LOVE STRIKES AWAY THE CHAINS OF FEAR (Maya Angelou)

                                                                             




                                                                         

                                 LOVE STRIKES AWAY THE CHAINS OF FEAR


                                                          FAMOUS POEMS



          Touched by An Angel by Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

                                            POETRY FOUNDATION


An acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou had a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood’s first female black director, but became most famous as a writer, editor, essayist, playwright, and poet. As a civil rights activist, Angelou worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She was also an educator and served as the Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. By 1975, wrote Carol E. Neubauer in Southern Women Writers: The New Generation, Angelou was recognized “as a spokesperson for… all people who are committed to raising the moral standards of living in the United States.” She served on two presidential committees, for Gerald Ford in 1975 and for Jimmy Carter in 1977. In 2000, Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by President Barack Obama. Angelou was awarded over 50 honorary degrees before her death.

HISTORY OF REGENT BAR, EDINBURGH, AND NEIGHBOURING BUILDINGS ON ABBEYMOUNT

                                                     
                                                                                     

Alan Joy and his partner Colin opened the Regent Bar on Montrose Terrace, Abbeyhill, Edinburgh in 2003 as an alternative to the more earthy and slightly dodgy LGBT bars on the Top of Leith Walk, and the more pretentious New Town Bar on Dublin Street. The place on Montrose Terrace was closed before Alan and Colin started up, though it had been open as the Regent Buffet during the 1950s. Alan and Colin were previously the proprietors of  the Blue Moon Cafe on Broughton Street, in Edinburgh's Pink Triangle, and later the proprietors of the Nom de Plume restaurant, further down Broughton Street and above the LGBT centre in the basement,

                                                           REGENT CINEMA (Cinema Treasures)


                                                           

     QUOTE:Converted from Youngers;St. Anne’s Brewery buildings, the Regent Cinema opened on 1st August 1927. It was a project of independent operator Graham Youll and the conversion was carried out by architect T. Bowhill Gibson. In March 1928 it was taken over by General Theatre Corporation (GTC), who were taken over by Gaumont British Theatres in May 1928. Late in 1929 it was fitted with a British Acoustic sound system. The Regent Cinema had a 30 feet deep stage, a Compton 2Manual/6Rank theatre organ was installed and there was a tea-room for patrons.

Later operated by the Rank Organisation it was closed on 2nd May 1970 with “Carry On Again Doctor” and Oliver Reed in “The Trap”. It was used as an occasional Fringe theatre and also a live rock concert venue for a while, but this proved to be not very successful and the building was standing derelict in 1984. It was subsequently demolished.

Contributed by Ken Roe

                                           More about     REGENT CINEMA

"The Regent Cinema at Abbeymount opened in August 1927.  The Architect was T. Bowhill Gibson, and the original seating was for 1,700.

The cinema was sold to GTC (Gaumont) in March 1928.

It closed in May 1970 and has now been demolished.  There is a garage on the site of the old cinema."

Gordon Barr

                   
                During 19th Century cinema was instead


                                       PALACE BREWERY  (ARCHIVES HUB)



        Nearby was

                                STEWART'S BALLROOM

                           

Stewart's Ballroom was situated at Abbeymount Edinburgh, and was originally owned by councillor John F Stewart, who apparently lived in the large house you can see just beyond the Astoria entrance in the black and white picture below.  Later it would become the Astoria and play host to many punk and new wave acts.  The final guise of the Astoria was "The Good Time Emporium" pub/restaurant. 

IS THERE A CIRCLE JERK IN BAYESIAN STATISTICS?

Definition a 'circle jerk' is a group of  people participating in group onanism . Is there one in ISBA, the International Society for Bayesian Analysis, which I helped found in 1993? ,

                                                                                 

During late November. I received, by e-mail from Michele Guindani an announcement of the forthcoming webinar (on Nov 27th) of the following article, which has already been published in  Bayesian Analysis. [Michele is the editor in chief of this online journal]

Latent Nested Nonparametric Priors"
by
Federico Camerlenghi, David B. Dunson, Antonio Lijoi, Igor Prünster, and Abel Rodríguez



                                                                  

