What she said.

"[T]he way to build political power is to be a good ally first. If you help them pass their pet issues or support them with more than lip service, then they'll be on board with helping you with yours.

That means the next time the labor movement needs a helping hand with a protest, Latino/a's request your support on the Sotomayor nomination or African-Americans request some help trying to get congressional representation for DC, that y'all need to show up and push just as hard for those issues as you would your own."

and

"[T]he progressive GLBT agenda for those of us in 'flyover country' [and elsewhere - ed.] doesn't begin and end with same gender marriage, DADT and DOMA repeal.

You don't think GLBT peeps need universal health care? That GLBT peeps don't want or need good jobs at good wages? That there are GLBT service members not ensnared in DADT issues who want the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to end and come home?"

and more. I've been muttering the same things under my breath for a few days now.

Transgriot, via gordonzola.

More Questions! More Answers!

(go ahead, ask.)

These came in a batch.

When did you first realize you were not white bread (strictly het, vanilla, conventional)?

Non-conventional in general? Very early on, like, um, four or so. About as early as I can remember. I never 'fit in' with other kids, and I knew it. I was mostly OK with it, too. And I had very early signs of gender nonconformity.

The rest? In my very early twenties.

When you were a child (pre-puberty), what did you want to do for a living when you grew up?

I wanted to be a writer. Or a paleontologist.

How closely has your adult life followed your earliest expectations - or not?

Well, I did become a writer...

I didn't go to graduate school, which I honestly expected from an early age.

How would you describe your upbringing?

My parents were very politically liberal and vaguely hippie-ish; also young, and in conscious rebellion against their own upbringing. This means there was a lot of processing in my childhood :), a lot of room for discussion and negotiation. Or maybe I was just contentious and headstrong. My parents were pretty good about boundaries, though (in a way that a lot of hippie-ish parents were not), and there were definitely limits and rules -- it's just that I always knew the rationale behind them, whether or not I agreed with it.

I spent a lot of time hanging out with my mother in libraries and laboratories and the back of classrooms, and with my father in parks and at baseball games (free on weekdays) and at the Student Union. I learned how to make my own fun, mostly in my head and on the page (and under the baseball bleachers, and in my mother's office while she was teaching class, and deep within the university library stacks...).

Are you planning to raise your daughters as you were raised, or differently? Please explain.

I don't have any quarrel with the way I was raised, and I find I am asking my mother for her advice a lot. that said, times have changed; I think that for the most part the principles behind my upbringing are solid enough, but the circumstances are very different. I'll have to adjust accordingly.