From: “Callie”
To: <helenboyd@myhusbandbetty.com>
Subject: Going To The Queer Playce
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 06:49:49 -0500
It was lovely meeting you in Burlington. I read your blog entry on the conference, and it is joyous to see someone who is so hepped up about the community. It is when you acknowledge that this isn’t simply your partner’s community, one where you only put out the potato salad & soda, but that it is your community, one that supports (and challenges) your own journey beyond gendered expectations, that you are compelling.
Anyway, I was in the shower this morning, and a blurb for your next book came to me. As a writer, I have no thought that you want to do what others suggest, or that you have any lack of projects on your own plate, but who knows, it may stimulate a little something in your own thinking. My only flickering hope is that it gets you in the mainstream, talking on Oprah, not about dealing with queer husbands, but about how queering ourselves beyond gendered expectations can be the most empowering thing we can do for ourselves.
In any case, continue your good work, your good exploration and your good life.
Love & Light,
Callie
Going To The Queer Playce: Enhance Your Relationship, Expand Your Possibilities And Empower Your Life By Playing Beyond Gender
In this book, Helen Boyd shows how exploring beyond the expectations we hold about gendered behavior can make any relationship better by allowing the full potential of our humanity to exist. The bedroom should be a place where people drop their armor and are allowed to touch the tender and tough parts of them which we often hide in everday life. By playing beyond gender expectations, we reveal more of ourselves, and that revelation makes us more able to life a full, happy & joyous life.
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On the evening of November 12, about 75 people gathereed at the New York State museum to hear a straight white woman explain how trans people screw up in building community.
Helen Boyd and her crossdressing spouse, Betty Crow, were brought to Albany by Rhea Daniels to express a message that ” resonates for all people on the transgendered spectrum, those in their lives and those who want to support them” according to a publicity flyer. Ms Boyd’s message though, was a sour diatribe based mostly on how the transpeople in her circle, message boards she runs on her website MyHusbandBetty.com, are mostly quabbling about things she considers minor, and that transpeople have to get over that behavior and act like adults. She supplemented this with an anecdote about how trans patrons had abused a NYC bar she patronized, talking too long to change in the bathroom and carrying in flasks to avoid paying for drinks and when one was confronted with their behaviour they started an e-mail campaign saying that the bar was anti-tranny. This tale, which seemed based only on conversations with bar staff, was told to remind explain how trannies pollute even places that welcome them.
Ms. Boyd said her book, “My Husband Betty” came out of a rant she made to a friend about how bad the advice Dr. Phil gave to the partner of a crossdresser was. Her friend, who also worked in publishing, suggested it was the basis for a book. This, according to Boyd, was the beginning of her steps into building trans community, steps she might not have taken if she had thought about her actions before making them.
While Ms. Boyd told anecdotes from a few gay people she knew, she told almost no anecdotes from transpeople. She did recommend Jamison Green’s book and mention comments from Tristian Taramino, but her view seemed to almost be entirely based on the crossdressers and neo-transsexuals who populate her board.
While demanding support groups that are supportive, she pushed her own agenda against the lives of trannies. She complained that she and her husband had been attacked while casting the community as a whole as a failure.
dominatrix
denied her own gender queerness to get dates and have a sex life
i don’t think i will ever forget betty repeating to the crowd “we have to grow a pair, grow a pair, grow a big pair” when talking about lobbying the govt. betty did note the oddness of saying this as a tranny, but said it anyway. betty may not say trans what, but lines like that make it clear.
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From: Callie
To: Diane Sofia Frank
Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 9:53 PM
Subject: crowboyd
It was like watching the high schoolers rag on the junior high kids for being so immature.
Helen wanted to talk to about 60 people about what’s wrong with the transgender community, and surprise, surprise, that comes out to the fact we fight over trivialities again and again rather than acting like grown ups. She wants us all to grow up, but to her, that meant we have to stop being so obsessed with identity.
