The TPP appears to be a fait accompli – a done deal. Future prospects for our species are dim. There is one spot of light – Bernie Sanders is running for President. For those who grasp the possibilities of this last chance to fend off the almost inevitable corporate take-over of world food and water supplies, I offer the following primer.

It is not about money, it is about getting out the vote. This is a labor intensive activity; anyone can help with the project.

The only election that truly matters is the Democratic Party Presidential Primary. It doesn’t matter who the Republicans choose from their very odd clown car. Hillary-Shillary has made it clear that her true constituents are transnational corporations including Monsanto. If she wins there will be no actual difference between the two parties.

The key to choosing Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee is registering voters who will vote for him. Therefore:

STEP ONE: Learn how to register voters. Look it up on-line or call your local Democratic Party and ask them.

STEP TWO: Wear a “Bernie for President” shirt and stand at locations where people can see you and have free speech rights. People will approach you – register them to vote. Have a pen and a clipboard. They MUST register as Democrats to vote for Bernie in the primary here in Oregon where I live.

STEP THREE: Get out the vote in the primary. If you have kept track of the people you registered to vote – make sure they actually vote. The Democratic Party in your area will sponsor Get Out the Vote (GOTV) activities – if you show up to help make it happen.

STEP FOUR: After he wins the nomination, volunteer a shift a week at Democratic Party Headquarters in support of Bernie. Some ways to help are walking door-to-door, making phone calls, updating computer data bases, and stuffing envelopes.

We can do this. It is not exaggerating to say that the fate of our species hangs in the balance.

I just put two posters into street-facing windows at my home.  It was fast and easy. We need to take action at the most local levels to inform our friends, co-workers, family members, and neighbors about the urgency of the push to stop the TPP. 
Bernie Sanders is part of the solution, Hillary Clinton is part of the problem.
Please print out the posters, in color if you can, and put them where people passing by can see them.
Let's get the word out.

Yesterday's victory regarding blocking Fast Track of the TPP has not reduced my concern that the forces aligned behind the TPP are hard at work to make it a reality. I saw a commercial on TV yesterday extolling the values of the TPP. I wonder who paid for it? Monsanto?

I woke up this morning with the Kinks playing in my head . . .

We shall defend our island
On the land and on the sea
We shall fight them on the beaches
On the hills and in the fields
We shall fight them in the streets

Lyrics of "Mr. Churchill Says" by Ray Davies

Well, Mr. Churchill says, Mr. Churchill says
"We gotta fight the bloody battle to the very end"
Mr. Beaverbrook says, "We gotta save our tin
And all the garden gates
And empty cans are gonna make us win"

We shall defend our island
On the land and on the sea
We shall fight them on the beaches
On the hills and in the fields
We shall fight them in the streets

Never in the field of human conflict
Was so much owed to so few
'Cause they have made our British Empire
A better place for me and you
And this was their finest hour

Well, Mr. Montgomery says and Mr. Mountbatten says
"We gotta fight the bloody battle to the very end"
As Vera Lynn would say, "We'll meet again someday
But all the sacrifices we must make before the end"

Did you hear that plane flying overhead?
There's a house on fire and there's someone lying dead
We gotta clean up the streets
And get me back on my feet because we wanna be free
Do your worst and we'll do our best

We're gonna win the way that Mr. Churchill says
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, well Mr. Churchill says
"We gotta hold up our chins
We gotta show some courage and some discipline
We gotta black up the windows and nail up the doors
And keep right on till the end of the war"

Quote from Churchill's speech, upon which Ray Davies​ drew.
"We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

Need some context for what Winston Churchill was talking about?  This video explains:

While looking for the YouTube video of the Kinks playing "Mr. Churchill Says" I found this a version that seems to challenge the eventual outcome of winning WWII. As for me - I'll be fighting the blood battle until the very end.

     I was in high school in 1968 when my mother told my sister and me to walk downtown and volunteer at the Bobby Kennedy for President campaign headquarters. We lived in Orange, California and the office was on Chapman, not too far from the circle. We were just teenagers and were told we were too young to walk precincts so we helped around the office. This was my first political campaign and I was all in for Bobby. It was heartbreaking to win the California Primary . . . 

"I think we can end the divisions within the United States. What I think is quite clear is that we can work together … We are a great country, a selfless … and a compassionate country … So my thanks to all of you and on to Chicago and let's win."

And then it was over.

