Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

School Bars the Door to Trans Children

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Grace Annam

Mount_Saint_Charles_360_284

Recently, a Catholic school in Rhode Island decided that there was no place in their school for trans children.

Mount Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket, Rhode Island has issued a policy banning transgender students from the school, according to the Parent and Students Handbook.

The 2015-2016 edition, the Philosophy of Admissions’ section of the handbook states, “Mount Saint Charles Academy is unable to make accommodations for transgender students. Therefore, MSC does not accept transgender students nor is MSC able to continue to enroll students who identify as transgender.”

…

According to the schools mission statement, “Each and every student is known, valued, treasured and taught in partnership with the family.”

Hm. Apparently, they achieve that goal by selecting only certain students to know, value, treasure and teach.

I’m not Christian, but I’ve read much of the Bible, and on seeing this headline, the first thing which occurred to me was Mark 10:13-10:16:

And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

The picture above is apparently of the front of the school, where we see a statue of Jesus standing with his arms outstretched. That sculpture is not uncommon in Catholic settings, and I’ve always seen it as a welcoming gesture. In this context, it suddenly looked to me like Jesus with his arms outstretched to bar the gates.

Because God forbid that the trans children should swarm the gates and make it to the bathrooms or the locker rooms. Almost certainly, that is the accommodation which MSC proactively decided they could not figure out how to make, which necessitated rejecting an entire category of children.

The alumni, however, reacted in a manner probably not expected by the school, with a petition, currently at 1649 signatures, or about twice the size of the student body, demanding that the school admit trans children.

That’s got the attention of the school, which has released a statement.

Statement Regarding Transgender Students at MSC

3/4/2016
Mount Saint Charles Academy deeply regrets the unintended hurt feelings at and seeming insensitivity of our policy regarding the acceptance of transgendered young people. The policy that currently appears in the Mount Saint Charles Student Handbook is not intended to be discriminatory toward transgendered students nor is Mount Saint Charles Academy’s intent or desire to exclude transgender students. The policy was put in place for the simple reason that Mount Saint Charles feels that its facilities do not presently provide the school with the ability to accommodate transgender students.

As a Catholic school, Mount Saint Charles recognizes its call to serve all children who desire a Catholic education, but it also recognizes that it is not a comprehensive high school with the ability to serve all students. Some students may not be academically qualified. Others may have learning plans which the school cannot accommodate. And in some cases, our facilities may not be adequate to service some students.

Although the school has not been approached with any requests to admit transgender students, Mount Saint Charles Academy’s administration has been exploring ways in which it might provide reasonable accommodations for transgender students and fulfill its mission.

While Mount Saint Charles can respect that some may find our current policy somewhat inconsistent and intolerant, please try to understand the reason for its existence. This is certainly not our intent. Please know that we would very much like to address the issue, and your prayers and kind assistance would go a long way in allowing us achieve that goal.

Oh, well that’s good. They didn’t mean to be inconsistent and intolerant. That’s a relief. Their intent will wrap its eldritch tendrils around their trans students and protect them from harm. (Warning for profanity and sarcasm in that link.)

The actual good part is that now that they’ve realized that their discrimination won’t get a pass, they say that they’re trying to figure out how they can teach trans students, although they apparently don’t think they have any trans students or trans applicants.

Which would be touching and adorable, if we ignored the consequences. The lives of trans people feed that kind of meat grinder. The US Military tried really hard for a long time not to have trans members, but they had them anyway. We turn up everywhere; that’s what you get in a system which creates incentives for trans people to hide, which punishes us when we don’t. There is no doubt that MSCA has trans alums, and they probably have closeted trans students right now. The best survey data we’ve seen yet puts the trans population at about 700,000 in the US. At about 320 million for the total population, that’s about one in 450 people. Even with some selection bias, which is pretty plain in this case, there’s a decent chance of a single current trans student.

I wish trans kids didn’t have to go through this. But, apparently, they do. And it’s been an eye-opener for a lot of people, I think, what some people are willing to say about children, are willing to do to them, if those children are trans.

Stop beating up on children, you people. If the inhumanity of it doesn’t stop you, then for heaven’s sake let expedience stop you. Think about how it makes you look. You may think it makes you look principled, like you’re having to make hard choices and sacrifices in order to hold a moral line. And if you were making the sacrifice yourselves, maybe that’s what it would look like. But you’re not; you’re selecting others to make the sacrifices, which means that it looks like what it is.

