Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 81

Transgender Child Attacked With a Baseball Bat

This link is the kind of story that makes me want to get a picture of the victim and go door to door to show people who these victims are and put a face to the problem. So maybe then people will stop thinking this kind of bullshit is okay. Maybe then an attack like this would make the national news instead of barely making a blip on trans news sites and trans advocacy blogs.

You can't even blame this one on those darn men, or those mean teens, because the attacker is a grown woman…hitting a child with a baseball bat because she's deputized herself as a member of the gender police.

The amazing thing is, there's neither any shame from people who do things like this, nor outrage from the people who claim to support diversity. It's no surprise that I'd report on this story, because my blog is full of reports of minorities being mistreated or oppressed. But after I report on them, no one else is going to bring them up. These attacks will not stop if people continue to look away from every attack.

Let me put this in perspective for you. Today, a bunch of nerds are mad, because a "mean" lady went on a lousy date with the world champion of Magic. Despite the fact that he used this as a bragging point and took her to a play about Dahmer, I saw a lot of you nerdy dudes complaining "Hey, she should be glad he was a great catch!" Nerd, he was NOT a great catch for her. A card game took priority over his sex life, and she wasn't willing to share time with a game.

More to the point, you're really jumping her because she impugned the honor of your HOBBY. That is some seriously sheltered bullshit.

Did she attack the Magic World Champion with a baseball bat? No, she said he's a nerd and not really worth dating. And, she has the right to say so. You have the right to complain too, and I have the right to point out that you are pulling some privileged and sheltered bullshit, whining that people don't respect your collectible card game. I'm telling you to your faces as a former Magic player: fuck you and your stupid game. There are bigger problems in the world than you being rejected by girls for being nerds.

Like what? Like a complete stranger walks up to a transgender girl and attacks her because "she isn't wearing the right clothes." And the cops won't even call this a hate crime, even though it clearly was.

But tomorrow, I can be sure that there will be continued net wide whining over this "attack" on a white male's privilege, but there will be no net-wide outrage for a real physical attack on a trans CHILD made by a grown woman.

Yes, people, your priorities are fucked up. Yes, you should be ashamed of yourselves. But you really don't care. The woes of poor nerdy white dude are more important than a group of people with a tragically high suicide rate and the highest number of assaults, rapes, and murders of any minority group. I ain't comparing tragedies or putting down other minorities. But damn it, at what point do you people stop worrying about little shit like a fucking collectible card game player's butthurt, and start worrying about real atrocities occurring daily in your world?

Ebook review: Frankie and Formaldehyde by M. Jones

Frankie and Formaldehyde is a strong story right from the start, and it just keeps building on those strengths as the plot unfolds.

Take a zombie nursing home similar to the kind depicted in Michele Lee's Rot. But instead of magic animating these undead, a corporation, Osmosis, Inc. has created a compound to bring the dead back to life. But unlike most zombie apocalypse stories, Osmosis does not entirely lose control of the situation, and the undead are herded into arenas and fed. Afterward, the company is even selling the compound to grieving family members using predatory ad campaigns to prey on peoples' inability to accept death.

Enter into this cold world an elderly woman named Frankie, who, along with coworkers Shirley and Larry, shovels rotting meat to the corpses in one of the arenas. She works constantly because Osmosis has taken over her bank and swindled her on her home loan.

Did I mention that Frankie's husband is a zombie? George isn't like the others, and instead of being a violent "rogue" he passes most of his days watching TV and eating bacon raw. But when Frankie leaves her door unlocked in a fit of worrying, George gets outside and begins to uncover a plot by Osmosis to strip everyone's land. Only…George seems to have discovered this before, back when he was alive…

Enter into this mess a S.I.R. investigating office, Chuck. A retired cop now working to investigate and eliminate rogues, Chuck is rightly seen by everyone as the corporate errand boy of Osmosis. Like Frankie, Chuck is in denial about how bad things have gotten, but as the story unfolds, Chuck sees how scummy Osmosis really is. Eventually, he must come to terms with this, but not before confronting George and Frankie in a truly explosive finale.

