sex ed

Hey everyone -

I am officially on that somewhat annoying list of people who post political links on blogs that are really supposed to be about their personal lives. Bear with me, though.

Earlier today, I was reading Josey Vogels' fantabulous column, My Messy Bedroom. She answered emails this week. The first was a semi-amusing, semi-serious one about a man who had tried to sneak low-fat foods into his wife's diet. Gross. The second involved sex ed programs. Abstinence-only programs are spreading in Canada (where Josey lives), and they are often frightening and loaded with inaccurate information. It's immensely worse in the states. Apparently, our federal government gave $170,500,000 to abstinence-only programs in 47 states (CA, PA, and ME* refused). Here is a link to a 1/2-hour documentary about programs in Albuquerque, NM. If you have some time, and are at all interested in this issue, give it a look:

Abstinence Comes to Albuquerque

Thanks,
Ethan

*Yay for ME! This makes that state one of three in the nation to have refused this less-than-stellar funding as well as one of two states in New England (along with RI) to have incorporated both sexual orientation and gender identity into its anti-discrimination law.

bullet-point letter

This probably won't make sense to anyone who actually has this blog's url - chances are that it's not really worth reading. I haven't a clue why I'm writing this online instead of in a notebook or a random word document. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that I slept from about 3:30am to 6:45am.

I'll probably be adding to this periodically.

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Dear Spencer,

- when did you last see Nathalie? how was it?
- by the last time I saw you, your hair had definitely surpassed mine at it's best
- your bass playing was phenomenal. another couple of years, and you would probably have been on par with J. Myung (and isn't that the secret anyway? to spend about 4years dedicated solely to your instrument?)
- cheap tea and coffee with free refills
- the realization that we could talk anywhere and avoid spending the amount of money you tended to drop at the diner, followed by hours-long conversations in parking lots
- fuck
- swear to science, I was talking about you yesterday
- all the platonic love in the world
- thanks for Dream Theater
- my last show (Valentines Day 2003) kicked ass - largely because of you and the gigantic group of people you brought
- beauty won't always get you out of being called on logical fallacies
- you either eat enough for 5 people or avoid eating altogether
- neither of us are in the yearbook or senior collage
- thanks for jamming with me
- in the spirit of honesty...I had an immensely selfish moment when I found out that this had happened on my birthday...and I need to get over that
- selfish thought #2: can there be a worse punishment for not keeping in touch with someone?
- dramatic thoughts of flying back are probably grounded in fantasties of somehow reversing this
- your fingers are beautiful
- you're mother is ridiculous. always a good time to stand up for you while all three of us were in the room, and she pulled that tiresome "why can't you be more like your nerdy friend here?" routine
- were cigarettes harder to quit than heroin?
- 2 Victor Wooten shows - both immensely different, both incredible
- I am not intimidating
- believe it or not, you are a better chess player than I am
- points for resourcefulness
- in the John Harris, The Value of Life sense (comparing primarily wanting to slim down with secondarily wanting that next piece of cake, for example), did you reach your primary or secondary aim there?
- You would have loved Kamelot and Dragonforce
- finally got my tattoo. It's a combination of the last bass I saw you play and the most similar one I could find in an admittedly short internet search. It's immensely scabby and painful right now, but I love it nonetheless.

Catch you later,
Ethan

Hoping that Sam's night ended well...

Here are some highlights and lowlights from today, the day that we acknowledged my aging. Birthdays are kind of amusing - we are really aging at the same pace from day to day; I didn't suddenly age from 2o.0 to 21.0 in a single day, but we celebrate as though I did.

Stellar:
- when I was leaving the Kremlin, the dude handing jackets/bags out took a look at me, grabbed my fantabulous leather jacket, and handed it to me without even waiting for me to hand in my ticket
- birthday drinks
- getting recognized by a bunch of people - one person who works at Queens, one person who I believe goes there (the latter remembered my Hedwig t-shirt and knew that I was wearing Converse sneakers. Barely on the good side of the cool/creeptacular binary)
- dancing with gorgeous, sweet, fun boys for hours
- free food at the Union, in honor of the bizarre Eurovision competition
- Twanda, one of my favorite queens, danced while I sang Bat Out of Hell
- beautiful late night/early morning sky on the walk back
- new record for finding money - 1.46 pounds! (beaten severely on Tuesday, 23/5, when I picked up an incredible 3.71!)

