Life, Law, Gender

Comments

When I quit blogging (so I was only gone 9 months -- did you miss me?) I decided to turn on the feature that requires comments be moderated.  I'd never done this before, but I began to get so many spam comments that I didn't want to give over my blog to them.

So, until people start finding out about me resuming posting (probably will take a while, I imagine as I don't intend to market myself) and begin to regularly comment, I am going to leave comment moderation turned on.  Please don't worry that your comment doesn't show up right away.  I will post it the minute I see it (you know, if it's not spam), I promise!  And, of course, thanks for reading!

Obviously...

Random posting has begun.  I may (or may not) post more often.  We'll see. 

Posts here will probably be largely about being transgender, lesbian, generally queer-related, or other political commentary.  I maintain a blog over at Rainbow Law Center for stuff related to our practice of law. My most personal posts, or posts that mention family members by name will still be confined to my password protected "Family Blog".

It's Time

My wish for you: Peace, love, compassion and forgiveness.

I started this blog 3 years ago this month.  I've written 700 posts since I made the transition from AOL (my first blog post is here) and I've had over 2,300 comments from you, my dear readers, and generated nearly 170,000 page hits. I've accomplished my principal goals of informing my law school classmates about myself and of keeping my mom informed about what was going on in my life. I've graduated law school (achieving my goal of no "C" grades and exceeding my goal of at least one "A" grade); my mother will likely never read another blog post. In addition, the blog has become burdensome to me, and that I can't have.

Along the way, though, I've made some real-life friends, I've met several fellow bloggers, I've met some readers, and I've made dozens of cyber-friends.  In addition, this blog has given me a space for myself -- a place where I could ruminate about the day's events or contemplate my navel. It's been a journal and a pulpit. I've been able to document an interesting and sometimes tumultous time in my life here, and that's been a great benefit of the blog. More than a handful of readers have contacted me privately to tell me that my writings have had a positive effect on their lives. That was unexpected, but it has been the greatest reward of all.

My next venture is to work with my darling spouse on starting up our law firm -- Rainbow Law Center, PLLC, located out of Ann Arbor. It will be through this venue that I will try to help others find their way through the maze of LGBTQ law and policy. I will put a link up when the website is functional.

All things in their time.  It is time for me to bid you all adieu (my spouse says "don't burn your cyber-bridge. Call it a hiatus rather than an ending." We'll see. I rarely ever close a door). Thank you all for reading. See you 'round the blogosphere.

Sexuality and Religion

Check out this blog, Sexuality and Religion, new to me and my blogroll. 

So often the religous voices we hear are of the conservative-right variety.  This woman is different and, I think, celebrates the diversity in humanity rather than attempting to diminsh it.  Her views on abortion are here, on transgender is here.

I'm a minister and a sexologist. Yes, those words do go together! I am also the director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing (www.religiousinstitute.org) I hope you'll join me in exploring the connection between sexuality, religion, and spirituality, and the need for sexual justice in our faith communities and society.

Ain't I a Trannie?

This is pretty weird.  Someone came to my blog today, referred from this post dated August 4, 2005 on the blog Trannifesto (a UK crossdressing blog).  About 2/3 of the way down the post is this paragraph:

Jen has a link to Musings On Life Law And Gender — and something inside of me tells me we've left the TrannieSphere at this point. There's nothing intrisically inside of me that says there's anything wrong with the slightly over-politic transgender weblogs over in the states — I just, well, I dunno.

I feel like we haven't just left the TrannieSphere — we've left Planet Earth.

Excuse me?  Should I be offended, or maybe Jen should be? (Hint:  I'm not) ::grin::

Odd little milestone

I converted to TypePad in November 2004, after hosting my blog on AOL for the first 9 months of its life.  Since that day in November, according to StatCounter, I've had 150,051 hits).

I wouldn't normally post such a thing (I mean, really, who cares?).   But, I get a kick out of numbers sometimes -- and I like the fact that this is a palindrome (hey, I do the same stupid thing with my odometer; this past week my "new" car displayed 28082 miles).

This works out to be an average of 192 hits per day over that time period -- ranging from hits up to 700 on April 24, 2005 (the day I introduced my new blog layout) to as low as 67 this past December 24, 2006.

Happy Blog-versary, Jami!

It's hard to believe, but Jami's blog, Not THAT Different, is one year old.  Woohoo!  Drop by and wish her happy birthday.  As I said last year, she's good people.  In her very first post, she credited me with starting her own blog.  In my comments to that post, I predicted: "With your sense of humor, insight and the wisdom that only a person of your years could have, it's bound to be one of the best very soon!"  I'm so prescient!

I have two friends in the world that I know I could turn to, no matter what, no matter when, no matter how long since I'd last seen them.  Jami is one of them.

Posting resumes

With this post, I hope to begin regular posting once again.  To all of you who missed me and expressed that through comments and emails, I thank you.  Even my daughter chastised me earlier today that I should post more often than "once in a blue moon". OK.  Things have settled down a little bit, so I'll try.  My goal is a minimum of one post per week.  I'll do more, if/when I can.

She lives!

I'm sorry about that extended hiatus. I wish I could report that it's over. The truth is the past 5 or 6 weeks have been remarkable. There is so much to report (culminating in this past 10 days which have been unprecedented in my lifetime -- and my readers all know that's saying a lot). Hopefully, I'll fill you all in soon.  But, frankly, I'm just so very busy that blogging simply hasn't been on my list.

In the meantime, then, I give you a new blog: People and things I don't understand, written by my lovely spouse. Her first entry, People who don't love baseball is up. An excerpt (in which she nails a common reason for blogging (though not, of course, mine)):

I have decided to start a blog. The first question is, what do I have to say? I have such deep, insightful thoughts when I am in the middle of doing something else, or laying awake in bed, and yet no recollection of them when I am sitting at the keyboard. I am certain this happens to everyone… we are all brilliant in our own heads. But now I want to shine in the cyberworld. I want to be a blogger on issues of importance and perhaps more importantly, I want my readers to be impressed with my intelligence and wit.