                                        This has something to do with the ISBA 2018 Conference in Crete
                                                   




Upon reading the mind twisting paper, I, with the greatest of respect, found it to consist of a vast amount of high quality, relatively useless, blither, much too brilliantly complex in mathematical terms, and with scant chance of computing any Bayesian solution. Here is my subsequent slightly nutty correspondence with the Bayesian Analysis, Editor in Chief Michele Guindani:

Hi! I won't be here for the webinar discussion. Could you possibly insert this comment in the discussion? Thank you Tom

I helped initiate  Bayesian semi-parametrics in the 1970s with my papers in Biometrika 1973 and JRSSB 1978, which complemented Ferguson's 1973 paper in the Annals of Statistics ,I was very interested to see how the subject had advanced during the last 46 years. Upon reading the paper I conclude that it has regressed at least 200 years!!!. While highly complicated and doubtlessly brilliant mathematically, in true Dunsonian style, the authors seem to simply be spinning their wheels without prospect of useful applications [ WITH POTENTIALLY PRECISE PRACTICAL BAYESIAN CONCLUSIONS]. However, I am 71 and getting a bit senile. Maybe I'm missing something profound, When I published my Personal History of Bayesian Statistics with Wiley in 2014, I thought to myself (and kept a bit quiet about it while praising too many people to bits) that DIC was the only useful addition to our previously wonderful subject during the current century, together with the brilliant work by Burkert and Evans on the resolution of Lindley's paradox which still seems to be ignored by everybody who still falls into the standard Bayes factor traps. Now I'm wondering why so Bayesian papers and non-convergent simulation procedures are getting churned out willy nilly, even now and without apparent purpose, But maybe it's something to do with this new-fangled Big Data Analysis. Is Big Data a catch word or is it just something else to justify your meal tickets?

Michele Guindani	Thu, Nov 21, 6:24 PM (20 hours ago)
to me

Hi Tom,

Thank you very much. My apologies for the late reply, it has been quite hectic for me over the past week. It is a pity you will not be able to make the seminar discussion. Although I am relatively young, I realize that there has been indeed a change of perspective in many respects, -----[THE REMAINDER OF PROFESSOR GUINDANI'S REPLY HAS BEEN DELETED FOLLOWING HIS CURIOUS INTERVENTION ON THE J ISBA FACEBOOK PAGE. HE APPEARS TO HAVE AGREED WITH ME A TOUCH MORE THAN HE WISHED TO MAKE PUBLIC. IN THE MEANTIME ANOTHER BAYESIAN COLLEAGUE CONTACTED ME TO SAY THAT ONE OF THE CO-AUTHORS OF THE FORTHCOMING WEBINAR PAPER HAD BEEN HEAVILY CRITICISED AT A RECENT CONFERENCE FOR HIS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PAPER. THIS IS ALL HIGHLY PERPLEXING]

Best,

Michele

Thomas Leonard <leonardthomas70@googlemail.com>	11:54 AM (2 hours ago)
to Michele

Hi Michelle,

             Thank you for your reply.I guess that I indeed might  have said something pertinent. I am taking a back seat now from ISBA, because of my declining heath and because the antics of Bernardo and Carlin and their likes have ruined my memories of conferences long ago, after I helped Arnold Zellner to devise ISBA in the first place. I am also scared of the (massive) way in which Bayesians are spreading their wings and its potential impact on the creation of misinformation and skewed information as the world spirals in its apparent irrational death throes, this followed the flawed leadership of Adrian Smith and Its acolytes during the 1990s and before. I hope this makes sense, Please feel free to repeat or publish any of my utterances which you might care to,

                                                  With all best wishes,

                                                                           Tom Leonard

      P.S. I don't know whether this poem is at all relevant. I composed it yesterday.  https://thomashoskynsleonardblog.blogspot.com/2019/11/bubble-blether-blither-abusive-pariahs.html


                                                                       

On the left ----ISBA's Three founders (Hotel Nikko, San Francisco 1993)

Tom Leonard, Arnold Zellner, and Gordon Kaufmann, with Carl Morris, secomd from right, and two other Bayesian Colleagues, Wesley Johnson and Shanti Gupta I thinlk

