King Richard III: Catholic burial in Westminster Abbey, please

I won't wax lyrical about this as it seems so simple. He was a King of England, his wife (Anne Neville) is buried in Westminster Cathedral and so it is obvious that he should be buried with her. Now, she hasn't got a grave marker, as (according to the Westminster Abbey site) was killed the same year at Bosworth. So somewhere near the alter seems fitting, but disrupting floors and foundations to get his bones sort of nearby seems excessive, but he was KING OF ENGLAND. If any recent monarchs' corpses were ignominiously tombed, wouldn't we want future citizens to take up the cause, pay respects appropriately and bury them with as much pomp and circumstance as their position deserves?

I can see that a State Funeral might be a bit of a damp squib (go on, how many of The IT Crowd fans wanted me to write damp squid?) given that throngs of adoring/morning subjects who felt the impact of his reign aren't available.

But he really deserves much more than he is getting. We're grateful that he's been found (shame that the female archaeologist busted open the cranium accidentally, though) but now we must muster more effort to recognise his contributions.

I also agree with this blog that correctly asserts that a Catholic funeral would be necessary given the faith he held upon his death (presumably).

Hymnal Homecoming

After a significant absence, this blog is being reinvigorated. Thus to give it the best start possible, I'm getting the Good Guy on my side.

Not normally a sentimental blog, but this beautiful hymn deserves a post of its own.

And can it be?

Televisual treats: Amish gap years, homocidal University staff and parental gender desires.

• Rizzoli and Isles had a storyline about a murderous pimp who happened to be a residence advisor - beware all those heading to University this fall - your local, friendly helping-hand could be your worst nightmare!
• Amish: World's Squarest Teenagers was another fly-on-the-wall documentary where the participants were clearly prepped about what controversial things to say or do, yet it was still eye-opening and warming, unexpectedly so. I learned about bundling, the different types of Amish clothing options (and how Becky wore shorts on the beach!) and how dancing for joy (and to glorify God) can be life changing.
• 8 Boys and Wanting a Girl talked about PGD and the controversy. But no-one mentioned whether it was selection of a foetus based on gender, for which I can understand people's concerns. Or whether it was sperm selection (using centrifuge to spin off the light from the heavier sperm, since one type is mostly male) and then swamping a syphoned ovum in that selected sperm, or whether they actually selected a specific spermatozoa to implant in an ovum. This latter technique seems less controversial, but presumably it is more expensive. Also the feature was about women wanting girls in a family of men. I have two questions:
• Do those with gender disappointment tend to wish they had girls? Are there more mothers wanting mini-me's than there are fathers wanting little girls? Are there a similar number of dads in feminine families wanting some male company?
• Do these parents realise that even if they do conceive the longed for daughter or son, that they may turn out just the same as the other children - tree-climbing, gun-loving, football-playing, or doll-dressing, tea-making, pink-wearing? There is no assumption that the preferred gender will meet the cultural desires the parents want fulfilled. Mummy may not be able to go shopping for girly dresses with the daughter - she might want combats. Daddy may not get to go camping with his son, if he would rather stay home and play house. Do they prepare for this mentally? What if the kid is gender dysmorphic or sexually queer? Are they prepared for this? Does fulfilling the desire for a certain gender simply mean that the child must have the right genitalia? Would these mothers be happy with a gay son who wants to go to the gymkhana, discuss hair styles, or whatever else these women assume their imagined daughter would do? Would a father be okay with a butch daughter who can throw a ball, rugby tackle and make armpit burps with the best of them? I guess not. I think these parents are longing for a cultural stereotype that is unrealistic. They are hoping for a certain stereotype of personality rather than the genetic gender. Would any of their children feel pressure to be other than their current gender - do any of them consider transvestism or a transgendered identity more readily due to familial pressure? 

Okay, I have four questions actually: 

• Why don't any of these families consider adoption or fostering? Do they want a little version of themselves so badly?

•  What happens if the child is sick or disabled? They would be the right gender but the parents wouldn't be able to do all the 'gender-appropriate' activities - is that child still valid in their eyes as fulfilling the category they so badly desire? Would another healthy child of the right gender be needed to adequately satisfy this hunger?

Iranian women's rugby team take to the field wearing modesty-preserving headscarves and tracksuits: do their bodies really need this much protection?

Iranian women's rugby team take to the field wearing modesty-preserving headscarves and tracksuits | Mail Online

I wonder about these burhkinis and other modest sports clothing. I know little about Arabic or Muslim culture, but what I have read suggests that body covering is to protect the women from:
lascivious thoughts from the men they encounter;
having their reputation tarnished by being seen as a floozy if they are not covered;
being judged on appearance rather than what they say or do...

and to protect the beauty and glory of a woman's body and hair for her husband (to be).