I have never had confidence that we have learned the truth about the assassinations of the three most inspirational leaders of my youth, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy.

"Abraham, Martin And John"

Anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed lotta people but it seems the good they die young
You know I just looked around and he's gone

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed lotta people but it seems the good they die young
I just looked around and he's gone

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed lotta people but it seems the good they die young
I just looked around and he's gone

Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, it's gonna be one day

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin, and John

    "It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
                     ~ Robert F. Kennedy, University of Cape Town, South Africa, June 6th, 1966

     I have worked for candidates for various political offices all my life, from Bobby's presidential campaign up to today. I have worked for social justice, boycotting grapes in support of United Farm Workers then, boycotting slave-master Walmart today. Rest in Peace, John, Martin, and Bobby. May your ideals live on - in me and in the millions who draw inspiration from your words and the models of your lives of action. ~ Dr. P-J

For the first 12 years of the time I participated in (mandatory) public education, I was denied permission to wear pants to school. The dress code required that I (labeled “a girl” at birth) wear a dress. It was the law – I was a girl and I had to wear the clothes that allowed for easy identification of my label.

I was a student at an elementary school in Seattle from kindergarten to third grade. Parts of the playground were segregated. The younger children had a co-ed playground with a slide, hanging bars, etc. The recess areas for the older children were divided into the girls’ playground and the boys’ playground. The girls were situated on the asphalt next to the school. We had four-square, hopscotch, and tetherball. Boys were permitted on the girls’ playground, but that rarely occurred.

The boys controlled a dirt and gravel lot. It was much larger space, occupying the whole south side of the playgrounds, extended out to the edges of the school property. To my young mind, the boys’ playground seemed dangerous – a place where a person could get hurt. The boys played tag, baseball, and other field games. Sometimes they got dirty and sometimes got in trouble for it. Girls never got dirty. No girls ever entered the boys’ playground. We all followed the rules back in that day. We all knew our places.

This systematic distribution of privilege was reinforced when I learned that “he” was the universal pronoun that included both females and males. If the gender of an individual was uncertain, we must always defer to the masculine. It was embedded in the language – police man, mail man, fire man, it was portrayed in our Dick and Jane readers where men were doctors and women were nurses. It was enforced on the playground. It was mandated in the type of clothing I was required to wear.

And what is gender assignment of this type? It is a form of otherising.

Edward Said wrote about Orientalism, and the concept of otherising. Said identified the patronizing and self-aggrandizing identification of the colonial masters as superior, which allowed them to justify/rationalize their domination and subjugation of indigenous people. Middle Eastern people were stereotyped as “Orientals” who were sneaky, exotic, and unethical. The (white male Christian) colonizers kept for themselves those attributes of human personality that then justified their mastery of inferior others – they were better - open, normal, and honest. In other regions, indigenous people have been labeled heathen, dirty, lazy, child-like, and so forth. These traits form a dichotomous sort, with the privileged class on the left and the abject class on the right. Figure 1 is a dichotomous sort drawn on Said’s concept of Orientalism.

Figure 1.

In 1885, in A Child’s Garden of Verses, British author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about “Foreign Children”:

Little Indian, Sioux, or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don’t you wish that you were me?

You have seen the scarlet trees
And the lions over seas;
You have eaten ostrich eggs,
And turned the turtle off their legs.

Such a life is very fine,
But it’s not so nice as mine:
You must often as you trod,
Have wearied NOT to be abroad.

You have curious things to eat,
I am fed on proper meat;
You must dwell upon the foam,
But I am safe and live at home.
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don’t you wish that you were me?

Figure 2.

I will leave it to the reader to deconstruct this poem. When I first heard it read to me at around the age of five, I took it as ironic, but while in grad school, when I shared with friends from other lands, they heard oppression and racism. The barely clothed Native American (far right child in Figure 2) in the related drawing by Jesse Wilcox Smith provokes the question: Who dresses like that?  A hypothetical creature, a construct. Figures 3, 4,  and 5 present some alternative images for Native America children.

The concept of otherizing helps explain the construction of gender.  Figure 6 represents some of the commonly held beliefs about the attributes of the two genders.

Figure 6.

The true nature of human attributes is quite different. Any individual, regardless of gender, can have more or less of a certain human attribute, whether it is being interruptive compared to being a listener or whether it is being a leader versus being a follower. Figures 7, 8, and 9 analyze five attributes as continuums. The self-described characteristics of the author are provided as an example of one particular human being, depicted in bold red in figure 9.

