This is but one of the many articles dealing with some of the statements made by Iran’s President concerning homosexuals:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/26/iran_gays/
Now, reading that or any of the other such articles one might assume that Iran is the only country where such an attitude is displayed. Having read rather extensively on matters of gender I know that such is most certainly not the case.
Let’s start with Africa. Black Africa, south of the Sahara. Try to find any mention of homosexuality relating to this part of the world. Various leaders have said that homosexuality is a “White Man’s problem” and is “non-African”:
“In Uganda, for example, the practice - referred to as "carnal knowledge of another against the order of nature" - has been outlawed by president Museveni, while Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe claimed homosexuals were "worse than pigs and dogs."”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/africa/2002/africalive/2072057.stm
BBC Africa reported that “A common theme from callers, and within emails, was that homosexuality is un-African and does not exist on the continent”.
Over to Nigeria, where homosexuality is punishable by hanging:
“Among the many myths created about Africa, the belief that homosexuality is absent in Africa or incidental is one of the oldest and most enduring. African leaders, historians, anthropologists, clergyman, authors, and contemporary Africans alike have denied or overlooked the existence of homosexuality or same-sex relationships and persistently claimed that such patterns were introduced by Europeans.
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/32974
In Africa, homosexuality is illegal for gay men in 29 countries and for lesbian women in 20 countries. You may recall that when the Anglican Church moved towards recognition of same-sex marriage, the African bishops rebelled and threatened to withdraw. Of course. Gay sex is “un-African”.
Move to Thailand, the sex-trade capital of the world. Until very recently, within the last few decades, the language had no word for “homosexual” and lesbians were "unknown". Indeed, many Thais assume that homosexual behaviour – the many gay bars and male prostitutes - was introduced by American soldiers on R&R visits during the Vietnam War. Commonly, males in the sex trade explain that they are in it “for the money” and are not Gay.
“Down-low” referred to married men or other men professing to be heterosexual,having sex with other men but identifying themselves as neither homosexual nor bisexual. This is part of Afro-American terminology in the United States. Why? To be out is to risk discrimination.
Further south, in Latin America, the same theme holds true. A male is not considered homosexual for engaging in sex with another man, as long as he assumes the “male role”. That is the cultural answer; transsexual prostitutes report that most clients wished to assume the female role in private.
So before throwing stones at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it might be wise to consider that the North American and Western European approach to homosexuality differs markedly from other parts of the world, from Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia and the Mideast.
Nor must we go to foreign shores to find such an attitude. It was only a few decades ago that men were incarcerated or sent to asylums in the United States (and Canada, I would assume) if caught in a gay relationship.
This does not excuse the comments made by Ahmadinejad. It does however put them in a perspective that is totally lacking from the crowing of much of the American media. The jeering crowd at Columbia University was comprised of young Americans. As with many young, they assume they know all and the jeering gave evidence of that snobbishness. They are sophisticated and wise in the ways of the world – their world, but not that of Ahmadinejad. When you are ignorant of cultural differences, it is easy to laugh at other views.
Many similar comments might be made in respect of the questions regarding women in Iranian society. Prior to the fall of the Shah, Iran - then a secular state as was Iraq - had offered women many advantages they did not enjoy in neighbouring states. Iran had high levels of woman in professions and in higher education. Religious garb was largely in the past, as in Turkey, another secular but Muslim State. The return of the Ahotllah certainly changed that, women being forced to return to garb and roles demanded by the Mullahs. Yet even so, the status of women in Iran today compares very favourable with its neighbours. In Pakistan, husbands routinely murder women without any real penalty imposed (according to Amnesty International reports); in Saudi Arabia and other Arab-Muslim countries the role of women is very restricted. We all now know how badly women were restricted in Afghanistan. While there is no doubt that women in the Muslim world do not have the near equality they enjoy in Western Europe and North America, within the neighbourhood women of Iran fare better than in other countries of the region, including those that Americans call allies. Perhaps only Israel has come up to (or surpassed) the gender equality the students of Columbia favour.
Now, I hasten to add that the above does not imply or suggest that I agree with Ahmadinejad or his obvious negative attitudes towards Gays or women’s equality. It does mean that had I been in the audience at Columbia, I would have disapproved of his comments but not joined in the jeering and booing that followed his remarks on this issue. I might have reflected on the need to educate Iran and the rest of the world on such matters.
Try to imagine a reverse of the Ahmadinejad speech at Columbia – George W. Bush speaking at Tehrain University. Someone asks a question on Gay rights in the United States. Well, Bush and his major voting block, the fundamentalists Christians, may not kill Gays but there is no doubt that many do not wish them well. It is only a difference in degree and with many of Bush’s supporters it is hard to say where along the line they would stop. While the students at Columbia may wish to espouse equality, Bush’s supporters certainly do not.
This exercise is really nothing more than further demonization of Iran, a necessary step in the move towards yet more unilateral action and “pre-emptive” military steps. If indeed the United States or Israel attack Iran, as many now expect, for two issues to be discrimination against Gays or women’s rights is indeed strange.
The Civil War in the United States was "to free the slaves". How bizarre for the United States to fight a new war against Iran for Gay and Women's rights. What some people won't do to drum up support for a war!
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Winter is Here... Almost...
Another dreary rainy day in River City…
Winter is definitely on the way. One can feel it. The sky is filled with dull grey clouds, puffy and darker in parts. Leaves have turned yellow but not yet fallen; the flowerbeds and garden are dead and dying. It feels cold enough to snow, cold enough certainly to make your breath visible and to frost car windows at night. Autumn came and went quickly, winter arrives before it is due.
Winter is my favourite season. I enjoy the cold air, the snow on the ground (Prince George looks much better when covered under several feet of snow!). One can always layer clothing and keep warm. Indeed, from years of experimenting, the trick is not to keep too warm. This year I finally discarded the duffel coat that has been my primary winter jacket for years. Frankly, it has seen better days and has been a Trojan in all sorts of weather. The new jacket is more fashionable, most certainly. In reserve is the –40 or so parka complete with snow waist and furry hood. When I wear that, only my eyes are visible. Being a long time fan of capes, I have several for the cold weather. My favourite is a loden cape with a military collar and in a distinct yellow shade. For colder days, there is a long almost floor-length maroon wool cape and for special occasions, two wool mohair capes one in green and blue squares and the other in maroon. These are for driving without the arm restrictions and a sweater under the cape keeps one very warm.
My normal winter outfit, for the pasts several years, has been leggings topped with a floppy sweater. Some time ago, I saw leggings on sale in many different colours, so I bought a dozen or so. Every time I see a nice sweater in a thrift, often had done, I buy it to go with one colour or another or leggings. Since buying the leggings, I keep looking for more, but it seems that local stores only stock black. Ah well, at least the sweaters provide considerable variety. With such sweaters often selling for as little as $3.99, I overdid things and recently cleared out my closet paring down the sweaters by giving many away to a friend.
Now, up here we have to turn off the outside water taps. If one does not, the pipes can freeze and burst. So yesterday I tended to that little chore, crawling under the house to turn off the copper pipes that feed the outside taps. The next chore when the rains stops for a bit is to move all the outside “stuff” – the swing, chairs, tables, hoses and reels and more into the gazebo and to then cover the gazebo with a tarp and tie that down. We shall be putting up winter drapes in some rooms – a bit heavier and better able to save heat. I have an oil heater in my room, just for those very cold nights, and the winter comforter is ready to keep me toasty warm. The rest of our “winterizing” is already done – windows and door seals checked, furnace filter changed, candles and flashlights in their proper place.
An electric cord has been strung out to where the van is parked, ready to plug in the block heater (for those in the south, a heating coil that goes into the oil pan that heats the oil in the car during very cold nights). The greenhouse is closed up and ready with a single light – one light bulb keeps the temperature just a little higher, enabling plants to survive. This is the same as carrying candles in our car, to light and provide just enough heat if you happen to end up in a snowdrift. The van has all the emergency supplies, from a “jumper” battery to cables, candles and chains in addition to the summer load of spare light bulbs, oil and other fluids, and emergency first-aid.
I suppose preparing for winter is a little like preparing for a hurricane. One of my friends moved to the Yucatan area of Mexico a few years ago, right in the path of Katrina. She spent several days in her home with all windows covered with plywood listening to the howling wind. Emergency supplies are kept at the ready in hurricane season. Well, at least we don’t have to go that far!
Aside from getting ready to confront winter’s blast, things have been quiet here. Well, a few dental appointments and such, but nothing really to get the blood pounding.
I have become one of the frequent contributors to the local “Letters to the Editor”. Prince George has a daily paper (not on Sundays) and a bi-weekly. Both have published my letters. Writing on topics ranging from local planning (or the lack of the same), roads, prostitution and decision by council, I am often amazed at how many people read these missives. From our favourite autobody shop (winter brings icy roads and gravel on highways – great for windshields!) to my credit union, I have emerged as a very local celebrity, it seems. “Oh, you’re the one that writes those letters!” tends to greet me frequently around town. The last letter was regarding the war in Iraq, as might be expected from other entries in this blog.
Remiss I would be for not mentioning the recent events at Columbia College in New York. Sorry, but if you invite someone to your place to speak, even if you do not like what they might say, you are polite – and the President of Columbia College was anything but to the Iranian president. I was particularly struck by the ignorance contained in the Columbia president’s remarks. He denounced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “Let's, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.” (The complete text is :http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature /2007/09/24/bollinger/). His remarks concluded with, “I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.” Sorry, that is not the way to do things. While the Columbia president pandered to the US press and administration, the Iranian president played to his audience in Iran and the Third World, keeping cool under pressure. I suppose the most obvious remark is that under the Iranian system, the president has about as much power as the vice president of the USA, before Cheney. That is to say, not very much. So the remarks were off target, given the limited power his “guest” actually has. (see http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/25/ahmadinejad/
Obviously, this is part of the American demonization of Iran, a necessary step before war. The enemy must be made to look “evil”, and Columbia’s president certainly tried. The mullahs rule Iran. Now, I am not saying that I would like to have Ahmadinejad over for supper, any more that Saddam Hussien. Reports also suggest that he be in trouble, politically, at home. Remarks like those made yesterday will only enhance his reputation at home in Iran. Ahmadinejad is not even “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces. Yes, no doubt there are abuses, but Idi Amin would have been better treated. Further, since the 79 revolution, literacy in Iran has gown substantially, from less than half the population to 80%+. The rural nature of the population has shifted to cities. Simply, there have been gains after the Iranian Revolution, periods of calm and growth. Few know that after the Americans took Baghdad, Iran sent a letter to the Americans via the Swiss ambassador offering to meet and settle all outstanding issues, including the nuclear one. The USA, under Bush, not only did not reply, they blasted the Swiss ambassador from relaying the message.
Nor does the American media focus on the real reason, if any, why Iran might want a nuclear bomb. Look at a map. Israel shares no borders with Iran. But to the south lies Pakistan, a Sunni Muslim country with a president who has survived several assassination attempts and a population that is very militant. One shot is all it takes to change Pakistan from a benevolent American ally to a fanatical Islamic state, a Sunni state on Iran’s Shiite border. Pakistan, of course, has a nuclear bomb. Not the nicest neighbour to have, really. But no, to the American media, the only reason Iran wants the bomb is to “kill all the Jews”, something Ahmadinejad has never said (see earlier blogs).
The American media seems to play on ignorance. I recall a recent “test” that found most students surveyed could not locate Washington DC on a map and the silly comments, some of which might be real, when one TV host does interviews on the street. A public must be an informed public, not susceptible to overt lies that the rest of the world (as in the case of Iraq) knows to be lies. If you don’t even know how to find Iraq on the map, you cannot be expected to have a valid informed opinion on war against Iran.
Winter is definitely on the way. One can feel it. The sky is filled with dull grey clouds, puffy and darker in parts. Leaves have turned yellow but not yet fallen; the flowerbeds and garden are dead and dying. It feels cold enough to snow, cold enough certainly to make your breath visible and to frost car windows at night. Autumn came and went quickly, winter arrives before it is due.
Winter is my favourite season. I enjoy the cold air, the snow on the ground (Prince George looks much better when covered under several feet of snow!). One can always layer clothing and keep warm. Indeed, from years of experimenting, the trick is not to keep too warm. This year I finally discarded the duffel coat that has been my primary winter jacket for years. Frankly, it has seen better days and has been a Trojan in all sorts of weather. The new jacket is more fashionable, most certainly. In reserve is the –40 or so parka complete with snow waist and furry hood. When I wear that, only my eyes are visible. Being a long time fan of capes, I have several for the cold weather. My favourite is a loden cape with a military collar and in a distinct yellow shade. For colder days, there is a long almost floor-length maroon wool cape and for special occasions, two wool mohair capes one in green and blue squares and the other in maroon. These are for driving without the arm restrictions and a sweater under the cape keeps one very warm.
My normal winter outfit, for the pasts several years, has been leggings topped with a floppy sweater. Some time ago, I saw leggings on sale in many different colours, so I bought a dozen or so. Every time I see a nice sweater in a thrift, often had done, I buy it to go with one colour or another or leggings. Since buying the leggings, I keep looking for more, but it seems that local stores only stock black. Ah well, at least the sweaters provide considerable variety. With such sweaters often selling for as little as $3.99, I overdid things and recently cleared out my closet paring down the sweaters by giving many away to a friend.
Now, up here we have to turn off the outside water taps. If one does not, the pipes can freeze and burst. So yesterday I tended to that little chore, crawling under the house to turn off the copper pipes that feed the outside taps. The next chore when the rains stops for a bit is to move all the outside “stuff” – the swing, chairs, tables, hoses and reels and more into the gazebo and to then cover the gazebo with a tarp and tie that down. We shall be putting up winter drapes in some rooms – a bit heavier and better able to save heat. I have an oil heater in my room, just for those very cold nights, and the winter comforter is ready to keep me toasty warm. The rest of our “winterizing” is already done – windows and door seals checked, furnace filter changed, candles and flashlights in their proper place.