Now are these women really all so gorgeous that non-covering will reduce men to baying wolves? What value is their reputation other than in finding a husband - does it stop you getting a job? Doesn't judgement based on clothes not character happen anyway? They may not be seen as sexy and dim, but rather as prudish and uptight - which is worse?

As for retaining one's true beauty for their husbands, I find this offensive. A beautiful woman might save her beauty for herself, her best friends, her family, her God. Why is there this assumption that a woman must marry a man? Lesbianism is illegal, I assume. But is celibacy and spinsterhood frowned upon, too?

Maybe these women cover up so that they can revel in their own bodies alone behind closed doors and know that the secret of their bodily truth has been preserved.

As for the sporting clothes - I understand that getting Muslim women involved in such activities is hard, as they are seen as immodest in of themselves. What would these women (and their families) rather they be healthy and stepping outside cultural norms, or locked away and perhaps have a lower quality of life? What is more important to them? How they meet these doctrines or how their fit their life is? Is the worldly experience important, or is it the after-life (which will be good if they follow doctrine) that matters?

Three things I really don't understand

1. DOMA - Why is there a link between the church and state in marriage ceremonies? Weddings are a celebration of love based around a legally-binding contract, sometimes with religious blessing - an official, government-recognised union to which God has also given the thumbs up. Do people really think Jesus/Christianity/the Church (or whichever flavour of faith you prefer) invented marriage? Am I totally in ignorance of the necessary history? I thought it was designed to keep daughters under some man's control, be it their father or eventually their husband. Or something to do with taxes, or the census, or something totally not connected with saving one's soul or being a good representative of your particular fellowship. But I may be wrong -  - it's happened before.
2. Money spent on governmental elections - I don't think it is fair because rich, corporate-panderers will be more vocal as they can afford more newspaper adverts and radio time. To run our countries we need experienced, moral people, not those with wells of cash that should go to better causes. There is a campaign somewhere in the states for this woman to run again for election next year and she has already amassed millions in campaign revenue - why not give that all to charity and stand for election based on that?  I need to find some stats.
3. Raul Moat support - in the UK there is a penchant for celebrating anything that defies or ridicules the police or any element of authority. So when a policeman was shot (and blinded) by a double murderer who then went on the run, there was a disturbing element of society who were egging him on. Paul Gascoigne wanted to take him a fishing rod, a dressing gown and some sandwiches. Now there are those that have made a Facebook tribute page and people selling commemorative T.shirts. I find it all very shocking.

I'm on a cart

Like Towleroad, I don't want to support Mormon enterprises (mostly because I don't know enough about them to decide one way or another), but like Towleroad I do want to share this awesome Old Spice copycat, which is much better than Alyssa Milano's:

Gay cure?

Plenty of church groups and some psychiatrists claim that any form non-heterosexuality can be cured with enough prayer or therapy. But really, what are they trying to do? Someone can choose to never act on their non-het feelings/inclinations, does that make them straight enough? Or is having the thoughts and feelings too much and they are trying to correct those, too? If you define a sexual orientation by behaviour then stopping someone's actions is enough, but if you want to change how someone responds inside to a person to whom they are emotionally/intellectually/romantically/sexually attracted then I don't think there is a quantity of prayer or therapy big enough to help that - the heart wants what the heart wants - it just does. You can't know who you are going to fancy today, tomorrow or in ten years' time. You just have to be open to hearing your heart and hope that those that love you will be supportive, the rest is just chaff blowing in the wind. It's only when displayed behaviour is censored and sanctioned that harassment and discrimination become a problem.

This article might stimulate more thoughts in the dialogue of choice/cure.

More movieness

Also, this article about women-made movies for women might be worth checking out. It reminded me that I meant to watch Transamerica...

UPDATE: Transamerica was good, pretty good, actually. I'm not sure I can comment on how the trans stereotypes (mis)represent the trans community, but I can at least note some of the obvious ones:

• scarf on the neck - despite FH not having an Adam's apple, as revealed when she is in the cafe with her heroic Native American cowboy.
• bad foundation (too pale at the beginning, too dark in the restaurant scene with the grandparents)

Furthermore, it seems to me that Click which I have never seen ploughs far too similar a field to that of Multiplicity, even down to the architect and the deus ex machina type device.

