I love my iPhone. I’m an Apple fangirl to the core, but gosh have they made a mess of things with the new Podcasts app! It’s annoyed me enough to bring me out of my blogging hiatus to have a little rant!
I want the Podcasts app to do three little things:
- Allow me to subscribe to interesting podcasts
- Download new podcasts so I can listen to them in my car and track what I’ve listened to
- Give me easy access to playing back the podcasts
So, we have the Podcasts app, a preview of the app which will be built in in iOS 6, and it’s pretty, oh so pretty. It collects all the podcasts together with a nice tiled view, clearly showing the ‘album cover’ of each one. Playback is beautiful, with a tucked away detailed view which shows a beautifully animated reel-to-reel tape playing, which even shows you how much is left to play thanks to the varying levels of tape left on each spool.
Unfortunately, the beauty is the only good thing about this app. It makes such a mess of things in all other areas!
It doesn’t play back properly. Inexplicably, playback will stop and the app will hang or will drop out of the playback to the list of podcasts, having lost the position of playback (so you have to restart playback and manually search for where you were up to).
It doesn’t track playback, either: Podcasts I’ve listened to will pop back up into the list as unplayed and on top of that, there’s no option to hide played podcasts; they all just sit there, cluttering the list up.
It doesn’t download podcasts, either! I’ve set all my podcasts up to be automatically downloaded and yet, unfailingly, each morning, the podcasts I want to listen to on the drive in to work aren’t downloaded.
Oh, I do love Apple’s beautifully crafted software and hardware, mostly because the design never compromised the functionality, more often than not it actually enhanced it. This time, however, I do wish that Apple had spent a little less time on the design and a lot more on the functionality. This app is not yet even Beta quality, it’s at best a shaky Alpha quality app and Apple should never have released it as it is and I do so hope it’s not an example of what we can expect in iOS 6!
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I came across this ad on Copyrant and was totally blown away by it. It’s powerful and disturbing and I challenge you not to be moved by it.
MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING!
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- WEBMU 2010 is Hamburg bound!
After three years in Hamburg, I’m going to be heading to the other end of Germany, to the heart of Swabia to start a new job and to explore another part of the country. It’s going to be quite a change from Hamburg, trading water and Plattdeutsch for mountains and Schwäbisch, but it will be nice to be nearer friends in Munich, Augsburg and Regensburg and I’ll enjoy the easier access to France (I think my francophilic side is just getting stronger!)
I have to admit that I’m going to miss Hamburg since I’ve really fallen in love with this city and have made some very good friends here, but the job market in my industry is centred elsewhere so off my cat and I go. At least I’ll still be allowed to attend the Whiny Expat Blogger Meet Up! 
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Growing up different is difficult, especially if one belongs to the LGBT spectrum. As it is, being a child is complex enough. Being known to be gay, lesbian, bi or trans adds to that complexity and ones peers all too often use those sorts of differences to make life hell. We’ve all heard the stories of those tragic suicides; unfortunately, the vast majority of the suffering goes unheard.
| The L-Project artists | |
| Scottish Legend, Horse, Georgey Payne & Emma Kavanagh (Greymatter), Sofia Antonia Milone (GeEkgiRL), Sandra MacBeth, Amber Taylor-Groves (HeadsHearts), Mel Sanson (Kenelis), Nina McCann, O’Hooley & Tidow, Lorna Thomas, Leanna Goring, Juey, Jess Gardham, Amy Sutton (Neon Choir), Nicky Mitchell, and Ella Chambers |
That’s why I love the ‘It gets better’ programme: People who have gone through the process of coming out and growing up as one of those different ones telling those in the depths of that battle that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Now, a group of lesbian musicians in the UK have created the L-Project and are using their version of better to tell the same story through a song.
Written by Greymatter‘s Georgey Payne and performed by some of my favourite bands, the song It Does Get Better is an anthem for those who are facing bullying because they’re different.
The profits from this song will all be going to a Diversity Role Models, helping to stop homophobic bullying in schools, and Stonewall, the leading lesbian, gay and bisexual charity in the UK.
Here’s the video of the song:
If things did get better for you, or if you feel it is important to support those who still haven’t found their way to that better place, do please support the L-Project. The EP costs a measly €1.49 on iTunes and if enough of us spend that measly sum, we could really help quite a few people having a really hard time.