An electric cord has been strung out to where the van is parked, ready to plug in the block heater (for those in the south, a heating coil that goes into the oil pan that heats the oil in the car during very cold nights). The greenhouse is closed up and ready with a single light – one light bulb keeps the temperature just a little higher, enabling plants to survive. This is the same as carrying candles in our car, to light and provide just enough heat if you happen to end up in a snowdrift. The van has all the emergency supplies, from a “jumper” battery to cables, candles and chains in addition to the summer load of spare light bulbs, oil and other fluids, and emergency first-aid.
I suppose preparing for winter is a little like preparing for a hurricane. One of my friends moved to the Yucatan area of Mexico a few years ago, right in the path of Katrina. She spent several days in her home with all windows covered with plywood listening to the howling wind. Emergency supplies are kept at the ready in hurricane season. Well, at least we don’t have to go that far!
Aside from getting ready to confront winter’s blast, things have been quiet here. Well, a few dental appointments and such, but nothing really to get the blood pounding.
I have become one of the frequent contributors to the local “Letters to the Editor”. Prince George has a daily paper (not on Sundays) and a bi-weekly. Both have published my letters. Writing on topics ranging from local planning (or the lack of the same), roads, prostitution and decision by council, I am often amazed at how many people read these missives. From our favourite autobody shop (winter brings icy roads and gravel on highways – great for windshields!) to my credit union, I have emerged as a very local celebrity, it seems. “Oh, you’re the one that writes those letters!” tends to greet me frequently around town. The last letter was regarding the war in Iraq, as might be expected from other entries in this blog.
Remiss I would be for not mentioning the recent events at Columbia College in New York. Sorry, but if you invite someone to your place to speak, even if you do not like what they might say, you are polite – and the President of Columbia College was anything but to the Iranian president. I was particularly struck by the ignorance contained in the Columbia president’s remarks. He denounced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “Let's, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.” (The complete text is :http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature /2007/09/24/bollinger/). His remarks concluded with, “I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.” Sorry, that is not the way to do things. While the Columbia president pandered to the US press and administration, the Iranian president played to his audience in Iran and the Third World, keeping cool under pressure. I suppose the most obvious remark is that under the Iranian system, the president has about as much power as the vice president of the USA, before Cheney. That is to say, not very much. So the remarks were off target, given the limited power his “guest” actually has. (see http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/25/ahmadinejad/
Obviously, this is part of the American demonization of Iran, a necessary step before war. The enemy must be made to look “evil”, and Columbia’s president certainly tried. The mullahs rule Iran. Now, I am not saying that I would like to have Ahmadinejad over for supper, any more that Saddam Hussien. Reports also suggest that he be in trouble, politically, at home. Remarks like those made yesterday will only enhance his reputation at home in Iran. Ahmadinejad is not even “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces. Yes, no doubt there are abuses, but Idi Amin would have been better treated. Further, since the 79 revolution, literacy in Iran has gown substantially, from less than half the population to 80%+. The rural nature of the population has shifted to cities. Simply, there have been gains after the Iranian Revolution, periods of calm and growth. Few know that after the Americans took Baghdad, Iran sent a letter to the Americans via the Swiss ambassador offering to meet and settle all outstanding issues, including the nuclear one. The USA, under Bush, not only did not reply, they blasted the Swiss ambassador from relaying the message.
Nor does the American media focus on the real reason, if any, why Iran might want a nuclear bomb. Look at a map. Israel shares no borders with Iran. But to the south lies Pakistan, a Sunni Muslim country with a president who has survived several assassination attempts and a population that is very militant. One shot is all it takes to change Pakistan from a benevolent American ally to a fanatical Islamic state, a Sunni state on Iran’s Shiite border. Pakistan, of course, has a nuclear bomb. Not the nicest neighbour to have, really. But no, to the American media, the only reason Iran wants the bomb is to “kill all the Jews”, something Ahmadinejad has never said (see earlier blogs).
The American media seems to play on ignorance. I recall a recent “test” that found most students surveyed could not locate Washington DC on a map and the silly comments, some of which might be real, when one TV host does interviews on the street. A public must be an informed public, not susceptible to overt lies that the rest of the world (as in the case of Iraq) knows to be lies. If you don’t even know how to find Iraq on the map, you cannot be expected to have a valid informed opinion on war against Iran.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Rumours of War
I have become obsessed with the war in Iraq…
… and the potential war in Iran.
My little library of books regarding the war and the Bush administration has grown to three shelves. While most of the titles favour my own view – that the war is wrong and a blot on humanity – a few titles represent the “other view”. I do try to understand all points of view. With each passing day, that gets harder and harder to do.
Sunday morning, I got up and opened the computer, heading to my daily read of SALON articles, especially the column of Glenn Greenwald. He also wrote one of the books on my shelves – A TERRIBLE LEGACY. After that bit of cheer, it was time to let the dogs out for a morning romp and piddle and then a brief glance at the Sunday morning news programs. Henry Kissinger was on THE LAST WORD, the CNN news Sunday news program with Wolf Blitzer. The topic – bombing Iran. Knowing Kissinger had the ear of Bush II, I listened with some horror as the party line was unfolded.
I greatly admire the work of Gwynne Dryer, a military historian and writer. He has written three books on this war. IGNORANT ARMIES. FUTURE TENSE, and now THE MESS THEY MADE. The first was written before the war, the second in 2004 and revised in 06, and the last in the current year. Dryer, unlike Rumsfeld and Cheney, has been very accurate in his predictions.
It certainly seems as if the Bush administration is determined to go out with a bang. Currently, one report says Bush has decided against the war with Iran, but with US troops patrolling the border and Israel itching to send in bombers, anything could turn the area into a mess.
I recently posted the following to one group:
“Many countries have what is called "threshold nuclear weapons capability".
That is, they have the ability to enrich uranium to the degree necessary for
use in power reactors, just like Canada, Brazil, Germany and Australia
(there are forty such countries). Each of these countries could, if they
wished, "ramp up" the enrichment process to build a bomb. As I understand
it, civil (industrial) use only needs about 20% or less pure, weapons need
90% plus pure. Under the Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty, countries who do this then allow IAEA inspectors in to make sure that only the lower grade is being produced. Under the treaty, any country may opt out on three month's notice and proceed with a bomb.
As with Iraq, the USA demanded vigorous inspection by the IAEA. They found no evidence of weapons building of treaty violation. That was confirmed as recently as February of this year.
Contrast that with current statements of Bush and Cheney.
Now, "Iran wants to exterminate Jews in Israel".
Not quite true. The statement was made in Pharisee in October 05. What was
actually said as translated was that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must
vanish from the pages of history". Many regimes have done so - the regime
in Moscow, East Berlin and many others. Indeed, the speech refers to these,
as well as the regime of Saddam Hussein. It does to mean the people are
eliminated, but that the regime is stopped. He was proposing the "one state
solution" to the Israel/Palestine conflicts - a vote by everyone in the
former Palestine.
Bush and his confederates have distorted this to the "elimination of Jews".
This is sounding more and more like the pre-Iraq distortions. As a lame
duck, Bush can go quietly or roll the dice hoping for a biggie prior to 08.
If his past is any way to predict his future, the dice throw seems very
possible.”
And SALON had the following article in today’s edition:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/24/ahmadinejad/print.html
This is indeed scary stuff. The war drums in the media are beating as loudly as they did prior to Iraq, and with the same type of lies being advances as a reason for “pre-emptive attack”. Iran would retain the ability to sink tankers in the Gulf and thus oil prices would skyrocket. Oh eyes, the latest word is to expect an “October roll out” for the new product. War, that is…
Somewhere, I forget where, the oil deal mentioned in the SALON article had another item. A pipeline from Iran to China, certainly not what the Americans wish to see.
To me, the war in Iraq was a “perfect storm” type of scenario. A naïve U.S. president with no foreign affairs experience, bad advisors with an agenda that had not been accepted, a desire for revenge (the assassination attempt) and glory (war president), and, of course, oil. Not to bring the oil into the USA, for Canada supplies most of that, but to control it, especially with China. By 2040, barring unforeseen problems, China will be a superpower, India shortly after that. The USA now has a military technology agreement with India, but China? Not forgetting the stated desire of the neo-cons to retain American status as the sole superpower as long as possible, China also owns most of the US debt. Hmmmm…
It bothers me – it really bothers me – that the United States is once again moving towards a war not for its own interests, but for those of Israel. As has been commented on by many, the neo-cons have two factions. One of those is very pro-Israel and is, not surprisingly, mostly if not exclusively Jewish. No, this is not an anti-Semitic statement; it is simply the truth. Pearl, Wolfowitz, Firth and many more are Lukid party supporters in Israeli politics. The list of these is a long one. They offer advice to Israel often yet occupied major policy chairs in the USA. As Dyer has written, it is possible that when Americans find themselves in yet another war, they might be very upset to find that it is waged not in the interests of the United States, which has a large “stay-at-home” minded population, but on behalf of Israel. If indeed Iran does or is on the cusp of having a bomb, such a bomb would not be intended to be used against the USA but might be used against (or more correctly, to counter the threat of) the 200 or so nuclear weapons of Israel.
Another thought as a result of today’s news. The Americans, especially the reporter on “60 Minutes” last night, are very upset that Iran is providing weapons to the anti-American types in Iraq. Mad enough to go to war, it seems. Now, in the many, many years of the Cold War and continuing today, how many countries has the United States armed? In particular, how many countries pick up their planes, tanks and very sophisticated weapons from the USA? In days past, both the former USSR and the USA armed many countries and insurgents. This is unhappily part of life, and the USA is the biggest arms broker in the world. It recently announced massive sales to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel, who recently invaded and destroyed Lebanon; Saudi Arabia, a religious monarchy with no democratic leanings. And the US is mad at Iran for possibly providing some weapons to Shiite militia? Sorry, but if that is Bush’s reason for war, or even one of them, it speaks of the weakness of the American reasons for a war against Iran. Another false front, as we saw so recently in Iraq.
The drums, the same drums we heard four years ago, are beating. I hope they do no more that sound. It is not only Americans who will suffer as a result of the drums, but the whole world.
… and the potential war in Iran.
My little library of books regarding the war and the Bush administration has grown to three shelves. While most of the titles favour my own view – that the war is wrong and a blot on humanity – a few titles represent the “other view”. I do try to understand all points of view. With each passing day, that gets harder and harder to do.
Sunday morning, I got up and opened the computer, heading to my daily read of SALON articles, especially the column of Glenn Greenwald. He also wrote one of the books on my shelves – A TERRIBLE LEGACY. After that bit of cheer, it was time to let the dogs out for a morning romp and piddle and then a brief glance at the Sunday morning news programs. Henry Kissinger was on THE LAST WORD, the CNN news Sunday news program with Wolf Blitzer. The topic – bombing Iran. Knowing Kissinger had the ear of Bush II, I listened with some horror as the party line was unfolded.
I greatly admire the work of Gwynne Dryer, a military historian and writer. He has written three books on this war. IGNORANT ARMIES. FUTURE TENSE, and now THE MESS THEY MADE. The first was written before the war, the second in 2004 and revised in 06, and the last in the current year. Dryer, unlike Rumsfeld and Cheney, has been very accurate in his predictions.
It certainly seems as if the Bush administration is determined to go out with a bang. Currently, one report says Bush has decided against the war with Iran, but with US troops patrolling the border and Israel itching to send in bombers, anything could turn the area into a mess.
I recently posted the following to one group:
“Many countries have what is called "threshold nuclear weapons capability".
That is, they have the ability to enrich uranium to the degree necessary for
use in power reactors, just like Canada, Brazil, Germany and Australia
(there are forty such countries). Each of these countries could, if they
wished, "ramp up" the enrichment process to build a bomb. As I understand
it, civil (industrial) use only needs about 20% or less pure, weapons need
90% plus pure. Under the Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty, countries who do this then allow IAEA inspectors in to make sure that only the lower grade is being produced. Under the treaty, any country may opt out on three month's notice and proceed with a bomb.
As with Iraq, the USA demanded vigorous inspection by the IAEA. They found no evidence of weapons building of treaty violation. That was confirmed as recently as February of this year.
Contrast that with current statements of Bush and Cheney.
Now, "Iran wants to exterminate Jews in Israel".
Not quite true. The statement was made in Pharisee in October 05. What was
actually said as translated was that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must
vanish from the pages of history". Many regimes have done so - the regime
in Moscow, East Berlin and many others. Indeed, the speech refers to these,
as well as the regime of Saddam Hussein. It does to mean the people are
eliminated, but that the regime is stopped. He was proposing the "one state
solution" to the Israel/Palestine conflicts - a vote by everyone in the
former Palestine.
Bush and his confederates have distorted this to the "elimination of Jews".
This is sounding more and more like the pre-Iraq distortions. As a lame
duck, Bush can go quietly or roll the dice hoping for a biggie prior to 08.
If his past is any way to predict his future, the dice throw seems very
possible.”
And SALON had the following article in today’s edition:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/24/ahmadinejad/print.html
This is indeed scary stuff. The war drums in the media are beating as loudly as they did prior to Iraq, and with the same type of lies being advances as a reason for “pre-emptive attack”. Iran would retain the ability to sink tankers in the Gulf and thus oil prices would skyrocket. Oh eyes, the latest word is to expect an “October roll out” for the new product. War, that is…
Somewhere, I forget where, the oil deal mentioned in the SALON article had another item. A pipeline from Iran to China, certainly not what the Americans wish to see.