Also, Nicholas Cage's Knowing was pretty mediocre: too like ET and 1001 other alien/apocalypse genre movies. Plus the 'Jesus is the tree of life' motif was confusing. The Bible page, motto written on the van's side, then the final scene with the children running towards the tree. So was there meant to be an understanding that the alien/angel-type beings were from a Christian/Abrahamic god? Or did the directors throw that in for good measure to appeal to a wider audience in conservative America? Answers on a postcard...

...and 'Be kind, Rewind' is rather like the British success, Son of Rambow in the refilming for famous flicks. Perhaps it is a popular theme I've missed before now...

...Finally, Live Free or Die Hard seems to be riding the action-hero-father/daughter protection racket, just as True Lies did over a decade ago. But it was good all the same!

Next planned viewing:
Midnight Cowboy
The World according to Garp
Todo sobre mi madre
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
The Adventures of Sebastian Cole

Greco-Roman Movement

Okay, so having delved into a bit of tangential reading on Ancient Greek and Roman history, religion and mythology, I have some thoughts and feelings I need to share.

First, you should understand that this entire line of thinking was stimulated by Percy & the lightning thief (which is my shortened title) and the wonders of Wikipedia.

So, I needed to know who all the tall gods were in Olympus and why they were tall. Did Wiki know? Hells yes, and a whole bunch more.

I spent the weekend learning about: the geography and the many people (roman and Greek, mortal, mythical and godly) of the times, how there were cognates between the regions for their gods, the original gods, the connections between various religious origins, the goddesses most closely connected to me and their festivals, and the people wanting to reignite the ancient ways.

I also detoured to look at UNESCO world heritage sites, the seven wonders of the world, the eighth wonder of the world and the various times and techniques behind these creations/phenomena. Plus the tallest, widest and most powerful waterfalls in the world.

But the ancient history stuff got me thinking. In Greek writing they often describe features of people as resembling particular gods and goddesses, did there exist a general, agreed understanding of what these gods/goddesses looked like? Would one look at a person and see that the brow, nose, hair line, height, or chin resembled a particular deity? Could you describe someone's to appearance and have your audience picture the person? If I said a man looked like Danny De Vito, you'd think short, rotund, drools a bit when he speaks, fiery, American, balding with dark hair. If I said a man looked like Uma Thurman, you'd think tall, thin, blonde, athletic, sharp facial features, piercing eyes, clipped speech. Could those in ancient times assimilate in their collective mind's eye an image of their deities? I think if one was described as resembling Cleopatra, you'd think brunette, if Helen of Troy, then blonde, if Samson, with lovely locks and if Hercules then brute strength but that is as far as I can go. However, Odysseus says that Nausicaa resembles a goddess, particularly Artemis. How is it that he can pick which goddess she most closely resembles?

Also, was there a familiar link with deities and the conception of value, ethics and goodness?
"This honor bestowed upon the children was later used by Solon, as a proof while trying to convince Croesus that it is impossible to judge a person's happiness until they have died a fruitful death after a joyous life." (Herodotus' History, Book I)

Also, does Eos relate to those that are tempted by others whilst in a relationship?
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 27 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) : "Eos, whom Aphrodite tormented with constant passion as punishment for sleeping with Ares."

If you must watch one of these: Percy, Valentine's Day, Leap Year, The Secret Lives of Pippa Lee make it Percy or Pippa. The others are a waste of your time and intelligence. Also, I tried Spartacus: Blood and Sand; just make sure you don't.

If you accidentally did watch some/all of these, you need to be cheered up. Check out Steve Martin in P, T, A or the other Ron Burgundy movie.

On a slight related topic, if you are looking for advice on movies to watch, then seriously check out Brandy and Julie (of LOGO's Big Gay Sketch Show) who have collaborated with Autostraddle to produce fortnightly reviews - the first one for James Cameron's Avatar was hilarious! Check them out here. Hmm, 2nd installment, not so funny, disappointing... :(

I shall be checking out another fantastical, semi-religiously toned film: The Golden Compass. I'll let you know about my feelings later on... After a quick session of Facebook Mafia Wars!

Sunday thoughts...

Amazing new technology allows pre-birth bonding with baby.
@Queerty has awesome flowchart of arguments for/against gay marriage.
Eye-tracking posterboard allows viewer interaction.
Kodak stops supplying an old-style film product - end of an era?
Women in Iran and shoes

The new curtailments of expression are for our benefit, or are they?

• Burqhas are unnecessary concealment of women, or a protection from sexual oppression?
• Kissing banned in schools is a safety net for too-young sexual activity, or stopping expression of self?
• Avoiding swine flu risk, or denying people religious expression with no more communion wine?
  

If you are silent, are you still there?

Speak out, be heard, be visible. Here are how others have done it:

Jeanette Winterson "I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing I didn't think I had to. I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle."