Get the song here: iTunes • Amazon
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Tags: bullying, It gets better, L-Project, LGBT
This morning, I read the Pink News article about Roland Martin’s off-colour gay-bashing tweet during the Superbowl. When I saw there was a petition on Causes.org to encourage CNN/Time Warner to fire him, I signed it, and then thought I’d share that with some people to encourage they sign it, too. Clicking the “Share to Facebook” button
, I expected to get a pop-up post window with the link pre-filled but instead got a Causes app window (right).
Fine, they have an app, but why do they need to know which networks I’m on? Why do they need my list of friends? I don’t want to give them authorisation to post as me since I don’t want to post all the petitions I sign, only the ones I feel I need to share on Facebook.
OK, so I head off to the “Share with my email contacts” thinking I’ll at least get a usable template for a Facebook post there, but no. They want to get access to my email account! That means, they want me to share my thousand plus private, family and work contacts with them, and let them send them mails in my name. That’s insane!
In the end, I had to go back to the Pink News article to get the URL of the petition so I could write my Facebook and Google+ posts. There was no easy way to share a petition without signing over control to Causes.org. This is the sort of invasive behaviour I expect to find with commercial organisations (and abhor when I do) but expected better from Causes.org. Their attempts at making it easy to share petitions have just made it more difficult for those of us who want to maintain a tiny amount of control of our online lives.
Please go ahead and sign the petition. Just be careful: They want into your online life and don’t give any sign of caring about your privacy.
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Tags: causes.org, facebook, petitions, privacy
As humans, it seems that we have a continuous need for labels. In some ways, we’d all be so much better off without them, but until human psychology goes through some major changes, I don’t think that’s going to happen!
The ‘cis’ vs. ‘trans’ issue has had people wound up for years now and by the look of some of the comments I’ve received and the regular hits I get from the search engines, especially with phrases such as ‘I don’t like cis’, the tempers are rising about it once more.
To be honest, I don’t care what terms we come up with, as long as they show an equality of value between those who are trans and those who aren’t. Calling cis people ‘non-trans’ or ‘normal’, as some would prefer, just subjugates trans people.
Part of the problem is that the terms ‘trans’ and ‘cis’ aren’t particularly well defined. Gender variant people who aren’t trans, for example, often feel excluded when called ‘cis’. However, in my opinion, this doesn’t invalidate ‘cis’, it just means that we need to work on how it is used. Gender identity isn’t the neat little binary that humans love when categorising people, but looking at how badly bisexual people are treated even now, after years of lobbying of both the gay and straight worlds, I think this will be a long battle.
Likewise, the fact that both ‘trans’ and ‘cis’ are used in negative ways doesn’t help. Both trans and cis commentators have a tendency to use the terms when they aren’t needed. Just look at how the press loves to throw in that the perpetrator of some crime is trans when that has no bearing on the case. Likewise, some members of the trans community like to unnecessarily emphasise that the subjects of certain stories are cis for similar effect.
Unfortunately, none of this helps any of us. What remains is that we do need a means to help people understand that it isn’t a case of ‘normal people’ vs. ‘trans people’. I’m as normal as any cis person (well, I may be weird in other ways, but that’s not of pertinence to this article! )
I am a fervent believer that we need a term to describe the situation of being comfortable and happy in the gender one was assigned at birth, just as one has a need to describe when one is uncomfortable with that and one needs to change that, either through a complete transition or through finding opportunities to live in or temporarily experience the gender expression society blocks from you. Being cisgendered may be the majority case, but it is no more ‘normal’ than being trans.
I’ll continue using ‘cis’, too, since it is a liguistically productive construction. Just look a the definition of ‘cis’ and ‘trans’:
cis- |sɪs|
prefix
1 on this side of; on the side nearer to the speaker : cisatlantic | cislunar.
• historical on the side nearer to Rome : cisalpine.
• (of time) closer to the present : cis-Elizabethan.
Often contrasted with trans- or ultra- .
2 Chemistry (usu. cis- ) denoting molecules with cis arrangements of substituents : cis-1,2-dichloroethylene.
ORIGIN from Latin cis ‘on this side of’ ;
and
trans- |trans| |trɑːns| |-nz|
prefix
1 across; beyond : transcontinental | transgress.
