Mes Souhaites

Back at Tech, I went to hear a researcher from UT talk about gender and society. I don't remember his name or the subject of the talk, but he opened with an anecdote that I've contemplated from time to time over the years:

"I look out over this crowd and I am reminded of my times back in college. From my gray hair you might guess it's been a while. I was in college back in the '60's, and it wasn't exactly like you see in the movies, but it was something interesting. Many of us felt as though we were part of something special; that the world was changing and we were a part of that.

"We used to have groups of people who would get together and just talk about stuff. Sometimes there was a book, but alot of the time the conversation just meandered. I remember being your age and being in one of those discussions about gender. One of my friends turned to a black girl and said, 'our struggle as women unifies us. There are lots of different problems with the world, but we can connect in the common ground of our womanhood.'

"Her friend responded, 'No. That's a nice thought, but when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror you see a woman. When I look in the mirror, I see a black woman.'

"It was at that point I realized that when I get up in the morning and look into the mirror, I see a human being. The thing about privilege is that it's invisible. Everyone else has to define themselves in relation to it."

I've been thinking about this in the last couple days because I've been arguing social issues with McK and one of her central points of opposition to my points is that I am a passive racist.

The other night on my way to the gym, there were hundreds of high school and middle school kids toting pro-life signs milling around Union Station. (I assume they were on their way back from the Capitol.) As McK and I were coming home, we were admiring their discarded placards. She was fascinated that one of the main groups was the Kights of Columbus, who are apparently a white-supremacist group. The idea of white-supremacists going on about abortion reminded me of the recent move to reinstate the FCC's "fairness doctrine" requiring "all coverage of controversial issues by a broadcast station be balanced and fair."

This is what used to give all candidates in elections equal air-time. I'm for an informed populace, but I'm more against direct governmental interference in media content. So, I said that I was against censorship so long as people are held accountable for the effects of deliberate mistruth and slander. After some chit-chat, McK's response was, "I'm doing better, I didn't bring up how your position might be different if you weren't a college educated white male."

How does one respond to that? I'm not going to claim racism doesn't exist. I can't really say that I'd have the same perspective if I was a black woman; I have no clue. I have friends of different races, but they are all pretty well acculturated middle class Americans. Do I know what life is like in the ghetto? No.

At this point I don't really have any response to the accusation that I'm racially insensitive. I generally don't think about race when talking to someone. I talk to everyone in basically the same way. Is that wrong?

I'm generally very proud of my life and I love my friends. It feels so strange to me to be ashamed that my best friends are white. The unspoken accusation is that I'm comfortable enjoying a status quo built on the use and abuse of other people. People are being discriminated against all over the place and, cocooned and oblivious in my little white world, I take positions on issues that serve to exacerbate the issues and make these people's lives worse.

One of the places I really get caught up is on the issue of identity. Everyone is looking around for things to build an identity out of. I'm a Southerner. I'm a computer geek. I'm a drinker. I'm a dancer. I'm a writer. As much as these are things that I do, these are things that paint a picture of the person I want to be. This isn't about the insecure high schooler smoking to fit in with the cool kids. This is about everyone having a person inside that they are and wanting to understand who that person is and wanting to express that person to the world around them.

Everyone needs an identity and I see where people frequently use their race to draw upon for parts of their identity. I know Asian people who like eating with chopsticks, black people who wear FuBu and white 20-somethings that hate Bush. It is about expressing who you are and belonging to a group that you admire. Sometimes people ignore their identity and try to fit in where they don't belong, but I see fitting in as a healthy activity in general.

Blackness, Asianess, intelligence, femaleness or whateverness all have activities and attitudes that are associated with them. There is the trait and then there are the cultures that are associated with the trait. Martha Stewart and Paris Hilton: both women, very different cultures. Lil' Jon and Colin Powell: both black. Me and David Duke: both Southern. My biggest questions at this point are about mobility. McK seems to tie race and culture very closely together. I think what I would like to know more about is how race affects mobility and how that relates to individual decisions about identity.

The whole mess is so very complicated… I'll have to come back to this one.

I spent a week with my dad over Thanksgiving and while doing so we conflicted over moral issues in a way that we haven't in quite a while.

Right before the last election he went on a bus tour around Tennessee as the author of the gay-marriage ban that passed almost ten years ago. He spoke about his previous work as a child psychologist and how he helped to cure abused children of their homosexuality. All in all his stumping wasn't really necessary since amending Tennessee's constitution to disallow homosexual unions passed with the strongest support of any state in the union: four out of five Tennesseans voted for it.

I talked to him some and told him essentially that I thought he was a hateful bigot. I drew frequent parallels to censures taken against the black population fifty years ago, but I was working at a disadvantage. This is a big issue for him, and he might be bigoted but he's not dumb. He knows more about the studies than I do and I really like having the majority of the facts before attempting to discuss something.