It looks like you’re sacrificing children.

Suffer them to come unto you, instead.

Grace

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

New Story: “Between Dragons and Their Wrath”

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Mandolin

February is always one of the busiest months for me. This February was so busy that I didn’t remember to click “post” on the entry I’d written about my new story in Clarkesworld Magazine, “Between Dragons and Their Wrath.” I wrote it with my former student, An Owomoyela.

Fourteen-year-old Domei lives in a world jagged with the dangerous, magical scraps from someone else’s war:

In the forest, scales are most common. If they cut you, the cut will never stop bleeding.

If you step in a place where a dragon has defecated, food will stream through your body, and you will always be hungry. If you pass a place where a dragon breathed fire, your skin will forever blister and heal and then blister again. If you touch a dragon’s blood, you’ll go mad.

As for me, I was harvesting scales. With a scale, you can till the land faster than anyone using an iron hoe. You can butcher meat in a tenth the time it takes to use a knife. There are good things about dragon leavings, and for those good things, I usually get paid enough to eat.

Scales are common. Everyone knows about those. It was something else that got me.

This story began with a draft An wrote years ago. Last summer, they handed it to me, and I worked on the plot and characters. It was interesting starting with material that wasn’t mine, trying to understand the inside of the story enough to be able to continue and enhance the work that’s already there. I don’t think of An and myself as particularly similar writers, but I think we may approach structure the same way. It’s easier for me to put myself intuitively into their stories than it has been for other people I’ve tried this exercise with. (I do hope that some of those attempts will lead to other published stories also.)

Another excerpt (almost totally written by An):

During the war, the Andé slaughtered a big dragon the size of a mountain. They dropped its liver and gall on Hizhang. Bile poisoned the earth, poisoned the air, poisoned the people and the children of the people, and is still poisoning them now. People born in Hizhang have probably never seen a dragon, but they don’t need to.

Every dusk, the cows start lowing from Hizhang. But there are no longer cows in Hizhang.

You see, we were lucky.

The story is also available in audio, narrated by Kate Baker.

