoys me. In fact, it isn’t the film that annoys me, it is the way it has been received. It is labelled as a “gay cowboy film” when is it nothing of the sort. Just to clarify, I really liked the film, I thought it dealt with some really important issues, however, these issues had very little to do with homosexuality. The film, for those who haven’t seen it, is about two cowboys who work on an isolated mountain looking after the sheep during the winter. Set in the 1960s, it is a story of how the two fall in love. Now on the surface it is about a “gay” relationship, but when one thinks about it, the fact that they are two men is inconsequential. The story is about forbidden love, about how love knows no boundaries. The “boundary” the story chooses to explore is one of gender. However, the characters in the film were not gay (although Jake Gyllenhaal’s character may have been). They were just two men who fell in love.

The reason the reactions to this film annoy me is because this film is one of the few films of our time that actually deal with a minority well. What could have been a story about love, has been labelled a story about homosexuality, meaning it is treated as a “gay film”. Film and television are terrible at handling minority populations. There are only really two ways they have minority characters.

The first method is the use of “token” characters. They place a character in a film/show in order to demonstrate how tolerant and politicly correct they are. These characters are often extremely stereotyped and serve only to reinforce these stereotypes in people’s minds while contributing little to the story.

The second method is to have a character who does belong to a minority, and then focus on this fact whenever they appear on screen. Again, these characters are almost always stiffly stereotyped meaning these characters are often false and impossible to identify with. This is often taken a step further when the whole film or series is based on a minority group. These shows/films will often only show the worst parts of a community or focus on the differences between that community and the audience’s rather than the similarities.

What we need, and what perhaps Brokeback Mountain did, are minority characters who appear with no fanfare, or special mention, but merely as people. We need to see black people, Muslim people, gay people, without the label attached. We need to see them as people. What I want to see, is a film that has minorities in, but does not dwell on this fact, and does not place minority characters in just for the sake of it.

For an entry on another the latest (and last) Heath Ledger movie ‘The Dark Knight’, check out this post.

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