To me, the war in Iraq was a “perfect storm” type of scenario. A naïve U.S. president with no foreign affairs experience, bad advisors with an agenda that had not been accepted, a desire for revenge (the assassination attempt) and glory (war president), and, of course, oil. Not to bring the oil into the USA, for Canada supplies most of that, but to control it, especially with China. By 2040, barring unforeseen problems, China will be a superpower, India shortly after that. The USA now has a military technology agreement with India, but China? Not forgetting the stated desire of the neo-cons to retain American status as the sole superpower as long as possible, China also owns most of the US debt. Hmmmm…
It bothers me – it really bothers me – that the United States is once again moving towards a war not for its own interests, but for those of Israel. As has been commented on by many, the neo-cons have two factions. One of those is very pro-Israel and is, not surprisingly, mostly if not exclusively Jewish. No, this is not an anti-Semitic statement; it is simply the truth. Pearl, Wolfowitz, Firth and many more are Lukid party supporters in Israeli politics. The list of these is a long one. They offer advice to Israel often yet occupied major policy chairs in the USA. As Dyer has written, it is possible that when Americans find themselves in yet another war, they might be very upset to find that it is waged not in the interests of the United States, which has a large “stay-at-home” minded population, but on behalf of Israel. If indeed Iran does or is on the cusp of having a bomb, such a bomb would not be intended to be used against the USA but might be used against (or more correctly, to counter the threat of) the 200 or so nuclear weapons of Israel.
Another thought as a result of today’s news. The Americans, especially the reporter on “60 Minutes” last night, are very upset that Iran is providing weapons to the anti-American types in Iraq. Mad enough to go to war, it seems. Now, in the many, many years of the Cold War and continuing today, how many countries has the United States armed? In particular, how many countries pick up their planes, tanks and very sophisticated weapons from the USA? In days past, both the former USSR and the USA armed many countries and insurgents. This is unhappily part of life, and the USA is the biggest arms broker in the world. It recently announced massive sales to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel, who recently invaded and destroyed Lebanon; Saudi Arabia, a religious monarchy with no democratic leanings. And the US is mad at Iran for possibly providing some weapons to Shiite militia? Sorry, but if that is Bush’s reason for war, or even one of them, it speaks of the weakness of the American reasons for a war against Iran. Another false front, as we saw so recently in Iraq.
The drums, the same drums we heard four years ago, are beating. I hope they do no more that sound. It is not only Americans who will suffer as a result of the drums, but the whole world.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Northern Meandering
Every one or two months, Sonia and I - or myself alone – head down south to Kelowna.
For those not familiar with British Columbia geography, Kelowna is a city located on Okanagan Lake. The lake itself is over 100 miles long, running roughly north and south towards the southern part of B.C. It is dotted with towns, large and small. At the top of the lake is Vernon, then Oyama (named in honour of a Japanese admiral), Lakeside and Kelowna. To the south lie Westbank, Summerland, and Penticton. I have omitted a few. This is a desert made into an orchard by irrigation, and more recently into vineyards for wine making. The wines, especially the ice wine have made the Okanagan Valley famous.
Back in the fifties, when I first went to Kelowna, it was a sleepy little railway and agricultural town. No more. The population has boomed, with recreation year round from boating and swimming in the summer to skiing in the winter. As orchards gave way to wineries, all of the Okanagan towns started to attract retired types from all over Canada. Gated communities now dot the landscape as well as an ever-increasing number of high rise towers. Many have relocated from Vancouver, driving house prices up and up to that equal of Vancouver.
Quite a change from Prince George, where we now call home.
There are two main routes to travel and we tend to vary them. One way is south along the Caribou Trail (the old gold rush trail) which follows the Fraser River. For us, that means heading south to Quesnel, Williams Lake, 100 Mile House and finally Cashe Creek. A turn east takes you into Kamloops.
Heading east from Prince George, one goes for miles and miles with nothing but treed hills and mountains as far as the eye can see. Eventually, you get to McBride where one joins the Yellowhead Highway and follows it south along the Thompson River to Valemont, Clearwater and other small communities into Kamloops. The Fraser and Thompson join at Kamloops then heading south to Vancouver.
This trip, we headed east, enjoying cruise control as the road meandered with slow sleepy turns across the northern forests. No towns along this route, no gas stations or much of anything but trees. You travel for miles until reaching McBride, where the valley broadens out for farming and ranching. A short distance further east and you catch the Thompson and turn south. Unlike the muddy brown Fraser, the Thompson is a wonderful blue-green and it meanders along green valleys surrounded first by trees, then as you go further south, by desert, parched and dry yellow hills and sandstone. By the time you reach Kamloops, you are in ranching and rattlesnake country.
Kamloops has one favourite stop for us. At a Second Glance bookstore is located downtown but with easy parking. Not too large, it is crowded with mostly pocketbooks but it does have a fair selection of hardcovers at “reasonable” prices – not many bargains, but a good place to complete any writer in softcover. They have already provided me with all the Travis McGee books and now, the titles I needed for Jane Haddam. Anyone wanting a complete collection of Robert B. Parker in softcover could probably find all here, stashed away in boxes in the back.
Having left early – around 7:30 AM – we were in Kamloops by 2:00 PM so had lots of time to browse and still head along the way to Kelowna. Again there are choices. We selected the “scenic” route east almost to Salmon Arm on the Sushwap Lakes and then south over the hills to Vernon via Falkland. Falkland’s one (and perhaps only claim to fame is that Buddy Rich (“Come Along and Be My Party Doll”), the early rocker, settled here on a ranch after his brief fame. He died a year or so ago)
Vernon is at the northern tip of both Okanagan Lake and Kalamalka Lake. The two lakes are seperated by a ridge of hills and the townsite. The highway south takes you above Kalamalka – the “lake of many colours”. It is always beautiful, going from deep green to deep blue and all shades in-between. Oyama lies at its southern tip, and at the northern head of yet another lake. You soon get caught up in the new commercialization. Endless strip malls, car dealers and big box stores start here and continue all the way through Kelowna. While Kelowna is blessed by geography in the main, the negative is that all through traffic – and most commuter traffic as well - must go via the highway and bridge. Traffic snarls of two hours or more are not unusual. This after 800+ kilometers of driving
Having been a long-term visitor to Kelowna, I always stay at the same motel. While it has changed hands the staff have largely remained – for the day staff. Evenings are a different matter, and we arrived in the evening. Oh well, not all can go well. It seems that to rent a room following the new rules, one must either pay by credit card or, if paying by cash have sufficient room on your credit card for the full “deposit” of around $300. My credit cards rarely have that much free room unless I plan ahead. So we ended up not staying at our normal motel the first night, a problem rectified by the day staff the next morning. My goodness! It seems that one cannot travel anymore at all. Either that or you are restricted to the really skuzzy motels that neither demand a deposit nor clean up the rooms too often. The next trip, my funds go on my card. Cash, it seems, is dead.
All’s well that ends well. We moved the next morning and Sonia had her chance to swim in the pool during the afternoon.
And I have my medical appointments…
Next morning, it was another medical and then on the road again, this time a new route. We went west, up the Okanagan Connector to Merritt. Merritt is the home of the annual Mountain Music Festival, the downtown complete with paved stars for C&W performers who have appeared at the event. Then, instead of turning north to Logan Lake, we went west on Highway 8 to Spense’s Bridge and the Trans Canada Highway.
Highway 8 is a delight. It follows the Nicola River and is the perfect road for a sports car. I wish I was back in my little MGB, but the Caravan would do. So we twisted round corners, up high over the river then dropping down, around a few bends and more corners, and started all over again climbing the side of the hills. Sonia hung on and kept quiet. I was having great fun! There is not much on the road and scenery limited to a few lush and small valleys amongst the desert hilltops. Rock falls of sandstone and, closer to Spense’s Bridge, hoodoos of strange and out-of-this- world appearance. After an hour or so of total enjoyment (for me, the driver) we came into Spense’s Bridge by the railway, a strange assortment of old houses and buildings that once may have had a purpose.
Now north, on the Trans Canada to Ashcroft and Cashe Creek. Bleak country, round hills and jagged rock outcroppings. Hot, dry and looking like a western movie. Behind some of those hills is a giant landfill for Vancouver garbage.
We stopped in Cashe Creek for an ice cream. I needed a pick-me-up after the drive and we knew we simply had to get home that night. Ahead lay the Caribou Trail, the way to the Barkerville Gold Rush of 1858.
The stagecoach started off at Chase, a town just a few miles up the way. “Historic”, they call this place. I suppose it is but the antique stores were more junque. Billboards show the stages leaving and arriving – we simply passed through, knowing our next stop would be in one hundred miles, at One Hundred Mile House. Along the way, Eighty Mile, Ninety Mile – they seemed to run out of good names when the Rush was on. Still, the countryside was wonderful, treed pastures and old log cabins and barns. The Fraser just off to the left.
The Caribou is a very pretty area. Unlike the never-ending evergreens of Prince George, trees are mixed with small pastures and grazing horses. Occasionally, a small lake comes along, a creek or river.
Williams Lake is a nice town, with a charming downtown that curves along the top of the lake. Next stop, Quennel. It is the gateway to Barkerville and the gold rush of 1858. Barkerville and the charming stage stop, Cottonwood, lie to the east a few miles. While Quennel has a nice riverfront and parkland, the town is studded with pulp mills within the town limits.
The further north you go, the broader the valley, the more distant the hills. By the time you get close to Prince George, you are in flat farmlands, bordered by hills to be sure. You pass the “international” airport on the way in, then over the Fraser to the standard stretch of motels, strip malls and shopping centres. Of all the towns, Prince George is the biggest in the north, about 75,000. It has major depots for industrial supplies, logging, mining and farming equipment. And more pulp mills, this time a short distance out of town to the north.
Prince George is in the middle of nowhere. To the south, Vancouver is a ten to twelve hour drive. East is Edmonton, a bit closer; southeast is Calgary, almost the same distance. Westward is the Pacific and Prince Rupert – a longer trip. The last attempt we made was stopped due to a mudslide. To the north, Dawson Creek and Fort St. James and Fort Nelson. Nothing is close by.
Yet historically, the northern part of British Columbia was the first to have European visitors. Prince George was founded by Simon Fraser in 1780 or so after Alexander McKenzie had passed by a few years before. Then called “Fort George”, after George III, it slumbered as a fur trading post until the 1920s. It was part of New Caledonia, now northern British Columbia with the headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Fort St. James. We have been to Fort St. James, past Vanderhoff to the west and on the way to Prince Rupert. It is now a small village on the shores of Stewart Lake.
Paddlewheelers used to ply the waters of the Fraser from Quennel north past Fort George to the headwaters. With the land rush of the early century, South Fort George was south of the old Hudson’s Bay trading post, Central Fort George to the northwest. Haggling over where the railway station should go led to the purchase of the Native Reserve by the railway and the establishment of Prince George between the two. The arrival of the railway during World War One made the towns grow and eventually merge. (One result is a totally crazy pattern of streets in the older parts of town).
South Fort George, on the river, was home to bars and brothels; Central Fort George the establishment types. The Natives on the Reserve complained of drunks walking home to Central from South, one reason why they were happy to sell out.
For those not familiar with British Columbia geography, Kelowna is a city located on Okanagan Lake. The lake itself is over 100 miles long, running roughly north and south towards the southern part of B.C. It is dotted with towns, large and small. At the top of the lake is Vernon, then Oyama (named in honour of a Japanese admiral), Lakeside and Kelowna. To the south lie Westbank, Summerland, and Penticton. I have omitted a few. This is a desert made into an orchard by irrigation, and more recently into vineyards for wine making. The wines, especially the ice wine have made the Okanagan Valley famous.
Back in the fifties, when I first went to Kelowna, it was a sleepy little railway and agricultural town. No more. The population has boomed, with recreation year round from boating and swimming in the summer to skiing in the winter. As orchards gave way to wineries, all of the Okanagan towns started to attract retired types from all over Canada. Gated communities now dot the landscape as well as an ever-increasing number of high rise towers. Many have relocated from Vancouver, driving house prices up and up to that equal of Vancouver.
Quite a change from Prince George, where we now call home.
There are two main routes to travel and we tend to vary them. One way is south along the Caribou Trail (the old gold rush trail) which follows the Fraser River. For us, that means heading south to Quesnel, Williams Lake, 100 Mile House and finally Cashe Creek. A turn east takes you into Kamloops.
Heading east from Prince George, one goes for miles and miles with nothing but treed hills and mountains as far as the eye can see. Eventually, you get to McBride where one joins the Yellowhead Highway and follows it south along the Thompson River to Valemont, Clearwater and other small communities into Kamloops. The Fraser and Thompson join at Kamloops then heading south to Vancouver.
This trip, we headed east, enjoying cruise control as the road meandered with slow sleepy turns across the northern forests. No towns along this route, no gas stations or much of anything but trees. You travel for miles until reaching McBride, where the valley broadens out for farming and ranching. A short distance further east and you catch the Thompson and turn south. Unlike the muddy brown Fraser, the Thompson is a wonderful blue-green and it meanders along green valleys surrounded first by trees, then as you go further south, by desert, parched and dry yellow hills and sandstone. By the time you reach Kamloops, you are in ranching and rattlesnake country.
Kamloops has one favourite stop for us. At a Second Glance bookstore is located downtown but with easy parking. Not too large, it is crowded with mostly pocketbooks but it does have a fair selection of hardcovers at “reasonable” prices – not many bargains, but a good place to complete any writer in softcover. They have already provided me with all the Travis McGee books and now, the titles I needed for Jane Haddam. Anyone wanting a complete collection of Robert B. Parker in softcover could probably find all here, stashed away in boxes in the back.
Having left early – around 7:30 AM – we were in Kamloops by 2:00 PM so had lots of time to browse and still head along the way to Kelowna. Again there are choices. We selected the “scenic” route east almost to Salmon Arm on the Sushwap Lakes and then south over the hills to Vernon via Falkland. Falkland’s one (and perhaps only claim to fame is that Buddy Rich (“Come Along and Be My Party Doll”), the early rocker, settled here on a ranch after his brief fame. He died a year or so ago)
Vernon is at the northern tip of both Okanagan Lake and Kalamalka Lake. The two lakes are seperated by a ridge of hills and the townsite. The highway south takes you above Kalamalka – the “lake of many colours”. It is always beautiful, going from deep green to deep blue and all shades in-between. Oyama lies at its southern tip, and at the northern head of yet another lake. You soon get caught up in the new commercialization. Endless strip malls, car dealers and big box stores start here and continue all the way through Kelowna. While Kelowna is blessed by geography in the main, the negative is that all through traffic – and most commuter traffic as well - must go via the highway and bridge. Traffic snarls of two hours or more are not unusual. This after 800+ kilometers of driving
Having been a long-term visitor to Kelowna, I always stay at the same motel. While it has changed hands the staff have largely remained – for the day staff. Evenings are a different matter, and we arrived in the evening. Oh well, not all can go well. It seems that to rent a room following the new rules, one must either pay by credit card or, if paying by cash have sufficient room on your credit card for the full “deposit” of around $300. My credit cards rarely have that much free room unless I plan ahead. So we ended up not staying at our normal motel the first night, a problem rectified by the day staff the next morning. My goodness! It seems that one cannot travel anymore at all. Either that or you are restricted to the really skuzzy motels that neither demand a deposit nor clean up the rooms too often. The next trip, my funds go on my card. Cash, it seems, is dead.