MICHELE GUINDANI's SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Most of Professor Guindani's methodologies invoke highly complex probabilistic models with the zillions of assumptions they entail. I doubt that  that many computationally feasible and at all close to convergent procedures,e.g. variations of MCMC,are available for analysing these models except in very special cases. I therefore draw into question, for future consideration, the scientific usefulness of this and any similar Bayesian research 

CONCLUSION

Given  my knowledge of  Bayesian research in general e.g. as reported on the Approximate Bayesian Computation Facebook Page, I tentatively conclude that there might  be a 'circle jerk' in Bayesian Statistics whose participants have some tendency towards publishing articles which are scientifically virtually useless, but which by camouflage appear to be of prize winning quality unless distinguished otherwise by a top and suitably assertive expert in the field. If the editors of our journals happened to be part of this circle, then Society as a whole would be in great trouble indeed. This is of course solely my individual, and highly individualistic perception, which could, given the frailties of my mind, be ENTIRELY MISGUIDED AND INCORRECT,

I do however definitely believe that circle jerks have existed during the history of Bayesian Statistics, though the De Finetti-style 'coherence' circle jerk of the 1970s differed in nature from the 'not really convergent Metropolis algorithm' circle jerk which was initiated, in Bayesian Statistics in 1992.

COMMENT FROM DR, EWART SHAW (WARWICK)

I've always been worried by the shift towards high-dimensional models with parameters far removed from identifiable properties of observables, and from human experience in general. The title "Latent Nested Nonparametric Priors" alone puts me right off with each successive adjective! High-dimensional space is astoundingly 'empty' (witness e.g. the number of directions in Euclidean space no closer together than 60 degrees, as shown by sphere packing). The human mind - mine at least - finds it 'challenging' to come up with appropriate possible models, parametrisations, interrelationships, priors, and representations + interpretations + communication of the resulting posteriors. Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man.

Bubble, Blether, Blither, Abusive Pariahs

                                                                 

BUBBLE, BLETHER, BLITHER, ABUSIVE PARIAHS

by Thomas Hoskyns Leonard

Bubble away Prince Andrew

At the younger berries and elderberries

Blether Bad Boris Blether

Blither Sir Aristocranky David Attenbatterem blither

Who about nature and starving the African masses burbles

Begone abusive pariahs!

And with Eugenics how about thought

And Compassion

Keep whispering, devious psychopath,

Triangulating owl in your ghostly lair

This poem was composed by Tom Leonard, in the Botanic Cottage in the Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh on 21st November 2019. This was during an Open Book writing session led by Pauline Moore during Book Week Scotland. The theme of the session  was 'Blether'.

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, NEGATIVE RACIAL EUGENICIST

                                                                 

             


        Sir David Attenborough the high profile presenter on Nature is a harmful, mendacious eugenicist. The twerp should be given considerably less space, and should certainly not given the credit he is given for various public 'pronouncements'.

                                            POPULATION CONTROL

Except:

Even our heroes can slip up at times. Sir David Attenborough is officially the most trusted man in Britain, but his remarks published today, in the context of the debate over world population growth, that it is “barmy” to send food to famine-stricken countries, is crass in its callousness; it is simply stupid. And when he reflects on the implication – that it is acceptable to reduce human numbers by starving people to death – Sir David may well be forced to modify his words.

                      TELEGRAPH: HUMAN BEINGS ARE A PLAGUE ON EARTH

He suggested humans are "blinding ourselves" to the problem, claiming: "We say, get the United Nations to send them bags of flour. That's barmy.


                                MORE ABOUT THE SAME SHIT


“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.”


                                      DAVID ATTENBOROUGH , RACIAL EUGENICiST

FROM CULLINGWORTH (2013)

I was very tempted to title this comment "David Attenborough - fascist" but people might misunderstand my point. Others - via the fine medium of Twitter suggested: "David Attenborough - fabian" in recognition of all those social democrats and pseudo-liberals (and apologists for mass murderers) like Sidney & Beatrice Webb, G B Shaw, H G Wells and J M Keynes who were in favour of government intervention to stop the masses from breeding.

However, I thing that "David Attenborough - eugenicist" will suffice for that is what he is:

"We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so,” warns David Attenborough in an interview in the new issue of Radio Times magazine. “It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde,” says the natural history broadcaster.