She feels she was gender queer in hs, but learned how to act feminine to get dates. “If I wanted to have sex, I had to learn to act like a straight girl.” And then at the end, she wondered why people who are gender queer suppress it, I reminded her she told the answer: to get laid. That surprised her, just as it did when I caught her asking someone wanting an autograph if she was a partner. “You don’t understand! Partners are my peeps!” No, you don’t understand when you say trannies shouldn’t be so identity obsessed and you say you don’t know why, and you do the same thing, it’s noticed.
Betty spoke up and challenged me, saying we need to look beyond trans, and I asked if any support group with trans in the title was set to be wrong, and she said “no, that blah, blah, blah, when you stay with trans you end up shooting yourself in the foot. ” In other words, just what I said.
These are people who find it easy to talk to trannies but can’t handle challenge.
I laughed on the way home, that death laugh, the one I get when I realize how separated I am. The people who know me know I have always been porcupine, and I made Helen laugh, and Betty tried, but they will slough off the challenge quickly. They have to. It’s about being what they want to be, and it’s more fun to be the big wallys.My mother was suprised when I was back at like 9:15. No change for me, because in a short time, running, no time to look like more than a cheezy CD, and that ain’t me. But I doubt I could explain that to our speaker — the one that the host said would “resonate for all people on the transgender spectrum” — because the struggle to be exposed and seen is not one she understands, and not one Betty is focused on. No deep truths that need to be revealed, just a fun character to be played.
It was sad and sadder for me.
So I laughed.
And wanted to die.
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Session Start (Callan:Diane): Sun Nov 13 08:26:05 2005
Callan: the more I think about this straight white woman, out for 4 years, hectoring trannies about their idiocy in building community based almost totally on her experience on her board, the more upset I become.
Diane: I haven’t totally read her notes for Albany yet. Sorry to hear that
Callan: Well, she told the people what they wanted to hear: it’s those bad trannies that are the problem. And self-loathing creeps that we are, we loved hearing that.
Diane: There have been a lot of catfights on the boards lately
Callan: Right. And in her myopia, seeing the board as the window, that’s transdom to her . Identity battles over and over again, like junior high schoolers. But the only good tranny she mentioned was James Green. And I’ll guarantee I know that James Green better than her.
Diane: ok…but I think I’d have an easier time here if you gave me your “positive” point of view rather than what bugs you about Helen
Callan: I give my positive point of view routinely in my writing.
Diane: Yes, I know… but somehow I’m not connecting that talking about what’s wrong with what they’re doing she’s not what’s wrong with them. I see her as criticizing behavior and you’re spot on that she herself can’t get away from identity labels
Callan: This is about an arrogant intruder telling people what is wrong with them. She claims to want to build community. I think doing that by scolding, by criticizing in ways that can be shown as not reflected in your actions is not building community. I think her actions are more destructive than constructive, whatever she calls them because she doesn’t lead by doing what’s good, listening & reflecting but rather by telling others how they are wrong.
Diane: ok… So besides yourself…who did you see leaving the room/barfing etc?
Callan: I just saw the old hands getting crusty. We have heard this before. But as I said, many love preachy preaching, when someone else tells us that the others are as wrong as we think they are
Diane: well, fire and brimstone can be a fun ride
Callan: “Thank you for speaking the truth that the bad trannies fuck everything up! We need to save the community from them!”
And the that very separation is what is bad
A preachy preacher tells you the world is going to hell and they have to change. A teachy preacher tells you that you are in hell unless you change and Preachy Preachers are a lot more comforting
Diane: fine bad republicans fuck things up for good republicans too. I’m not entirely sure where anything goes/is going. I wonder if in E. Germany,or in Hirschfeld’s times that they worried about the distinctions
Callan: Well, that was a point she thought she made, that we are all in this together
Diane: fair enough. but do I think a big trans community is possible
Callan: Has she read “Those Heterosexual Faggots!” from 1994? Terry Murphy liked it so much she called and read it to me on the phone. Was upset to find I had written it.
