Roads to Safe Places

"The majority of people are white, so what's wrong with them being on billboards in the majority of cases?"

A work/friend of mine recently showed her class extracts from Blue Eyed and subsequently discussed a scene in it in which a billboard with a good-looking white, middle-aged and obviously affluent couple are shown. Pretty much unanimously, the class came to the above conclusion. Now, statistically this seems to be true, but srsly. We'd like them to knoy what's problematic about that statement, but are at a loss on how to achieve that. What I could come up with on the fly was:

Basically to make clear that this is a constructed norm and make them think of ways in which this is harmful - because what happens if you don't belong to that norm? Maybe also showing them quote by Adrienne Rich might help a bit, too: 


So yeah, grasping a straws here.

Help, oh wise flist?

"Can anyone tell me anything about what people used to write on in the thirteenth and fourteenth century?"
"They used to carve things in stone."
"... In the thirteenth century, they took notes by carving them in stone...?"
"Well, yes. Until they started to print books."

This person?



NOT writing on this guy's head.

The following are the categories in the children's section of the nearest Hannover city library (and I quote):  ...

Yeah. I don't know. Fantasy and action, sure, but reality?? Really? (That's where they put the books on WWII, drugs, child pregnancy and life in the GDR. Reality is depressing in Germany. Romance is a redundant category, because every book I looked at in the other categories had a pretty prominent romance plot, yuck. Kissing books, man).

Am I happy about that because it means no one will have to go through the trouble of teaching the kids these words at school, or am I worried for the future of my mother tongue?

I took my first class in of the very short introductory course on German Sign Language that Crocky's uni's offering today, and it was awesome. Hard, though, because I missed the first class. It's only a very basic class for beginners and we won't get further than basic introductions and easy sentences, but it definitely leaves me wanting more. There are also a few really good resources online, too, like the German Sign Language dictionary, and I also very much like the look of Signing Savvy, which I wish were available in DGS.

Given our oralist past, it's not surprising that there is more material online, though. Most of my linguistics lecturer's deaf DGS teachers were forbidden to sign in class at their school back in the day. If they did sign, which the hearing teachers would interpret as being fidgety and not paying attention, they'd go so far as to tie their hands behind their backs.

Signing in general was frowned upon, the teachers couldn't speak DGS, as the central idea was to train them how to to lip-read instead, as DGS wasn't recognised as a language at all.

Until, oh, 2002 or so.

Go, Germany.

Ok, people. Imagine you are a gun enthusiast, owned guns, and wanted to keep them in your house.

Now, pick your option of choice for gun storage from these two.


           

Made your choice? Awesome!

And now for storing ammunition. What looks like the sensible option here?

          

If you chose the first option in both cases, you ought to meet the father of last year's German school shooter Tim, who seems to have similar ideas about safety as you do. His son surprisingly got hold of both gun and ammunition and became, well, a school shooter with them.

( Seriously, wth. )

Not a big surprise, really, though the study (German) is ten years old, and I don't know anything about the methodology or details on the sample they used for this study, as they don't go into detail in the article this table was included in.

So, I asked my family to sign this petition I keep harping on about and was told by my father that he doesn't really see the point because only so few people are taking part, so he doesn't see a reason to bother with it. Edit: but he did sign it in the end, yay! Leaves only my brother and my mother who are deterred by ... having to sign up?

That doesn't really sound all that logical to me, especially as a reason to not bother as well if it's something you even moderately care about, but it's true. It is doomed, really - to be seriously considered it needs to gather 50k signatures within a month - it has roughly 5k now, and it needs 45k more until March 3. Plus you need to - gasp- sign up to sign it and people are lazy and don't care whatever the fuck is in our constitution, so both the people who actually would be protected by this law and the majority can't really be bothered.

The third article of our basic law reads as follows:

The changed version looks like this:

According to our government, the term "sexual identity" covers bisexual, lesbian, gay, intersexed, transgendered and transsexual people because all components of the LGBTI acronym are the same to them. For once, this might be a really good thing and generally A Step In The Right Direction, regardless of the weirdness of having all those different things subsumed under the term "sexual identity".

Well, before, back in November, people in our government thought that the other parts of our Basic Law already nicely cover all relevant aspects and voted it down, it's now being brought back to attention by major parties, and there is also this petition. But, well, you need to sign up. D=

People like our more conservative and sillier folks thought back in November that would will mean paedophiles would be protected under the law and there would be a need to change the legislation to include something they refer to as "bisexual marriage", which turns out to be polygamy. No, I'm not making this up, these people really are that dense, and judging from the comment section of the petition, they're not alone.

Now I am not a legal expert, but I am pretty sure that there are ways to define what exactly they mean by "sexual identity". Having to define terms that sound incredibly vague is a bound to be a central feature of a legislation in which the first article of the Basic Law is "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority". What is this "human dignity", exactly? And how can state authority protect it? Maybe I'm being naive here, but I can't help but have faith in our lawmakers to get down a definition that says pretty clearly what they mean by "sexual identity".

As for the petition and this matter in general, it seems that there are three basic possibilities to view this - not to give a damn, to be for it with or without knowledge of the legal implications, or to be against it with or without knowledge of the legal implications. So to my mind, you either don't give a damn and I dislike you, you're on the side of the "bisexual-marriage-is-group-marriage"-people or have a more sane legal reason I'd really like to know about, or your name is on that list already or bloody well should be.