Posted in Fiction, Mandolin, My publications | Comments Off

Open Thread and Link Farm, Scratching Through The Skull Edition

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Ampersand

South Dakota Becomes First State To Pass Anti-Transgender Student Restroom Bill – BuzzFeed News
Aaargh. And I suspect this won’t be the last state, unfortunately. But wait! There’s an update! South Dakota governor vetoes transgender bathroom bill – CNN.com (Thanks Grace!)
Lawmakers in These States Are Obsessed With Which Bathroom Trans Kids Use | Mother Jones
“44 anti-transgender bills is more than double the number of bills filed in last year’s legislative session, and this year’s attacks come in more varieties than they have before.” (Pdf link.)
Conservative Trolls Have Been Suggesting Men Go into Women’s Restrooms to Help Legislators Discriminate Against Trans People – Slog – The Stranger
The rise of American authoritarianism – Vox
A new poll shows that Americans with authoritarian beliefs are the most likely to support Trump. And even if Trump loses this election, the authoritarians will remain a major force in US politics.
My husband raped two women — and I had to answer for his crimes – Vox
A first-person essay by a woman whose husband raped two strangers, who had her life destroyed, and who had become an advocate of Restorative Justice.
Federal Law Criminalizes Protesting Trump Now That He’s Guarded by the Secret Service
“Free speech zones” are the opposite of free speech. Also, it seems at least plausible that Trump’s security folks racially profile to determine who to kick out.
Talking about racism isn’t dividing the country. Racism is. – Vox
The kerfuffle over Sanders’ economic plan – The Boston Globe
A short piece by James K. Galbraith.
Standard Fare or Fantasy Economics?
A slightly longer (but still not very long) piece on the same subject, this time focusing on stimulus.
“Dear Lawrence, I Know You Are Only Doing Your Job, and I Truly Wish I Could Help Assuage Paypal’s Concerns About My Donation to Syrian Refugees, But…” – Lawyers, Guns & Money
How can a woman make more on Ebay? Pretend to be a man | Science | The Guardian
“Men earn 20% more on average than women selling identical new products on eBay, shedding light on unconscious biases which affect buying behaviour”
To Influence Policy, You Have to Be More than Rich | Ten Miles Square | The Washington Monthly
An interesting article discussing the scholarly argument over if middle class people’s preferences influence policy, or if it’s just the wealthy whose preferences are catered to.
Donald Trump is not a fascist
A New Advocacy Group Is Lobbying for the Right to Repair Everything | Motherboard
Another example of copyright abuse being used to make us less free – in this case, to make it against the law for people to try and repair their own stuff.
The Itch – The New Yorker
A horrifying and fascinating read. “She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.” I’m not sure if I’ve linked this before – the article is several years old – but it’s worth linking again, if so.
The Current Crime Debate Isn’t Doing Hillary Justice | Ten Miles Square | The Washington Monthly
The crime bill during the Clinton administration did not cause incarnation rates of POC to skyrocket.
What happens if you scream out of a window in sweden at night – YouTube
Artists Covertly Scan Bust of Nefertiti and Release the Data for Free Online
This is very cool. I really enjoyed the video one artist covertly made of the other artist covertly scanning Nefertiti. But why not a third video, covertly filming the covert filming of the covert scanning?
Miss Manhattan – 99% Invisible
” Over 30 statues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art were made in her likeness, and she adorns dozens of memorials and bridges and buildings all over the city. Although the body and face of Audrey Munson have been immortalized in iron and marble, her name is mostly forgotten.”
In Defense of Nonpologies | Thing of Things
A Feminist Criticizes Feminist Frequency | Houston Press
Marital Rape Is Semi-Legal in 8 States – The Daily Beast
Most of these eight states have double standards, by which a spouse can only be prosecuted for rape if it can be proven that physical force or a threat of violence was used.
World Population Decline | Acumen | OZY
Although population is still increasing, it’s long-term path will be a decline.
Walmart Wages Are the Main Reason People Depend on Food Stamps | The Nation
” A single Walmart Supercenter costs taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year in public assistance.”
Across Europe, gay migrants face abuse in asylum shelters
Bank of Canada urges ‘Star Trek’ fans to stop ‘Spocking’ their fivers | Dangerous Minds
I’m late on this, but now that I know about it how could I not share?
Vermont Senate Votes To Legalize Recreational Marijuana | ThinkProgress
If nothing goes wrong, Vermont will be the first state to legalize recreational marijuana through its legislature, rather than through the initiative process.
neo-neocon » Blog Archive » Want proof that Trump’s a tyrant? You got it.
This is a conservative site lamenting Trump’s promise to make it easier to sue news outlets for libel. Includes quotes from conservatives on both sides of the question.
Why Republican criticism of Trump fails
Thanks to Elusis for this link. “Sophisticated people cloak their racism in a well-turned phrase. Romney isn’t criticizing Trump for racism. He’s just ridiculing him for using the wrong fork.”

Posted in Link farms | 43 Comments

These are the RSS Feed Addresses That Work For “Alas”

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Ampersand

Here are the rss feed addresses for “Alas” that you should use (if you use RSS):

For the blog itself: https://amptoons.com/blog/?feed=rss2

For the comments: https://amptoons.com/blog/?feed=comments-rss2

Some of the other feed address are no longer updating Alas, alas.

Posted in Site and Admin Stuff | Comments Off

Favorite Fiction Recommendation: “Her Husband’s Hands” by Adam Troy-Castro

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Mandolin

“Her Husband’s Hands” by Adam Troy-Castro, originally published in 2011, was honored with a Nebula nomination. The story was one of my picks as well as that of the membership at large. It’s a disturbing story, no doubt about it. At the time, I wrote (rephrased somewhat to make the writing sharper):

A war widow receives bad news from the front: her husband is dead. However, they’ve managed to save his hands, and only his hands… It’s dark, intensely written, and intimately and compassionately characterized

From the story:

Her husband’s hands came home on a Friday. Rebecca had received word of the attack, which had claimed the lives of seven other soldiers in his unit and reduced three others to similar, minimal fractions of themselves: One man missing above the waist, another missing below, a third neatly halved, like a bisected man on display in an anatomy lab.

The Veteran’s Administration had told her it could have been worse. The notification officer had reminded her of Tatum, the neighbor’s daughter so completely expunged by her own moment under fire that only a strip of skin and muscle remained: A section of her thigh, about the size and shape of a cigarette pack, returned to her parents in a box and now living in their upstairs room, where it made a living proofreading articles on the internet. That’s no life, the notification officer said. But Bob, he pointed out, was a pair of perfect hands, amputated from the body at the wrists but still capable of accomplishing many great things. And there was always the cloning lottery. The chances were a couple of million to one, but it was something to hope for, and stranger things had happened.

