Little boxes

Hi, everyone! Yesterday was a picture perfect Indian Summer day here in NH, warm and sunny, and I got out in the afternoon to enjoy the nice weather with a walk around town, continuing my neverending ''Battle of the Bulge'' Today's supposed to be pretty nice, too, but a bit cooler, so I'll probably do that again this afternoon...and, now to Rick, at our sports desk! :-D

I'm going to talk a bit more about an issue that I commented on at LeAnne's ''The Lighter side of being Transgender'' blog. Those annoying little ''M'' or ''F'' boxes that seem to appear on nearly every piece of paperwork that lands in our lap. I think that these little boxes are a bit like Tribbles, they seem to be born pregnant and do little more than breed more little boxes! :-D All kidding aside, at the very instant that we're born, we're inspected, catagorized, and arbitrarily placed inside a little box that says either ''M'' or ''F''. If your box was ''F'' you got the pink blanket, if it was ''M'' you got the blue one. In years past, those who's genitalia were in some way uncertain were subjected to horrifying surgical intervention to make them fit into one of those boxes, and in that, we in the trans community have been much more fortunate than our intersex brothers and sisters.

After birth, these little boxes take on a life of their own and multiply exponentially as the years go by. Medical records, school records, driver's license, marriage certificate, on and on ad infinitum, and these little boxes are immortal, they follow us even beyond the grave! Now, some would like to see other boxes added to the standard ''M'' or ''F'' to give other choices to those who's gender is in flux or those who don't identify as either gender, but I take the opposite approach. I'd like to see those little boxes done away with entirely! IMHO, those little boxes are little more than bureaucratic voyurisim, only about one step better than being a Peeping Tom! I see no reason why some pencil pusher at the DMV needs to know what's between my legs, I don't plan on being intimate with them! In any event, these boxes are, in most cases, unnessisairy, if your legal name is Jane, for example, and you're wearing a skirt, chances are that you identify yourself as female!

Okay, on a lighter note, from the ''Are you f'ing kidding me?!!'' department: A man who worked for McDonald's in Brazil for 10 years won a 65 thousand, that's right, THOUSAND!, dollar settlement in court because he gained 65 pounds while he worked there! This latest jaw-dropping denial of personal responsibility is truly astounding! It sounds like a ruling that would come out of the 9th circut court of appeals! Idiots like this is why we have ''CAUTION, CONTENTS MAY BE HOT'' stamped on styrofoam coffee cups!

Gee, I wonder if I can sue Anheuser-Bush? :-D

Dani xxx