This petition, even if it doesn't lead to momentous changes, at least seems to be pretty good a way of showing on which of the three sides people are in this matter. I signed it because I'm still hoping against all reason that this could go somewhere and because also I want to show my support for this publicly, even if this does turn out to be futile. Sometimes that seems to be all I can do, really.

I'd also be much a happier person if more people I know were not completely failing to give a damn or against it, especially my own family, bloody hell.

Ich bin mir zwar immer noch nicht ganz über die Sinnhaftigkeit offiziellen Onlinepetitionen unseres Bundestags im Klaren, aber hier ist sie trotzdem, hoffentlich bringt sie etwas.

Also, hier könnt ihr sie finden, und darum geht es: 

Ich sollte es eigentlich ja besser wissen, aber ich habe diesen Artikel gelesen:

Gleichgeschlechtliche Partnerschaften - Kinder brauchen keine Hetero-Eltern

Und dann hab ich noch einen Fehler gemacht - ich habe die Kommentare auch gelesen. Hier mal eine Auswahl, es ist zum Schreien:

"Ja, es muss ein tolles Gefühl sein wenn man in der Klasse oder auf dem Pausenplatz mitteilen darf das man eben nicht ein Mami und Papi zu Hause hat sondern zwei Mami oder zwei Papi... Den dem Hedonismus und Egoismus moderner Erwachsener dürfen keine Grenzen mehr gesetzt werden."

"In einem Punkt verlieren einige heterosexuelle Paare doch drastisch, wenn homosexuelle Paare bei der Adoption gleich gestellt werden: und zwar jene hetersexuellen Paare, die auf natürlichem Wege keine Kinder bekommen können. Denn um die gleiche Anzahl Kinder bewerben sich dann plötzlich viel mehr Paare. Und die Wahrscheinlichkeit, den Kinderwunsch erfüllt zu bekommen, sinkt für Mann-Frau-Paare, die biologisch nicht Eltern werden können, drastisch."

"Denn eines ist mal klar, die Anzahl der Kinder die freiwillig zur Adoption frei gegeben werden, ist verschwindend gering und die klassische Familie IST für Kinder der beste Ort um auf zu wachsen und nichts anderes."

"Nur, weil so manche bunte Erscheinungen des menschlichen Lebens immer hoffähiger werden und sich auch ein entsprechendes Lobbywesen dazu gesellt, ist hier noch längst nicht alles im Sinne der Natur."

"Ich hätte auch erwartet, dass Homo-Kinder öfter homo werden."

"Homosexualität ist natürlich- aber ob es natürlich ist, Kinder durch homosexuelle Paare großzuziehen? Homos haben gegenüber Heteros in der Gesellschaft keine Nachteile. Sie können es offen ausleben ebenso wie Heteros."

Was soll einem dazu noch einfallen...?

So, ich gehe mal wieder an die Arbeit hier.

So peachy that there are no issues the annual city-wide pride event organisers needs to support, apparently and that, like some of the very visible ally organisations, you don't need to appear in the blurb on the homepage because it's an event for "gays and lesbians". Huh.

Considering that pride week is always organised by Hamburg Pride e.v. which says it's supporting the rights of the full LGBTQI etc. spectrum in their statement, but whose goals are aimed primarily at same-sex couples that's probably not too surprising. As a member of a same-sex couple I think it's great they care, but is there really nothing that pan-, bisexual or (especially) trans individuals who are not in a same-sex couple could do with this year? Really?**

It's a shame, because one of the primary functions of the association seems to be "education and the inclusion of homosexuality awareness" not only in school curricula but also in the actual lessons, and props to them - even though it's been on the official curricula for years, most teachers don't include LGBT issues in their lessons in any way (not entirely true in my case. We did watch The Crying Game in our English LK (A level class), albeit without any kind of communication about the movie apart form how the political issues of the Troubles were presented in it. LGBT people don't exist in our school reality).

I'm not sure how they actually go about their education programmes, but I'd like to know if they include at least bisexual or trans related issues. It doesn't really say anywhere. I'd also be a happier person if they'd include gender-related issues and a bigger spectrum of sexual orientations and preferences, too, and possibly even such a thing as kink awareness, as it may save a lot of people a lot of angst and trouble, even in times of the internets. In the aftermath of education events, a lot of kids end up trying to insult each other, and if they're presented with a bigger variety of sexual orientations à la YayGenderform, identities and gender identities as well as preferences, that might not only broaden their horizon, but also shut them up and get them thinking.

They say they do offer help for LGBTQI individuals who are survivors of assault or otherwise in trouble or in a crisis, which is good, but on the whole not very specific. 

So, I don't really feel the love.

--
** Edited for less cryptic cynicism: after they were criticised by a UN committee for women's rights this Febuary with regards to our out-dated trans laws, the German legislative body have agreed to hand in a revised version of the laws by the first of August, which just so happens to be the first day of pride week.
As far as I can remember there was not much mention of laws being changed during last year's pride, and it's not an official goal during this year's. I'm hoping they simply forgot to change the goals on the official page, which seems to be a template they've been using for three years now, but I doubt it.