Part of the issue is that this is a matter of faith for me. Not faith in God, but faith in myself and the clarity of my perceptions. I know some pretty neurotic and emotionally damaged people, and I have gay friends who seem mentally sound to me. Either I'm correct and they're of sound mind or I'm wrong and homosexuality is a purely psychological issue with no biological component. I trust my perceptions.

Today I got an email from my dad with a link to the San Francisco Aids Foundation on transmission rates. It shows from 1981 to the present 89% of HIV transmission in San Francisco has been from male homosexual contact. 1% has been from heterosexual contact. It included a little note saying, "Let your friend know that his sexual life style is a dangerous one."

His premise is a bit flawed since the heavy infection rates among homosexual men in the early years of the epidemic skews the numbers. According to the CDC about 60% of sexual transmission cases in 2004 involved male homosexual contact.

Something I was wondering about in responding to him though was good counter examples. Ideally, I'd like one where a lifestyle choice my father would think is positive put a person for a natural environmental risk. Christianity and Judaism would be good examples except Romans and Nazis aren't really natural environmental features. Buddhist or Hindu vegetarians and malnutrition are also a possibility, but I think he'd respond better to an example with more white people. Any ideas?

I, unfortunately, will not vote this year. My absentee ballot was sent to Africa and I didn't have time to get a new one. It sucks since I would like to cancel out my father's vote on Tennessee's marriage amendment. He's been on a speaking tour across the state for the last week trying to drum up support as part of the Real Marriage bus tour.

I really don't get it. Exactly what the do they thing is going to happen if gay people were to marry?

I always thought that homophobia was something along the lines of the racism of the 60's. I'm certainly not going to argue that racism is dead, but if I were black I wouldn't expect to walk into a restaurant in most of the country and be refused service. While the problem hasn't gone away, I think that it is undeniably improving.

My grandmothers, both of whom I love and respect, have both said things that are a little bit racist. I don't argue with them or expect them to change their sentiments. They are members of their generation and I find it difficult to fault them that when my predilections line up so much with my own generation. It is rare that someone really breaks away from the opinions they grew up with in any serious way and those who do seem more likely to be demented than visionary.

Honestly, I figured this was a problem that I could mostly ignore for a while and it would pass away (literally).

titivillus sent me a list of ballot initiatives and it looks like eight states (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin) have same-sex marriage bans under consideration.

One of the big problems with the liberal microcosm I travel in is I lose touch with the rest of the world. It is like being overseas in an Islamic republic during the last presidential election. It was completely baffling (and embarrassing) when Bush was reelected. He was so disliked by so many of my daily contacts that I forgot that the country full of people who elected him in the first place were still there.

What are things like for the rest of you? I live with a gay guy and I spent about an hour getting chatted up by a transvestite on Halloween. Different sexualities are certainly present in my daily life, but not in an uncomfortable sort of way. I live in DC though. I went to the drag races and spent an hour dancing and drunken cat-calling drag queens with about 10,000 other people. (At some point everyone should see a 200lb man sprint in high heels.)

I'm still working out the ins and out of the banking bit. Bank of America has been the most recommended bank, but they require direct deposit on their free account or there's a $5.95 monthly charge. Currently my paycheck goes straight into my ING Direct account which earns 4.35% as opposed to 0% with Bank of America. They do have a $50 signing bonus though which would make up for quite a bit of lost interest.

I suppose I am going to have to be moving money once a month in any case. Either into checking to pay my bills or out to a higher interest savings account. ING has an automatic deduction, so I could just set that up. Honestly, with a third of my paycheck going into my IRA, joining a gym, moving to a new house and starting to take the metro to work; my savings capacity is severely diminished. I probably ought to just switch and go with Bank of America.

BB&T is still in slight consideration since they have a free checking account with no strings. Also, while I was poking around today, I found their check card has a deal with Visa Extras. Once I've signed up, for every dollar I spend, I earn points. I was perusing the catalog and, had I signed up initially, I could be well on my way to a $100 Lobster Gram gift certificate. Alas.

So, I dislike my bank. When I got to the States, I needed to move fast to start my new job, so I went with BB&T because my parents used them and they had branches in Tennessee and D.C. So far though, I'd estimate I've paid them at least $100 in fees, and I'm tired of them.

When I opened my account with them, I decided to put $5000 in one of their CDs. I knew that I was going to be moving and that my finances were uncertain. When I explained this to the guy opening the account and asked about transferring money in and out of the CD, he told me I could to so once a month without penalty. Once I got to D.C. I had to take some of it out to cover my security deposit and was promptly penalized.