But, this is not a fast-paced story. The cast's ages range from 40-70 in most cases, so the pace moves a bit slower, befitting the cast's age. But this is not to say the story is slow or dull. It unfold at just the right pace and delivers a great ending. There's resolution, but Shirley predicts that there can be no happy ending. And this is perhaps the most realistic assessment of their future.

So to recap, this is a great story premise, a great cast of quirky characters, fantastic dialogue, and a romantic angle that's all about love and sacrifice and nothing about sex. The scene were descriptive enough to rip shudders from my jaded black heart, and toward the end, I was giggling gleefully with every line from Shirley or Larry. Can I gush about this story further? Yes, but I'll spare you.

I give Frankie and Formaldehyde 5 enthusiastic stars and recommend it to all zombie and horror fans who like a little brains with their blood and guts.

And this is a cop…

So first go check this link and see what an off-duty cop does with his free time. Let me make this clear: this, is a police officer, the person whose job it is to uphold the law, cruising for sex, and displaying transphobia when the women he solicited weren't to his liking.

Now if this was a story about a gang banger, you could almost forgive the ignorance because they're embedded in a macho culture that violently fears gay and trans folk. But these cops committing crimes like this are the generation who supposedly went through sensitivity training and took courses on respecting diversity. They've been taught to know better, and they still choose to be thugs and criminals.

And this isn't a minor discrimination infraction like, "Hey, you look like a dude, dude." He crashed their car and fired into the car to try to kill them. There's no legal reason why this man shouldn't go to prison and get a little taste of the same shit he's been dishing out. But first, we have to wait to see if the trial judge will allow him the "trans panic" defense. If not, great, we'll see one dirty pig fry for once.

But the jury who sat in on the rape of a drunk stripper by two police officers thought that was a-okay, because strippers are always asking for sex. And the women in the car may have been hookers, meaning the jury could decide that they had some bullets coming to them for tricking a fine officer of the law.

So no, even when the cop fires into the car, I'm skeptical that the trial will lead to an "obvious verdict." And by the way, I'm still searching for some source of positive trans news to counter all of this doom and gloom. But for us, good news is when we win a discrimination suit and force a company to admit they were wrong for mistreating us. But when we celebrate that, we ignore the fact that all these corporation who talk shit about being committed to diversity STILL have to be sued to recognize that we have the same rights as other employees. They support diversity, as long as someone diverse isn't trying to collect a paycheck from them.

I'm still looking for a real victory to celebrate, and lately, all I see is more reasons to be disappointed.

Oooh, a tech post! Must be a blue moon!

This is a helpful link to explain how to remove a security certificate by DigiNotar CA. I can't get the full story on what's going on, but apparently this is a spoofed certificate that affected people using Google services. Near as I can tell this was some attempt from someone in Iran to spy on dissidents using Google to organize protests.

The certificate has already been revoked, and an upcoming browser release will revoke and delete the certificate. But if you're in Iran (and I actually do have a fraction of traffic from there*) it might be a good idea to delete this pronto for your own safety. So here is a Firefox article explaining how to do it. The rest of you, I doubt the certificate will do anything bad since it's already been revoked, but if you want to remove it, the instructions are fairly straight forward.

Mr. Ed

Um…so, this is another Tumblr fiction brain fart, this time a tuckerization and a parody of Stephen King's Night Flyer. In fact, readers of King's short story will probably see where this joke is going before an uninitiated reader, but I hope the punch line is still good for you King fans too.

And yes, I still love him. He is teh Man, and I've read more of his books than any other writer ever. But the muse proposed this and I giggle-snorted and went, "Oh hell yeah. We can do that."

So without further ado, I give you Mr. Ed

Let's talk about Afghanistan

So first, here's the link to a story about the statistic that no one likes to mention, unless you're Fred Phelps or one of his detestable offspring. Y'all recall, I attempted to serve in the Army, and I got injured out. I have a lot of respect for those guys because "ours is not to question why. Ours is but to do or die."

People who enter the military exist under a different code of law, the UCMJ, or the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A person in this system is property of their government, and as such they voluntarily sacrifice many of the rights that other people take for granted. And they do this for shitty pay.

