CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Sometimes I like to remind myself that the positive side of being a part of a community with such a high suicide rate is that it is good practice for growing old.
It is the only gray area of an otherwise bleak landscape. It's hard enough doing this in Canada - I can't imagine what it must be like doing this in the US. My impossible sum needed for my medical expenses is only in the thousands of dollars range - whereas in the US, it easily costs ten times what I'll have to pay. It's also... hard... not to be a little jealous. Sometimes I wish I had no family - because I just can't do that to my mother. None of this is her fault - she shouldn't have to suffer because I was too weak to keep trying. So, I'll keep trying. http://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/3ayh2i/the_loss_of_a_friend_we_will_miss_you_jessie/
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This one is making the rounds, so I thought I'd add my two cents: I don't know the context of what he said, so I can't really speak to whether or not what he said was offensive to me. I can say that I, personally, consider the term tranny offensive. I would not want to be referred to using that word. That being said, I am not entirely against its usage. I do believe it is possible to use the term in a non-derogatory way, but since the article does not contain his quote at all, or in part, I am unable to ascertain if the usage was directly offensive to me or not. It could perhaps just make me uncomfortable - but it is plausible to say it in a positive way. I do know people who openly use the term, and welcome it's usage, so we cannot say that our community, monolithically, finds the term offensive. No one can really say that about anything. People can be called what they want. That's what we stand for, in a way. Chapter 1: Born Of A Broken ManSuddenly, I was awake. Not with a start, but about 30 seconds before my alarm went off, bringing my day to a grinding start. I have mixed feelings about this morning - morning is always an upsetting time for me. The realization that I have to go to work; hopefully it’s at least Friday, but not Sunday ; I hope I feel good today; I hope I have energy today.
I also remembered that, since it was Friday , I was doing mushrooms later today. I had 4 mushroom chocolates, each with 2g of mushrooms each, for tonight. I was hoping for some good introspection, as I’d really been feeling stuck in life lately, and basically had nowhere else to look for help. And I needed help - over 60K of school debt (in Canada), and a 14$/hr, go-nowhere computer repair job where I was the only employee of a company with just enough customers to keep us bleeding and desperate for new customers. I am an antitheist. So when I heard about this story, I couldn't help but keep an eye out for people who would defend either the actions of the note writer, or the somehow explain that "true" Christians would never do such a thing.
I did not have to wait long. I often try my best to keep my thoughts to myself on such matters, but I grew up in the US, and I look up to Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, so I often find that I cannot. Here is a comment I made earlier today, in response to this quote, found below the jump: I am a controversial person. Some people have described me as contrarian - a title which I accept, when applied without the assumption that I am merely gamesaying whatever my opponent might say. So when I tell you that I think there might, maybe, be a case for transracialism, be aware that I say that mostly as a philosophical construct, more than an assertion that people ought to get started doing it. Given a world of transgenderism, what sense does it make for people to claim to be transracial? A Temporary TripSo now here we are, a week later, the first Friday after that bullshit. I’m just about to smoke a joint after what some people might consider the longest two weeks of their lives, when it’s dinnertime. Ah, perfect. I’ll get started after dinner.
We have our somewhat usual sniping dinner session - I’m not contributing enough around the house, do the dishes sooner, blah blah blah. She’s right, but I’m seriously burned out from life at this point. All I have to look forward to is the joint I get to smoke when I get home from work, and at this point, it’s been like that for what feels like a lifetime for me. And now I’ve just gone through a breakup, after being single for 9 years. Basically, fuck everything. Gun control is one of those controversial, touchy subjects in today's world, and is one of those almost perfectly symmetrical ideals in that each argument cancels each other out - Liberals say that guns are dangerous and need to be unavailable or heavily restricted for the general public, and Conservatives say that there can be no real personal safety without guns.
I think both parties are right. I think the Conservative's solution to personal safety, however, is a little heavy handed. For some background, I am a martial artist. A lot of pro-gun people usually sneer at me at this point - if I have a gun, you'll lose every time! is what I've heard from my more combative opponents in the past. Since a lot of people also seem unwilling to listen unless I concede this point - a weapon is far more powerful than an empty hand. However, that conceals the truth that a well trained empty hand is still plenty powerful enough to distract, disable, weaken, or otherwise help someone escape from a dangerous situation. In my martial arts class, in which we were taught Americanized Wing Chun, my Sifu also taught us general escape tactics and often reminded us the importance of what Wing Chun was for: it is not a sport, it is a very effectively-escalating medium-to-short-range self defense martial art. This is the key here: unlike guns, Wing Chun can effectively increase the force one defends oneself with. It is the phasor of the self defense world. So, if you're within arm's reach of your attacker, and can't get away, you can either knock him out if he's just some drunk in a bar (you probably won't even have to do that much), or you can jab your fingers into his eye sockets if he's got a knife. Which is not to say that it is a trivial task, but it is certainly much easier to do specifically within the martial arts framework of Wing Chun. Wing Chun even has excellent mechanics for closing medium distances, and at long distances, you'll need to think creatively to either get closer or get further away. None of this is not to say that protecting yourself or another with Wing Chun (or similar martial arts, like Jeet Kune Do) is easy - it is, without a doubt, one of the most harrowing and challenging experiences of one's life, and just like defending yourself with a gun, it could cost you your life when doing nothing would have saved it. Wing Chun in particular has several mechanisms in it that I think make it one of the safest martial arts to learn. It is based on several principles, all based on basic body mechanics, that enable the user to protect themselves while attacking others simultaneously, including blocking and punching simultaneously, and blocking and punching in one punch. It is a martial art that requires time to learn, as it requires careful positioning and training good muscle memory, as it's very much like a gun in that each individual piece must be working perfectly, or else it will fail at the weak point. So, as this relates to gun control, I think if people want to own guns specifically for the case of self defense, then they should learn a martial art and how to defend themselves with their hands first. That is obviously extraordinarily impractical, so in a real world scenario, I would hope that the men and women out there who wish to carry a gun with them at all times do so in tandem with learning how to defend yourself with just your fists (and hopefully your mouth too - it can be a self-preservationists best tool), so that you might escalate self-defense scenarios with more granularity. I think this is 100x more important with the police force, as well. No matter our gun control situation, I am ok with beat cops having guns, but I think hand-to-hand training should be their specialty. We should seriously have shaolin motherfucking warriors rolling around, rather than weak and frightened men defending themselves with the only weapons they have: Their sense of authority and their guns. I want them to have more than that - I want them to feel safe even when their guns aren't drawn, so that maybe they won't draw them quite as often. |
AuthorChristina Hitchens is a trans female writer living in BC, Canada. She loves computers, animals, and a good argument. Archives
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