http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o I strongly feel that what our society needs so acutely in the aftermath of these uprisings of rage and mass acts of criminal damage, arson and mass lootings is something called RESTORATIVE justice as a key part of sentencing options. There are SO many hundreds, if not thousands of victims now as well as thousands more witnesses to the crimes that have been committed in these Flash Riots.

I am calling them Flash Riots deliberately. Perhaps they’ve already been called that by others but these riots are exactly the same as Flash Mobs really. Except instead of a crazy and intense music and dancing experience in the middle of your local shopping centre you are suddenly terrified that you may be robbed, beaten or burnt from what you are seeing around you and on the instant media.  This is Happy Slapping en masse applied with fearless fury to the state and the ‘perceived’ rich (with local traders and businesses) as well as to major corporate retail outlets. There will be MANY traumatised people out there, including the familes of the rioters too. We must NOT let this degenerate into MOB ‘justice’ or we will be descending back to the days of public lynchings and other barbarisms that we shook off many years ago in this part of the universe. As shocking as the riots are there have been responses that have chilled me to the core.

There will need to be an intensive support for victims and witnesses as well as a focus on community healing and recovering. These young people caught up in this must not be further outcast … we ALL have to live together and support each other with guiding the children and youth in our lives towards opportunities for HOPE and tangible success not destroying the lives of their neighbours.

Working through with this patiently, calmly, maturely and with integrity is, in my idea of what is right and wrong, is only going to be done if we understand what we mean when we talk about something like ‘justice’. Should it always be about ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ in court sometimes. No-one has won in the wake of this mass youth unrest and expression of hopeless and ruthless rage. Surely these cases are going to be filling up court rooms all over the country soon. How will we ensure that in the haste for ‘speedy’ justice and harsh punishment that I see some people calling for there will be also due fairness and process for alleged offenders? There will be an evidence mountain that could fill Wembley so it’s a good job they cancelled the game!

I want to have an open, frank conversation about this with others and I feel passionately that others should also try and put desires for revenge and retribution out of their minds for the losses that people have incurred and the enormous fear they all must have felt.

Who is going to pay for this? Don’t anyone disrespect reality and say ‘the rioters’. Get real. They have nothing and have nothing to lose so that will not pay back the £30k lost in stock for just one couple who run a family business Iwho do not know how they will survive as of today. They had buildings insurance but no contents cover, presumably because like a lot of people they were struggling to make the mortgage, bills and rising costs of everything … including supporting the very kids who are struggling to get jobs and can’t afford college any more.

Personally I think we should take back those bank bonuses and use them to set up a national fund for healing and restoring justice. People would be able to get back up on their feet again and we can get to work, with those offenders who have caused the harm and devastation when properly convicted, in clearing up our cities and towns and in providing opportunities for young people to harness their passion into something that benefits their community and gives them a sense of hope in their future without crime. We need armies of women and men like the magnificent un-named fearless Hackney resident in the Youtube video going around today or Darcus Howe, a grandad and dad who can talk to young people but most of all who can LISTEN and help them channel that anger into creative positive action for themselves and their communities.

I hope that makes some sense to anyone out there who is struggling to know what to do for the best in these difficult and dangerous days. One thing is absolutely certain … everyone needs to keep their cool but make no mistake, this government has to GO, we need a General Election and the cuts have to stop NOW! Else we won’t be talking days … it really will keep on erupting as long as there are people who have nothing left to lose … and we’re just going to see even more of them in the future with things as they stand.

I LOVE my books, my notebooks,  my scraps of paper, torn and pristine, my rocks and stones and treasures. But I also feel like I need to breathe and only have around me what I am focusing on in the here and now. My next move will be to be very organised with my work/creative space and it’s boundary between my rest and bedroom.

These will be the books that are not going into hiding, being sold or being stored in boxes. I thought I would share some with you.

My Here and Now books, May 2011

I was a 13 year old blue-belt judoka and a confident fighter

If I thought it was hard enough getting through puberty first time round then bang, crash, wallop, here it comes a second time at 43 instead of 13. I’ve had a lot going on in these umpteen months I’ve been quiet here but, as those of you who’ve followed the ups and downs on Facebook know too well, I’ve had a lot to learn along the way about how my transition has impacted on my life. I felt, to be mindful of my own and my loved ones’ privacy, that I needed this ‘downtime’ to gather myself in my new emerging skin.