Figure 7.

Figure 8.

Figure 9.

I have not cooperated with my gender assignment. It seemed arbitrary to me at an early age. As I made my way in the word, I have resisted male hegemony, patriarchy.

Queer theory provides answers.

Additional reading:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Said
wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism
wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory

Pink or Blue - Which are You?
The quick answer is: neither.

According to an article on the Smithsonian website, assigning the color pink to girls and blue to boys did not become popular until the 1940s. Interestingly, an article published in Earnshaw's Infants' Department in 1918 advised that “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” (1) As recently as 1927, “Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene’s told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle’s in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago.” (1) 


In this photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt as a young lad, he wears fashionable clothing of the era: a dress, a hat with a feather, and patent leather shoes. White was commonly used for children because it was easy to bleach and keep clean looking. Boys’ hair was commonly kept long until the age of six or seven.

When my daughters were babies, in the early 1980s, pink for girls and blue for boys was less fashionable than it had been. Women were committed to raising their girls to have more opportunities, and femininity was challenged as a reflection of oppression. There was a range of products available for babies in gender neutral greens and yellows, bright reds, etc. Frilly pink for girls was out!

A Google Image search of the term “baby clothes” conducted on March 29, 2015 reveals that we are back to a time of gender colorizing infants. These “Newborn Baby . . . Perfect Shower Gift[s]” (2) come in color sets for a girl or a boy:

While boys’ outfits do not prepare them for a life of objectification, girls’ outfits do. Isn’t she cute? She’s just like a little doll. “Lifelike miniature baby doll collection by Cheryl Hill dressed in Tinker Bell-inspired outfits with Tinker Bell artwork, sparkling wings and more.” (5)

As queer politics get more radical, more trans folks are coming out every day, and those who challenge gender norms are more frequently making it real in personal encounters, a quick examination of the mass marketing of baby clothes reveals that the policing of gender is still going strong. This quick study of the marketing of infant clothing reveals that genderizing is perhaps more prevalent today than it was 30 years ago. Baby clothes reveal the push to keep girls feminine and boys masculine. And that’s not natural.

June 1970 The Kinks - "Lola" from Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One
The video is a live version that may amuse. Note that Ray has been compelled to change "Coca-cola" to "cherry-cola" by the time of this performance. Earlier versions on You Tube are uncensored.

I saw Ray Davies perform in Portland (around 2012). I felt compelled to leave my balcony seat and move to the very front of the crowd at the lip of the stage, joining the passionate dancers. almost all of them young, trans, gay, or queer, calling out for Lola. 

Of course "kink" is British slang for sexual deviation.

1972 David Bowie - "Suffragette City" from The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
This song was a useful anthem for liberated women of that time but makes even more sense when you see Bowie perform it live. Love the earrings.

The Stones also performed "Angie" from Goats Head Soup
It's not the lyrics or the beautiful piano by Nicky Hopkins that made this piece a cutting edge gender mash-up - it's Mick's outfit.

1974 David Bowie - "Rebel Rebel" from Diamond Dogs 
The lyrics, the costume, and Bowie's entire persona challenged gender stereotypes.

The times they were a changin' and what a relief for some of us.

One recent Sunday at the flea market a mother pushed a stroller past the wares. A small child reached out towards something sparkly, little hands grabbing at empty air. Mommy grabbed the desired object, a bracelet of plastic beads – looked it over, and then tossed it back into the bin. “No, that’s for girls,” she explained to the disappointed child.

Gender is arbitrary, constructed in thousands of moments like this. This was a microaggression, policing the masculinity of a toddler.

Over time, this child will no doubt learn to suppress natural and instinctive behaviors in order to fit his mother’s expectations of gender conformity and fulfill a role in the masculine hegemony that governs our interactions, directly affecting our outcomes.

The idea that gender differences are natural and biological is so accepted that to even speak in opposition to that notion is a form of blasphemy. But think back to the moment of birth – what is the first thing we must know about a newborn. Is it weight, height, or Apgar score? NO! It is gender. It’s a girl – get out the pink bows. It’s a boy – a tiny baseball mitt and a football.

Our behavior towards newborns and infants is very specifically genderized. We cradle little girls, cooing and telling them they are beautiful. With little boys? We engage in mock roughhousing, boxing with them. We police the behavior of boys, enforcing our perception of what it means to be male, starting from their first moments on the planet.