About a month later I deposited my paycheck in an ATM. It turns out that the checks weren't signed. So, the bank removed that amount from my account. They didn't however remove the hold that had been placed on that amount, so effectively withdrew those checks twice, overdrawing my account. After going to the bank twice and getting the amount straightened out, I asked them to remove the $100+ in overdraft fees since they had overdrawn my account, not me. I called them twice and they kept saying they were doing it and finally they removed about $50 of them. I just didn't have the energy to keep calling them.

I've never been in there and it taken less that fifteen minutes to do anything. I went it to close my CD yesterday and after almost 45 minutes and a lengthy phone conversation, one of the managers managed to get it closed.

I'm just tired of it and want a new bank. My money is currently broken down into four main categories:

• Checking: Money for monthly expenses. All I need here is a check card of some sort and online bill payment. I didn't ever get a checkbook for my account because my address keeps changing and the only check I have to write is for rent. The one thing BB&T has done right is making it easy to get a check sent to him.
• Emergency Funds: This is a chunk of change for dealing with something like a car accident or chipped tooth or whatever. It needs to be accessible within three or four days. For this I've got a savings account at ING Direct named "BB&T Sucks" that's earning 4.35%.
• Retirement: MPP does a SIMPLE IRA through American Funds. I'm withholding almost 20% at this point. I'm trying to push my income as close to the $30,000 jump from 15% to 25% as possible.
• Investing: This is still theoretical because I've been upping my IRA withholding to compensate for extra money I have. (I'm actually withholding 30% currently, but that will average out to 20% by the end of the year.) In a month or two though, I'd like to put a couple thousand dollars in something, probably an index fund.

So, does anyone have a bank they've been really happy with? Branches in Tennessee and D.C. would be nice. Not sucking would be awesome.

(If anyone ever decides to open an ING account, let me know. For a referral, I get $10 and you get $25.)

In a rarity, I've got a story to tell that I'm uncomfortable telling because it's too revealing. There are times that life gets you down. Imagine if you got to a point where you stopped fighting and you tried to just go down. I wasn't terribly good at it, but that's along the lines of where I headed. This story I'll ply only in trade. Email me a story that you think might make me see you in a different and darker light and I'll give you mine.

We're going to throw a beach bash in a couple weeks when everyone is getting ready to COS. There's a good live band that has been performing at the bar and they've said they're up for coming out and performing for us. My group has a couple guitar players and I'm looking for acoustic guitar songs that are good for playing so everyone can sing and dance along. I got a CDs worth of suggestions at the party in Boghé a couple days ago, but does anyone have any others?

Sublime	Santeria
	What I've Got
George Michael	Faith
Oasis	Wonderwall
Janis Joplin	Me and Bobby McGee
Violent Femmes	Blister in the Sun
Poison	Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Indigo Girls	Closer to Fine
	Power of Two
Tom Petty	Free Falling
Blues Traveler	Run Around
Deep Blue Something	Breakfast at Tiffany's
Bob Marley	Buffalo Soldier
Counting Crows	Mr. Jones
Dave Matthews Band	Crash
Peter, Paul and Mary	Leaving on a Jet Plane
Concrete Blonde	Tomorrow, Wendy
Van Morrison	Brown Eyed Girl
Dispatch	The General

I was going to put this to a longer treatise, but I'm too busy and want to get it down.

Weekend before last, a bunch of us headed off the the desert oasis of Terjit to bid farewell to our education volunteers with some relaxing, dancing and boozing. I enjoyed myself generally, but I did not have a very successful drinking experience. I suppose that had my goal been catalepsy I was right on target.

I ended up in a heap over by the pool and my participation in the large scale nudity I hear took place later was only tangential in that I got my pictures taken with bare asses hovering over my slackened face. I wasn't in a really bad spot so far as danger to my health or anything like that. I just missed the majority of the party and I was really disappointed in myself.

It has left me examining a bit my relationship to alcohol and how I deal with it. Given that I'd been drunk less that a dozen times before coming here, saying that I drink more now is not especially meaningful. I'd say I get intoxicated three or four times a month. I don't drink very often when I'm not shooting to get at least a little drunk because I still don't especially enjoy the taste of alcohol.

I've been sick and passed out four times in the last two years. All of those times were bigger parties. I have a bad habit of drinking anything that's handed to me. It's not a problem when I'm with a small group and everyone's drinking about the same speed. When there are enough people that I can drift between different groups and do lots of different rounds of shots, I start to get in trouble. That's a trend I'd not realized before Terjit and something I'm gonna keep an eye on in the future.

At one point I looked down upon alcohol as a crutch. All it does is lower inhibitions and why can't I simply liberate myself? I'd say honestly that I still agree with most that basic premise. I'm not sure if I was completely confident if I'd want to drink or not. It is completely theoretical at this point since I'm not that guy and I've got to deal with the reality of being me. Does this make me less of a worthwhile person? Maybe.

To break the fourth wall, I was just wondering if any of you had anything insightful comments on drinking. Is it something that emotionally and spiritually mature people do?