iragray:

This link leads to my top surgery Chip In page. I’m asking that whoever can please donate $1. I don’t have much money, but I know I could give someone a buck. So, that’s all I am asking for. Many of you have helped me so much, and I am so appreciative (and I hope that I help many of you in return). I wish I could express how much I need this without it turning into a sob story. If you can donate $1, please do. If not, please signal boost this instead.

Thank you for all that you have done for me. I would have never been able to medically transition without you, and I will never forget that. 

Having just had my own and knowing/appreciating how lucky I am to have been able to swing it, I felt like the least I could do is re-blog this.

comicallycool:

Don’t Ask, Don’t TELL

With the formal end of DADT less than a month away, GQ’s Chris Heath spent six months assembling an oral-history-of-sorts about what it was like to be a gay man serving in the U.S. military. The resulting piece, which appears in our Sept 2011 issue and runs a bit longer at GQ.com, is funny, sad, horrifying and, above all, surprising. Life under DADT is both everything—and nothing—like one might expect. A brief sample below, from a heartbreaking section of the piece titled “Invisible Partners”:

Air Force #4 (senior airman, four years): “Right now our relationships don’t exist.”

Air Force #3: “I’ve had three deployments [while] with the same person. Every time it’s been ‘All right, see you later.’ All the spouses get together, do stuff. He’s just there by himself, fending for himself.”

Marines #2: “The relationship lasted for about four years, but I always felt like I was disrespecting him, to have to pretend he didn’t exist when I went to work. When I got deployed, he was there with my family when I left. It kind of sucked—to shake his hand and a little pat on the back and ‘I’ll see you when I see you’ kind of thing. And when you’re getting ready to come back, the spouses were getting classes—here’s how you welcome your Marine back into the family—and my boyfriend didn’t get any of that. I had a really hard time adjusting to being home. We tried to make it work for a year but he was getting more and more paranoid about people finding out about us. It killed me that he felt that way because of me. I don’t think we ever really had a chance, ultimately.”

Air Force #3: “When I was deployed, every Sunday we would sit down on opposite sides of the world and we would each order a pizza and we would watch a movie together over Skype. We weren’t doing anything bad except trying to spend some time together. But there was no ‘I love you.’ Certainly nothing sexual, or anything like what some straight guys do over Skype.”

Navy #2 (captain, twenty years): “Personally, I haven’t had a lot of struggles. The hardest thing that I faced was about eight years ago. I was dating somebody for about two years who had gotten out of the army. He was HIV positive, and I didn’t know that, and he ended up dying—it just happened very quickly. I am not positive, luckily. So I had a lot of difficulties grasping with that personally, dealing with his death, and I had to take time off work, but still not tell them. I couldn’t go to the doctor or the psychologist. There wasn’t really anybody to talk to.”

A Report from the White House
Marines #1: ”Since I’m a single officer in the Marine barracks and I’ve got the highest security clearance you can get, I also serve at the White House in close quarters with President Bush and President Obama at social events. Very seldom was the president ever alone, but one time the president had said, ‘Go and get the vice president,’ and all the straphangers went, and the president went in the Blue Room and was just standing there waiting for Biden. And there was no Secret Service around or anything, and I went, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to go and talk to the president about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” ’ He was looking out south—there’s an incredible view down past the Washington Monument to the Jefferson. And I just stepped in and said, ‘Sir?’ and he turned around and walks to me and I just started: ‘You know, sir, I want to let you know that there are a number of us that work very close to you who appreciate very much what you’re doing on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—more than you probably realize.’ And he was shaking my hand, he looks up and it’s like…he got it. I said, ‘I want to thank you for this.’ And he goes, ‘No, I want to thank you. Thank you for your service, and thank you for your courage.’”

That last one was pretty legit.

A very interesting read. Even if I do make it a habit not to read most of what comes from GQ.

Just so you don’t think I’m a Katy-Perry-apologist - I know she’s awful. This old interview pretty succinctly calls out the gay-related issues I have with her and her “defense” says it all. :(

Now she’s saying she’s a gay icon and featuring plenty of gay kissing in videos. (To go along with the “Firework” video she’s receiving submissions of people sharing their own firework moments - in a quick glance at the summaries she’s actively trying to highlight LGBT individuals.) Whether as apology or to pretend “UR So Gay”, “Hot ‘n Cold”, and “I Kissed A Girl” never happened, I wonder (doubt) how much sincerity is actually there. (For more reading about reactions to this latest version of Katy Perry, there’s this Jezebel post, by the same author of the interview linked above.)

Gender and sexuality hang-ups abound in her recent album too, so with two years maybe the only growth has been that she’s learned how to spin it all and distract attention.

Yet, her songs are really freaking catchy and get me focused while I work and are fun to dance to in my pajamas. Not to mention the legions of synchronized dance videos they spawn. I’m not against taking some products - especially pop-cultural products - at face value as long as you don’t let that stop the conversation about why these products are problematic. Maybe that’s hypocritical, but if I were to eliminate everything in my life which I have complicated thoughts about it’d be a pretty sparse life.

Also, I do think people can change and their opinions can evolve. I think it might be harder to really tell that’s the case when we’re talking about celebrities given all the noise around them. The press and the imagery and the sound-bytes and the messages get mixed up; add in the attemps to appeal to the lowest common denominator for some celebrities and it’s very difficult to ever tell what they actually believe.

Whether Perry really believed her responses in 2008 were appropriate or whether she was trying to not cause a firestorm, I don’t know. But she had a pretty receptive audience at hand to really address the LGBT criticisms when she was interviewed by a gay media blog. If ever there was a time to try to backpedal for the sake of publicity, then that time would be this interview. It’s two years later and while her actual opinions regarding the queer community may have evolved, the root issue of inappropriate cultural relationships apparently has not given the details of her Indian wedding.

Maybe I’ll just go get my Master’s in Katy Perry.