And it's not us Western white folk - we're fine (or more pertinently failing to meet replacement levels meaning, but for immigration, negative population growth). It the huddled masses in Africa:

“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves – and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a co-ordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.”

 A less kind blogger might sniff a little racism there!

Now David Attenborough - along with the other posh eugenicists in organisations like Friends of the Earth and the Green Party - has a pretty loose association with actual facts about population and indeed about famine in Ethiopia - true there are food shortages most years in this country but no objective observer - or even the development industry - identifies population pressures as the cause.

The real problem for nasty eugenicists like Attenborough is that economic growth, trade and open markets - by making us richer - are the means to 'control' population. Coupled with sending women to school rather than to arranged marriages. Here are the facts that the eugenicists ignore:

...in the next few years (if it hasn't happened already) the world will reach a milestone: half of humanity will be having only enough children to replace itself. That is, the fertility rate of half the world will be 2.1 or below. This is the “replacement level of fertility”, the magic number that causes a country's population to slow down and eventually to stabilise. According to the United Nations population division, 2.9 billion people out of a total of 6.5 billion were living in countries at or below this point in 2000-05. The number will rise to 3.4 billion out of 7 billion in the early 2010s and to over 50% in the middle of the next decade. The countries include not only Russia and Japan but Brazil, Indonesia, China and even south India.

Attenborough and his posh eugenicist mates can sod off. Humankind doesn't need him to sort its population growth - getting richer and better educated is doing the job just fine.

                                    ATTENBOROUGH AGAINST LARGE FAMILIES

                                     UPPER CLASS WARRIOR

                                    STOP FEEDING THIRD CLASS NATIONS

                                  PROPAGANDA MOUTHPIECE PROMOTING CLIMATE FEAR

TRANSPHOBIA IN THE QUAKERS AND SCOTTISH LABOUR PARTY

Note added 21 st November 2019 I have now stopped attending the Quakers because they are completely bananas on these issues. Last night I attended an evocative Candlelight Vigil for Transgender People outside the Scottish Parliament, and that sealed my decision



                                    TRANSGENDER 'DEBATE'  IN SCOTTISH LABOUR


                        QUAKER TERF Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans SPEAKING IN SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT ON 20th NOVEMBER

WE SHOULD LIVE HOW SYLVIA  RIVERA LIVED, AND SWEAR HOW SYLVIA RIVERA SWORE, WHATEVER THE TWISTED DO-GOODERS THINK



                                                            

                                                                       


This blog post is my response to apparent Quaker transphobia when I was bullied as an LGBT person while representing part of the Edinburgh trans gender community in Marie Delices Cafe in Morningside Edinburgh on 8th November 2019. I walked out of the meeting when I was effectively prevented from posing a question to Daniel Johnson MSP regarding the Gender Recognition Act. (More indication of what happened during this lunchtime meeting with three leading Quakers is added at end of this blog post, beneath a (forthcoming) picture of my transgender ex-partner.)


While the Quakers are mainly pro-trans there are still a number of active Trans Exclusionary Feminists in the Quakers, and we have some of these well-documented


I referred to the incident in Marie Delices during my ministry to South Edinburgh Quakers on 10th November 2019. In particular I held Sylvia Rivera in the light,



                                                                       

    

                                HISTORY IS A WEAPON SPEECH (2001)

"OUR ARMIES ARE RISING AND WE ARE GETTING STRONGER."