Diane: that’s the part that I’ve always had difficulty with myself,
Callan: No, Helen tried to say that.
Diane: when you say we’re all in this together sometimes I start thinking like that old joke where Tonto turns to the lone ranger and Says What you me “we” paleface?
Callan: what you mean we, white man. . . yeah. And that’s why Helen’s “we” feels so empty because it’s clear she doesn’t really listen to us just sweeps us together.
Diane: so if I feel that way. I get down to a certain bottom line. I want ‘some’ legal protections. I don’t want to have to worry about employment, housing issues. I want a clear, protective, clean legal process for TS. I want “gay marriage”
Callan: I understand the questions of what “the community” wants. It’s not as simple as a dance event every weekend.
Diane: and I’m not sure what else there is
Callan: I am the one who says there is no trans community, only a network of interlocking communities
Diane: We wrestled with that last night at AO we provide what middleaged couples want
Callan: But Helen sees her world as “the trans community.” And so do her supporters, like Rhea
Diane: Well, you say that, I say that, and sometimes dear old Suzy might be interpretated as saying the same thing. I say there’s no such thing as community on her boards frequently. I talk about trans-communities plural
Callan: OK.
Diane: but I think people do get infected by the unification bug rather than the coalition building bug
Callan: But when Helen claims to speak about and for the trans community and I get upset then she tells me I am an identity monger.
Diane: ouch… she has a tongue she does
Callan: You know my big beef with Miqqi?
Diane: no…but I find Miqqi unitelligible anyhow…how can I have a beef with someone who I can’t read
Callan: Miqqi quoted me in one of her pieces, calling me a CD.
Diane: put a label on you rather than just saying “callan”
Callan: I said that I had never identified as CD, and was upset she labeled me that way
Callan: She told me that she was sick of identity politics people like me. She assigns me the damn identity! and when I am upset, it’s my identity politics problem!
Diane: annoying
Callan: U bet. And much what Helen did last night. “Don’t label! Only I get to label!”
Diane: I’ve been dealing with that in ways too but I prefer to make an educational event out of it
Callan: I just went last night.
Diane: I keep talking about all the modifiers that are assumed to be attached to a label and ask which ones they assume about me
Callan: We need language we do. But explicitness identifies twisted thinking and that makes people upset, like people who want to claim enough superiority to write books, stand at the front of lecture halls and take board positions
Diane: that’s the flip side After we signed off last night I got an email from my sponsor in the book circle she didn’t like the first two paragraphs of the review, and it was clear that I wrote those paragraphs for a “in” audience for people who lived with the lies who lived and worried about other people writing about them and that for an outsider to this those paragraphs didn’t work as well as they might
Callan: Yeah. How do you bring everyone else in when you only have a few graphs?
Diane: well, I can and will do better
Callan: It’s a big challenge to contextualize growing up trans every time.
Diane: smart woman
Callan: Good.
Diane: a bit nuts but very smart
Callan: Nuts is good.
Diane: she said once past the first two paragraphs she was reading the rest on the edge of her seat
Callan: Good.
Diane: so I’ll do some tinkering…at least for the version that goes to the book circle but there was a point to this relating to what you were saying about explicitness and who understands what about needing language
Callan: OK
Diane: and then having the experience to create the language and I keep writing and hit and miss
Callan: I have a note of someone who says that we need things to communicate — memes! God, not memes, shared metaphors, codes to invoke shared experience symbols and when the experience isn’t shared trying to cobble together a set of metaphors is hard. Tell me what that fraise de bois ice cream you had from that little shop in Paris tasted like and I bet it’s not like strawberry ice cream from Kroger
Diane: which is why I think “I am my own wife” fails a bit because it never really communicates Charlotte’s experience as trans or gay….. Charlotte has no lover in the play, no affair, only furniture and gramophones
Callan: But she never found one which is very trans
Diane: she had several affairs with older men according to people who have read her biography
Callan: But even the actor didn’t get Charlottes experience. his inner charlotte didn’t feel better in the dress
Diane: I don’t think the playwright got Charlotte’s expereince
Callan: Right. I believe that to be true.