Check it out. I will return -- probably within the next two weeks.

New Blog

I have a new blog on my blog-roll, Swede and Czech.  Mostly, it's geared for gay men.  I'm not so much into his daily postings of half-naked men (though I have some readers who I know will be!), but I know this blogger and he's a great guy.  Moreover, for purposes of this blog, he's had a couple of really great posts.  I draw your attention to this one, in particular.  It is meant for those of you who have blogs and are probably a bit younger than me.  I nearly pee'd my pants watching this video.  OMG.  Also, through him, I offer this quote from Barney Frank:

"I can sum up the Republican agenda in nine words: Burning the flag, spurning the fag and earnings that lag." - Barney Frank, speaking to the Florida GLBT Democratic Caucus, who did not invite Florida's Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, due to his support of Florida's gay marriage ban. (via NY Blade.)

And, finally, he has lots of insightful political comments.  It's what he does/did for a living.

Carnival of Bent Attactions - VII

The 7th Carnival of Bent Attractions is up. It's been up for a week, but I delayed posting about it because I wanted to send even more readers to 2sides2ron.  OK, that's a lie.  I delayed posting it because I was lazy.  Anyway, if you've not read this month's edition you should do so.  It's excellent.  And, as Winter said, you should put a little queerness into your day.

Spam apologies

One of the risks of an open blog like mine is comment spam and rude people.  For those of you who logged on earlier and saw the filth that someone posted earlier, before I could ban the person from commenting, I apologize.

All I know is that the person logged on from Taylor Dunham in Austin, TX after surfing over from another blog (a bar exam blog). For those of you who want to block him in anticipation, his IP address is: 204.57.109.226.

Happy B'Day to Life, Law, Gender

Two years!  I can hardly believe that I've maintained this blog that long.  My first post was intended merely as a way to come out to my law school classmates as transsexual -- primarily to save me the trouble of doing so on a one-by-one basis.  It was a tough decision at first.  I thought very seriously about trying to "go stealth" but in the end I knew it wasn't in my nature (and, seriously, I knew it was just impossible).

I've enjoyed blogging.  It's been a great source of connection for my family - my mom, my sister and at least one of my daughters are regular readers - and for my friends.  I've made many new friends blogging, both in real time and in cyberspace.  I've even met a few of my cyber friends in real-time and look forward to meeting more.  Plus, it's been a good therapy for me.  It has become my personal journal as well as a place for me to voice my opinion about current affairs, particularly as they relate to the world of transgenderism.  It doesn't matter if that opinion means nothing to anyone else, it's a nice record for me of events and feelings.

During the past two years, the blog has undergone two transformations -- first from AOL Journals to a plain vanilla TypePad interface, to the one that I have now.  I've seen my readership rise and fall, and rise again.  I've not ever spent much time worrying about it (I mean, really, who cares?) but it's fun to watch.  In that vein, I snatched a global mapping tool from Unblague which I added to the lower right stats part of my page.  I think it's cool to see how many places from around the world have managed to stumble across the blog.  I've created categories for people to navigate to their area of interest.  My favorites are: Transgenderism (of course), Gay Civil Rights, Law School, and Sea Stories (despite no recent posts there). Having said that, I also like Poetry and Internet Quizzes.  Blogging is so multi-faceted; hmmm, I wonder if it reflects my personality?

I don't know when I'll stop blogging.  I've threatened several times, mostly during periods of distress and depression, as I'm sure long-time readers will remember, but I've never stopped for longer than a week or two.  Still, after I graduate, who knows?

Anyway, thank you my readers -- for reading, for sticking with me through the ups and downs, for your generosity in comments, for your willingness to engage in thoughtful debate and your openness to new ideas.  You make it all worthwhile.

Carnival of Bent Attactions

I don't really understand what "carnivals" are, or how they work.  What I do know, however, is that my blogger friends are all doing it (Maria, Jay, Jen) and Maria went so far as to request that we post about it.  So, this is a post about it.  This month's carnival will be hosted by Jay Sennett.  I don't really know what it is, but I'll check it out -- you do too.  I actually submitted an article to it (though I don't think it's worthy of extended circulation), my recent post entitled "How do you know?".

[UPDATE] Maria sent me an e-mail explaining all this stuff; I've copied it below.

Carnivals are like intros you see at the beginning of anthologies, where the editor often says a little about each of the stories you are about to read - except carnivals are done with blog posts instead. 

It’s kinda like if you were to publish a post of links to other blog posts you found interesting, but carnival hosts rely on submissions to link to.

I hope that makes some sense.  There's also a FAQ page at BlogCarnival.com, which explains blog carnivals like this:

"A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks.

There is so much stuff in the blog-o-sphere, just finding interesting stuff is hard. If there is a carnival for a topic you are interested in, following that carnival is a great way to learn what bloggers are saying about that topic. If you are blogging on that topic, the carnival is the place to share your work with like-minded bloggers.

Blog Carnival is the place to come to find carnivals you are interested in, to submit your blog articles to carnivals where they belong, and to organize and maintain carnivals."

Small milestone

Sometime just before midnight last night my blog recorded its 100,000th hit (well, since I converted to TypePad and then added StatCounter (on 11/15/04), anyway).  According to StatCounter, that's an average of 207 hits per day, with 104 unique visitors each day.  Now, I know that some of those stats aren't fully reliable and I also get that those numbers don't indicate a huge dedicated readership.  Nevertheless, it amazes me that so many people have stumbled across my blog over the past year and a half.  Thank you all!