Wayne Christian and his Senate Bill

For context, please go here:
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-legislature/82nd-legislative-session/video-pansexual-amendment-debate/

"While you were sleeping last night, State Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, resurrected an amendment to SB 1 that would ban colleges from using state funds or university facilities for gender and sexuality centers. This is a must watch series of videos!!"






  I would like to take a few moments of your time to set the record queer and correct:
While I was growing up my mother often told me that "I didn't understand, I didn't have the whole story" when quite often with my dragon heart and genius mind I often saw the complex mess of life more clearly than many.

Of course in his testimony Wayne Christian took things out of context. So, let me please try to attempt to put them in context.

The questions he read off from a handout (from UT) were most likely a visualization, guided thinking technique often used to create empathy and understanding for what another goes through. One takes a predominant audience identity and questions it in the same vein that LGBT identities are questioned every day.This creates a cognitive dissonance and dissociation that can be used to highlight how others feel.

As a sidenote, I find it interesting that the honorable Wayne Christian could not speak his own gender identity.

The video taken from Texas A&M's Cay Crowe presentation....ooooh, where do I begin.

1. The student who took this video violated the sanctity of a safe space in the same manner of those people who videotape visitors to planned parenthood. This student took a sacred trust and betrayed his/her fellow aggies and the environment created
2. The student violated copyright law by not getting permission to tape and rebroadcast
3. The student created terror by posting to YouTube showing he could get into a sacred space of fellow students and reveal to public what was private. Safe spaces are not safe when people feel that their identities, what they are learning, etc will be broadcast to the whole world
4. And finally, Cay Crow did this safe sex presentation free of charge as a service to students before break. In my mind it is better to teach a student how to operate heavy machinery (ie anal sex) instead of just letting them go at it without any guidance. We know students are going to have sex, we know they are going to have all different kinds of sex, the best method for their own safety, the safety of their partners, and the safety of all of us (STI's to name just one effect), is to give them practical, sound, safer methods of doing what they are going to do in the healthiest methods possible.

So, it is late....but my brain was burning as Wayne Christian used that crap out of context.

And with that I have to applaud Lowell Kane and the Texas A&M GLBT Resource Center for all they do to provide safe and nurturing environments to students that I love and care for so very much.

I may work in the community, and not at A&M. I may not experience some of the fallout of this first hand. But, my roots in this community have grown deep. My love of TAMU's potential has always been strong and the antics of Wayne Christian and also what has been going on here at A&M are sad, abhorrent, and have lighted my ire.

Wayne wants equal treatment. Lifting up diversity is not a zero sum game honorable lawmaker. When GLBT students get something, it does not automatically take away from straight students who are reinforced with heterosexual teaching, training, reference, and health care centered on them and their "lifestyle" every single hour or every single day.

When are we going to stop this damn debate that by thinking of others we somehow hurt those who are in the majority.

Depressed - beauty demons sitting on my heart

     This morning I looked through some pictures of myself at the 2nd annual Austin Harvey Milk Commemorative March. True, I chose not to wear makeup, still pictures - any pictures lately spin me into a confidence down spiral.
http://www.farrisfoto.com/GetEqual/HarveyMilkConferenceAndMarch/index.html

Here is what I see when I look at these pictures. A passionate, angry woman with hair that seems to move on its own because of the goddess aura surrounding her. A woman who is fat, doesn't have a very pretty face (and having a pretty face means a whole lot to me), and whose hair is stringy, old, grey and belongs in a horror flick.

Robin looks at me and tries to comfort me by saying that I have just as beautiful a face as they day we met.
Sweet, nice, and helpful....something I will remember and cling to as a totem as I try to claw my way out of this dark place.

Still, I see a woman who is not as pretty as someone like Nikki Araguz and who has over the years gained an ever expanding girth.

I hope that yoga will help with the girth. The reality is that I eat too many sweets and have little self control. The yoga is better for the stress detox and the alignment of my body and soul...peace within rather than with easy, rapid weight loss.

Can I hold on long enough for the yoga to be of weight loss benefit.
Can I stop thinking of myself as this ugly old woman whose angry all the time.....

I don't know, this hole I fall into seems to be a cyclical one.


Much love, to a day or moment soon out of this darkness to a sunlit, cool beach.

Presentation Anxiety - opinions welcome, only if they are positive.

I am worried about my presentation at the Harvey Milk Conference this weekend. 


So, some critics (who are good friends I trust) say I put too many words on a slide. Others (also good friends and mentors) say I "read" too much from my slides. Both are true to some degree.


What is left out is that the detail I put into slides is to help me remember what in the heck I am supposed to say when I am in front of an audience. Also, my natural inclination is to read and react to the audience and build from there.

So, what do I tell myself? Perhaps that they have valid concerns, things I can work towards, but that I also have to be fair to myself and my way of doing things. If I clam up worrying about "did I put too many words on the slide" I cannot grow as a presenter through observation of how "better" presenters work the craft.

Also, in order to present I have to be relaxed enough to put those concerns "on the back burner" and engage the audience.

I like and need the structure of powerpoint. Perhaps sometimes I lean on that too much instead of using it as a visual aid. If I were teaching in the classroom, what would I be doing? Well, I would have an outline with the information I want the students to learn, those key points are what I would write up on the board - isn't the same thing I am doing when crafting the powerpoint ?


I cannot undersell my own flexibility though. Earlier this year I did an "off the hip" presentation with a good friend and mentor to a PFLAG chapter. The conversation had was pretty darn good - made better because the friend was there. But, I did "hold my own"


It is late, I may be over thinking this. 
I say, go with what has been built.
Some are going to think I am reading from the slides, some are going to like the slides, and some are going to say, "Hey, that Katy Stewart is pretty good at what she does."


Your comments appreciated.