That’s all for now folks … will post again when I have more details about the coming exhibition. I’ll also be doing a live interactive session(s) as part of the project. Looking forward to that … and to the launch event on 3 June. An occasion for the suit again

There has been a lot going on in the transsexual/transgender blogosphere of late.  It’s like a storm has been brewing for quite a few months now.  It is difficult to describe the points of division in the community because they are multiple, they are complex and they are deeply rooted.  As a member of the trans community who has been “out” for nearly twenty years, I have seen these problems for a long time now, and they seem to rear their head fr … Read More

via Transmeditations's Blog

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 7,600 times in 2010. That’s about 18 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 24 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 46 posts. There were 41 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 17mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was June 19th with 114 views. The most popular post that day was Shapeshifting for beginners – my first three weeks on T.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, doctorz.wordpress.com, liammacuaid.wordpress.com, socialistresistance.org, and en.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for roses, rainbow roses, haw par villa, wolf, and gray wolf.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Shapeshifting for beginners – my first three weeks on T June 2010
8 comments

International Congress on Gender Identity and Human Rights – June 4-6, 2010 in Barcelona, Spain April 2010
3 comments

Thank you to everyone!! November 2009
1 comment

About me September 2009
6 comments

What Happens When You Find the One…And He’s Nothing—Nothing—Like You Expected? April 2010
2 comments

“I am PROUD to be a dude with a vag and my own wee cock lol!!! Like every single human being has genitalia that are diverse and different – everyone should proudly celebrate that because, as everyone knows, children and young people can grow… up with immense shame around their bodies and particularly genitals – its by no means just a trans issue!! Young guys born with penises face immense pressure to be hung like the porn stars they see online when they are curiously exploring their sexuality. Young girls too are now at an early age deciding their breasts, their labia, their everything, when they compare themselves with the airbrushed standardised corporate stamp that defines ‘beauty’. Most of us have had issues with this one way or another in our lives, as kids, teens and adults. The revolution many of us want to build in this world is just as much about fighting this all-pervasive body fascism as it is about jobs, ending war and racism and the rest of it.”

B00mBoomboy sums it up brilliantly in his parting shot at the end of his YouTube vid (below) ”I’m a man and I love my cunt!” Good for you dude … more of us should try to be loud and proud of our bodies, even if THAT is a personal and intensely challenging thing to try and say when you are massively struggling with dysphoric thoughts yourself. I know that deeply from my own journey or surviving these issues so far. If we can’t love our selves as fully as we possibly can then it gets hard to fight back when we need to, in ways that empower us and don’t add to our battered self-esteem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kIXP677Q3M&feature=player_embedded

And neither do any of the trans guys I know. In fact, for someone who tries soooo hard to be hip, you are making yourself less cool every day. I first wrote about Ke$ha’s questionable notion of the transgender community when I was writing for Examiner.com. At that time, in an interview with The Advocate, Ms. Dollar Sign claimed to be a “huge fan” of the “transgender community” (you’d have to be a pretty huge fan if you liked the whole community – … Read More

via Matt Kailey

Bosch’s ‘Hell’ (from The Garden of Earthly Delights)

I have been rather quiet these last couple of months, except for on Facebook where I have been wittering my moods, thoughts and ideas, crazy and not-so-crazy, masking a period of turmoil and pain in my life. All this STUFF has been hard to even imagine writing about and I am acutely aware these days of the risk of self-disclosure – even though I am an ‘out’ trans man there are plenty of reasons to go stealth about many personal aspects. It is not just hard on me but it is also incredibly challenging for those I am around at times. My loved ones in many ways have their own self-identities themselves challenged by my gender transition. But it has been hard at times, for reasons that I will not go into detail about because I respect every single one of you and the process you yourselves are going through.

I was in some sort of school or community hall which had the buzz of an indoor market but no-one was selling anything. There were lots of people there, milling around chaotically, bumping into each other although keeping fairly calm. There were tables around with bags and stuff on them. On reflection it feels like it was some sort of community emergency shelter that I am in but it is not clear at all what is going on or why everyone is inside.

I walk towards a table in front of me. Underneath it in the semi-dark is a slow-worm glistening and writhing  in all its bronze and irridescent glory. Then the slow-worm begins to grow and grow, writhing like a snake on the spot until it grew dog-sized and grew a golden fur and it transformed into a dog. The poor dog was dragging her broken backlegs behind her – she reminded me of my old dog Thai (14 next month). Then the dog transformed into a completely mutilated an unidentifiable corpse which had no limbs, an unrecognisable face and with butchered cuts, wounds and sores all over the reddened carcass.

It was grotesque.

Suddenly everyone began to point and scream at this tormented creature in front of them. It was suddenly a demon, a horror story, a brutalised and bloody focus for everyone’s fear. A freak of anguished pitiful pain.

Then I noticed a tiny quivering over its skin and looked and saw tears in its eyes. I suddenly became aware that it was still alive and felt an overwhelming compassion and empathic connection to this tortured being. Looking into her or his eye I could not tell if this being was human or animal, perhaps a pig. But as I desperately tried to plead with bystanders that s/he was alive, no-one would help me. They just screamed and recoiled in terror. I woke up in a terrible state, stricken with feeling I had been unable to save this poor being, human or non-human, it didn’t matter.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION!!

Two clips from Paul O’Grady utterly free from wishy-washy twaddle about the Con Dems. He’s emerging as a bit of a class warrior and the audience response is encouraging too. Thanks to Sandra. (The title of this post needs to be read in Scouse accent.) … Read More

via Mac Uaid