I bitch a lot about lots of folks, and when some bad apples show up in these war stories, I'll point them out. But you'll never catch me saying "this is everybody in the military." That's because who makes up the military is a HUGE selection of people from all walks of life, religions, and ways of looking at their role as soldiers. There is no one definition of who a soldier is and how they think or act.

So, now that we're clear that the target of my complaint is only on the politicians and generals, I want to point out that the US has now been at war in Afghanistan for one year longer than the Russian Afghanistan war. We went over with good intentions of wiping out terrorism, but in the process, America has accepted more overt control from the government, and jingoism and xenophobia are running rampant in the disguise of "political rants."

And a lot people still keep complaining, "We want jobs." People, your government is spending everything they have to keep up their aggressive international bullying campaign, and they can't afford to invest in jobs for NASA, much less in making jobs for you.

And besides, THIS was the conservatives' plan all along. After they told you they would cut the social safety net and make you all self-reliant, you didn't think part of that net was job creation services. Oops, yeah, it was. But that too was part of the conservatives' plans, because after this you self-reliant people are supposed to be filled with the entrepreneurial spirit and start up your own businesses and hire your neighbors. Instead of doing that, y'all look to the capital and say, "How about some jobs, boss?"

So, you DO want social services, but only if they're the "right kind." The kind that benefit you and not those "welfare queens."

This is why you poor people are such a disappointment to rich conservatives. All of their plans would work, if you weren't lazy welfare sucking little bitches who won't learn self-reliance.

Before you send a reply, wait. I just summed up what conservatives think of you, not what I think of you. I think you're lazy and sheltered too, but I don't think you should be so self-reliant, because frankly, some of you aren't smart enough to be trusted on your own. (NOW, send a reply)

And, while I'm sure you see jobs as being very, very important to your personal well-being, I would like to remind you that one, the US has been in Afghanistan for one year longer than Russia, and two, the US government is emulating Soviet Russia in a lot of other disturbing ways. (More direct control of information sources, more surveillance, torture, secret prisons.) So it shouldn't surprise you that sometime soon, the US can also emulate Soviet Russia and go broke. I'm not suggesting anything radical or using psychic powers to make a prediction. I'm just apparently one of the few people who's brushed up on history recently.

As a people, you have to care about someone. Your soldiers could be one place to start. No matter how long you stay training police in Afghanistan, when the last Americans leave, there's still going to be a bloody conflict going on. The invasion will not have changed the circumstances, only the people doing the shooting.

None of the risks our people faced have changed Afghanistan. It remains the graveyard of empires, the place where education cannot reach, where ruthless devotion to the past is the only acceptable view to the people holding the guns, and everyone else who disagrees with them is a target. Like the saying goes, to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

These wars against terrorism are costly. They eat up human lives, and they eat up money. The people who make it home will remain scarred by what happened, and sadly, they ended up fighting for an empty ideal. That's not their fault. "Ours is not to question why…"

It's our job as citizens to question the use of the military, because it's our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, who will be sent away to fight for whatever reason the leaders decide upon.

So search your heart, and ask which is more important: Ending the war that's draining our nation's resources and bringing our soldiers home, or complaining to a broke government to give you jobs that they can't afford to create?

Jeopardy theme in three, two, one…

An experience I'm not yet acquainted with…

Death threats online are problem faced by many different groups, and here is a woman talking about how hate groups escalated from bad mouthing her and her sexuality up to regular death threats. She also describes some folks who've had to go into hiding because constant threats made online.

I've been lucky thus far in that all my trolls tend to say the same ridiculous things, calling themselves compassionate and longing to help in one sentence, and then dehumanizing half the planet's population in the next. I've had people ask some really mean questions about the circumstances of my rape, and I'm quite used to being told I'm full of shit, misguided, or making a big deal out of nothing. Being dismissed is still just as irritating as it was when I was a kid, but it's nothing new. But no one has threatened to hunt me down. Yet.

But, just so y'all know, I'm in Italy. So those in the US who hate my guts will have to pony up the cash for a ten hour flight. And my house has a moat. With alligators and sharks. When you get to my floor, there's a little kid in a mushroom costume who will tell you "Sorry, stalker, but the princess has fled to another palace."