All’s well that ends well. We moved the next morning and Sonia had her chance to swim in the pool during the afternoon.
And I have my medical appointments…
Next morning, it was another medical and then on the road again, this time a new route. We went west, up the Okanagan Connector to Merritt. Merritt is the home of the annual Mountain Music Festival, the downtown complete with paved stars for C&W performers who have appeared at the event. Then, instead of turning north to Logan Lake, we went west on Highway 8 to Spense’s Bridge and the Trans Canada Highway.
Highway 8 is a delight. It follows the Nicola River and is the perfect road for a sports car. I wish I was back in my little MGB, but the Caravan would do. So we twisted round corners, up high over the river then dropping down, around a few bends and more corners, and started all over again climbing the side of the hills. Sonia hung on and kept quiet. I was having great fun! There is not much on the road and scenery limited to a few lush and small valleys amongst the desert hilltops. Rock falls of sandstone and, closer to Spense’s Bridge, hoodoos of strange and out-of-this- world appearance. After an hour or so of total enjoyment (for me, the driver) we came into Spense’s Bridge by the railway, a strange assortment of old houses and buildings that once may have had a purpose.
Now north, on the Trans Canada to Ashcroft and Cashe Creek. Bleak country, round hills and jagged rock outcroppings. Hot, dry and looking like a western movie. Behind some of those hills is a giant landfill for Vancouver garbage.
We stopped in Cashe Creek for an ice cream. I needed a pick-me-up after the drive and we knew we simply had to get home that night. Ahead lay the Caribou Trail, the way to the Barkerville Gold Rush of 1858.
The stagecoach started off at Chase, a town just a few miles up the way. “Historic”, they call this place. I suppose it is but the antique stores were more junque. Billboards show the stages leaving and arriving – we simply passed through, knowing our next stop would be in one hundred miles, at One Hundred Mile House. Along the way, Eighty Mile, Ninety Mile – they seemed to run out of good names when the Rush was on. Still, the countryside was wonderful, treed pastures and old log cabins and barns. The Fraser just off to the left.
The Caribou is a very pretty area. Unlike the never-ending evergreens of Prince George, trees are mixed with small pastures and grazing horses. Occasionally, a small lake comes along, a creek or river.
Williams Lake is a nice town, with a charming downtown that curves along the top of the lake. Next stop, Quennel. It is the gateway to Barkerville and the gold rush of 1858. Barkerville and the charming stage stop, Cottonwood, lie to the east a few miles. While Quennel has a nice riverfront and parkland, the town is studded with pulp mills within the town limits.
The further north you go, the broader the valley, the more distant the hills. By the time you get close to Prince George, you are in flat farmlands, bordered by hills to be sure. You pass the “international” airport on the way in, then over the Fraser to the standard stretch of motels, strip malls and shopping centres. Of all the towns, Prince George is the biggest in the north, about 75,000. It has major depots for industrial supplies, logging, mining and farming equipment. And more pulp mills, this time a short distance out of town to the north.
Prince George is in the middle of nowhere. To the south, Vancouver is a ten to twelve hour drive. East is Edmonton, a bit closer; southeast is Calgary, almost the same distance. Westward is the Pacific and Prince Rupert – a longer trip. The last attempt we made was stopped due to a mudslide. To the north, Dawson Creek and Fort St. James and Fort Nelson. Nothing is close by.
Yet historically, the northern part of British Columbia was the first to have European visitors. Prince George was founded by Simon Fraser in 1780 or so after Alexander McKenzie had passed by a few years before. Then called “Fort George”, after George III, it slumbered as a fur trading post until the 1920s. It was part of New Caledonia, now northern British Columbia with the headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Fort St. James. We have been to Fort St. James, past Vanderhoff to the west and on the way to Prince Rupert. It is now a small village on the shores of Stewart Lake.
Paddlewheelers used to ply the waters of the Fraser from Quennel north past Fort George to the headwaters. With the land rush of the early century, South Fort George was south of the old Hudson’s Bay trading post, Central Fort George to the northwest. Haggling over where the railway station should go led to the purchase of the Native Reserve by the railway and the establishment of Prince George between the two. The arrival of the railway during World War One made the towns grow and eventually merge. (One result is a totally crazy pattern of streets in the older parts of town).
South Fort George, on the river, was home to bars and brothels; Central Fort George the establishment types. The Natives on the Reserve complained of drunks walking home to Central from South, one reason why they were happy to sell out.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Alice Dreger, Mike Bailey and Me
For the past five years - five years! - I have been embroiled in an academic feud. It has been one of the nastiest, dirtiest and ugliest wars I have ever witnessed, short of those actually fought with bombs and guns.
Recently, another academic write a "history" of this war, setting out the horrible tactics used by a group of three "politically correct" types. A brief outline is from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html?ei=5070&en=c422d8ed38d5dcb2&ex=1189569600&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1189447254-8i1nceAu9Ty+KsQT2rlYyA
Alice Dreger's epic paper on the war is found here:
http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdf
After being attacked with "yellow journalism" tactics similar to those of McCarthy, I wrote an article back in 2004 concerning this war. That article was printed in "Transgender Tapestry" by then editor Dallas Denny. It may be coincidence, but that was the last edition that Dallas edited. The next edition with a new editor published several attacks on me. My article may be found at:
http://www.ifge.org/Article298.phtml and
http://www.autogynephilia.org/I%20AM%20ARUNE.htm
After years of watching professionals being attacked by rabid politically correct "activists" it is a relief to have media focused on the foul means used to stifle expression of opinion. My own article details the methods used against me for merely supporting a theory. One of these "activists" uses an interesting technique. Andrea James, or someone action on her behest, writes an accusation to an e-group or newsgroup under an assumed name. The accusation is then picked up and broadcast over the Net as "truth" and spread as widely as possible. In my case, the accusation was that I was a "registered sex offender". Not true. But once posted on a newsgroup, that accusation took on a life. Andrea James then coyly reprinted it on her web pages and spread it to the four corners of the planet. Others - the "cohort" or herd - repeated it endlessly. I know of at least three times that the same tactic was used. Alice Dreger points out other similar tactics used against Dr. Bailey by James, McClosky and Conway.
Ugly. No other word comes even close.
Alice Dreger’s analysis of the “Great Transsexual War” (commenced with the publication of J. Michael Bailey’s “The Man Who Would be Queen” in 2003) has generated the anticipated reaction from some transsexual advocates and their followers. Wherever they gather on the Internet, Dreger has now been added to a long list of professionals and others who may be attacked at will.
Reason, that great capability mankind has to sort out issues, seems to be absent. Instead, raw emotion pours out from those who attacked Bailey in the past and now focus on Dr. Dreger.
Perhaps no one of these screeds is more illuminating than that posted by a former lawyer and current grad student, Katerina Rose from Texas. In the past, Rose has “reviewed” Bailey’s book. Her review (in “Transgender ‘Tapestry’”) ended on this note:
“The Man Who Would Be Queen is a quintessential example of the kind of disingenuous, misrepresenting, anti-scientific, life-threatening atrocity that can be perpetrated by someone with balls.”
One might conclude she did not like it.
Her current screed on Bailey starts out by a statement of her neutrality: “I have no personal connection to the controversy….” This conveniently overlooks her review (which is later quoted). Page Two leads her to arrive at a conclusion. “…There’s a bad smell in the air – the smell of the fix being in”. Remember, this is a supposedly neutral paper. Immediate after comes the comment that “we” must defend ourselves, for if we do not no one else will. The peril is Bailey’s book and the ideas it contains.
So much for neutrality.
Following that, a page or two which may be summarized as “You can judge a book by its cover” followed by “Our ends justify any means”, both rather strange positions for a lawyer, now a student of history, to take. Rose rehashes her objections to the theory as if this were the issue that prompted the NY Times, the National Post in Canada and other media to focus on this issue.
That is not the issue. Some may wish it was and many will try to make it the issue now, but it is clearly not.
Matters of religion and politics are barred from some tables. In our new age, we might include sexual orientation and gender identity. All of these are products, in one way or another, of how we think at our core. We use our religious and political “glasses” to view the world as we also do with sexual orientation and gender identity yet none have a litmus test for science to use. No lab results will conclude that a person was Christian or Muslim, liberal or conservative, gay or straight, or considered their brain to be male or female. Each of these is critical to our “core identity” yet are all products of the mind. Those products cannot be distilled down to a chemical test. Rather, they are expressed as ideas as we speak or write. So important is each of them that many have and will die in defense of their ideas or because of them. For these issues, mankind has reserved special horrors. Torture as in the Inquisition, religious wars, hot and cold wars, and hate crimes. We alone of all the species on this earth have the ability to create these divisions amongst us and the need to fight between ourselves as a result.
As it concerns Dreger’s article, this premise is seen as a motivation for the ugliness of the attacks both on her paper and on her personally.
A reading of the negative comments that now attack Dreger shows a strong need to shift the paradigm from the issues she writes about back to the topics of Bailey’s book or, more recently, Dreger's own work with the Intersexed. The article by Rose is typical. She almost totally ignores what Dreger presents as the issue and instead tries so hard to drag her readers back to the matter raised in Bailey’s book. The antics of Conway, James and McClosky are totally ignored. What she is doing is clear. “Hey! Look over here! This book was so very bad - “disingenuous, misrepresenting, anti-scientific, life-threatening atrocity” - that we will not even mention the tactics used to attack it”. In fact, not only was the book none of these things, her attempt to change the issues is lame and false. She, in common with her allies, is really saying, "Don’t look at what we have done. We saw a greater good. Our good justifies all the means we used to attain it”.
If that greater good was universal, perhaps that position, bad as it is, might hold merit. But others, many others, have found the book to be insightful and informative, as a search of comments on Amazon on Bailey's book clearly shows. Rather, there are many “good ends” that all could justify any means. Amongst nations, we see war as a result. Emotion and not reason (perhaps with motives not yet discovered) govern in such a case.
If one now reads almost all of the posts that attack Dreger one quickly finds that they all share this approach. Rose is not alone – she is simply the best of those targeting Dreger. Dr. Conway, the Lord of these Flies, remains mute; Dr. McClosky demands the right to censor before answering questions and refuses to look at the tactics used by his two co-leaders saying only – and carefully – that “I did nothing wrong”, clearly leaving the blame to James and Conway and all that followed. Need we say that none of these three remained mute when they filed charges against Bailey and made his life hell.
The issue is not Bailey’s book, Blanchard’s theory, or anything else from Nazism to conspiracies. Not now. The issue is the smear tactics and false charges made by Andrea James, Lynn Conway and Deirdre McClosky. They made these slanderous comments not simply against Bailey, but against any person, transsexual or not, who either supported the premises in Bailey’s book or his right to speak and publish. They promoted others to attack as well and a great many transsexuals did indeed do so. They all behaved like spoilt children, politically correct zealots who demanded total acceptance of their idea while repressing other concepts in a malicious and evil manner – by lies, half-truths and slander repeated endlessly.
Certainly the over-the-hill response in this instance demands some consideration. Might it not point to the lack of self-confidence and esteem of those who so relentlessly attacked? A person secure in their own concepts of self does not have the need to vilify and disparage other ideas in this manner. To me, if me alone, this speaks more of a deep insecurity of the inner being of such people. As a transsexual woman, I have no need to reinforce my being by attacking those who might express ideas about the reasons for gender identity issues. I am not threatened (as the mob here so clearly felt itself to be) by alternative ideas.
Conway and McClosky are both professors, retired to be sure. They especially should have known better. Andrea James, the transgender advocate and consultant, has made a business out of being transsexual, selling trinkets and self-published books and tapes from her web site to the unwary. One can only hope that this has been her moment of fame.
Those who followed the threesome worked into a mob-like frenzy by mythical monsters and threats to their being and not excused. As with any mob, one can only hold the leaders accountable. The allies of the threesome – and there were many – were simply mindless drones manipulated to do as mobs do. One always hopes that they have learnt a lesson. Mayhaps so. Some will go to their graves convinced of the nobility of their cause and see their ugly tactics as “necessary means”. Others might reflect that the next time they might even read the book or article condemned before denouncing it and attacking others.
One is drawn to the images at the close of several old Western movies. The sheriff and a few trusty helpers have defended against a mob. The three ringleaders have been shown to be false and misguided. The mob shuffles its feet, heads down, recognising that they have been led astray and sheepishly regretting what they have done. A few still want to or need to believe even when shame and shame alone would put that thought from their heads.
Sheriff Dreger has done her task well.
Religion, politics, gender identity and sexual orientation. Not topics for the dinner table…
Recently, another academic write a "history" of this war, setting out the horrible tactics used by a group of three "politically correct" types. A brief outline is from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html?ei=5070&en=c422d8ed38d5dcb2&ex=1189569600&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1189447254-8i1nceAu9Ty+KsQT2rlYyA
Alice Dreger's epic paper on the war is found here:
http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdf
After being attacked with "yellow journalism" tactics similar to those of McCarthy, I wrote an article back in 2004 concerning this war. That article was printed in "Transgender Tapestry" by then editor Dallas Denny. It may be coincidence, but that was the last edition that Dallas edited. The next edition with a new editor published several attacks on me. My article may be found at:
http://www.ifge.org/Article298.phtml and
http://www.autogynephilia.org/I%20AM%20ARUNE.htm
After years of watching professionals being attacked by rabid politically correct "activists" it is a relief to have media focused on the foul means used to stifle expression of opinion. My own article details the methods used against me for merely supporting a theory. One of these "activists" uses an interesting technique. Andrea James, or someone action on her behest, writes an accusation to an e-group or newsgroup under an assumed name. The accusation is then picked up and broadcast over the Net as "truth" and spread as widely as possible. In my case, the accusation was that I was a "registered sex offender". Not true. But once posted on a newsgroup, that accusation took on a life. Andrea James then coyly reprinted it on her web pages and spread it to the four corners of the planet. Others - the "cohort" or herd - repeated it endlessly. I know of at least three times that the same tactic was used. Alice Dreger points out other similar tactics used against Dr. Bailey by James, McClosky and Conway.