Around 2011, there was a strong trend of stories about processing PTSD. It’s still a theme now, but it was even more dominant then. At 6,000 words, it’s a lot of emotional impact in a small space.

Posted in Fiction, Recommended Reading, Reviews and Criticism | Comments Off

Kitty Pattycake

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Mandolin

Mike and Zephyr play patty cake.

Posted in Cats | 5 Comments

I may not like what you say…

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Ampersand

..But I will defend to the….

To the…

Hold on, this is all happening too fast. Let’s stop and breathe and consider this a moment.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I really, really want you to have the right to say it. Honestly, I do.

But although I really, really want you to have the right to say it, I really, really, really, really, REALLY want to continue living. So just in terms of number and font choice of “really”s, there’s no comparison there.

To be truthful, not only would I not give up my life to defend your right to say it. I don’t honestly think I’d give up my hands. Or even a thumb – I use both my thumbs very frequently. I’ve even been known to twiddle them.

How about “I may not like what you have to say, but I will defend to the loss of a small toe your right to say it.” I could give up a small toe. But there’d have to be some kind of anesthetic.

How badly do you want to say it, anyhow? Why isn’t it your toe on the chopping block? You’re the one who wanted to say it! This whole system seems very unfair to me.

Posted in Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc. | 29 Comments

Quick Notes: Poetry Planet podcast, & Tiptree Anthology 99 Cents

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Mandolin

A few quick notes for this week.

Poetry Planet podcast

Diane Severson puts together the poetry planet podcast that aired recently in this episode of starship sofa. She includes my poem, “Terrible Lizards,” which is about — as you might expect — dinosaurs. She asked me to include an anecdote about it:

1) I love dinosaurs. I never went through a dinosaur phase as a kid, but my husband never got over his, so when I met him in college, I got to have a late dinosaur phase, which we still enjoy together.

2) I was driving cross-country through the midwest (well, my husband was driving and I was passengering) and staring out of the windows at all the flat land, and trying to visualize cool things walking through it, which my husband can do and which I mostly can’t. Then I saw one of those huge irrigation devices and realized it was about dinosaur-sized. I never got the visualization trick down, but I can do the imagining with words thing.

Listen here.

Tiptree Anthology available at 99 cents:

Last year, I was honored to participate in the anthology project Letters to Tiptree.

For nearly a decade, between 1968 and 1976, a middle-aged woman in Virginia (her own words) had much of the science fiction community in thrall. Her short stories were awarded, lauded and extremely well-reviewed. They were also regarded as “ineluctably masculine”, because Alice Sheldon was writing as James Tiptree Jr.

In celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Alice Sheldon’s birth, and in recognition of the enormous influence of both Tiptree and Sheldon on the field, Twelfth Planet Press has published a selection of thoughtful letters written by science fiction and fantasy’s writers, editors, critics and fans to celebrate her, to recognise her work, and maybe in some cases to finish conversations set aside nearly thirty years ago.

I gave my answer in the form of a poem.

If you’re a Tiptree fan, now is the time to buy the book–until March 31, it’s available at 99 cents.

Posted in Mandolin, My publications | Comments Off

2015 Science Fiction and Fantasy Graphic Novel Recommendations, part two: Curveball and Nimona

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Ampersand

Click here for part one: The Sculptor and Beautiful Darkness
Click here for part three: Crossed + One Hundred and Stand Still, Stay Silent.
Click here for part four: Summary post, including a list of notable sff graphic novels of 2015.

Since it’s Hugo nomination season, I’ve been making an effort to read every notable science fiction or fantasy graphic novel that came out in 2015. And you know what? It’s hopeless! There are just too many coming out. I’ll never get around to reading them all. And probably some of the best ones, I won’t even find out about until after Hugo nominations are over. (That’s what happened last year.)

And of course, by limiting myself to graphic novels, I’m missing out on any number of wonderful webcomics and floppy comics. (If you’re in the market for great sff webcomics, I’d highly recommend checking out Dicebox and Family Man and O Human Star and Stand Still Stay Silent and Modest Medusa and Strong Female Protagonist and Evan Dahm’s extraordinary Vattu and probably many more.)