• on or to the other side of : transatlantic | transalpine. Often contrasted with cis- .
2 through : transonic.
• into another state or place : transform | translate.
• surpassing; transcending : transfinite.
3 Chemistry (usu. trans- ) denoting molecules with trans arrangements of substituents : trans-1,2-dichloroethylene.
• Genetics denoting alleles on different chromosomes.
ORIGIN from Latin trans ‘across.’
Some linguistic conservatives don’t like the creation of new words or the adaptation of terms to suit other uses, but that’s nature. We’re exposed to new world views and need linguistic change to be able to express this properly. ‘Cissexual’, ‘cisgender’ and ‘cis person’ are just as valid as ‘transsexual’, ‘transgender’ and ‘trans person’, all accepted terms in common use, and follow linguistic rules in English. They’re non-discriminatory (though, like most words, can be used in a discriminatory fashion, unfortunately) and they’re descriptive of the situation. They do require people outside of the trans community to do a little work understanding the concept, but that could be seen as a good thing in its own right.
What’s not to like?
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That was the best ever series of Dr. Who! I never thought they’d beat Tom Baker’s Dr. Who, but this series was great. Suspenseful, atmospheric and deep. Well done, BBC!!!!
I won’t share any details because lots of you out there will not have seen the last episode yet, but you’re in for a corker!
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Go Daddy, the well-known domain registrar and hosting company, has a rather controversial CEO, Bob Parsons. He’s already disliked by a lot of people for using demeaning ads for his company and now he’s shown just the sort of character he is by indulging in the ancient Great White Hunter sport of killing elephants.
Elephants trampling crops is a huge problem for a lot of outlying settlements in Africa. African elephants are generally more aggressive and territorial than their Asian cousins and when they come into conflict with humans, they can act in ways which destroy livelihoods and put people at risk. Unfortunately, the reason why they are coming into conflict with humans is because we’re encroaching on their territory, not the other way round.
Parsons is using this issue as the spin on his activities. He claims that this is a humanitarian act, improving the lives of villagers who are facing terrible hardship. However, it’s a classic case of human imperialism weighing an animal life above human economic distress and when it comes to endangered animals, as is the case with African elephants, it’s simply not acceptable. If he truly wanted to help, flying all the way from the US to Zimbabwe to point a shotgun at an animal is not the way. There are alternatives to killing elephants who encroach on human habitations and the groups managing such projects are crying out for the resources someone like Parsons could offer them.
Unfortunately, I think it unlikely that Parsons will do anything as useful as helping with elephant fencing since it’s just not as fun as shooting a poor defenceless animal. Reports that he has shot leopards (there’s a truly horrible video here) show that whatever spin he’s putting on it, he’s flying to Africa to kill exotic animals for the fun of it and that’s despicable.
I’m happy to say that I’m not a GoDaddy customer for all sorts of reasons, but if you’re reading this and you’re spending money with him, I implore you to find an alternative. The only way we’ll be able to make it clear that acting like this is unacceptable is by hurting such people in their all too fat wallets.
Read more here:
Mashable.com – Go Daddy CEO tries to explain elephant killing “safari”
GreenAnswers – Chilli fencing allows farmers and elephants to work together in Africa
Safe the Elephants – Elephant Geofencing
Feministe – Sexist Superbowl Ads
Life Imitating Design – Go Daddy sexist commercials don’t impress men or women
Photograph by Parsonsrep.
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It seems that the Royal College of Psychiatrists is hosting a conference called “Transgender: Time to change”. I agree, it is time to change, but time to change for the better. Unfortunately, the inclusion of Julie Bindel, a transphobic radical feminist on the panel gives me little hope that this will be anything near that. You see, asking her to a conference on transgender and transsexual issues is like asking the Westboro Baptist Church’s Fred Phelps to be on a panel about homosexuality.
I’m not saying the Julie Bindel isn’t an intelligent and articulate person. In fact, she’s an accomplished journalist with a good body of work behind her. Unfortunately, she deeply hates trans people, especially trans women, and has proven herself to be unable to be objective about the issue. A radical feminist of straight out of the movement based in the 1970s, she has actively and publicly worked to ridicule and debase trans people.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists has been very remiss indeed in including Julie Bindel in this, even more so since they don’t acknowledge the fact that she has a history of campaigning against trans people. This is the bio they use on the invitation:
Julie Bindel has been involved in campaigning to end violence against women and children for 30 years. She is the co-editor of The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys, Astraia Press, 2003, and a number of chapters and papers on topics such as domestic violence and homicide, rape, stalking and harassment, and trafficking and prostitution. She currently divides her time between research and journalism. In 2010 Julie was named by the Independent on Sunday as one of the 100 most influential people from the lesbian and gay community in the UK.
