Entries tagged "posts"

Happy Pride: If you’re using that Facebook LGBT flag emoticon, a small request.

LGBT Pride flag photo credit: Ted Eytan cc
Happy Pride! I’ve got a few words for everyone who is excited about Facebook putting out a new rainbow flag icon during LGBT Pride month this June. Facebook sponsored the RNC after many many anti-queer stances by the GOP. A major Facebook shareholder has been a core part of Il Dupe’s campaign. Facebook sent its COO to help give Il Dupe a photo of business support when his new election was in doubt. Facebook also took a long time to address the real names policy which posed a true threat to many queer folks. Thanks to Roma Roma and more who advocated on this issue. Enjoy Pride but know that real LGBTIQQ2S leadership comes from lives lived, real risk and real backbone. Here’s to the drag queens and the civil rights activists and to every queer who came before me. Thank you. Here’s to every kid and every grown up coming out to themselves. Welcome! I care. Here’s to every small town queer, every swishy boy in the south, every person getting policed by someone else’s discomfort around gender.
 
If you’re not queer and you really want to be supportive, rather than focusing your energy on displaying something about you…ask queer folks you know about their lives, about the parts you don’t get to see, that people don’t always post about. Be an interested person and a willing listener to folks who have often been through a great deal. Among many other stories, there are people who have been through a plague and were never really heard by the straight part of the country. Signal boost their feeds this month. Realize that queer people you know are always reading your posts, all year long. Take some time and learn about the gay pogroms happening in Chechnya and the serious obstacles still here in the US for many queer folks legal and otherwise.
 
Queer folks often have to deal with their biggest challenges in the families they grow up in. This can mean anything from difficulty to outright abuse and losing a home and these things can begin as early as 3.
 
Now that Pride is a more popular and commercially acceptable thing to decorate for, I ask you to consider using Facebook for something that truly can matter and make a difference. And that will come from you, your witnessing, your time attention and caring, not from any symbol. Showing one queer person you care and are interested in really hearing what something was like to live through and deal with can make a meaningful difference. Queer lives are often code switched.
 
So this is my Pride wish: that every person on Facebook who isn’t queer and wants to use that flag emoticon thing also is willing to spend the time online to ask, listen to and acknowledge one queer person once this month.
 
Thanks for your time.
  • June 3, 2017
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On Wonder Woman

My first play at around 10: Sheep in the Stomach.

I am not into super heroes. I never identified with Wonder Woman. I wanted to be part of the first weekend grosses for Patty Jenkins.

I still sobbed in the middle of the movie tonight because for a moment I could see what it would have been like at 10 to see a woman be this strong and unafraid. And I could imagine, in a flash, what kind of impact that would have had on my life and the lives of my peers for the years we’ve had. And I could see what it’ll mean for the 10 year old girls now. And I wished it had come out a year ago because I seriously think it would have helped HRCs campaign because it will impact the culture in a broad way about strong women and strength and love and doing what’s right. I was also thrilled that Patty Jenkins got this gig and did such a fantastic job. This is not a genre of film I particularly like (though I even imagined tonight how much fun it would be to act in a film like this which I’d never considered before because I hadn’t seen my own athleticism and strength as skills for film). But I really enjoyed this movie. I would have been happy if the movie never left the island with the Amazons (no surprise there). Maybe It’s a genre I *could* love. One I could make.

Here’s to a future of unapologetic women taking power and directing whatever the hell we want.

  • February 28, 2017
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She Sets the Gold Standard for Comedy in the Bay Area

 

This lovely piece on me just ran in the J Weekly.

And it ran without a request to tell me “just one thing!! that familiar bit of Jewish criticism a/k/a love from one bubbeleh comes after so many shows. California changes my people.

The next Yarn is coming up on the 7th in Oakland. Hope to see you there. You’ll find tickets here.

 

  • February 21, 2017
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Understanding Trump and the US via trauma. Hope for a better way.

Lesbians lead.

I started signing off of twitter and facebook in 2007 with “Night good people.” I believe I was the first to do a regular nightly sign off. I wanted to treat it as a time *with* others and to be as human and connecting as possible. I didn’t want to treat my presence in these places with other people like I was broadcasting to nameless “audience” who matter less than I do.

https://twitter.com/heathr/status/834138840436662272

  • February 19, 2017
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Uber, Susan Fowler and Patriarchy in Silicon Valley and Beyond

  • January 16, 2017
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Russia stands up for punching women. What follows America?

Russia has just decriminalized domestic violence.

Women are harmed at an alarming rate from domestic violence here in the US too. And the Senate just voted to make sure contraception is not covered. Misogyny has long been apart of our culture. This is a moment in which patriarchy has put all its chips on red.

It is time for us to refuse. This means men too have to really get in your guts, what it means to have self-agency and control over your body handed over whether its forced pregnancy, the very common experience of rape and sexual assault and the de facto cultural and legal reality that there’s not a whole lot you can do about it without more pain and even with the pain there are almost never collective social and legal consequences for rape for the rapist other than affirmation of so-called “masculinity,” the dismissal and marginalization of womens experience (or these would be stories and experiences you’d be hearing about all the damn time in media), any random guy walking toward down the airplane aisle feeling like its no big deal to put his hands on your waist to move you aside.

This means marching and calling and insisting. This means making consent a reality and the norm. This means talking to your sons and students about what consent is. This means social norms and pressures that support girls and womens’ agency.