Rita Mae Brown "My lesbianism is an act of Christian charity. All those women out there praying for a man, and I'm giving them my share."

Dorothy Parker “Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.”

Sam Austin "Homosexuality is god's way of insuring that the truly gifted aren't burdened with children."

Lynn Lavner “The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.”

Gore Vidal “What I am preaching is: don’t be ghettoized, don’t be categorized. Every state tries to categorize its citizens in order to assert control over them.”

George Orwell "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

Back to life, back to reality...

Today's queeriosities include:

1. Jezebel's guide to lesbo stereotypes and cliches
2. Twelve-year old daughter of two gay mom's presented her life facts to politicians, some of whom expressed a change of heart over their voting direction after her speech. The wee one was interviewed: check it out.
3. Jezebel's helpful recruitment guide for turning non-Sapphists into lady-lovers.
4. Frightening news from Saudi Arabia - an 8yr old girl married off to a 47yr old man to settle her father's debt has been told that her marriage cannot be annulled until she reaches puberty. This is about as far from the fairytale of a Princess being married off as a child to her future Prince Charming as you could get.
5. Three exciting women using their energy and faith to become engaged in fighting for justice and equality in a range of arenas.
6. Firoza Bibi, a brave woman from rural India, has won a local governmental election and is fighting for justice for her local community, including women who were sexually brutalised as a weapon of war.
7. Bilerico's guest blogger, Monica Helms, talks about how boring life is in binary. I like spectrum ideas, that we are a sliding scale of all types of humanity, but I worry that this somehow interferes with yin/yang, dualism philosophy of ancient cultures. Can I support a continuum whilst advocating a two-sides of the coin, together-we-make-a-whole argument?
8. Li'l Wayne has been on the Jimmy Kimmel show and revealed that he lost his viginity at 11yr old to a woman, and it sounds like rape to pretty much everyone who has seen the clip and commented on it. From feministing.com there is a link to a smart essay on it, which raises the issue of rape apologism and its meaning for women-on-men assault, and how black men are hypersexualised and therefore the host and other guest (white) felt able to laugh about it.
9. Sadly, the other news story about sexual assault that caught my attention was the disturbing story of a female Sunday School teacher who kidnapped, raped with a foreign object, murdered then put the body in a suitcase in a lake. The victim was a little girl. Paedophilic attacks are not just carried out by men.
   
10. Thanks to queerty.com, I found 2M4M.org and their fab picture
11. Clever video about wrongness of NOM claims through Towleroad.
12. A hilarious video that mocks the original NOM film (@Bilerico)
    
13. New book and online publicity drive for the femme-themed literature: Femmethology
14. The fabulous, genderfucking superstar, Peaches, has a new album I feel Cream and a single from this Talk to Me has a fantastic music video, which feels a little Goldfrapp, Ride a White Horse, which incidentally looks a little Lady Gaga: check it out via queerty.com
15. Cutest thing today - wee robot that has been helped around NY by kind citizens: an art project with humanitarian overtones - click here for the video. (@gizmodo)
16. Sadly the elderly are getting a raw deal again: a fifth are not taking meals to save money according the Daily Mail (UK).
17. But a British supermarket, ASDA, is helping the aging process by selling walking sticks and wheelchairs - no more NHS scrappy, institutional, utilitarian, stuff for you, Grandpa - a loaf of bread, a bottle of ale and a mobility aid - marvellous! (@DailyMailUK)
    

Friday Follow-through

Gay elephant disappoints its owners! Politicians in Poland are complaining that the breeding programme is an expensive failure after Ninio has shown little interest in females, preferring boy time! (@DailyMail)

Librarians fumble classification of famous archaeology text: Prof Stringer's important book, Homo Britannicus was incorrectly shelved in the LGBT/queer section! (@DailyMail)

Queerty has a fascinating article on Jesus as a Gay Man based on a new book by Kittredge Cherry - what a fabulous name for an author, and she is a lesbian, too!

Bilerico moves the debate towards racism after the writer remembered being called someone's 'perfect little geisha boy', meant as an affectionate term, but brought up the wrong sort of feelings in Jason Tseng.

Women are finding less satisfaction with their career than men - they are preferring to have a happy home life, whereas their male counterparts are prioritising their employment prospects. (@DailyMail)

Happily childfree woman has had to reconsider her opinion now that she has a puppy in her life messing up her hormones! (@DailyMail)

Google founder's wife has produced a product (with the help of her organisations) that allows a person to be genetically tested for tell-tale mutated genes, etc. that might signal a predisposition to getting certain diseases. Both Sergey Brin and his wife, Ann Wojcicki, and their child have been tested; they are especially concerned about Parkinson's Disease, since there is history of it in the family.