Diane: He only got his experience being a gay American from the bible belt, and he stopped there…. and never really got into Charlotte’s skin, what her desire really was
Callan: And Helen, well Helen isn’t even trying to get to the richness of trans experience. She knows enough and can’t move beyond that yet.
Diane: Helen is freaked by Betty’s claims of transness
Callan: Right! So how can she speak positively about transness?
Diane: and her (and don’t you ever repeat this) not reading Betty as femme anyhow
Callan: Right. Helen is a woman, Betty is not.
Diane: It’s not only that she wants a penis in her love life, she doesn’t see woman in betty in the first place, and not having met Betty I don’t know
Callan: And if Betty ever got there, became pussy, how would Helen feel? : Is it Betty holding on or it not being there?
Diane: Helen wants a guy
Callan: And she should get one, rather than keep the mate she has as a guy. as much as possible
Diane: she has written recently about missing having the ‘catch’ on her arm….the hot guy, the smart guy
well, there’s also the question of what Betty really wants
Callan: Desire shift is wicked way hard especially when we don’t want it
Diane: just like Z uses me as an anchor Betty may use Helen that way
Callan: Very well may. Betty works for Helen’s brother in law
Diane: didn’t know that
Callan: All in the family.
Diane: right. that creates knots of it’s own
Callan: But all this shit, well it’s real
Callan: and the declamations last night were a projection and I felt abused by them targeting all of us for her pain. It means her words lack blood. No reality.
Diane: the other thing with Helen is that she doesn’t care for women all that much she is somewhat ,,put off….I guess I can put it that I dig being in the women’s circle so much. she’s annoyed with Judith Halberstam’s notion of female masculinity, because Halberstam had no room for hetero women with masculinity
Callan: She is annoyed with many things, but can’t leave them as questions or see how that illuminates her just makes it other people’s fault. where you stumble, there lies your jewel. J. Campbell
Diane: but as you say, the old timers just sit and bristle?
Callan: What the hell can we do? I mean, I bet I pissed her off but not so much that she found me psychotic. Enough letting others talk, enough reflecting what they say, not just saying my own point
Diane: well that’s the point. I’m taking the somewhat cynical view that time will teach Helen what arguments can’t
Callan: Yeah. Maturing is a process but still, the people hit in the process.
Diane: that she’s not like Virginia…. but I don’t think she wants to stay with trans stuff anyhow. She really wants to be a writer and started with stuff close to her it’s the next book I want to see
Callan: When I e-mailed with her I told her that I though that trans partner was way too confining, that she has to talk about how to be a straight queer, her journey as helen, not as partner to betty, and that was something she cannot yet hear.
Diane: btw is the “Those heterosexual faggots “somewhere where i can find it easily?
Callan: It’s on my site somewhere. PicoSearch has it.
Diane: I think she’s actually starting to separate Helen the straight queer from betty…its just beginning of a process
Callan: Fine. But last night, that wasn’t the point.
Diane: that’s the problem for her being asked to speak at a given time. You get where she’s at now and that does keep changing the gender queer business on her part just showed up on the boards strongly in the last two weeks
Callan: Well, it was abusive. She isn’t capable of giving context to a big speech, to making clear this was like a blog entry not a book
Diane: It was abusive because she put labels on other people….
Callan: And was mightily twisted in her rationalizations. No thinking through. No respect for others challenges beyond her nose
Diane: thinking this stuff through takes years
Callan: Yup.
Diane: maybe decades. it’s really hard stuff
Callan: And what I wish was when she found someone who could challenge her, she engaged that challenge rather than putting it off, Like I keep looking for people & ideas to challenge me and help me do the work.
