Sanacrow

I made it through program prerequisites! And I got a transfer scholarship! However, disability grants have been discontinued because of budget cuts, and scholarship funds are not available until after class starts... which is going to make moving to actually attend MTSU impossible without help. Please, if you can, pass this on so maybe I can crowd-fund enough to take advantage of the opportunity my hard work has earned.

Help Sana Get Her Scholarship!


(A "real" post to follow in the next day or two.)

What upsets me is the emphasis that even the critics are putting on who pays taxes. I've seen a lot of people making arguments about how the working poor pay payroll taxes and sales taxes but this is beside the point. The implication is that there is a point at which you are too poor to matter, at some point you are not able to contribute to the economy and it's all your own damn fault and "we" owe "you" nothing. Equally I see a lot of rhetoric regarding how willing to work people are, meaning that, what? If you aren't willing to work you should just go die in a hole? I don't care how lazy, selfish or even downright mean someone is, they still deserve food in their belly and a roof over their heads. There is no heirarchy of who deserves food and shelter. We all deserve it because we are alive and we are human and it is incumbent upon all of us care for one another.

~Kristin Craig Lai on Shakesville

If anyone currently residing in the US would be willing to fill out a sociology questionnaire for a starving college student, would you please either reply with the answers to the following, or send your answers to sanacrow at foocatz dot com.

No personally identifying information is collected or used. If you chose to respond via email, your response will only be seen by myself and my 3 project partners. The aggregate data will be used in a paper and presentation for our current events sociology class.

Thank you!!

Sociology Questionnaire: Group Project

( clicky thing )

2. What's your take on what parts of gender (however you wish to define that) are inborn, and what parts are societal? Do you have any particular views on the role of chromosomes, in utero hormones, etc.? Or are all of those kinds of questions irrelevant?

According to current medical knowledge (as reported in various peer-reviewed journals, including The International Journal of Transgenderism, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, and a whole lot of others I'm not gonna dig up my notes to list off) there's a whole lot that goes into what we lump under "sex" and "gender".

Chromosomes are important, but they're more of a guideline than a rule. XX and XY are the most common, but there's a lot more variation than anyone covers in 8th grade biology. And XX doesn't always mean "female" nor does XY always mean "male" even in basic physical development. It's one of the reasons that "genetic female only" line cracks me up. Unless they're karyotyping at the door, you can't tell what chromosomes someone has from their anatomy, their endocrinology, or any method other than genetic karyotyping. In addition, assigned-female individuals cannot be assumed to all posses uteri, vaginas or differentiated vulvae, assumed to menstruate, or assumed to anything else commonly claimed to be universal to women. Gasp! Some women - including some "genetic women" - even have cliterophalluses! Teh shock!

There's a lot of statistically-common variation out there. I sometimes love to get in the middle of some of these debates and point out that my wife, who was assigned male at birth, has XX chromosomes (and XXY ones - she's a mosaic variation of Klinefelter syndrome). I'm the one who has given birth, and my karyotype is XoXY. I have conceived (multiple times, on birth control even), birthed healthy children, breastfed - and yet I had testes as well as ovaries well into adulthood. And the two of us are not all that rare.

According to the folks that study such things, there are three major contributors to sex during development - the influence of the chromosomes contributed by the two parents, the hormone balance in the fetus (and, to a lesser extent, in the mother) during brain development, and the hormone balance in the fetus (again, and to a lesser extent in the mother) during gonadal definition an development. The latter two are considered to be the largest influences, and usually they "line up" and the hormone balances at the two different points influence development in the same direction. But not always, and there are an infinite number of variations possible.

All of that was just about sex. Gender is a whole other fettle of kish, and probably has just as much complexity. Ditto to gender presentation.

How much is innate, and how much is societal? I think that's going to vary dramatically depending on the individual. Some folks are rather fluid in one or both, some folks have strong innate preferences that influence their gender identity and/or presentation, and others (probably the majority) have some areas that are "natural" to them and others they pick up and still others they don't even have a thought about.

For me, I'm mostly read as female, and mostly anatomically female. I generally ID as intersex, and either genderqueer or soft butch. I would like to be able to mod my body in some ways (and remove some feminine markers) that are not possible for me, yet there are some aspects of a female body I really like. There are some ways I wish I could be more masculine, but I do not want a male body. Queer I am.

#s 3-7 to follow.

... although this evening it kinda feels like it.

I'se not away from the social media because of medical foo this time. I'se going back to school.

Thanks to help from disability services, an almost-reasonable financial aid package and an assistive tech grant, I am now a full-time student with a dual major in Social Work and Community Health doing the universal transfer portion of the program at Pellissippi State.

I'm still figuring out scheduling everything in, and re-learning how to study... and am a bit overwhelmed a great deal of the time right now... but I think (most of the time) that it'll work out. But right now.... I'm going to go take a lot of drugs and collapse...

'I feel I should thank you,' said Oats, when they reached the spiral staircase.

'For helping you across the mountains, you mean?'

'The world is... different.' Oats's gaze went out across the haze, and the forests, and the purple mountains. 'Everywhere I look I see something holy.'

For the first time since he'd met her he saw Granny Weatherwax smile properly. Normally her mouth went up at the corners just before something unpleasant was going to happen to someone who deserved it, but this time she appeared to be pleased with what she'd heard.

'That's a start, then,' she said.

~ Granny Weatherwax, via Terry Pratchett (Carpe Jugulum)

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue ... do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them ... and the point is to live everything ... live the questions now ... perhaps you will then, without noticing it, live along into the answers.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Eris, look at the name of our dead.
Antinous, read the name of our dead.
Faro, remember the name of our dead.
Ymir, look at the name of our dead.
Indra, read the name of our dead.
Melek Ta'us, remember the name of our dead.
What is remembered, lives.
We shall always remember.


She made a difference. She will always be remembered.

These are the best things I've seen yet about the Feri/Faery goings-on:

From Eldriwolf

And from Chemalfait

What did I do wrong?

This is what I wrote:

((person asking why there isn't more "X did Y, which is why there is a problem with action / choice Z" type information more easily available))

If I let a cousin copy something that is personal and private, and they
leave it out for all to see, I am not going to publicly point at it and
draw everyone's attention to it. If it's just one bit among a lot of
other stray bits, then it doesn't stand out -- no one hunting for the
Secrets of Sana is going to paw through anything looking for something
they have no reason to think is there.

I kevetch with close kin about certain individuals and how particular
bits have been "mistreated" here or there. But outside of that - even
with Feri students (or potential Feri students) - it really doesn't have
a place beyond rather general warnings, basic information about vetting
teachers and my usual "keep your brain with you at all times and watch
your ass, too" routine.

Sometimes, in talking with folks one-on-one, or in particular
circumstances, I will give an opinion (as well as a general bit about
the basis for it) of a specific teacher if it's directly asked for and
it's appropriate. Sometimes, in *very* specific circumstances, I'll
include more detail about why I hold that opinion. But I'm not going to
put up a neon sign saying "Here There Be Private Lore". And that's what
naming names often is. Especially on public / semi-public lists where
it's easy to find by folks who think that in hunting down and grabbing
bits and bobs - especially the super-sekrit ones - they're capturing
Feri. We don't need any more half-arsed carnys shilling basterdized
something-they'll-call-Feri.

---

I've gotten two responses. Veedub using part of it as a jumping point for a related - but - not - exactly point... and thanks from one of the folks whose choices / methods I *really* don't like (for various reasons, some related to this stuff, some quite other).

I'm a bit perplexed in a vague 'that's not what I meant' sort of way...