Ugly. No other word comes even close.
Alice Dreger’s analysis of the “Great Transsexual War” (commenced with the publication of J. Michael Bailey’s “The Man Who Would be Queen” in 2003) has generated the anticipated reaction from some transsexual advocates and their followers. Wherever they gather on the Internet, Dreger has now been added to a long list of professionals and others who may be attacked at will.
Reason, that great capability mankind has to sort out issues, seems to be absent. Instead, raw emotion pours out from those who attacked Bailey in the past and now focus on Dr. Dreger.
Perhaps no one of these screeds is more illuminating than that posted by a former lawyer and current grad student, Katerina Rose from Texas. In the past, Rose has “reviewed” Bailey’s book. Her review (in “Transgender ‘Tapestry’”) ended on this note:
“The Man Who Would Be Queen is a quintessential example of the kind of disingenuous, misrepresenting, anti-scientific, life-threatening atrocity that can be perpetrated by someone with balls.”
One might conclude she did not like it.
Her current screed on Bailey starts out by a statement of her neutrality: “I have no personal connection to the controversy….” This conveniently overlooks her review (which is later quoted). Page Two leads her to arrive at a conclusion. “…There’s a bad smell in the air – the smell of the fix being in”. Remember, this is a supposedly neutral paper. Immediate after comes the comment that “we” must defend ourselves, for if we do not no one else will. The peril is Bailey’s book and the ideas it contains.
So much for neutrality.
Following that, a page or two which may be summarized as “You can judge a book by its cover” followed by “Our ends justify any means”, both rather strange positions for a lawyer, now a student of history, to take. Rose rehashes her objections to the theory as if this were the issue that prompted the NY Times, the National Post in Canada and other media to focus on this issue.
That is not the issue. Some may wish it was and many will try to make it the issue now, but it is clearly not.
Matters of religion and politics are barred from some tables. In our new age, we might include sexual orientation and gender identity. All of these are products, in one way or another, of how we think at our core. We use our religious and political “glasses” to view the world as we also do with sexual orientation and gender identity yet none have a litmus test for science to use. No lab results will conclude that a person was Christian or Muslim, liberal or conservative, gay or straight, or considered their brain to be male or female. Each of these is critical to our “core identity” yet are all products of the mind. Those products cannot be distilled down to a chemical test. Rather, they are expressed as ideas as we speak or write. So important is each of them that many have and will die in defense of their ideas or because of them. For these issues, mankind has reserved special horrors. Torture as in the Inquisition, religious wars, hot and cold wars, and hate crimes. We alone of all the species on this earth have the ability to create these divisions amongst us and the need to fight between ourselves as a result.
As it concerns Dreger’s article, this premise is seen as a motivation for the ugliness of the attacks both on her paper and on her personally.
A reading of the negative comments that now attack Dreger shows a strong need to shift the paradigm from the issues she writes about back to the topics of Bailey’s book or, more recently, Dreger's own work with the Intersexed. The article by Rose is typical. She almost totally ignores what Dreger presents as the issue and instead tries so hard to drag her readers back to the matter raised in Bailey’s book. The antics of Conway, James and McClosky are totally ignored. What she is doing is clear. “Hey! Look over here! This book was so very bad - “disingenuous, misrepresenting, anti-scientific, life-threatening atrocity” - that we will not even mention the tactics used to attack it”. In fact, not only was the book none of these things, her attempt to change the issues is lame and false. She, in common with her allies, is really saying, "Don’t look at what we have done. We saw a greater good. Our good justifies all the means we used to attain it”.
If that greater good was universal, perhaps that position, bad as it is, might hold merit. But others, many others, have found the book to be insightful and informative, as a search of comments on Amazon on Bailey's book clearly shows. Rather, there are many “good ends” that all could justify any means. Amongst nations, we see war as a result. Emotion and not reason (perhaps with motives not yet discovered) govern in such a case.
If one now reads almost all of the posts that attack Dreger one quickly finds that they all share this approach. Rose is not alone – she is simply the best of those targeting Dreger. Dr. Conway, the Lord of these Flies, remains mute; Dr. McClosky demands the right to censor before answering questions and refuses to look at the tactics used by his two co-leaders saying only – and carefully – that “I did nothing wrong”, clearly leaving the blame to James and Conway and all that followed. Need we say that none of these three remained mute when they filed charges against Bailey and made his life hell.
The issue is not Bailey’s book, Blanchard’s theory, or anything else from Nazism to conspiracies. Not now. The issue is the smear tactics and false charges made by Andrea James, Lynn Conway and Deirdre McClosky. They made these slanderous comments not simply against Bailey, but against any person, transsexual or not, who either supported the premises in Bailey’s book or his right to speak and publish. They promoted others to attack as well and a great many transsexuals did indeed do so. They all behaved like spoilt children, politically correct zealots who demanded total acceptance of their idea while repressing other concepts in a malicious and evil manner – by lies, half-truths and slander repeated endlessly.
Certainly the over-the-hill response in this instance demands some consideration. Might it not point to the lack of self-confidence and esteem of those who so relentlessly attacked? A person secure in their own concepts of self does not have the need to vilify and disparage other ideas in this manner. To me, if me alone, this speaks more of a deep insecurity of the inner being of such people. As a transsexual woman, I have no need to reinforce my being by attacking those who might express ideas about the reasons for gender identity issues. I am not threatened (as the mob here so clearly felt itself to be) by alternative ideas.
Conway and McClosky are both professors, retired to be sure. They especially should have known better. Andrea James, the transgender advocate and consultant, has made a business out of being transsexual, selling trinkets and self-published books and tapes from her web site to the unwary. One can only hope that this has been her moment of fame.
Those who followed the threesome worked into a mob-like frenzy by mythical monsters and threats to their being and not excused. As with any mob, one can only hold the leaders accountable. The allies of the threesome – and there were many – were simply mindless drones manipulated to do as mobs do. One always hopes that they have learnt a lesson. Mayhaps so. Some will go to their graves convinced of the nobility of their cause and see their ugly tactics as “necessary means”. Others might reflect that the next time they might even read the book or article condemned before denouncing it and attacking others.
One is drawn to the images at the close of several old Western movies. The sheriff and a few trusty helpers have defended against a mob. The three ringleaders have been shown to be false and misguided. The mob shuffles its feet, heads down, recognising that they have been led astray and sheepishly regretting what they have done. A few still want to or need to believe even when shame and shame alone would put that thought from their heads.
Sheriff Dreger has done her task well.
Religion, politics, gender identity and sexual orientation. Not topics for the dinner table…
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Facebook Albums
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4814&l=1c54c&id=668946018
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=6547&l=d503f&id=668946018
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7349&l=32851&id=668946018
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11333&l=7b0ba&id=668946018
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11336&l=7dc2b&id=668946018
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11334&l=a65e5&id=668946018
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9754&l=881bf&id=668946018
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9769&l=a14fd&id=668946018
The Hunt for Nick Tosches
The Hunt for NICK TOSCHES
I “discovered” the books of Nick Tosches quite by accident, as oft-times happens. A local thrift had a copy of “IN THE HAND OF DANTE” which caught my eye, and especially standing there reading the very first sentence:
“Louie took off his bra and threw it on the coffin”.
That grabs one’s attention. The book turned into a rollicking good time, with strange passages about the publishing industry, origins of words and symbols, all carried along with a gangster plot and the life if Dante. You really had to be there, as the saying goes. Somehow, Nick makes this all hang together in a very satisfactory manner.
Intrigued, I wanted to read some of his other books.
Most of what Nick writes is about music. His first book was on the history of Country Music; his second on the roots of Rook ‘n Roll. But what he really writes well are biographies. His bio of Jerry Lee Lewis, the rival of Elvis until poor Jerry Lee made the mistake of taking his bride on a tour in England (she was 13 at the time). “The Killer” was a phenomena, as big as Elvis and perhaps more talented. This bio puts you there, every step of the way.
Other bios have filled the Nick Tosches list of books. Perhaps the best for reliving the fifties and early sixties is his wonderful bio of Dean Martin. The story of Martin and Lewis, their rise in the entertainment world and separate careers thereafter, is a legend made real. Tosches also follows his Italian roots to do a bio of a banker, God’s Banker. A bio of Sonny Liston, the boxer and others followed.
Done only for the money and not a good book at all is his bio of a musical duo – Hall and Oates. More a publicity rag than a bio, this rare item is sough after by the fans of the duo still. “Dangerous Dances” is not a book Tosches regards with any high esteem.
Nick is also a poet, perhaps the last of the “beat” poets. There are a few books of his poems and, more interesting, several CDs of his poems with music. Close your eyes and travel back into the coffeehouses of yore.
In 1988, Tosches drew upon his New Jersey and New York “connections” to produce his first novel, and the first of a small series of three novels linked in a Tosches manner. These are hard-edged novels following the drug trade and the gangs that operate them. “Cut Numbers” came first followed by “Trinities” and then “In the Hand of Dante”. Trinities used an interesting approach. The Advance Reader’s Copy was presented in a brown butcher paper wrapping with the logo “Double Uniglobe Brand” – a mock brick of heroin.
As Nick is an Associate Editor of “Vanity Fair”, my favourite magazine, his articles appear there now as they have in “Rolling Stone” in the past. He gets sent to interesting places and reports on them – Japan and the sushi and fish industry there, Bahrain and the fantastic hotels. Some of his articles are gathered in the “The Nick Tosches Reader” volume, and they are truly all over the map. One article for Vanity Fair tracks efforts to find the last opium den and was made into a small volume on its own, the ARC presented in a small plastine package, as would be a small amount of opium.
Early American minstrels form the subject of one book, which I found hard to follow lacking any sense of the music. I think that Nick’s books on music would be enhanced if he also produced a CD to accompany each so a reader removed from the archives of such music might be able to follow the test. This is especially so with “Where Dead Voices Gather”, which is both a bio of Emmett Miller and a tale of the minstrel songs of the 1800s and 1900s.
His last book “King of the Jews: The Arnold Rothstein Story” is the bio of Rothstein, plus a bit more. The first four chapters discuss the translations of the bible, some later chapters branch off to eulogize his recently deceased friend and fellow writer, Hubert Selby, Jr. You really have to follow his mind as it goes along.
Nick is sometimes billed as the “bad boy of lit”, the leader of the “grit lit” movement and “one of the greatest living American writers". Fine and good. I knew of no other readers who had read any of his books. Few had heard of him in “these parts”. What a delight to collect!
So, with all that in mind as an introduction, I am out to track down the elusive Mr. Tosches. Having managed to gather all of his books, the next necessary step for me was to have them signed by him (A form of madness reached in the penultimate stages of bookaholicism).
His web site was nice, but gave no way of contacting him. Yes, he did write for Vanity Fair and was listed as an Associate Editor, but posts sent to them remained unanswered. No, what was needed as a small bit of originality, something that matched his insane way of telling a tale.
On the Net, one interviewer stated that he met Nick in a wonderful Italian restaruarnt in New York – one of those places I shall never see where people have to line up to get in. Nick has lunch there daily, the interviewer stated. Indeed, Nick wrote several passages in a cookbook produced by the owner.
So – a solution! I wrote a nice e-mail to the restaurant, asking if they could print it up and give it to “Pope Nick” on his next appearance, together with a pen and some paper. I added that there was a post box not too far from their front door.
A week later, a parchment arrived. Perhaps this was the fancy paper they used for daily specials, but it was very rich in texture and bore a wonderful inscription from Nick Tosche for my copy of “In the Hand of Dante”. Some time later, I wrote back to the restaurant and asked if he would mind signing bookplates for all the books; he replied with a postcard saying “yes”. The bookplates were sent and returned shortly thereafter.
Which gives me perhaps one of the only collections of the complete words of Nick Tosches in the world, all signed and pristine. The world is not breaking down my door to get them, but I am happy to have enjoyed this writer and made a little contact.
I “discovered” the books of Nick Tosches quite by accident, as oft-times happens. A local thrift had a copy of “IN THE HAND OF DANTE” which caught my eye, and especially standing there reading the very first sentence:
“Louie took off his bra and threw it on the coffin”.
That grabs one’s attention. The book turned into a rollicking good time, with strange passages about the publishing industry, origins of words and symbols, all carried along with a gangster plot and the life if Dante. You really had to be there, as the saying goes. Somehow, Nick makes this all hang together in a very satisfactory manner.
Intrigued, I wanted to read some of his other books.
Most of what Nick writes is about music. His first book was on the history of Country Music; his second on the roots of Rook ‘n Roll. But what he really writes well are biographies. His bio of Jerry Lee Lewis, the rival of Elvis until poor Jerry Lee made the mistake of taking his bride on a tour in England (she was 13 at the time). “The Killer” was a phenomena, as big as Elvis and perhaps more talented. This bio puts you there, every step of the way.
Other bios have filled the Nick Tosches list of books. Perhaps the best for reliving the fifties and early sixties is his wonderful bio of Dean Martin. The story of Martin and Lewis, their rise in the entertainment world and separate careers thereafter, is a legend made real. Tosches also follows his Italian roots to do a bio of a banker, God’s Banker. A bio of Sonny Liston, the boxer and others followed.
Done only for the money and not a good book at all is his bio of a musical duo – Hall and Oates. More a publicity rag than a bio, this rare item is sough after by the fans of the duo still. “Dangerous Dances” is not a book Tosches regards with any high esteem.
