Next meeting before the event will be at the Swamp Rabbit Cafe and Grocery, next Thursday at 6pm, yall come. In the meantime, please support Vernon Hugh Bowman in his fight against Monsanto's legal abuse.
~*~
As promised on the air today, here is the link to today's show. I started out a little jumbled, since we had some technical issues (we weren't in our usual studio and the acoustics were somewhat off), but I changed microphones, finally got going and tried to make some sense. Our first subject was the confrontation between trans activists and an anarchist group called Deep Green Resistance, while they were selling feminist books at the Law and Disorder Conference at Portland State University this past weekend. I react pretty strongly to defacing books or otherwise rudely rousting politicos at a table because it has happened to me many times; harassed by bikers at outdoor festivals for lefty literature, jeered at by fundamentalists at Occupy, and so forth and so on (in fact, I wrote about one such incident HERE). So, I asked, what IS hate speech and how should we handle it? One's person's hate speech is another person's Gospel (literally!), so what should we do in a pluralistic society that values the First Amendment?
Aside: I used to warn radical feminists that their eagerness to call everything (such as porn) 'hate speech' would some day come back to bite them in the ass, and here we are.
Increasingly, I am puzzled by trans activists' fixation on radical feminists (whom they call 'radscum'). Why not focus on fundamentalist right wingers who are far more numerous and say the same things? More to the point, the radscum do not seek to deny GLBT equal rights or try to keep folks from transitioning; they just argue (endlessly, relentlessly) about the physiological and social meaning(s) of "woman" and "female". The Christian fundamentalist Republicans think trans people should be forced to use their birth names on their drivers licenses and if they don't, locked up in mental institutions and/or arrested for fraud. Who is worse? And who has more power to enforce their prejudices?
Why not go after the REAL scum?
I'm ready when you are.
~*~
Today's blog post title comes from Steely Dan's excellent album, COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY (1973).
As I continuously plow through Shantideva's The Way of the Bodhisattva, I just keep thinking of the lyrics.
Bodhisattva
Would you take me by the hand
Bodhisattva
Would you take me by the hand
Can you show me
The shine of your Japan
The sparkle of your china
Can you show me
Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva
I'm gonna sell my house in town
Bodhisattva
I'm gonna sell my house in town
And I'll be there
To shine in your Japan
To sparkle in your China
Yes I'll be there
Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva...
Bodhisattva - Steely Dan