I just received a rather alarming message from Trans Menace UK, a trans activism group on Facebook. Apparently the government are consulting on scrapping the Equality Act. Without this law in place, firing people based on their gender, race, sexuality, trans status or disabilities is fine, among other things. And given the way they’re framing it as “Red Tape”, and that The Sun and The Daily Mail, two papers that are vehemently opposed to “Yooman Rights” are among the most read in the country yeah… we’re in trouble.
The Tories may be scum, but even I didn’t think they would go this far.
If you’re in the UK, here is a link to the consultation so you can voice your displeasure. We can’t let this happen.
Originally published at Jaffa Cakes and Sodomy. Please leave any comments there.
My loan came in sometime within the last hour. The essential stuff (a non-OEM copy of Windows 7 and a new hard drive) has been ordered, and will apparently be here before 1pm on Thursday (I paid the extra for express delivery – I’ve waited too long on this broken computer already). Hopefully this will fix the problem (it’s likely – my current boot drive, having come from a somewhat dodgy external unit, seems more likely to have failed than the motherboard, given that it’s a Gigabyte and they’re one of the most reliable brands out there) – if it does I’m considering spending the rest of the money on upgrades to make the computer shinier. If not, well a new mobo won’t cost too much, and I’ll have money left over for fun things.
So yay – nice to have happy things to report after the last two posts being so miserable.
Originally published at Jaffa Cakes and Sodomy. Please leave any comments there.
Yesterday’s visit to the new shrink was… unproductive. Apparently there’s a bit of a mix-up going on in my notes… while I’ve been diagnosed as bipolar and am being treat as such, my previous shrink (the annoyingly up his own arse Dr. Sinclair) decided (based on seeing me twice) that I have Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, aka. borderline. Thing is it doesn’t really fit me, so I was at a loss as to how he came up with it.
Then I saw this in the diagnostic criteria (emphasis mine):
disturbances in and uncertainty about self-image, aims, and internal preferences (including sexual);
Is it just me, or has that old bastard has used my being queer as a diagnostic criterion?
Anyway, I have to try and sort this out; get my notes saying I’m BP to the new shrink. IDK why it’s on me to sort out Dr. Sinclair’s fuckups but there you have it.
Urgh…
Originally published at Jaffa Cakes and Sodomy. Please leave any comments there.
As people may have heard, the UK’s ban on gay male blood has been lifted, as long as the donor hasn’t had gay sex (protected or otherwise) within the last ten years. Frankly, this is bullshit, but I hardly expect better from a homophobic society which still sees AIDS as “the gay disease”.
Plenty will no doubt be said on how this is a poor substitute for screening based on whether the donor has had unprotected sex of any description rather than on their choice of sexual partner. Instead I’ll focus on how this plays into the meme that gay men are either seen as eunuchs or whores; either we’re “good gays” i.e. the sexless sidekicks of the straights, useful for nothing except guiding our straight friends into having more fulfilling lives, or we’re the “bad gays” – dirty sex maniacs with no cares other than getting our ends away until we inevitably die of AIDS.
This conditional blood ban does nothing but enforce this; the good, sexless gays are deserving of the same treatment as straight people, but those of us who have the audacity to try and live our lives fully are still second-class citizens. Fuck that; no half measures.
Originally published at Jaffa Cakes and Sodomy. Please leave any comments there.
I get to see my brand-new shrink tomorrow; not really looking forward to it. I know, it’s for my own good and will probably be great for me but yeah… I haven’t seen a shrink yet I’ve liked and I’m not sure this will change anything.
At least Will said he’d go with me, which should help with the anxiety of meeting them for the first time.
In other news, still waiting for the loan to appear in my bank account so I can get on with fixing the computer, and debating whether I should treat myself to a memory upgrade while I’m on: up for debate because my long-term plan involves buying an X58 motherboard (ASUS’s very nice Rampage III Gene), and any memory I buy for my current, somewhat antiquated 945GC setup will be useless when I do so. Still, that’s probably a long time away, so I might as well make my computer as nice as possible in the meantime. And I may need to buy another Socket 755 motherboard out of the loan anyway, depending on whether the problem is with the hard drive or the SATA controller (pretty sure it’s just the hard drive, mind).
Originally published at Jaffa Cakes and Sodomy. Please leave any comments there.
( note: I’ll probably carry on that meme eventually – it kind of got held up. First Will was here so I was too busy having sex and eating pizza, then I needed to catch up on my sleep, then I was at my mam’s fixing her computer, then I ended up getting adware that fucked up my sidebar gadgets and kept launching IE so I had to deal with that (first virus since my Acorn days – yay! Not as elegant as Module or Extend though, sadly 
After a couple of weeks faffing about with emulators, I realised something. I seriously miss my BBC Micro*. Sure, computers can do much more stuff nowadays, but were they as fun? I used to love writing stuff for the Beeb, whether it was typing in listings from Acorn/Micro User or making my own stuff up (which was much easier to do back then – BBC BASIC and 6502 assembler were way easier to start doing useful stuff in than what we have now). Plus IDK… the fact that the computer was so primitive (32k RAM/128k on the posh ones, 4 sound channels, 8 screen modes that were all compromises) made people more creative – why bother with “clever” programming when you have near-endless resources available?
*goes to scour eBay for a Master 128*
*note to Yanks: the Beeb was the UK’s answer to the Apple ][ – similar specs and just as popular in schools.
First vi, now I find out there’s a Windows version of pine… I’m home. C:
(seriously, Outlook and other ~modern~ email clients can go fuck themselves... pine is where it's at)
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