I love irony, although if you look real close, you'll find your favorite bathroom arguments in their infant stages being used as a reason to reject the ERA.

Though the Xian Right had its big guns out for that one and really were the main force in defeating it in Iowa which would have been one of the last states they needed.

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. –Pat Robertson

And yeah, that's a real quote from him.  In Iowa no less.

Yes, I wasn't sure whether the irony was intentional or not. Either way, it was cute. And I've noticed the claw marks of the Eagle Forum on the bathroom canard.

As for Pat Robertson, well, I had no idea! So the ERA was just a lesbian recruitment drive? That does it -- I'm all for it now!

I don't have a problem with the term "transgender." I think it's nice to have an umbrella term, particularly if you're in the process of figuring out your gender identity, as I have been and more-or-less still am.

I do, however, have an issue with using the term as a verb. A trans woman I'm acquainted with said it best, though this is only paraphrasing: Calling someone transgendered implies that at some point someone or something transgendered them. You don't call gay people gayed.

It also bothers me when people say "a transgender." It seems.. belittling? I don't know what it is, exactly. It's like when people talk about "the gays."

I'm also not sure why, but the term "transsexual" just bothers me on some deep, vague level. Deeply ingrained negative associations, perhaps. I honestly couldn't tell you.

And anyone who has ever been on a x-county flight with someone's screaming crotchfruit the whole 'kill your kids' has a certain allure for sure.  And killing capitalism in the home state of ethanol and federal farm subsidies was always a side-splitter to me.  How people could could in one breath praise and defend capitalism and in the next complain about how their 'set-aside' check^* was late, always seemed misguided at best.


* - the famous, 'get paid for not growing things' subsidy

QuoteMajor Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age.
He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held
that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and
disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing
out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The
more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he
didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked
without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend
harnesses, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores
would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other
man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and
was therefore wise. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," he counseled one and all, and everyone said, "Amen."

(Though it turns out that this was a better way to smooth out the wild cycles of agribusiness than price supports, which just lead to a glut of corn and soy, which lead, in turn, to heart disease and diabetes epidemics.)

Joseph Heller flat out wrote one of the best books ever.  I try to read it every few years or so, it never gets old, only more true as time goes by.