Sadly it is things getting much worse and emboldened that make people more aware of what has always been there. A good chunk of the country had to knowingly vote (though I am not persuaded it was just votes that put Il Dupe in position we need an open investigation) for someone who brags about sexually assaulting women. Sexual assault was voted for. We will see more like this as in Russia if we do not say and embody “no.”

As with all things, if you don’t get the lesson, it gets harder.

And for those doubling down on misogyny in the new regime and the emboldened culture of dominanace sold, like crack or a bottle, like it’s gonna make everything ok, they will continue to find there will never be enough to make them feel ok. Their desperation will only increase.

There’s no way out of this without learning to feel, without growing up.

  • December 15, 2016
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What If Tech Hadn’t Been Willing to Meet Il Dupe

I don’t see how Il Dupe controls the population inexpensively without the companies that decided to kiss his ring the other day.

Why presume Cheeto tuchus now somehow means he won’t hurt your company? Perhaps they should send their cross-platform invite to Chris Christie while they’re at it.

Why presume the value of the market and currency will somehow be supported by his regime taking over (though Russian interference and electors haven’t met why presume for sure he’ll take over? Why not support public inquiry into Russian hacking? Technical stuff too complicated for tech CEOs? They gave him an implied endorsement via this appearance timed when it was.

Dave Pell recently outlined the shareholder pain but not the moral quandry or benefit (or political benefit) of taking a stand.

Putin got a whole lot of bang for his hacking buck. If they collectively decided to not go, who do you think the market would choose?

My instinct at this point is that you disarm manipulation best with what is inalienable. It is what can’t be bought and sold.

None of these CEOs and COOs who took off all their fleece vests and travelled to a sudden demand meeting with Thiel’s latest angel investment has been willing yet to make the public stand others who work in the industry and sometimes for them have. You can too

  • November 30, 2016
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The Unfacted: Lessons Learned Coming Out.

I wrote a little something on twitter about lessons learned coming out and living in a “make up your own facts” world.

The Donald Trump v Hillary Clinton election has given us a moment in which the threads of what the country appear to all agree upon are unravelling.

Donald Trump’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float level of narcissism seems to have given us a new level of ignoring or making up facts in politics and government.

Is it?

So many on the left are convinced of the need to only persuade with argument and the apparent hopelessness of this for our collective future safety when we cannot agree on basic things.

It’s not new that people in the US won’t accept facts. Here’s one example and some things I learned from it.

 

  • November 14, 2016
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Why Didn’t People Vote?

November 14, 2016

Why did people not vote?

Comey FBI “surprise” delighted on from the Bannon / Trump campaign. Last minute suprise plot twist! Stay tuned!

But you can’t pull the pieces apart.
Patriarchy, sometimes “she’s not one of the good ones, like me. Sometimes ”uppity cunt.“”

White supremacy.

Media, global economic change, failure of straight up talk from elected officials, GOP stonewalling for a generation, liberals failing to vote in midterms, hammered narrative about Hillary not Ms Rodham Clintons wickedness evil ambitious Lady MacBeth cackling. Email email. So much media time about email.

Very little coverage in media and TV of Trump’s fascist working and rallies. I’ve never been anywhere that men don’t get to say and do what they want to women. Isn’t that what life just is? Economic depression, felony convictions, systemic imprisonment of people of colour, lies to white folks from the GOP, the Roseanne show ending.

SCOTUS gutting the Voting Rights Act, States doing the same. Voter ID requirements. Fear of the government for deportation. Fear. Not knowing you can get a lift to the polls. Not having many polls. A long line at the polls. Not getting time off work. Believing fake news you saw on Facebook or TV. Trump and Bannons and Ailes and Stone getting in the vote. It’s rigged. I’m not sure I’ll accept it.

Bernie Sanders and so many others telling you “they’re both the same.” Not learning in school how the basics of democracy work. Not understanind that Trump is fascist and corrupt. The word tremendous. Not knowing where to go to vote. Having a doctors appointment. Not wanting to miss your show on TV. Did I mention she sent emails?

I don’t get exactly what I want. Being afraid people will have guns at the polls. Failing to know that people died for your freedom to vote. Not having someone growing up who always voted. Not having someone who believes in you and says you matter. Helplessness, not believing your vote will matter.

Where’s Daddy?

Bitterness for Sanders. Bernie or Bust. Humans have nothing to do with it, what happens is up to Jehovah and so she will never vote, said two young Black women to me. “I’m not going to vote,” said Trent pushing me in a wheelchair through the Las Vegas airport. “We’re going to have a war no matter who I’d rather save lives than take them.” He is going to play D+D still. He still is going to recycle his soda can.

So many reasons. So many versions of helplessness, so many versions of “Daddy beat me for my own good.”

It came down to not so many of them in a few neighborhoods in the midwest.

There is a third party in the US. This is it.

  • November 12, 2016
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My Systemic Podcast Interview

I was interviewed, just before the election, by Brett Terpstra on Systematic Podcast. I was really happy to get to talk with Brett who has built, among other things, the brilliant nvalt a note taking text editor for the Mac. It’s a double episode and we talked–among other things– about comedy, the Net’s influence on me, and Iggy Pop. You can hear it in your podcast apps or here on this page where you can also see the notes and my recommendations of great stuff.

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