Diane: What I wish was that you had private time with her. many people don’t do well with public challenges
Callan: I’m too scary. I offered myself a few times and she mostly wanted content for her site rather than to engage the issues and once it gets on her site it’s public and I have to be killed.
Diane: I meant sitting down after the talk…small BS session. just a few people, some good booze, a little light jazz
Callan: I am sure she would rather sit with the sycophants who think she is a hot mama
Diane: I’m not sure
Callan: Well, she doesn’t say “Why don’t you come with us?”
Diane: How were you introduced to her btw What I mean is this: I want to work on some of those things, but I don’t want it to be about you personally
Callan: I met her in Burlington, some e-mails, saw her again last night
Was I wearing the right labels? No. : I’m one of those people who think that quality is more than labels and you have to look at the content, not the label. But then again, my mother taught me to shop.
Diane: I agree, and on the surface Helen agrees but she slips back into the easy stuff
Callan: Yup. And when she is queen of the hop at these things, well… some people like that.
Diane: she’s Peggy Rudd’s almost chosen successor
Callan: Yahoo!
Diane: the straight white chick who can advocate for guys in dresses but she’s far queerer than Peggy
Callan: Next Generation
Diane: and she does see a lot of the crocks that peggy was blind to
Callan: But maybe like Linda Peacock she will find someone who really sees her and move on.
Diane: she just got kicked off partner’s list for not being pro trans enough. Her natural voice is that of partner who wants a man but gets trans in some way
Callan: Once we get an audience we think we have to serve them, when often we have to move on, or they make us into someone we don’t like being as many wives have found out.
I think her current voice is partner but it’s not her real voice the one she clings to to avoid the mess of who she is.
Diane: do elaborate?
Callan: Like “The Lean Out” on my site where partners have to lean out to balance each other and as long as Betty is the queer one she can be the one holding hands and leaning out
Diane: she’s an ex-punk…. who hates women who use beauty to get what they want from men
Callan: Her role model is Billy Idol and she was never the pretty one so Betty wanting to be the pretty one is freaky.
Diane: I don’t really get Billy Idol…never have
Callan: “I can’t claim that his clothes were mine, because people know I would never wear them — and that’s not just about size.”
Diane: Helen had an icon up showing her rolling her eyes and in the middle of the animated gif, there’s one frame… where she smiles and it’s dazzling. I told her that guys would kill to be the person who she smiled at that way and it pleased her
Callan: I know. She could be hot if she let herself be. But somehow, she has to be the smart girl not the pretty one.
Diane: she can’t be both… but as you say, a lot of this is a vehicle through which she works out her own issues but at least she’s doing that
Callan: And one thing I know is that as long as I am a tranny, Helen won’t be able to hear much of what I say. Because I am behind the filter.
Diane: I read Peggy Rudd and I get the imprssion of a woman who is wrapped in cloud of novacained cotton candy
Callan: What we do for love. . . .
Callan: Last night an MTF who is in a support group with FTMS, group therapy, said they thought it would be bad. but found that she could actually hear what FTMS said when she filtered out the same thing said by an MTF like her
We have these filters when we let the label mean more than the content, and to Helen, well any tranny born male has a lot to prove
Diane: you don’t get the content because of the filters that stop at the label
Callan: Yeah. If a republican says it, it must be wrong, at least according to Betty.
Diane: Betty hasn’t met the ‘good’ republicans
Callan: Could she see them even if she met them? The issue is Betty not being open to good people, whatever label
Diane: Have you read Rhenquists dissent on Roe V Wade?
Callan: No.
Diane: I have, and it’s really an amazing document. What he said was- the supreme court needs something other than it’s own judgement, a legislative history, in order to find that the right of privacy extends to abortions. He didn’t say it couldn’t make that determination, he said that there was a procedure that needed to be followed in how the law is constructed. Now, I happen to disagree that that is the proper way to deal with 9th amendment issues. I think the 9th amendment, by virture of not defining the process of determining non-specified rights left it open to the court to do just that to say we see the state encroaching on an inherent right …but I digress
the point is that Rhenquist was operating from a solid basis of legal tradition that had nothing to do with anything other than how law works in government and I can disagree on this very important question STILL see him as an honorable man vs Scalie who rewrites stuff to fit his conclusions
Callan: And you have to value his dissent, respect a different POV and so many can’t do that.