SYLVIA RIVERA'S JUNE 2001 TALK AT THE LESBIAN AND GAY COMMUNITY SERVICES CENTER, NEW YORK CITY

Latino Gay Men of New York (LGMNY), a social group established in 1991, invited the Bronx-born, Venezuelan/Puerto Rican Stonewall veteran, transgender activist, and Young Lords member Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) to be a guest speaker at its monthly "First Friday of the Month" meeting in June 2001. This meeting was organized as a celebration of LGBT Pride month, in commemoration of the Stonewall riots of 1969, a landmark event in the history of gay liberation. The meeting was held at the temporary building that the Lesbian and Gay Community Center was occupying near Gansevoort Street while its main building on 13th Street was being renovated. Since Sylvia was banned from entering the Center (see transcription), we had to secure a special permit in order for her to gain admittance. She came with her life partner Julia Murray. The meeting began with small group discussions of the legacy of Stonewall, followed by Sylvia's talk. The gathering concluded with a surprise rendition of "Happy Birthday" and the eating of cake and strawberries, an advance celebration of Sylvia's 50th birthday, which was to occur in July. Sylvia passed away from liver cancer several months later, in February 2002. The recording of Sylvia's talk unfortunately does not include the very beginning of her presentation. Particularly interesting, in addition to Rivera's recollection of the Stonewall riots, of early 1970s activism, and of the 1973 schism regarding the inclusion of drag queens in the broader movement, is her discussion of current trans politics in New York and of her participation in World Pride (Italy, 2000), her critique of gay normalization and gay marriage, and her comments on the activism generated by the murders of Matthew Shepard (1976-1998) and Amanda Milan (1975?-2000).                                                      

                                                   SYLVIA RIVERA (Wikipedia) 


     

Gender identity[edit]

Rivera's gender identity was complex and varied throughout her life.^[1][3] In 1971, she spoke of herself as a "half sister".^[29] In her essay "Transvestites: Your Half Sisters and Half Brothers of the Revolution", she specifically claims her use of transvestite as applying to only the gay community: "Transvestites are homosexual men and women who dress in clothes of the opposite sex."^[29]

In interviews and writings in her later years, notably her 1995 interview with Randy Wicker and her 2002 essay, "Queens In Exile, The Forgotten Ones," she expressed a fluid take on gender, referring to herself alternately as a gay man,^[5] a gay girl,^[3] a drag queen/street queen,^[1][7][8] and again as a gay man,^[1] embodying all of these experiences and seeing none of these identities as excluding the others.^[1] Rivera writes of having considered gender reassignment surgery much earlier in life, but of ultimately choosing to reject it, taking hormones only near the end of her life.^[1]


                                                       BIOGRAPHY.COM


                                  

“You all tell me, go and hide my tail between my legs.

I will no longer put up with this shit.

I have been beaten.

I have had my nose broken.

I have been thrown in jail.

I have lost my job.

I have lost my apartment.

For gay liberation, and you all treat me this way?

What the f**k’s wrong with you all?

Think about that!”                                                      

PICTURE OF MY EX-PARTNER MAY APPEAR HERE WHEN I HAVE HER PERMISSION

My trans ex-partner says that she tries to be invisible because she lives in fear of her life, At lunchtime on Friday I'd explained to three leading Quakers that transgender women were vulnerable people who, when repressed into feeling that they might not be real women,would frequently become depressed and sometimes take their own lives. Despite mind-bogglingly fierce resistance, from a subset of those present, which seemed contrary to pre-existing consensual Quaker policy, this message was nevertheless transmitted within an hour or so to Daniel Johnson MSP in a meeting, in my angry absence, in his nearby office. Daniel took it very much to heart, and said that he would study it carefully in relation to the ongoing debate regarding the Gender Recognition Act. 

    13 th November I have since corresponded with Daniel and sent him an earlier version of this blogpost (In Memorium Sylvia Rivera). He has sent me a couple of helpful replies, and is keen to meet with me

'DEBATE' ON TRANSGENDER RIGHTS WITHIN SCOTTISH LABOUR

My favourite quotes by Catherine of Siena:  "If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire!"  "Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear."  "Every step of the way to heaven is heaven."

IN MEMORIUM SYLVIA RIVERA

                                    TRANSGENDER DEBATE  IN SCOTTISH LABOUR

WE SHOULD LIVE HOW SYLVIA  RIVERA LIVED, AND SWEAR HOW SYLVIA RIVERA SWORE, WHATEVER THE TWISTED DO-GOODERS THINK



                                                            

                                                                       


This blog post is my response to apparent Quaker transphobia when I was bullied as an LGBT person while representing part of the Edinburgh trans gender community in Marie Delices Cafe in Morningside Edinburgh on 8th November 2019. I walked out of the meeting when I was effectively prevented from posing a question to Daniel Johnson MSP regarding the Gender Recognition Act. (More indication of what happened during this lunchtime meeting with three leading Quakers is added below, beneath a picture of my transgender ex-partner Nicola.)



