Pretty Much...

19th
June

59,480 notes

Last night, my university gave an honorary master’s degree to the service dog who sat through every one of his owner’s classes. He dressed appropriately for the ceremony.

"These are women who have to fight to be included within the category ‘woman,’ in a way that is not dissimilar from the earlier struggles of black women and women of color who were assigned the gender female at birth."

– Angela Davis on trans* women (via kinkykinkshamer)

(via tofuboots)

"A Trans Guy Walks into a Yoga Class" by Nick Krieger

trans-spirituality:

In my early twenties, I discovered Eastern philosophy. I read books about Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, and I grew very attached to non-attachment. For a brief period, I spoke in universal “We” statements, as in, “Our fundamental problem is that we deny death.” Sometimes, I went by myself to Spirit Rock Meditation Center for daylong silent retreats for LGBT folks, after which I’d scan Craigslist Missed Connections to see if any girls thought I was cute.

I share this because, well, it’s funny to look back a decade and see my youthful seeking-self blundering onto this path. And also to recognize the three huge differences between my experience then and now: a teacher, a community, and a consistent practice. I found these by showing up at yoga classes.

After introducing you to yoga, or at least my understanding of it, in my last OP post, it is my hope that you’ll try to some classes. To this end, I thought I’d share five challenges I’ve encountered or heard about, as well as offer some ideas to overcome them.

Continue reading…

(via tofuboots)

18th
June

46 notes

The NCAA has a new Transgender policy for athletes

transitiontransmission:

This is to be celebrated to be sure. And you can pour through the fine print.

Go on celebrate. If you like sports you know good and damned well what the NCAA is. It’s pretty fracking big. AND AWESOME!

Only note is on hormones. They aren’t covering much on that. Trust me, in the future, like with the Olympics and the MMA, they will start requiring 2 years of HRT if transition occurred after puberty. As soon as a Women’s NCAA basketball team with a few trans girls wins a championship. I’m not hating, or anything, but the Olymp/MMA have much better guidelines and rules than the NCAA currently has, but hey, I’m not complaining, just fortune telling :)

18th
June

440 notes

howtobeterrell:

sinidentidades:

Young, black and buried in debt: How for-profit colleges prey on African-American ambition
There are a few dictums that have enjoyed pride of place in black American families alongside “Honor your parents” and “Do unto others” since at least Emancipation. One of them is this: The road to freedom passes through the schoolhouse doors.
After all, it was illegal even to teach an enslaved person to read in many states; under Jim Crow, literacy tests were used for decades to deny black voters their rights. So no surprise that from Reconstruction to the first black president, the consensus has been clear. The key to “winning the future,” in one of President Obama’s favorite phrases, is to get educated. “There is no surer path to success in the middle class than a good education,” the president declared in his much-discussed speech on the roots of gun violence in black Chicago.
Rarely has that message resounded so much as now, with nearly one in seven black workers still jobless. Those who’ve found work have moved out of the manufacturing and public sectors, where good jobs were once available without a higher ed degree, and into the low-wage service sector, to which the uncredentialed are now relegated. So while it has become fashionable lately to speculate about middle-class kids abandoning elite colleges for adventures in entrepreneurship, an entirely different trend has been unfolding in black America — people are going back to school in droves.
It’s true at all levels of education. Yes, black college enrollment shot up by nearly 35 percent between 2003 and 2009, nearly twice the rate at which white enrollment increased. But we’re getting all manner of schooling as we seek either an advantage in or refuge from the collapsed job market. As I’ve reported on the twin housing and unemployment crises in black neighborhoods in recent years, I’ve heard the same refrain from struggling strivers up and down the educational ladder: “I’m getting my papers, maybe that’ll help.” GEDs, associates degrees, trade licenses, certifications, you name it, we’re getting it. Hell, I even went and got certified in selling wine; journalism’s a shrinking trade, after all.
But this headlong rush of black Americans to get schooled has also led too many down a depressingly familiar path. As with the mortgage market of the pre-crash era, those who are just entering in the higher ed game have found themselves ripe for the con man’s picking. They’ve landed, disproportionately, at for-profit schools, rather than at far less expensive public community colleges, or at public universities. And that means they’ve found themselves loaded with unimaginable debt, with little to show for it, while a small group of financial players have made a great deal of easy money. Sound familiar? Two points if you hear troublesome echoes of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Between 2004 and 2010, black enrollment in for-profit bachelor’s programs grew by a whopping 264 percent, compared to a 24 percent increase in black enrollment in public four-year programs. The two top producers of black baccalaureates in the class of 2011 were University of Phoenix and Ashford University, both for-profits.
These numbers mirror a simultaneous trend in eroding security among ambitious black Americans with shrinking access to middle-class jobs. It’s true that the country’s middle class is collapsing for everyone, but that trend is most profound among African-Americans. In 2008, as black folks flocked into higher ed, the Economic Policy Institute found that 45 percent of African-Americans born into the middle class were living at or near poverty as adults.
For too many, school has greased the downward slide. Nearly every single graduate of a for-profit school — 96 percent, according to a 2008 Department of Education survey — leaves with debt. The industry ate 25 percent of federal student aid in the 2009–2010 school year. That’s debt its students can’t pay. The loan default rate among for-profit college students is more than double that of their peers in both public and nonprofit private schools, because the degrees and certificates the students are earning are trap doors to more poverty, not springboards to prosperity.
There’s been growing, positive attention to this problem, and the Obama administration’s ongoing efforts to rein in the excesses of for-profit schools are arguably among its most progressive policy goals. But few have understood the for-profit education boom as part of the larger economic challenge black America faces today. The black jobs crisis stretches way back to the 2001 recession, from which too many black neighborhoods never recovered. Workers and families have been scrambling ever since, trying to fix themselves such that they fit inside a broken economy. And it is that very effort at self-improvement, that same American spirit of personal re-creation and against-all-odds ambition that has so often led black people into the jaws of the 21st century’s most predatory capitalists. From subprime credit cards through to subprime home loans and now on into subprime education, we’ve reached again and again for the trappings of middle-class life, only to find ourselves slipping further into debt and poverty.
Read more

I tried to tell you.

18th
June

1,063 notes

SEX WORKER PROBLEMS: Dear caring partners struggling with accepting your partners job,Your...

sexworkerproblems:

Dear caring partners struggling with accepting your partners job,

Your concern, insecurity and confusion are understandable. We live in a society where sex work is misunderstood and relationships are defined by certain boundaries that don’t take what we do into account.

I can’t speak for…

(via tofuboots)

"Most readers won’t know that the updated policies announced last week by the Social Security Administration (SSA) are among the most humane and important public policy advancements for transgender people during the Obama administration or even ever."

–

Great article written by the amazing Mara Keisling with the National Center of Transgender Equality. Read this article, and then go to NCTE’s website to utilize all of their amazing resources.

Mara Keisling: A Huge Small Step: The Obama Administration Delivers Big

(via ryansallans)

(via artoftransliness)

"I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares."

– Saul Bass (via rainydaysandblankets)

(via wildnothin)

18th
June

30,026 notes