The problem I have is with people who can’t imagine that there is a level of knowledge different than their current level that is valid and valuable They are in 5th grade and they can’t imagine what an 8th grader would think because the label makes walls that keep them in their own closet where they can call others wrong.
Diane: I’m a classical liberal…we do respect the conservatives, just not the radical fundies, so it still comes down to Helen pointing fingers about labeling and division and then going ahead and labeling and dividing
Callan: Learning to honor, value, respect, and support others who are different is so valuable And yes, Helen don’t do that and then abuses others for not doing that. But that’s the real work supporting even people whose choices squick you, as long as those choices are informed and consensual
Diane: I think the hardest thing I do is to support the people who are different. I’ve been making friends slowly with a literate thoughtful promiscuous, man-hungry CD who is honest, about her choices, and who she is and what she wants
Callan: Good on’ya!
Diane: point is we’ve very different agendas, but we’re talking from mutual respect, or at least I am
Callan: Different ways to be woman. But women have that issue all the time. how do we support people making choices we would never make?
Diane: she doesn’t get a lot of people telling her she’s good
Callan: What tranny gets affirmation enough? I watch SuperNanny to pretend she is praising me.
Diane: because there’s honesty, integrity UNDER those choices behind those choices I don’t want to pick up a guy at a bar she knows who she is
Callan: Well, lots of women consider that a pleasurable and proper activity. She has thought it through
Callan:.
Diane: http://www.jamieyanak.com/confessions/beholder/beholder.html
You might get a kick out of her
Callan: Thanks. Always like good writing, not people acting out on an auditorium of people and claiming to be the informed and enlightened one.
Diane: well, it’s not like Jamie doesn’t act out
Callan: Acting out isn’t the same as acting. And in Helen’s case, lots of people in her wake
Diane: well, I think there’s a lot of hope for Helen, but it takes time. when you get called to preach it’s really hard to change the contract to “teach” it’s easy to give the audience what they want and not what they need
Callan: Unless you are open to your own obligation to heal by engaging challenge. But yeah, being the queen is fun. Wish I could get that feeling But somehow, I’m left being the sage
Diane: I wish you could too I think it would a lot healthier for you (excuse me) to be teaching rather than critiquing
Callan: The doubter is wise, the believer is happy.
Diane: I doubt too….lots
Callan: That part I get
Diane: you could take that stage but your doubts stop you? not wanting to be the preacher stops you?
Callan: But taking the stage requires an audience and I have always liked to kill audiences so they can experience the same joy I get in rebirth.
Diane: so write a book get an agent
Diane: tell Rhea you want a forum
Callan: Not so easy when you have fallen off the grid. and Rhea sees me as anotha tranny not a real girl goddess
Diane: the grid is easy enough to climb back on
I’m gonna make you mad at me
Callan: OK.
Diane: because I think you CAN do it and I just don’t know what stops you. I don’t always agree with you but I do believe in you
Callan: Thanks. Now make me mad.
Diane: “Just Do it” speak your truth
Callan: yeah,
Diane: tell Rhea you want a turn on stage. build a community of your own
Callan: Look up “low latent inhibition.”
Diane: overcome it
Callan: Good ideas. Reasonable requests
Diane: hey, one thing Helen has done is build a community on her boards. people get together. yeah, you can say it’s like minded sycophants but ANY community can suffer that charge
Callan: I agree with you. I “should” do something. but somehow, I don’t know how to find ways to heal the little hurts.
Diane: whose…your hurts or someone elses?
Callan: Mine. I am way too raw and way too sensitive and I don’t know how to just take the hits and keep going.