Seriously, though, it's sad how many time I see examples like this that prove the online world has not led to an era of greater enlightenment. If anything, we're seeing hate become more organized, and we're seeing how effectively targeted hate can make people afraid to speak out.

And instead of addressing issues of personal safety for the users of the Internet, our government and ISPs are more concerned with preserving digital copyrights for corporations. One might think all of those people being paying customers might foster some affection, however fake, from the ISPs, but they really don't care that cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying are easy, generally legal, and are a growing hobby for a number of bored, sheltered douchebags.

So the ISPs will haggle over setting up a three strikes access law to protect Trent Reznor from me pirating his latest music videos, but they won't set up a similar system for cyber-stalkers with a known history of victimizing women and other minorities?

Do I even need to comment how fucked up all of this is?

Lambda Literary is trans and bi exclusive?

First read the link from Rose Fox, who in the article explains that she was formerly a judge with these very same awards. To be clear, there is a bisexual fiction group, and a trans group, and if those groups get more than 10 entries, they'll be divided into fiction and non-fic categories.

But, taking a look at the achievement awards, where authors are recognized for "contributing to the GLBT movement" in a first novel, for a mid-career author, or for lifetime achievement, winners are limited to one gay man and one lesbian woman. The language is exclusive of bis in both genders, and trans folks of every orientation.

If my book ended up on the ballot in the trans category, I wouldn't pull my title in protest. I could use the impressions from being on the ballot. But the fact is, there's three award categories that should be GLBT and are restricted to G and L authors. This gets right back into my complaints that B and T are always less important than G and L whenever we're lumped together.

Again, I would be glad to win an award, but I get so frustrated with people who talk about us making progress when we can't even convince our closest allies to be more accepting of diversity. If this is how we fare against allies, it's no wonder our enemies are having such a field day with us.

5 Minute Monday Interview with A.M. Harte

A.M. Harte asked me to do a short interview, and given that the topic is Peter the Wolf, this one goes to some dark places.And the last answer makes me feel squirmy rereading it, even if it is an honest answer.

Peter the Wolf (Book1) now has 16 sales, which will probably seem like bitching if I don't put this in context. But this is actually good sales numbers for a title in its first month. None of my previous releases over the last year besides this and The Life and Death of a Sex Doll have done this well. I don't have the Amazon sales figures on print or Kindle for the Belfire book, but I do have access to the sales reports on Smashwords, and they aren't bad either. Relatively speaking, of course.

But this isn't a post about The Life and Death of a Sex Doll. That was the previous post, actually. But since I didn't mention it, my sales, for my given amateur status in the writing world, are actually not bad. I mean, I do almost no promotion, only a few guest posts and interviews, and oh yeah, lots of people consider me as tasteless as Army coffee. So I have a lot working against me.

And yet, I got better sales on this book in its first month than I did on all my other previous efforts. So, for those sales, and for the folks who continue to read this blog even if you don't agree with me, thank you. I know, I don't say it enough, but since I've made it my job to poke lazy people with pointy sticks, I think I do a good job of every once in a while taking a deep breath and going, "And I don't mean everyone, just the assholes. And if you're not an asshole, thanks."

So, thanks, non-assholes, for your lack of ass-holery. Oh, this is just sliding downhill with every sentence. I'm gonna stop digging and go munch a sorbetto bar or somethin'.

TG Daily reviews The Life and Death of a Sex Doll

One would expect a novel about sex dolls to contain lots of sex, but there was surprisingly little. What is there is never gratuitous, and some scenes, while graphic, were quite touching.

Another great review for my book, which has gotten praise for its fascinating feminist themes, for great sci-fi elements, and for fantastic character development.

This would all be so much more awesome if I was selling copies hand over fist. Alas, I sell so slow that I can use the other hand for…promotional typing one-handed.

Anywho, please consider looking at the book. It's two novellas for the price of one, and both of those books have yet to get a bad review. If nothing else, this gives you a chance to be the first bad reviewer.