Nick is also a poet, perhaps the last of the “beat” poets. There are a few books of his poems and, more interesting, several CDs of his poems with music. Close your eyes and travel back into the coffeehouses of yore.
In 1988, Tosches drew upon his New Jersey and New York “connections” to produce his first novel, and the first of a small series of three novels linked in a Tosches manner. These are hard-edged novels following the drug trade and the gangs that operate them. “Cut Numbers” came first followed by “Trinities” and then “In the Hand of Dante”. Trinities used an interesting approach. The Advance Reader’s Copy was presented in a brown butcher paper wrapping with the logo “Double Uniglobe Brand” – a mock brick of heroin.
As Nick is an Associate Editor of “Vanity Fair”, my favourite magazine, his articles appear there now as they have in “Rolling Stone” in the past. He gets sent to interesting places and reports on them – Japan and the sushi and fish industry there, Bahrain and the fantastic hotels. Some of his articles are gathered in the “The Nick Tosches Reader” volume, and they are truly all over the map. One article for Vanity Fair tracks efforts to find the last opium den and was made into a small volume on its own, the ARC presented in a small plastine package, as would be a small amount of opium.
Early American minstrels form the subject of one book, which I found hard to follow lacking any sense of the music. I think that Nick’s books on music would be enhanced if he also produced a CD to accompany each so a reader removed from the archives of such music might be able to follow the test. This is especially so with “Where Dead Voices Gather”, which is both a bio of Emmett Miller and a tale of the minstrel songs of the 1800s and 1900s.
His last book “King of the Jews: The Arnold Rothstein Story” is the bio of Rothstein, plus a bit more. The first four chapters discuss the translations of the bible, some later chapters branch off to eulogize his recently deceased friend and fellow writer, Hubert Selby, Jr. You really have to follow his mind as it goes along.
Nick is sometimes billed as the “bad boy of lit”, the leader of the “grit lit” movement and “one of the greatest living American writers". Fine and good. I knew of no other readers who had read any of his books. Few had heard of him in “these parts”. What a delight to collect!
So, with all that in mind as an introduction, I am out to track down the elusive Mr. Tosches. Having managed to gather all of his books, the next necessary step for me was to have them signed by him (A form of madness reached in the penultimate stages of bookaholicism).
His web site was nice, but gave no way of contacting him. Yes, he did write for Vanity Fair and was listed as an Associate Editor, but posts sent to them remained unanswered. No, what was needed as a small bit of originality, something that matched his insane way of telling a tale.
On the Net, one interviewer stated that he met Nick in a wonderful Italian restaruarnt in New York – one of those places I shall never see where people have to line up to get in. Nick has lunch there daily, the interviewer stated. Indeed, Nick wrote several passages in a cookbook produced by the owner.
So – a solution! I wrote a nice e-mail to the restaurant, asking if they could print it up and give it to “Pope Nick” on his next appearance, together with a pen and some paper. I added that there was a post box not too far from their front door.
A week later, a parchment arrived. Perhaps this was the fancy paper they used for daily specials, but it was very rich in texture and bore a wonderful inscription from Nick Tosche for my copy of “In the Hand of Dante”. Some time later, I wrote back to the restaurant and asked if he would mind signing bookplates for all the books; he replied with a postcard saying “yes”. The bookplates were sent and returned shortly thereafter.
Which gives me perhaps one of the only collections of the complete words of Nick Tosches in the world, all signed and pristine. The world is not breaking down my door to get them, but I am happy to have enjoyed this writer and made a little contact.
The Hunt for Geoff Brown
[Note: as a book collector, I enjoy finding all of a writer's books, often in used book bins, thrift stores and lastly on line. Gathered on this Blog will be the stories of actually having these first editions signed by the writer, which means that one has to find the writer - an engaging pursuit.]
THE HUNT FOR GEOFF BROWN
If you talk to a transsexual woman older than 40, changes are she remembers having read a novel that dates back to the 1960s by the strange title of “I Want What I Want”. Perhaps you have seen a black-and-white movie on late night television by the same name.
Most of us have
What makes this book so very interesting is that it is the first – the very first - novel to deal in a realistic manner with a new minority then emerging – transsexuals. It dates back to 1966, the year before Christine Jorgensen published her autobiography and Dr. Harry Benjamin published his groundbreaking medical book, "The Transsexual Phenomena”. Gore Vidal’s spoof “Myra Breckenridge” was not yet published – it would follow in 1968. (The first book, in the form of a novel but what we would today call a “fiction non-fiction”, on transsexuality was “Man Into Woman”, by Niels Hoyer an account of the first known sex reassignment surgery in 1931 Germany. Very rare, it was reprinted as a pocketbook in the early 1950s and recently reprinted in the UK by Blue Boat Publishers. Novels dealing with intersexed people are more common. From Gary Jennings and his "Raptor" to the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides and arguably many in science fiction).
“I Want What I Want” was published first in the United Kingdom, then in the USA. It made little impact. A late paperback copy was released in both countries, with not much more impact. The writer, Geoff Brown, was unknown and new to novels (“I Want” was his first and only one more would follow and that almost ten years later).
Still, the subject of transsexuality had been given many pages of print and a few salacious pocketbooks before 1967. It was not an unknown topic but viewed as a very strange one. In fact, as novels go, those that involve realistic portrayals of transsexual women are still rare. Those by males ("Two Strand River" by Keith Mallard in 1974, "The Danish Girl" by David Eberhoff and "Trans Sister Radio" by Chris Bohjalian in 2000) have made the trade press. Those by transsexual women writers such a Pamela Hayes are generally found, with great difficulty, amongst the publish on demand press.
So where did “I Want What I Want” come from? Who is the writer and is he (or she) dead? Did he transition?
From what is available, we know very little. In fact, as much as we know is contained on the back cover of “I Want…”. “Geoff Brown”, we are told, “was born in Bridlington in Yorkshire in 1932 [making him now 77] and still lives there. This is his first novel and he at work on a second”. That second novel was in fact written and published, in 1975. On the blurb of that book we find out a bit more, but not much:
“Geoff Brown is a Yorkshireman he says he is stuck with it so he might as well be proud of it When questioned, he said that he though he might be able to write what were taken for autobiographical novels, as yet he did not seem to have any autobiography of his own. In the photograph above [see below] it is just possible to discern the scar on the right side of his nose that resulted from a misunderstanding with a neurotic dog. (“I got my nose between his teeth and I wouldn’t let go”). His hobbies are chess, war games and jeering at certain television programmers”
Blurb from the cover of “My Struggle”,
the second and final novel by Geoff Brown
That was in 1975. After that, nothing.
Two blurbs and silence.
Formal reviews of “I Want…” were promising. Punch, Sunday Times, the New Statesman and Saturday Review used words like “promising”, charm”, “intelligence”, “Powerful and moving”, “honesty”, “compassion and glowing with truth”. For the 1960s, that was great! In fact, for any novel about transsexuality today, that would be wonderful!
What the book did do is inspire a young actress to look upon it as her vehicle to stardom. Anne Heywood, a young actress with some film credits and a former Miss GB, saw “I Want…” as her golden opportunity. She was in a position to do something about it as well, for her husband of the time was a film producer, Raymond Stross. Stross had many pictures under his belt in the UK. According to what is suspected, Anne put the flea in his ear and he bought the movie rights from Geoff Brown, hiring John Dexter to direct (Dexter would go on to win fame – and awards – on Broadway but “I Want…” was the last film he directed).
The Stross project moved ahead, as movies do, slowly. In the meantime, back in the YUUU ESSS AHHH, other movies were a-makin’ – and faster. Gore Vidal’s “Myra Breckenridge” had shocked the public, surprised his publishers (who even ordered cheap paper as they thought the book would fail) and become a movie with Raquel Welch released in 1970. On a more serious side, Paramount had bought the rights to Jorgensen’s biography (saving her financial life at the same time) to make “The Christine Jorgensen Story”, also released in 1970. Both of those had a big advantage – they were each in living colour. Poor “I Want…” was a black-and-white film.
Poor Myra. Vidal was hired to do the screenplay and then replaced. The effort was to decline even worse:
“Rex Reed says that MYRA BRECKINRIDGE was a film made by a bunch of people who hid in their dressing rooms while waiting for their lawyers to return their calls.
The film itself demonstrates the accuracy of these comments. The basics of Vidal's story are there, but not only has the story been shorn of all broader implications, it seems to have no point in and of itself. Everything runs off in multiple directions, nothing connects, and numerous scenes undercut whatever logic previous scenes might have had. And while director Sarne repeatedly states in his commentary that he wanted to make the film as pure farce, the only laughs generated are accidental”.
“User Comments” from IMDB
“I Want…” had a happier time with the screenwriter. Brown was not up to the task, although he is credited. An English novelist, one who created a stir when she wrote the first classic book involving homosexuality (“Leather Boys”), Gillian Freeman was set to work. She had worked with Stross before, bringing her own book to the screen, but this was different and she should have known better. After all, the star was Anne Heywood, who just happened to be married to Stross. By the time it all ended, both Brown and Freeman thought they were off the hook for the result. The producers (i.e. Stross) had changed everything.
Transsexuality was a tough subject back in those days and remains so today, even with “Boy’s Don’t Cry” and “Transamerica”. So by the time “I Want…”hit the screens, the topic as well as the b&w treatment sank like a stone. Still, transsexual women who saw it, including myself, considered it a classic.
Making matters more confusing for anyone who cared to look, there were several other “Geoff Brown"’s who elected to write books on Black music, biking and other subjects. The name is certainly not uncommon. After his second novel failed to generate many sales, our Geoff Brown simply stopped writing and disappeared from view.
For over 25 years…
Being a transsexual woman, I had seen “I Want…” on late night television (it was actually on at 2:30am, but I stayed up to watch). Being a bookaholic, I wanted and finally found a copy of the first edition, which was becoming rather pricy by 2000. Even the paperback copies were going for over $50 by then, although thinking Brown was dead had the book show up free on the Internet, reproduced without concern for royalties, I suspect. After hunting down one Geoff Brown after another, none of them the “right” Geoff Brown, I had pretty well given up when my partner and I moved north to Prince George, some 700 miles north of Vancouver. (“You left Vancouver, the world’s most liveable/wonderful/best traveller’s/best business traveller’s city!!!” Yep. Getting too pricy, trendy and too warm. We needed cheap, basic and cold. Just our luck to move north when global warming gave Prince George the warmest winter on record. We may have to head further north soon…).
After the move, I revisited the matter of the missing Brown. As publishers and more had failed me, I headed off in another direction – after the movie types. Now, Stross was dead. Anne Heywood had moved to the USA, married a former NYC D.A. and moved to Hollywood, made many more films with small roles up to 1988, and then… Nothing.
All of the other members of the cast had died, it seemed. But then, a bit of luck. I found that Gillian Freeman had published a new book, her tenth. I write to her publisher (a very small publisher on the English coast), itself a bit of a strange step, and got back word that Gillian had had a stroke, but that her publisher, the dear, would copy my post and send it on to her for reply.
Several weeks past. Then the postie brought a rather thick envelope postmarked from the UK. It was from Gillian. Unable to type after her stroke, she had kindly taken the time to dictate a letter and have her husband type it! Even better, she had not given all her papers to Reading University, as my Internet research had disclosed, but had kept some. She enclosed with her letter copies of letters she had received from Brown during the writing, filming and release of “I Want What I Want”, the movie. The bad news was the last correspondence she had with Brown was back in the 1970s. She had no idea of where he was – dead or more likely transitioned with a new name, she thought.
My many trips to England had taught me some of the local culture. One fact I remembered. We here in North America pull up stakes and move every second year, it seems. But in the UK, many people live all their lives, from birth to death, in the same house. Brown’s letters to Freeman, from the 1970s, had a return address. Was it possible???
A bit more Internet digging. A search for the town and it has a bulletin board! So I asked if someone would look up Geoff Brown in the local telephone directory – just to tell me if one was shown at the old address. A reply came back in a few hours. “G. Brown” was listed. Another search with Brit Mail and Brit telephone gave me the postal code and telephone number.
Delighted, I even look up a map of the town, to pinpoint Brown’s home, nosey parker that I might be.
And I wrote a very nice letter.
And I waited…
A week passed. Then two. During that short time, my partner and I changed our phone plans and could now phone anywhere in the UK for a mere $.10 per minute. I did have Brown’s telephone number, thanks to Brit Telephone. With temptation steering my course, I picked up the phone one morning (allowing for the time differences and such) and dialled the number, getting the distinctive British telephone ring.
It was picked up!
“’Allo. Who’s this?” said a decidedly elderly female voice.
I introduced myself and stated my purpose.
“Oh, you’re that Canadian who write to my Geoff, are you? Oh yes, he got you letter. Matter of fact, he’s up stairs now writing a reply. I’m his wife”.
Now, the voice was a tad cold and unfriendly, but even finding that Geoff had a wife and was thus, presumably, still a man was a step forward. I asked if I could speak with him directly.
“Auw no. He’s up the stairs, isn’t he? “ad his supper and went back up stairs. Can’t get him downstairs now, where the tele is”.
Having some experience with the elderly and a little with the narrow old English staircases, I could appreciate that this might be difficult. Still, I had to gain some ground with this formidable character. Now, when confronted with this type of wall, I cast about with subjects, hoping to establish some rapport. I hit on the third – dogs.
“Oh yes, dogs are nice. Geoff and I have three big dogs” and Mrs. Brown and I were on our way to establishing a nice relationship.
Through our brief conversation, I found that Geoff had only written two books, been dissatisfied with the results, so simply ceased writing. He still lived in the same house where the book had been written, some thirty plus years after. In fact, I suspect he was born in the same house, the same town, and the same room! Mrs. Brown and I had a nice little chat and she promised that she would see to it that Geoff did indeed reply to my letter. The amazing thing was that he did!
Now, pause there. Here is a man who wrote two books, had no continuing interest in either the books or writing, and who suddenly gets a letter then a call form across the seas about the damn thing, filed long away in the past.