                                                                       

    

                                HISTORY IS A WEAPON SPEECH (2001)

"OUR ARMIES ARE RISING AND WE ARE GETTING STRONGER."

SYLVIA RIVERA'S JUNE 2001 TALK AT THE LESBIAN AND GAY COMMUNITY SERVICES CENTER, NEW YORK CITY

Latino Gay Men of New York (LGMNY), a social group established in 1991, invited the Bronx-born, Venezuelan/Puerto Rican Stonewall veteran, transgender activist, and Young Lords member Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) to be a guest speaker at its monthly "First Friday of the Month" meeting in June 2001. This meeting was organized as a celebration of LGBT Pride month, in commemoration of the Stonewall riots of 1969, a landmark event in the history of gay liberation. The meeting was held at the temporary building that the Lesbian and Gay Community Center was occupying near Gansevoort Street while its main building on 13th Street was being renovated. Since Sylvia was banned from entering the Center (see transcription), we had to secure a special permit in order for her to gain admittance. She came with her life partner Julia Murray. The meeting began with small group discussions of the legacy of Stonewall, followed by Sylvia's talk. The gathering concluded with a surprise rendition of "Happy Birthday" and the eating of cake and strawberries, an advance celebration of Sylvia's 50th birthday, which was to occur in July. Sylvia passed away from liver cancer several months later, in February 2002. The recording of Sylvia's talk unfortunately does not include the very beginning of her presentation. Particularly interesting, in addition to Rivera's recollection of the Stonewall riots, of early 1970s activism, and of the 1973 schism regarding the inclusion of drag queens in the broader movement, is her discussion of current trans politics in New York and of her participation in World Pride (Italy, 2000), her critique of gay normalization and gay marriage, and her comments on the activism generated by the murders of Matthew Shepard (1976-1998) and Amanda Milan (1975?-2000).                                                      

                                                   SYLVIA RIVERA (Wikipedia) 


       

Gender identity[edit]

Rivera's gender identity was complex and varied throughout her life.^[1][3] In 1971, she spoke of herself as a "half sister".^[29] In her essay "Transvestites: Your Half Sisters and Half Brothers of the Revolution", she specifically claims her use of transvestite as applying to only the gay community: "Transvestites are homosexual men and women who dress in clothes of the opposite sex."^[29]

In interviews and writings in her later years, notably her 1995 interview with Randy Wicker and her 2002 essay, "Queens In Exile, The Forgotten Ones," she expressed a fluid take on gender, referring to herself alternately as a gay man,^[5] a gay girl,^[3] a drag queen/street queen,^[1][7][8] and again as a gay man,^[1] embodying all of these experiences and seeing none of these identities as excluding the others.^[1] Rivera writes of having considered gender reassignment surgery much earlier in life, but of ultimately choosing to reject it, taking hormones only near the end of her life.^[1]


                                                       BIOGRAPHY.COM


                                  

“You all tell me, go and hide my tail between my legs.

I will no longer put up with this shit.

I have been beaten.

I have had my nose broken.

I have been thrown in jail.

I have lost my job.

I have lost my apartment.

For gay liberation, and you all treat me this way?

What the f**k’s wrong with you all?

Think about that!”

                                           PICTURE OF EX-PARTNER

                                                               

My (Tom's) ex-partner, Today (10th November) I explained on Facebook that I now realise that she was really a real woman when I loved her as a handsome man. In her reply she explained to the effect that unlike Sylvia Rivera, she always tries to be invisible because she lives in fear of her life, At lunchtime on Friday I'd explained to three leading Quakers that transgender women were vulnerable people who, when repressed into feeling that they might not be real women,would frequently become depressed and sometimes take their own lives. Despite mind-bogglingly fierce resistance, from a subset of those present, which seemed contrary to pre-existing consensual Quaker policy, this message was nevertheless transmitted within an hour or so to Daniel Johnson MSP in a meeting, in my angry absence, in his nearby office. Daniel took it very much to heart, and said that he would study it carefully in relation to the ongoing debate regarding the Gender Recognition Act.

DEBATE ON TRANSGENDER RIGHTS WITHIN SCOTTISH LABOUR

My favourite quotes by Catherine of Siena:  "If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire!"  "Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear."  "Every step of the way to heaven is heaven."