Diane: My suggestion….and this is something I try to get across to Zanna without success your healing/saving the world comes from healing other people
each time you help someone else, somehow a little healing will go on with you whether it’s time or distance it’s the recipe for dealing with the loss of a loved one and isn’t that really about the loss of a part of myself
Callan: My sister sent me to Kripalu, wanted to remind me that I could help others. I did, of course, even though she trapped me in a hell course for that. But the challenge was always how I got healed in the process. Who heals the healers?
Diane: your sister sent you to cripple you because she couldn’t think of anything else
Callan: I agree, you are right, To give is to receive. But my reception, well. not so good.
Diane: and you have a lot to give. Constructive suggestion: some of it is packaging
Callan: All of it is. be the cartoon people need but how does that help me?
Diane: which means that maybe you need help in an editing process
Callan: You know, I tend to blow fuses in therapists. as in many people
Diane: I know… you blow fuses all over the place. you warned me when we first started talking a few years ago that you’d alienate me too so far you haven’t
In some ways you are that hot pot of water you need to find a way to be cool at first and turn up the heat gradually so people don’t jump out
Callan: This makes me crazy. The whole “play small and then get big” ideas so you won’t scare people off at first, and when I transform to lower voltage all the heat builds up in me
Diane: well, come up with an alternative if you don’t like that then you need to find another outlet for it
Callan: Sorry. Haven’t done it yet and I’m a bit too fried after these decades
Diane: I don’t know how to help you on that. You know…
Diane: that maharishi keeps going
Callan: Yup. He has the rap down and gets odder and odder the farther he is from challenge
Diane: he started out saying that all it took to reach enlightenment was 20 mintues twice a day, and looking at it through my eyes he either was wrong then or wrong now, but he keeps going he keeps trying and that I have to hand it to him
Callan: Amen. Time’s latest issue is on Ambition, and I perused it to see what I missed.
Diane: and?
Callan: Long list. Family and Faith at the top, probably.
Diane: I see, when you don’t have an answer, round up the usual suspects? So like time
Callan: LOL. That was quite the dismissal. I answered about what I missed. No comment on Time.
Diane: I was commenting on time for having that in there. I obviously misunderstood in these reactionary times…family and faith are trotted to the for of everything with the Bushies
Callan: But, this is one point CrowBoyd doesn’t get. Helen Boyd says that we have to counter letters from the right with letters from the left. But the left is open minds and the right closed, at least in terms of movements, Southern Baptist, Robertson et al, and the have the faith to discipline followers but who can discipline the lefties?
Diane: I’d rather work from the another place entirely. Clinton’s genius was doing that. the point isn’t to discipline the lefties, the point is to subvert the righties
Callan: We do need to work from another place entirely but Boyd don’t get that.
Diane: The right wing wakes up every day from the nightmare that science and modernity has taken another wounding shot at the god of their fathers the modern world confuses them
Callan: a shot at the simplicity and closed minded world view of their fathers too much choice so we need to cut off the edges
Diane: they want certainty, and the way to deal with that isn’t too worry about party discipline in the left it’s to keep on hammering on the self-doubts of the right to talk about the fear behind home schooling
Callan: It’s to build wonderful things they don’t want to live without to be attractive and compelling, rather than dour and defended
Diane: well, that’s the other part: seduction. You need the carrot and the stick
Callan: And why they hated Clinton because people loved him and that freaked them
Diane: he did it well. too bad about his dick
Callan: But the people who loved him really just saw that as part. The people who hated him saw that as revealing the flaw of seduction
Diane: yes… it stlll baffles me how having an affair and lying about it, is somehow more a crime than starting a war on false pretenses and lying about it
Callan: Yup. But one is moral because war is moral and one immoral because sex is immoral
Diane: oh well…it’s getting late in the morning… I think I need to get on with my day
Callan: Have a lovely.
Diane: you too
Callan: bye
Session Close (Diane): Sun Nov 13 11:12:21 2005
Callan 