The next week, the postman brought another letter from England, this won from Mr. Geoff brown himself. Not only did he send the letter, but also it was obviously typed on the same typewriter that had been used for the correspondence with Gillian Freeman, back in the 1970s. In fact, it looked like the same typewriter ribbon!
History in my hands.
Now, Geoff signed some bookplates for my copies of his two books, thus making mine the only autographed copies of the “Complete Works of Geoff Brown”, something only a book collector could appreciate or even understand. Attempts to ferret out more concerning how he had come to write such a book were fruitless. In fact, after some attempts, I finally tried to enlist the aid of the Gender Trust of the UK, writing to them and suggesting they do an interview to record some of our history, scant as that is, as a minority. They did indeed delegate someone to do so, but a solid brick wall emerged when they wrote to set up the interview. Geoff replied that he had once granted permission foe an interview, but the two fellows who showed up to complete the task were officious, in white shirt and dark suits, and were in his belief either CIS or FBI. Naturally, that removed any chance for a further interview. He had tried it once, then books were tried twice, and he did not need to repeat the performance.
So, we know that Geoff did not transition, is married, has three big dogs, and… What else. Well, The second book, My Struggle is rather like “One Flew Over the CooCoo’s Nest”. Geoff writes the book from inside the mind of a schizophrenic, and it is a chilling read indeed. One example – the young hero is playing with his brother when parents are away. For fun, he ties his brother to the staircase railings and then tortures him. His parents, upon their return, are upset. “Why?” he wonders. Just a nice thing to do on a slow boring day.
Geoff has lived all his life in a small seaside town. While I cannot say this for sure, certain indications suggest that he lives in the hours his parents lived in. During his late teens, a shipwreck just off the coast had a profound impact on young Geoff. The large fishing vessel had run aground on a reef and was pounded for days before it sank with all hands. Rescuers could not scale down the steep cliffs in the bad weather. This real incident plays a role in Geoff’s second book and certainly for a time during the 1970s was an obsession. He wanted to write a new “Moby Dick” using the wreck of the Skegness. That book was never written; instead, the news reports of the sinking appear as a close to “My Struggle”. A book that Geoff “blames” on an American editor who had joined the publishing house.
Geoff has never seen the movie version of “I Want…” - not even today. When the movie was being made, he had sided with the producer to use a female to play the lead. Gillian had wanted a male actor. The producers ripped apart Gillian’s screenplay and Geoff’s book, as Geoff and Gillian agree.
Well and good, the mystery remains. This book was written in 1964 (publication was two years later) at the height of the Beatle craze. There was almost nothing publish on transsexual treatment or sex reassignment surgery outside of the press – no books, autobiographies, or medical studies. Geoff was married at the time. How was Brown able to convey so much of the transsexual world from a small coastal English town? Did he, as Gillian Freeman suggests in one letter, want to transition, to become a woman? Did he know those that did? There were few transsexuals in England at that time. April Ashley was certainly known but few others and, I suspect, none at all I Brown’s location. Still, the book clearly shows a rather close understanding of what a transsexual feels and the options then coming available.
Both of his books do show a very intimate knowledge of the subject and it could be that such was his special talent – taking the imagined life of others and making it real on paper. Contrary to that concept, many first novels are highly autobiographical. The locations used in “I Want.” are certainly drawn directly from Geoff’s own “neck of the woods”. If “I Want...” was solely imagination, where did he find out more? No books were available, as none had yet been printed.
We shall never know. Geoff Brown is over seventy now and not about to grant an interview (I tried to get the British "Gender Trust" to interview him - he refused citing a prior interview which brought him "FBI or CIA" types". There are few hints in the book itself. What makes that even more a mystery is that few in England at that time would even know about transsexuality, let along sex change operations which were not then legal in the UK. Where did he get his inspiration and information? A newspaper article? A copy of “Man Into Woman” that turned up in a bookshop?
THE HUNT FOR GEOFF BROWN
If you talk to a transsexual woman older than 40, changes are she remembers having read a novel that dates back to the 1960s by the strange title of “I Want What I Want”. Perhaps you have seen a black-and-white movie on late night television by the same name.
Most of us have
What makes this book so very interesting is that it is the first – the very first - novel to deal in a realistic manner with a new minority then emerging – transsexuals. It dates back to 1966, the year before Christine Jorgensen published her autobiography and Dr. Harry Benjamin published his groundbreaking medical book, "The Transsexual Phenomena”. Gore Vidal’s spoof “Myra Breckenridge” was not yet published – it would follow in 1968. (The first book, in the form of a novel but what we would today call a “fiction non-fiction”, on transsexuality was “Man Into Woman”, by Niels Hoyer an account of the first known sex reassignment surgery in 1931 Germany. Very rare, it was reprinted as a pocketbook in the early 1950s and recently reprinted in the UK by Blue Boat Publishers. Novels dealing with intersexed people are more common. From Gary Jennings and his "Raptor" to the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides and arguably many in science fiction).
“I Want What I Want” was published first in the United Kingdom, then in the USA. It made little impact. A late paperback copy was released in both countries, with not much more impact. The writer, Geoff Brown, was unknown and new to novels (“I Want” was his first and only one more would follow and that almost ten years later).
Still, the subject of transsexuality had been given many pages of print and a few salacious pocketbooks before 1967. It was not an unknown topic but viewed as a very strange one. In fact, as novels go, those that involve realistic portrayals of transsexual women are still rare. Those by males ("Two Strand River" by Keith Mallard in 1974, "The Danish Girl" by David Eberhoff and "Trans Sister Radio" by Chris Bohjalian in 2000) have made the trade press. Those by transsexual women writers such a Pamela Hayes are generally found, with great difficulty, amongst the publish on demand press.
So where did “I Want What I Want” come from? Who is the writer and is he (or she) dead? Did he transition?
From what is available, we know very little. In fact, as much as we know is contained on the back cover of “I Want…”. “Geoff Brown”, we are told, “was born in Bridlington in Yorkshire in 1932 [making him now 77] and still lives there. This is his first novel and he at work on a second”. That second novel was in fact written and published, in 1975. On the blurb of that book we find out a bit more, but not much:
“Geoff Brown is a Yorkshireman he says he is stuck with it so he might as well be proud of it When questioned, he said that he though he might be able to write what were taken for autobiographical novels, as yet he did not seem to have any autobiography of his own. In the photograph above [see below] it is just possible to discern the scar on the right side of his nose that resulted from a misunderstanding with a neurotic dog. (“I got my nose between his teeth and I wouldn’t let go”). His hobbies are chess, war games and jeering at certain television programmers”
Blurb from the cover of “My Struggle”,
the second and final novel by Geoff Brown
That was in 1975. After that, nothing.
Two blurbs and silence.
Formal reviews of “I Want…” were promising. Punch, Sunday Times, the New Statesman and Saturday Review used words like “promising”, charm”, “intelligence”, “Powerful and moving”, “honesty”, “compassion and glowing with truth”. For the 1960s, that was great! In fact, for any novel about transsexuality today, that would be wonderful!
What the book did do is inspire a young actress to look upon it as her vehicle to stardom. Anne Heywood, a young actress with some film credits and a former Miss GB, saw “I Want…” as her golden opportunity. She was in a position to do something about it as well, for her husband of the time was a film producer, Raymond Stross. Stross had many pictures under his belt in the UK. According to what is suspected, Anne put the flea in his ear and he bought the movie rights from Geoff Brown, hiring John Dexter to direct (Dexter would go on to win fame – and awards – on Broadway but “I Want…” was the last film he directed).
The Stross project moved ahead, as movies do, slowly. In the meantime, back in the YUUU ESSS AHHH, other movies were a-makin’ – and faster. Gore Vidal’s “Myra Breckenridge” had shocked the public, surprised his publishers (who even ordered cheap paper as they thought the book would fail) and become a movie with Raquel Welch released in 1970. On a more serious side, Paramount had bought the rights to Jorgensen’s biography (saving her financial life at the same time) to make “The Christine Jorgensen Story”, also released in 1970. Both of those had a big advantage – they were each in living colour. Poor “I Want…” was a black-and-white film.
Poor Myra. Vidal was hired to do the screenplay and then replaced. The effort was to decline even worse:
“Rex Reed says that MYRA BRECKINRIDGE was a film made by a bunch of people who hid in their dressing rooms while waiting for their lawyers to return their calls.
The film itself demonstrates the accuracy of these comments. The basics of Vidal's story are there, but not only has the story been shorn of all broader implications, it seems to have no point in and of itself. Everything runs off in multiple directions, nothing connects, and numerous scenes undercut whatever logic previous scenes might have had. And while director Sarne repeatedly states in his commentary that he wanted to make the film as pure farce, the only laughs generated are accidental”.
“User Comments” from IMDB
“I Want…” had a happier time with the screenwriter. Brown was not up to the task, although he is credited. An English novelist, one who created a stir when she wrote the first classic book involving homosexuality (“Leather Boys”), Gillian Freeman was set to work. She had worked with Stross before, bringing her own book to the screen, but this was different and she should have known better. After all, the star was Anne Heywood, who just happened to be married to Stross. By the time it all ended, both Brown and Freeman thought they were off the hook for the result. The producers (i.e. Stross) had changed everything.
Transsexuality was a tough subject back in those days and remains so today, even with “Boy’s Don’t Cry” and “Transamerica”. So by the time “I Want…”hit the screens, the topic as well as the b&w treatment sank like a stone. Still, transsexual women who saw it, including myself, considered it a classic.
Making matters more confusing for anyone who cared to look, there were several other “Geoff Brown"’s who elected to write books on Black music, biking and other subjects. The name is certainly not uncommon. After his second novel failed to generate many sales, our Geoff Brown simply stopped writing and disappeared from view.
For over 25 years…
Being a transsexual woman, I had seen “I Want…” on late night television (it was actually on at 2:30am, but I stayed up to watch). Being a bookaholic, I wanted and finally found a copy of the first edition, which was becoming rather pricy by 2000. Even the paperback copies were going for over $50 by then, although thinking Brown was dead had the book show up free on the Internet, reproduced without concern for royalties, I suspect. After hunting down one Geoff Brown after another, none of them the “right” Geoff Brown, I had pretty well given up when my partner and I moved north to Prince George, some 700 miles north of Vancouver. (“You left Vancouver, the world’s most liveable/wonderful/best traveller’s/best business traveller’s city!!!” Yep. Getting too pricy, trendy and too warm. We needed cheap, basic and cold. Just our luck to move north when global warming gave Prince George the warmest winter on record. We may have to head further north soon…).
After the move, I revisited the matter of the missing Brown. As publishers and more had failed me, I headed off in another direction – after the movie types. Now, Stross was dead. Anne Heywood had moved to the USA, married a former NYC D.A. and moved to Hollywood, made many more films with small roles up to 1988, and then… Nothing.
All of the other members of the cast had died, it seemed. But then, a bit of luck. I found that Gillian Freeman had published a new book, her tenth. I write to her publisher (a very small publisher on the English coast), itself a bit of a strange step, and got back word that Gillian had had a stroke, but that her publisher, the dear, would copy my post and send it on to her for reply.
Several weeks past. Then the postie brought a rather thick envelope postmarked from the UK. It was from Gillian. Unable to type after her stroke, she had kindly taken the time to dictate a letter and have her husband type it! Even better, she had not given all her papers to Reading University, as my Internet research had disclosed, but had kept some. She enclosed with her letter copies of letters she had received from Brown during the writing, filming and release of “I Want What I Want”, the movie. The bad news was the last correspondence she had with Brown was back in the 1970s. She had no idea of where he was – dead or more likely transitioned with a new name, she thought.
My many trips to England had taught me some of the local culture. One fact I remembered. We here in North America pull up stakes and move every second year, it seems. But in the UK, many people live all their lives, from birth to death, in the same house. Brown’s letters to Freeman, from the 1970s, had a return address. Was it possible???
A bit more Internet digging. A search for the town and it has a bulletin board! So I asked if someone would look up Geoff Brown in the local telephone directory – just to tell me if one was shown at the old address. A reply came back in a few hours. “G. Brown” was listed. Another search with Brit Mail and Brit telephone gave me the postal code and telephone number.
Delighted, I even look up a map of the town, to pinpoint Brown’s home, nosey parker that I might be.
And I wrote a very nice letter.
And I waited…
A week passed. Then two. During that short time, my partner and I changed our phone plans and could now phone anywhere in the UK for a mere $.10 per minute. I did have Brown’s telephone number, thanks to Brit Telephone. With temptation steering my course, I picked up the phone one morning (allowing for the time differences and such) and dialled the number, getting the distinctive British telephone ring.
It was picked up!
“’Allo. Who’s this?” said a decidedly elderly female voice.
I introduced myself and stated my purpose.
“Oh, you’re that Canadian who write to my Geoff, are you? Oh yes, he got you letter. Matter of fact, he’s up stairs now writing a reply. I’m his wife”.
Now, the voice was a tad cold and unfriendly, but even finding that Geoff had a wife and was thus, presumably, still a man was a step forward. I asked if I could speak with him directly.
“Auw no. He’s up the stairs, isn’t he? “ad his supper and went back up stairs. Can’t get him downstairs now, where the tele is”.
Having some experience with the elderly and a little with the narrow old English staircases, I could appreciate that this might be difficult. Still, I had to gain some ground with this formidable character. Now, when confronted with this type of wall, I cast about with subjects, hoping to establish some rapport. I hit on the third – dogs.
“Oh yes, dogs are nice. Geoff and I have three big dogs” and Mrs. Brown and I were on our way to establishing a nice relationship.
Through our brief conversation, I found that Geoff had only written two books, been dissatisfied with the results, so simply ceased writing. He still lived in the same house where the book had been written, some thirty plus years after. In fact, I suspect he was born in the same house, the same town, and the same room! Mrs. Brown and I had a nice little chat and she promised that she would see to it that Geoff did indeed reply to my letter. The amazing thing was that he did!
Now, pause there. Here is a man who wrote two books, had no continuing interest in either the books or writing, and who suddenly gets a letter then a call form across the seas about the damn thing, filed long away in the past.