So I can’t cover them all. But some of the ones I’ve been reading are awfully good, and that’s the real point of this exercise. So, onto the reviews:

Of all the science fiction graphic novels I read this year, Jeremy Sorese’s Curveball did the best at immersing me in a science-fiction world. This is the power of comics; rather than trying to explain the futuristic technology in scientifically plausible detail (something that I’m not sure Sorese could do), comics can show us how it feels for the characters living in that world.

Curveball is set in a world of robots and web-connected tech which is constantly on the danger of breaking down, sometimes disaterously; plus, there’s a war. But all of that is just the backdrop for Curveball‘s real concerns, which are friendship, relationships and main character Avery’s broken heart from a bad romance.

What I loved about Curveball, in addition to the feeling of immersion in a new world, was Sorese’s art, which is unabashedly cartooney, full of gray smudgy energy, and feels completely unique. Sorese also chose to use neon orange as a spot color, mainly to show where the sci-fi tech was present and what it was doing, a daring choice that ended up being effective.

Curveball‘s story is sprawling. This is not a book for readers who require a carefully structured narrative where every page fits cleanly into a clear-cut story arc. (If that’s what you’re looking for, see the previous recommendation of The Sculptor.) The story wanders here and there (at 420 pages, there’s room!), often feeling improvised, and early in the book the meandering feeling prevents the story from gathering momentum. But by the end – as Avery’s broken heart narrative came to the fore – momentum wasn’t a problem.

Another nice touch: Curveball has multiple gender-queer, gender-ambiguous, and non-binary gender characters, including main character Avery. This is presented in such an everyday manner that I’m not sure all readers will notice; in Curveball‘s world, being non-binary is unremarkable, and thus not remarked on. (Sorese has said that he considers the world of Curveball “utopian”; I wonder if this is part of what he’s referring to.)

Curveball does have flaws; the art, although beautiful, was occasionally hard to make out. (Unfortunately, the front cover is one of those few occasions.) In particular, the occasional bit of orange-on-orange art was almost impossible to read, and I suspect a lot of readers over 40 will have similar difficulties. And the main character Avery, despite being non-binary, still felt a bit flat, like dozens of listless, heartsick protagonists I’ve read before. The characterization of Avery’s best friend, Jacqueline, popped a lot more, and I sometimes wished that she had been the central character. (Avery and Jacqueline’s relationship sometimes felt a little bit like Maggie and Hopey.)

Still, this was an impressive first graphic novel, one of the most interesting sf/f graphic novels of 2015. I can’t wait to see what Sorese’s next graphic novel is like.

Nimona, by Noelle Stevenson, might be the most charming comic I read all year.

Nimona is the funny, touching, and hard to put down story of a young girl, Nimona, who apprentices herself to a gentle-hearted super villain named Ballister Blackheart (Ballister is the point of view character for the book). The early chapters of Nimona are concerned with the long-ongoing and rather wacky war between Ballister and his heroic nemesis Ambrosius Goldenloin. A lot of the humor comes from the ways Ballister’s attempts at evildoing are complicated by Nimona’s sometimes clumsy, sometimes frighteningly effective, assistance.

But as we read on, it becomes clear that the mystery of Nimona’s origins (she has shape-shifting powers), and her difficulty fitting into the world, are Stevenson’s real concerns. The assistant is the most consequential character in this world, and also the character who is suffering the most; but the hero and villain, caught up in their heroic battles, take a long time to realize that. It’s a story that begins funny and violent and winds up heartbreaking (but still violent).

Stevenson’s art is simple, energetic, and expressive, like a slightly more controlled Kate Beaton. And the three main characters are well written and defy simple stereotypes.

I did find Nimona a little self-contrary; the story urges us to see its three main characters as more than simple genre tropes, but Stevenson also relies unquestionably on some genre tropes. Specifically, the way Nimona kills minor (and usually nameless) characters left and right is never seriously questioned or dealt with, which felt odd to me in such a generally thoughtful narrative. And the artwork, while charming and clear, isn’t very ambitious or experimental compared to Curveball or The Sculptor. But not everything needs to push the boundaries of the form.

UPDATE: Some folks have asked if Nimona is eligible for a 2015 Hugo, since it was published in webcomic form before 2015. But according to Stevenson in an interview, she redrew the earliest chapters for the book, and added new story pages, including (but not limited to) the epilogue. This means that the 2015 book contains significant new material that hadn’t been published before 2015, and so Nimona is Hugo-eligible. (As I understand the rules.)

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Comics I Like, Comics other than Hereville!, Recommended Reading | 3 Comments