Less-than-stellar:
- Belfast tolerance (actually, this may be stellar - I remained quite sober all night)
- aforementioned gorgeous, sweet, fun boys' preference for gender-congruent dudes
- community drama
- karaoke cut one hour short because of the bizarre Eurovision competition
- Spencer. but I didn't know then.

Final Stretch

My philosophy final exam is tomorrow - and it's just all music from then on! Two days ago, I woke up resolved to go to Sweden Rock, regardless of whether I had people to go with. I booked a new flight (my original flight had been pushed back too far to work). Then last night, I finally figured out how to resolve the combined problems of going alone and having nowhere to stay - the message board! Luckily, someone from the UK had a couple of spare beds in the room she and her friends had booked. She was mainly hoping for female roommates, but open to males too. I sent her a message about the room (including a few sentences about being female-to-male). As of this morning, I have a place to stay! We might even be able to meet up in Copenhagen and take the train to Solvesborg together. WOOHOO!

Yesterday, I got to talk to Ariel! My BFF! It was unbelievable; with the exception of about 30 seconds of 'hello' in bad reception during orientation weekend and some online conversations, I hadn't spoken to her since January 24. How vile is that?

I also got to talk to my little man a couple of days ago. For those who haven't heard me ramble on and on about him, my little man is Matthew, my 12-yr-old brother. He is phenomenal. Gets way more action than I did at 12 - he was also talking to 2 ex-girlfriends that same night! What a boy! We should trade dating secrets sometime.

WARNING: PHILOSOPHY NERDINESS APPROACHING

Now for some exam practice! Chances are that one question on tomorrow's exam will be the following: Someone tells you that ze is going to torture you for the next 7 days. You will not sleep. You will be in excruciating pain, 24-hours-a-day. You will long for your life to end. However, ze is absolutely and under no circumstances going to kill you. Let's say that you will have a button under your index finger that, if pressed, will end your torturer's life. Would you be justified in pressing it?

Answer part 1: obligation to save life
In this scenario, choosing whether to kill the torturer might also be described as choosing whether to save hir life. I have identified a threat to the torturer (me, with my finger on the button). Am I obligated to save hir from this threat?

According to John Harris's wondrous book, The Value of Life, we are obligated to save the life of other persons unless we can find extremely compelling reasons to do otherwise. Harris outlines 5 situations in which we might be justified in not saving someone's life:
1) It would cause me immense harm
2) I have something of equal or greater moral importance to do, and can't do both
3) Some greater moral purpose will be served through the sacrifice of this person
4) This person wants to die
5) This person is better off dead
This is scenario #1. Harris doubts whether we are obligated to save a life if it would involve something so trivial as the loss of a finger - surely, we are not required to endure 7 days of unbearable torture to save someone's life!

Answer part 2: self defence
Some have suggested that torture may be worse than death. Torture is ongoing and may involve years of physical and psychological recovery. I will also emerge a qualitatively different person - my body may survive (injuries notwithstanding), but my personality may well be altered permanently; torture amounts to qualitative death (as opposed to numerical death). And so on and so on and so on.

In short: PUSH THAT BUTTON!

The Answer

Last Thursday, Erin and I headed to The Empire to see a band called Swanee River. Alas, their drummer had broken his hand and was unable to perform that night - instead, the lead singer hit the stage with an acoustic guitar and put on a terrific-but-brief show. More importantly, the headliner was a band called The Answer, and they were UNBELIEVABLE!!! If the world is ready for another Zepplin, these dudes are up to the challenge. That show further solidified my plans to grow the hair back out. Hacking it away was undoubtedly the right choice for me last year. I wasn't secure enough in my identity or supported/confident enough to combat pressures to look as stereotypically-guy-like as possible. I wish that I had been.To celebrate this, I am posting metal-y pictures of myself. The first one is from a Kill Hannah show last year (age 19), the second is from a show with my last band (age 17).

rock & roll and brew*

What a week.

Just got back from 3 days with Addya! Phenomenal! Edinburgh is stunning right now - we walked by the mountain, chilled out in the park, and collapsed periodically with end-of-semester exhaustion. I have finally experienced her nasty cafeteria. She is heading back to CT in 17 days, which seems all kinds of strange to both of us.