The next week, the postman brought another letter from England, this won from Mr. Geoff brown himself. Not only did he send the letter, but also it was obviously typed on the same typewriter that had been used for the correspondence with Gillian Freeman, back in the 1970s. In fact, it looked like the same typewriter ribbon!
History in my hands.
Now, Geoff signed some bookplates for my copies of his two books, thus making mine the only autographed copies of the “Complete Works of Geoff Brown”, something only a book collector could appreciate or even understand. Attempts to ferret out more concerning how he had come to write such a book were fruitless. In fact, after some attempts, I finally tried to enlist the aid of the Gender Trust of the UK, writing to them and suggesting they do an interview to record some of our history, scant as that is, as a minority. They did indeed delegate someone to do so, but a solid brick wall emerged when they wrote to set up the interview. Geoff replied that he had once granted permission foe an interview, but the two fellows who showed up to complete the task were officious, in white shirt and dark suits, and were in his belief either CIS or FBI. Naturally, that removed any chance for a further interview. He had tried it once, then books were tried twice, and he did not need to repeat the performance.
So, we know that Geoff did not transition, is married, has three big dogs, and… What else. Well, The second book, My Struggle is rather like “One Flew Over the CooCoo’s Nest”. Geoff writes the book from inside the mind of a schizophrenic, and it is a chilling read indeed. One example – the young hero is playing with his brother when parents are away. For fun, he ties his brother to the staircase railings and then tortures him. His parents, upon their return, are upset. “Why?” he wonders. Just a nice thing to do on a slow boring day.
Geoff has lived all his life in a small seaside town. While I cannot say this for sure, certain indications suggest that he lives in the hours his parents lived in. During his late teens, a shipwreck just off the coast had a profound impact on young Geoff. The large fishing vessel had run aground on a reef and was pounded for days before it sank with all hands. Rescuers could not scale down the steep cliffs in the bad weather. This real incident plays a role in Geoff’s second book and certainly for a time during the 1970s was an obsession. He wanted to write a new “Moby Dick” using the wreck of the Skegness. That book was never written; instead, the news reports of the sinking appear as a close to “My Struggle”. A book that Geoff “blames” on an American editor who had joined the publishing house.
Geoff has never seen the movie version of “I Want…” - not even today. When the movie was being made, he had sided with the producer to use a female to play the lead. Gillian had wanted a male actor. The producers ripped apart Gillian’s screenplay and Geoff’s book, as Geoff and Gillian agree.
Well and good, the mystery remains. This book was written in 1964 (publication was two years later) at the height of the Beatle craze. There was almost nothing publish on transsexual treatment or sex reassignment surgery outside of the press – no books, autobiographies, or medical studies. Geoff was married at the time. How was Brown able to convey so much of the transsexual world from a small coastal English town? Did he, as Gillian Freeman suggests in one letter, want to transition, to become a woman? Did he know those that did? There were few transsexuals in England at that time. April Ashley was certainly known but few others and, I suspect, none at all I Brown’s location. Still, the book clearly shows a rather close understanding of what a transsexual feels and the options then coming available.
Both of his books do show a very intimate knowledge of the subject and it could be that such was his special talent – taking the imagined life of others and making it real on paper. Contrary to that concept, many first novels are highly autobiographical. The locations used in “I Want.” are certainly drawn directly from Geoff’s own “neck of the woods”. If “I Want...” was solely imagination, where did he find out more? No books were available, as none had yet been printed.
We shall never know. Geoff Brown is over seventy now and not about to grant an interview (I tried to get the British "Gender Trust" to interview him - he refused citing a prior interview which brought him "FBI or CIA" types". There are few hints in the book itself. What makes that even more a mystery is that few in England at that time would even know about transsexuality, let along sex change operations which were not then legal in the UK. Where did he get his inspiration and information? A newspaper article? A copy of “Man Into Woman” that turned up in a bookshop?
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Since Then...
Since our move, we have grown to love living in the North.
Now, there are a few problems in Prince George. Travelling to anywhere is difficult, especially in winter. The town has a problem attracting medical doctors so each practising doctor has a waiting list and many cannot find a family doctor. Weather inversions can make the air horrid on some days.
Crack hit PG a few years ago. It especially hit the Native and Metis population. It took a long time for the City and RCMP to get a handle on that. Our neighbourhood, locally known as "The Hood" was worst hit. Of recent, higher values for houses has seen the former rental units bought by people who intend to live in them and that has resulted in a general upgrade. The RCMP and City have cooperated in attacking the crack shacks. When we first moved in, there were ten or more crack shacks within six blocks. Now, not a one. The police raid the places and break up as much as they can; then city inspectors arrive and list those things that must be repaired before the place can be rented. This has led to major renovations of the older duplexes, with prices rising form $49,000 two year ago to asking $136,000 today.
So, compared with when we moved in five years go, the neighbourhood has gone through major changes and upgrades. We were just a bit early.
When we first moved in, the house next door was a grow-op. Then after months of being a nice fellow, Tom, moved in downstairs. The Gills, landlords of the place, then rented the upstairs to total creeps. Druggies and dumpster divers, they made life for us miserable one summer by burning off the coating of wire they salvaged. But we worked with the city and landlord and finally got them out . They (or someone else) came back the next day and torched the house, a major fire. The house was left as a ruin for some time until we again complained to the City. It was rebuilt, torched again, and finally finished and is now on the market for $225,000 (we had been offered it for $79,000 before the first fire).
One reason why the neighbourhood has cleaned up is our friend - and perhaps protector - Dennis. Dennis is a character. A semi-retired Hell's Angel, Dennis is a great guy to do renovations and a wonderful type to do evictions. One problem in prior years was that Mr. Gill was not good at enforcing any evictions. Then he got Dennis, with a nice aluminium baseball bat somewhat modified. Now, Dennis has a lot of stories, but he looks after us, "the Girls". Any troublemaker in the area knows that Dennis is watching, sometimes walking the area at night. It makes for a very trouble free time.
Dennis also did out two major recent renovations - a back deck and a front porch. A great job for an affordable amount.
Now, there are a few problems in Prince George. Travelling to anywhere is difficult, especially in winter. The town has a problem attracting medical doctors so each practising doctor has a waiting list and many cannot find a family doctor. Weather inversions can make the air horrid on some days.
Crack hit PG a few years ago. It especially hit the Native and Metis population. It took a long time for the City and RCMP to get a handle on that. Our neighbourhood, locally known as "The Hood" was worst hit. Of recent, higher values for houses has seen the former rental units bought by people who intend to live in them and that has resulted in a general upgrade. The RCMP and City have cooperated in attacking the crack shacks. When we first moved in, there were ten or more crack shacks within six blocks. Now, not a one. The police raid the places and break up as much as they can; then city inspectors arrive and list those things that must be repaired before the place can be rented. This has led to major renovations of the older duplexes, with prices rising form $49,000 two year ago to asking $136,000 today.
So, compared with when we moved in five years go, the neighbourhood has gone through major changes and upgrades. We were just a bit early.
When we first moved in, the house next door was a grow-op. Then after months of being a nice fellow, Tom, moved in downstairs. The Gills, landlords of the place, then rented the upstairs to total creeps. Druggies and dumpster divers, they made life for us miserable one summer by burning off the coating of wire they salvaged. But we worked with the city and landlord and finally got them out . They (or someone else) came back the next day and torched the house, a major fire. The house was left as a ruin for some time until we again complained to the City. It was rebuilt, torched again, and finally finished and is now on the market for $225,000 (we had been offered it for $79,000 before the first fire).
One reason why the neighbourhood has cleaned up is our friend - and perhaps protector - Dennis. Dennis is a character. A semi-retired Hell's Angel, Dennis is a great guy to do renovations and a wonderful type to do evictions. One problem in prior years was that Mr. Gill was not good at enforcing any evictions. Then he got Dennis, with a nice aluminium baseball bat somewhat modified. Now, Dennis has a lot of stories, but he looks after us, "the Girls". Any troublemaker in the area knows that Dennis is watching, sometimes walking the area at night. It makes for a very trouble free time.
Dennis also did out two major recent renovations - a back deck and a front porch. A great job for an affordable amount.
Well, Here I Am...
Now, this is a new experience, but it looks like fun...
I enjoy writing. Thousands of posts over the Internet for years. The idea of creating a blog seemed to allow me to have fun without concern for taking up too much space on forums, e-grouprs and more.
My Name is Willow and my partner Sonia and I live in Prince George, British Columbia. Prince George is really in the middle of nowhere. A ten hour plus drive south to Vancouver, about the same east to Edmonton, southeast to Calgary. Dawson Creek is closer - perhaps four or five hours north. To the west, Prince Rupert is a longer drive.
We moved here in November, 2003. Our best friend, Danielle, had been raised in Prince George. One August day we picked her up at the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal in West Vancouver and stopped for coffee on Lonsdale Avenue in North Van. Over coffee, she told us of her intention to travel north to PG to visit her parents. Having not been out of Vancouver for a long time, the idea of a trip sounded good - and Danielle's parents had extend an invitation to visit months prior. So off we went, Sonia and I having never been north of Cashe Creek.
It was a wonderful September for a trip. Now, in Vancouver Sonia and I shared a small one bedroom condo, the same building as Danielle lived in. In East Van, it was crampted and tight; Vancouver was starting to be livable only if you had lots fo money to enjoy all the good things. Arriving in Prince George, Sonia - as is her way - started to read the classifieds. She quickly discovered that real estate values in PG were very, very low, the result of a long local depression. She wanted to look around. In fact, she wanted to look around with a real estate agent.
I thought she was joking.
No, she was not. Soon we were touring houses and what we saw, we liked. We even put in an offer on one house, only to find the real estate agents were now really looking after our interests. So, after some wandering, we sat down for coffee at the old Taco Bell on Fifth Avenue, since closed and pulled out the local bi-weekly paper. There it was - an ad for a house that looked just right and at a very good price. We thought there had been a misprint, so used to Vancouver prices. We called the number, got the address, and went to see it.
Well, the neighbourhood was no great shakes then. A trailer park, very shoddy, just to the east along with a slough and nature park. Lots of really shabby houses, but the ones next to the own we were to see were fine. A fellow arrived and let us in. The floor plan was perfect and at 1300 square feet, over double our little condo. It sat on a double lot, fenced. Yes, it needed work, but we would have funds on hand to do that if our condo sold in Vancouver.
We quickly made a few trips and put in an offer. It was accepted. Now all we had to do was sell the condo and move north...
If I had passed over our impression so the town, it was deliberate. PG is a working town, more pickups than cars. The downtown is a disaster. Big box stores of all types are found in the Malls and out west on the highway. Several large mills make the smell of pulp almost ever-present. But it had all the facilities we needed and the Internet had become our major source for books and such. The way we looked at it then, it was a nice place for us two old bats to enjoy life.
So back to Vancouver, list the condo, sell the condo in the heating up Vancouver marketplace, and move. With our stuff in the moving trucks, we haded north with five cats and one dog - the cats drugged and in travel crates. It was November 1st, 2003.
The first snowfall of the year arrived the following week; the house next door was raided as a "grow-op" a few days after.
We were home...
I enjoy writing. Thousands of posts over the Internet for years. The idea of creating a blog seemed to allow me to have fun without concern for taking up too much space on forums, e-grouprs and more.
My Name is Willow and my partner Sonia and I live in Prince George, British Columbia. Prince George is really in the middle of nowhere. A ten hour plus drive south to Vancouver, about the same east to Edmonton, southeast to Calgary. Dawson Creek is closer - perhaps four or five hours north. To the west, Prince Rupert is a longer drive.
We moved here in November, 2003. Our best friend, Danielle, had been raised in Prince George. One August day we picked her up at the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal in West Vancouver and stopped for coffee on Lonsdale Avenue in North Van. Over coffee, she told us of her intention to travel north to PG to visit her parents. Having not been out of Vancouver for a long time, the idea of a trip sounded good - and Danielle's parents had extend an invitation to visit months prior. So off we went, Sonia and I having never been north of Cashe Creek.
It was a wonderful September for a trip. Now, in Vancouver Sonia and I shared a small one bedroom condo, the same building as Danielle lived in. In East Van, it was crampted and tight; Vancouver was starting to be livable only if you had lots fo money to enjoy all the good things. Arriving in Prince George, Sonia - as is her way - started to read the classifieds. She quickly discovered that real estate values in PG were very, very low, the result of a long local depression. She wanted to look around. In fact, she wanted to look around with a real estate agent.
I thought she was joking.
No, she was not. Soon we were touring houses and what we saw, we liked. We even put in an offer on one house, only to find the real estate agents were now really looking after our interests. So, after some wandering, we sat down for coffee at the old Taco Bell on Fifth Avenue, since closed and pulled out the local bi-weekly paper. There it was - an ad for a house that looked just right and at a very good price. We thought there had been a misprint, so used to Vancouver prices. We called the number, got the address, and went to see it.
Well, the neighbourhood was no great shakes then. A trailer park, very shoddy, just to the east along with a slough and nature park. Lots of really shabby houses, but the ones next to the own we were to see were fine. A fellow arrived and let us in. The floor plan was perfect and at 1300 square feet, over double our little condo. It sat on a double lot, fenced. Yes, it needed work, but we would have funds on hand to do that if our condo sold in Vancouver.
We quickly made a few trips and put in an offer. It was accepted. Now all we had to do was sell the condo and move north...
If I had passed over our impression so the town, it was deliberate. PG is a working town, more pickups than cars. The downtown is a disaster. Big box stores of all types are found in the Malls and out west on the highway. Several large mills make the smell of pulp almost ever-present. But it had all the facilities we needed and the Internet had become our major source for books and such. The way we looked at it then, it was a nice place for us two old bats to enjoy life.
So back to Vancouver, list the condo, sell the condo in the heating up Vancouver marketplace, and move. With our stuff in the moving trucks, we haded north with five cats and one dog - the cats drugged and in travel crates. It was November 1st, 2003.
The first snowfall of the year arrived the following week; the house next door was raided as a "grow-op" a few days after.
We were home...
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