That isn't what I would have expected

Which is often the way with quiz results....

Which Dyke to Watch Out For Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Lois You are Lois, the ladykiller who's mellowed into an awesome, loyal girlfriend. Give yourself permission to read the newest Harry Potter at Camp Trans. Lois 90% Sydney 65% Sparrow 60% Clarice 60% Toni 60% Stuart 50% Mo 25%

Oh god, he has lost it completely...

Long-term readers of this LJ will remember my post on Hitchens here and how sad I was when Hitchens became a cheerleader for the Bush camp and for Bush's war. All of that was bad enough, but one still hoped that he might one day repent, and then one reads this and finds the bloody man more or less advocating Holy War and Genocide in the name of atheist principle.

When I was a Catholic, I was aware of the idea that sometimes you don't say things because they Give Scandal, they make your side - in that case the Church - look bad. You might be very worried about the Future State of the souls of your Protestant friends, but talking about it all the time was Bad Form and quite possibly counter-productive. I don't much care for the passionately religious of any stripe any more much, except when they happen to be people whom I trust not to go mediaeval on my ass, but the idea that we should use them to kill each other off is both wicked and bad in a CYA sort of way. It is wrong, and if Hitchens doesn't see it is wrong, he should see that it Gives Scandal.

He is turning into Anne Coulter as we watch.

Time travelling

On Saturday, I went to the second meeting of the London Trans Reading Group, which is not the least of all the fab new bits of social and intellectual life that I find myself with after meeting so many cool young men and women at Transfabulous back in June. I perhaps have not stressed enough just how much this has meant to me - well, I know I've stressed it quite a bit, but I need to stress it some more.

So, we were looking at Janice Raymond's vile bible of transphobia The Transsexual Empire which I hadn't read for thirty years. Since I reviewed it.

When we decided to do Raymond, I mentioned my piece and was asked to bring it along. The scary thing is not how good it was - because even thirty years ago I was pretty sharp and pretty sussed - or how it stands up to the test of time -even then I noticed Raymond's assumption of white privilege. It was the occasional bits of it that reminded me of how young I was back then, just a year or so into transition, pre-surgery, living in a squat full of Soho street hustlers in Dalston, only a couple of years away from being raped during my first trip to Chicago. And still assuming that my sexual future was with men - I actually got into a snit about Raymond's assumption that all feminist transwomen identify as lesbians.

Walking over the grave of your younger self is the spookiest thing we have to do - and I was glad to do it in the company of Christina, Kat, Tessa, Val, Teht, Ej, Jin, Ben and the rest of them.

And this evening someone on Facebook mentions using my piece in Reclaiming Genders in a Sexual Politics class at University.

I get old. More worryingly, I get canonical.

Enough of this - off to work on novel.