Last weekend was one of the best I've had here:
Friday night, I went to my first munch! Met some stellar people. The BDSM community seemed to be more trans-aware and trans-friendly than the queer community has been (overall, not necessarily individual-to-individual). No invasive questions, no trouble with pronouns (if someone slipped, they either corrected it themselves or were subtly corrected by the next person who spoke to/about me), and people managed to say identity-validating things without dwelling too much on that part of my identity. Way cool. I also met a fantastic woman there who big-sistered me a bit, giving me some Belfast resources that I hadn't found.

I headed to the Kremlin later that night to catch a drag show that Miss Hetti Hiballs was performing in! Turned out to be a competition, with 1st place getting a weekly gig at The Union (with 2 of the city's top queens) and moving on to compete in Miss Drag Idol in England! 1st, 2nd, and 3rd would also get free admission to the Kremlin for a while and some holiday vouchers. Hetti kicked ass. She began with a Sarah Brightman song (I loathe her) and then broke into "I'm Not a Fucking Drag Queen" from Better than Chocolate! She ditched her wig and shoes and fake eyelashes! Fefe, another friend of mine, was great too. The last queen, Devina En Call (or oncall, or something) was surprisingly good too. Unfortunately, judging was poor. Devina got 1st (should have been 2nd), Hetti got 2nd (should have been 1st), and Fefe didn't place at all! 3rd went to this queen who performed poorly but chose a song that got the crowd riled up, giving her one of the better reactions. On a brighter note, the judges were so impressed that they decided to let Devina AND Hetti compete in England!

Also learned that one of my friends is close to getting referrals for female hormones! Yay!

Saturday was another lovely queerspace-Union day, and then we hit the Kremlin again. I said excessively flirty things to excessively hot people. One of them bought me Absinthe as a result. It was the last weekend in Belfast for Elisabeth, one of my friends from Queerspace - she had been taking some sort of business course here (normally lives in France).

Sunday, I hung out with Erin for hours. We chilled at Starbucks - the only place with outdoor seating on the 2nd floor - and sewed. She had cut a picture from one shirt and wanted to attach it to another. We made no effort at making our work appear professional.

Sweden is not necessarily going to happen now...Sleater-Kinney and Twisted Sister definitely will. The Vibrators have decided to tour Canada, now that I've dragged myself to their home country.

One more thing - I have decided to grow my hair back. Or at least to try. It could take years and I can't guarantee that my patience will hold out. I have decided, though, that I hate feeling forced to have short hair to help other people understand that I am a boy. They can talk to me if they're unsure. This does not mean that I am following Gunner Scott's advice to grow a mullet - if anything, I kind of have the opposite, as the hair on top is longer than the hair in the back.

*from Dead Ringer for Love...a Meat Loaf tune, but not a Jim Steinman tune, so it only quasi counts.

it's official

My body doesn't want me anymore. We're breaking up. Somehow, it's managed to fall ill three times in four weeks, knowing that I would find this quite unacceptable.

How's that for a Cartesian line of thought?

In other news, I won karaoke at the Union again! I have learned to love the Kremlin, which is conveniently next door to the union and open a decent bit later! Yay!

In other other news, I have decided that I am going to hold off on further rugby playing and practicing until I get back to Boston. See below for details:

Quitter

Four hours for forty seconds on the pitch
I might leave anyway and spare myself
The agonies of lost and wasted hours
Mourning unfinished tasks and unmet friends
Delayed beginnings and cancellations
Yet I am deceitful in these outcries
I have traveled farther to watch others
Play with no chance at playing myself and I
Have found other promises of playtime
Fulfilled and know that if I persevere
I shall have hours and hours on French soil
Four days of sweat and dirt and bruising and
I am deceitful in imagining
That fair and better playtime would expel
My anguish here when even our trainings
Are damaging and our social moments
Are near insufferable; hours on the field
Distract me and endeavor to outweigh
The resurrection of four closet walls
Whether an hour’s training with minor
Changing room banter and cries for the ball
Four hours for forty seconds on the pitch
Or well met promises of full matches
Every second of answering to she
Begs me to sever all commitments here