I think this development is wonderful and I suspect that eventually it will be common practice for those wanting to procreate to ask the other person involved in the matter (that is the other person providing the genetic material) to provide their testing results before they decide to make babies together. If you have a higher risk of creating children with dreadful painful diseases, you might decide against producing offspring together. This does conflict with my distaste for abortion and euthanasia; I think all life has value and afflicted people can teach those around them so much about patience, compassion and love. However, if the choice was available before procreating (as in the movie Gattacca) then I, and I would think countless others, would want to know what they face beforehand. Not that you can ever really prepare to parent a severely disabled child. Plus, those scientists in the article are right, chance and environmental factors are not taken into account in the testing.

Would the testing go too far... with only tall, athletic, non-disabled children being created in the ideal world? I'm not sure we can avoid selection - you might not want to marry a bald fat man with coronary disease to prevent your babies being afflicted. Mothers choosing sperm donor candidates choose ones with 'best' qualities. I surely want intelligent, healthy, blonde babies...but that might say more about my ego than my desire for the 'best' children.

Some excellent links...

Be Yr Own Queero has three ace articles:
Defined by your gender? You don't have to be
Questioning Maleness: Constructing Homosexual Identity
Positive Queer Role Models
Helpfully, one of the commentors on BYOQ added a link to an academic paper on Gender as Social Institution.

Also, coming out in search of a gay-friendly school: Julie Halpert writes in Newsweek about her own daughter Alyson's search for a gay-friendly college. (@Queerty from Newsweek)

Christian college provides LGBT-friendly housing: The DiversCity Q housing

Proactive support is great when you can get it but, sadly, the gaps in the system are sometimes invisible until people fall through them. Young people in the care system are finding themselves in homeless shelters as foster care ends and the global recession affects their ability to find a job and their own home, so reports the NYTimes.

Finally, get it in your diaries, girls and the girl-identified! June 12st is going to be ORGASMIC! The Big O Day project wants the women/womyn/wimmin/whatever of the world to unite in the purism of pleasure - embrace the inner goddess and do something entirely and solely pleasurable for at least 15mins that day (just 15? I'm gonna spend a LOT longer...) You can do it alone, in a group, with a special pal, in public, in private, in your head - it can be sexual, esoterical, fantastical or epicurean - the power to be pleasured and pleasurable lies in each and every one of us, and June 12st is the day to give it out to the universe!

Random, quite simply random...

Fabulous sartorial suppliers... King and Allen

More state stalkerishness...

So, as a Born-Again Virgin, I am seeking a woman who will be happy to wait until we are married to have sex. So I think GayChristians and RainbowChristians are good places to start. Waiting to marry...not so that all sexual connectivity will be for the procreation of children (unless miracles occur), but lesbians waiting to make love to that one special, true lady. I guess that they do not have to be a queer Christian, per se, just someone who values sex, believes it to be sacred.Someone with faith and joy. We don't even have to have the same religion, as long as they are not a fundamentalist who thinks that my version of The Higher Power is wrong and therefore we cannot be together.

Questions for the LGBTQ community:

• Do some lesbian couples have their kids call one of them (maybe the birth mom, or the most femme) Mother and the other, Father, Dad, Pappa, or whatever? Could this wesbite provide an answer? Or maybe an academic paper by Polly Pagenheart? See: Pagenhart, Polly. "Lesbian / Dad: Masculine Mother, Feminine Father" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Women's Studies Association, TBA, St. Charles, IL, Pheasant Run, Jun 28, 2007 . 2009-03-24

Quotation from that paper:

Abstract: Nonbiological lesbian mothers challenge traditional notions of motherhood; that’s plain to see. Take a few steps farther back, though, and you’ll notice that lesbian parenthood revises and extends fatherhood just as much. Indeed, for a lesbian parent like me, "Both/and!" is the only answer to the either/or question: "Are you mother or father?" This essay, part memoir, part analysis, explores that rich parental space that exists at the crossroads of those two roles, and proposes that not just feminism and gender studies, but every parent—woman or man; queer or straight—stands to gain from the insights found there.

• Are FTM transpeople having their cake and eating in - childbirth then penis-ownership - do we applaud? Or ask them to chose the joys of one gender only, and stop being greedy in the experiences...?

Get ready for the advice column! Suggestions to improve life such as... Peeing like a ninja - quietly in bathroom stalls, also to allow you to pee in a urinal or whilst standing like a man... Too dry? Lick the tampon end first to make sure the applicator glides in.