She sounds like a tolerant woman with an excellent record, just the sort of person one should have on this panel, doesn’t she? Well, this is the woman who ridiculed trans people in the Guardian resulting in a furore and has several times referred to GRS (the genital reconstruction surgery also referred to as sexual reassignment surgery which is a key part of the transition transsexual people follow) as nothing but ‘genital mutilation’.
Hiding the fact that she is so rabidly anti trans makes me very worried, indeed. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has a lot of power over the life of trans people and once again we see trans policy being written by professionals with no personal investment in trans issues and by trans hating thought leaders. No trans associations are involved and none of the leading lights of trans activism in the UK. Christina Richards is trans, which is the single positive, but I fear she will be overshadowed by people who either actively hate us or who have outdated ideas of ‘how to correct’ us.
Yet again trans people are having the control over their futures taken out of their hands. It’s time for this to stop.
More info here: RCP Invitation
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One year ago today, I was rolled into the operating theatre in Aikchol Hospital, Chonburi, Thailand for a life changing operation. I fell asleep under the anaesthetic with two lovely nurses holding my hands and the whole team standing around me smiling (a memory which still brings a tear to my eye). Dr. Suporn, one of the best genital reconstruction (GRS) surgeons in the world, worked for seven hours to change something which had troubled me since my earliest memories and I woke up that afternoon feeling the most immense sense of relief I have ever felt.
A year on, I can look back at some amazing milestones. Coming out of hospital and recovering in Chonburi, surrounded by other trans women on their way to a life without the ‘trans’ defining them and by a wonderfully sweet and caring team at Dr. Suporn’s clinic, is something which will for ever be with me. Standing outside of the bathroom looking at my new body in the mirror and not being able to remember it as it was is another (I talked about it here).
The recovery from this operation has been another collection of amazing milestones. The four weeks in Chonburi were wonderful, with all that lovely support. Yes, things weren’t always easy (especially those breast massages), but I felt myself growing into my body as I did the daily routines taking care of it. Coming back home, though, was really hard, even with my lovely girlfriend’s continuous support. What a difference it made not having room service and those nurses around! Dilation went from a bore to a battle, taking up to 90 minutes to get to depth with lots of pain and that three times a day. Doing that around work was horrific and looking back at things now, I should have waited another three to four weeks before going back.
That said, those horrible days are part of the recovery and they didn’t last long. A few weeks later and my dilations were down to 20 minutes getting to depth, followed by the 15 minute dilation. Then came the transition to two dilations a day and even shorter times getting to depth. By the end of the year, I was down to twice a week (now once a week) and five minutes getting to depth and it all just became a mundane part of my life.
Whilst a lot of last year was about recovering, the most important parts were about me getting over my past as a trans woman. My transition is certainly not over (I don’t think it ever will be, to be honest, there’s so much to learn and just as much to unlearn), but so much of my life has been focussed on hiding away from being trans or on maintaining the right image once I’d started living life as me and that is all behind me now. I just live as me, now, and it’s amazing how much more energy I can put into other things now that I’m not spending so much on those trans issues!
I will always care about trans issues, though. I hate the discrimination that is still so apparent and I hate the condescending and patriarchal attitude so much part of the medical experience of trans people. I’m also horrified by the ongoing violence towards trans people and will continue doing what I can to raise this issue and make the rest of the world aware that such attacks are still passively condoned by a legal system and cisgendered public which views us as freaks.
That’s a lot to care about, but what was 60% of my life is now 10% of my life and that’s because of what started that day one year ago. My life’s as complex as ever with a long distance relationship and looking for a new job and I still have a last step of my physical transition to plan, namely the facial feminisation surgery I hope to have in the next year or so, but this year has brought me something which I’ve never really had: Contentment about feeling I am as I should be. That makes me really, really happy!
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Tags: Dr. Suporn, happiness, recovery, surgery, Trans, transition