Iodine, Thyroid, Radiation, Japan, Nuclear Power Plant Danger: What you need to know to help stay healthy if exposed to radiation

I've been doing research on this and it's VERY difficult to get accurate information about how to safeguard yourself against particular dangers of exposure to radiation in Japan, due to the nuclear power plant disaster following the earthquake and tsunami last week.

First, if you can, get iodine solutions, get iodine tablets prepared and sold to keep the thyroid gland healthy, and get kelp, specifically, as it is highest in iodine of all the seaweeds. The less processed the kelp the better: meaning, consuming it in naturally occurring forms is preferable, not in "flakes" or in otherwise manufactured or processed forms. You are wanting "potassium iodide" ideally, but other forms of iodine, such as that found in Betadine solutions, can be used if applied to the skin. DETAILS FOR HOW TO DO THIS ARE BELOW.

DON'T DRINK IODINE SOLUTIONS, TINCTURES, OR OTHER IODINE LIQUIDS. 

I repeat:

DON'T DRINK IODINE SOLUTIONS, TINCTURES, OR OTHER IODINE LIQUIDS. 

The way to take iodine into your body is through proper potassium iodine pills, or by painting it onto the skin and letting the skin absorb it. Or to consume kept and other seaweeds--eating them.

Seven flat, dry sheets of sushi nori per day is one way to get iodine. Again, kelp is higher in iodine than nori.

Click on titles to link back to source websites:

Foods High in Iodine

Beware: Too much iodine can be bad for you. Over consumption of iodine can be toxic and just as damaging as a deficiency. As little as 1000 micrograms of Iodine in a day causes irritations like burning of the mouth and throat, nausea, vomiting, stomach ache, and even coma. Like under-consumption, too much iodine prevents proper production of thyroid hormones leading to goiter.
I don’t eat salt, meat, or seaweed, where can I get iodine? Your options are to consider supplements, buy foods enriched in iodine, or ensure that the plant foods you consume come from parts of the world where the soil is rich in iodine.

The bottom line is this: children, especially, need stable iodine (non-radioactive iodine) in their systems in an on-going way to prevent thyroid disease later. Adults are also at risk, but are at less risk than children because children's cells replicate more often and more quickly. How it works is this:

The thyroid gland, in the neck, is critical to overall health and well-being. It is basically a small "iodine sponge" and needs iodine to work properly. It will accept or soak up any form of iodine that passes into the body. If it has plenty of non-radioactive iodine in it, it will be "saturated" in that iodine and will not have room to accept any radioactive iodine. If deficient in non-radioactive iodine, it will soak up the radioactive element and that's where there's danger.

So, get stable iodine, preferably but not only potassium iodide, into your system, daily. Products like Betadine, and other topical (for skin application, typically for cuts and scrapes) solutions of iodine are not as effective BUT ARE BETTER THAN NOTHING, by far.

Tablets and tinctures are available. Take the recommended amounts and try not to overdose. Excessively large amounts of iodine are not recommended and may cause health problems. But for now the concern is to get stable iodine into the system of children, secondarily to adults, exposed to high levels of radiation in the air or in food.

Things to also do: DON'T DRINK MILK. Cows can absorb radioactive iodine by eating grass and it goes right into their milk.

GET STABLE IODINE INTO YOUR BODY, BY PILL OR PAINTING A PATCH ON YOUR SKIN, BEFORE EXPOSURE, if possible, but ALSO BE SURE to get it in after some exposure, and keep it in your system at recommended doses. Why? Because the half-life of unstable iodine is very short! It becomes "not too dangerous" VERY quickly. So what you want is to allows what's been absorbed to do what it will naturally do--become not-so-radioactive--and get stable iodine in your system to prevent MORE radioactive iodine getting into your thyroid gland.

See this for more information, see below. Click on titles to link back to source websites:

FACTBOX-Potassium iodide use after radiation exposure

Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:39am GMT

 

March 15 (Reuters) - Explosions at nuclear reactors in Japan damaged by last week's earthquake and tsunami have released radiation into the atmosphere.
Wind direction determines where any released radiation will travel. If high levels get into the atmosphere, those exposed are usually given potassium iodide to help prevent thyroid cancer.
Following are some facts about potassium iodide:
* Potassium iodide is a common form of salt, similar to table salt. It can protect the thyroid gland from radiation and cancer caused by radioactive iodine. Known chemically as KI, the substance saturates the thyroid gland with non-radioactive iodine, reducing how much dangerous radioiodine the gland can absorb.
* Potassium iodide is most effective if administered before exposure and can provide protection for 24 hours. It will have beneficial effects if taken up to three to four hours after exposure, as well.
* Children are considered most at risk from radiation exposure, whether through the air or in contaminated food or milk. After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster significantly increased rates of thyroid cancer were detected in children in countries such as Belarus and Ukraine.
* Pharmacies in the United States do not typically stock potassium iodide, but it is readily available through many of outlets on the Internet.
* The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommends states with people living within a 10-mile (16 km) radius of commercial nuclear power plants stockpile potassium iodide as a protective measure for the general public. Individual states decide their own policies.
(Reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York and Susan Kelly in Chicago; Editing by Frank McGurty)

© Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved

HOW IODINE WORKS AS A PREVENTATIVE TO RADIATION SICKNESS

http://www.iodine-resource.com

Hi through my own research this is how iodine works - if you are at present deficient in iodine and it is said that most people are, then if there was radiation poisoning in the air you body would take in more iodine from the radiation and this would be stored in your thyroid.  if you are now boosting your levels of iodine so that you are not deficient then you have a better chance that your thyroid will not take in the iodine from the radiation and therefore poison you!  It is better to begin now to boost your system so that you are not dificient now. Linda Joslin - this is my input not part of this article, but check for yourselves on google for other documents.

IODINE PATCH TEST

If you've ever wondered if you are low in iodine, try the iodine patch test.
It's a simple and easy way to find out. You will use tincture of iodine which is 2% orange colored solution available in the first aid section of your pharmacy. It comes in a small one ounce bottle.

If you can't find it on the shelf in the first aid section, the pharmacist may be holding it in the prescription portion of the pharmacy.
If it is not there, ask your pharmacist to order it for you. My pharmacy only had one bottle left on the shelf.

Procedure for Test

Before you go to bed, paint a half dollar size of iodine onto clean dry skin. This should be either on your stomach, under your forearm or inner thigh where material won't rub on it.
When you wake up, you will notice the color has changed. Make a mental note about how much it has changed.
Wait for 24 hours. If the color has completely disappeared, you are iodine deficient.
The body's deficiency is proportionate - the faster the iodine is absorbed by your body, the more deficient you are.

When I used the iodine patch test, the circle disappeared in less than four hours. This is considered a severe iodine deficiency.

Treatment

If the color disappears, you may begin using the iodine painting as a supplement for your iodine deficiency.
This should be done on a daily basis until the body no longer absorbs the iodine.
After that, you may then test at intervals to see if you have become deficient again and treat accordingly.

Testimonials

My favorite place to find testimonials is from Earth Clinic where you can read comments from people who have shared their experiences in treating hypothroidism (lack of iodine).
Beth from Chicago, Il, wrote about using iodine painting on her body.
She mentioned her sugar cravings disappeared after she started using iodine this way as a supplementation.

Janya from Fountain Valley, CA wrote she has been painting with iodine in the morning and evening for five years.
She stopped all doctor prescribed medications for Hashimotos disease because she found out the medications would destroy her bones and her mind.
She takes liquid kelp drops during the day and continues with the painting for less than $3.00 a bottle.

You may also supplement your iodine deficiency with Lugols iodine.

SEE ALSO THIS POST: *HERE*. I'll post more information as it comes in. Blessings and prayers for health and healing for humanity.

Charlie Sheen is a drug addict and the equivalent of two and a half men who are male supremacist scumbags. And Charlie Sheen HAS BEEN FIRED, finally! Details here.

image is from here

March 1, 2011: Breaking news on Charlie Sheen: Brooke Mueller, his ex-wife, has files a restraining order against him.
For more, see:

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2011/03/01/2011-03-01_brooke_mueller_files_restraining_order_against_estranged_husband_charlie_sheen_t.html

This is a man CBS has been paying about two million dollars to every week he "works" at playing a shallow misogynist on TV. With a fraction of that money (or perhaps all of it) he has been scoring more drugs and exploiting and/or abusing more women in systems of prostitution. He claims to have no savings! No savings with two mill a week? That'd be a lot of drugs and a lot of renting of women as sexxx-things. And now he wants 3 million per episode. Prince Charming, he's not. As was astutely noted on SNL's Weekend Update, on May 14, 2005:

Tina Fey: This Monday marks the final episode of the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Next season, CBS Monday will be anchored by the show “Everybody Has Mixed Feelings about Charlie Sheen.” [source: here]

But not because he's creepy, folks. Because he's one more man, a very rich one, who can pay to abuse women and not be charged with any crime.

If I hear any more about how victimised Charlie "the procuring prick" Sheen is, I'm going to... well, possibly write up another post about him. I've posted on this male supremacist racist abusive jerk before, *here* and *here*. But clearly three time's a charm, because now the arrogant, abusive, obnoxious actor is finally gone from the TV screens and hopefully will get his ass kicked to the curb just outside the border of Hollywood. Why am I hoping for this?

He's a chronically exploitive man who procures women (for sexxx) who have been raped and pimped. He sexually exploits and sometimes harms the women. He's a misogynist, racist jerk, along the lines of Mel Gibson. He may also be anti-Semitic, but certainly not as anti-Semitic as that son-of-a-HaShoah-denier, Mel. Both men are what they are because they choose to do what they do--they practice being that way. Over and over again. They aren't racist and misogynistic because of drugs and alcohol. Drugs and alcohol don't cause people to be white supremacists or male supremacists, just so you know. How can I know this?

There are other men who've been caught with drug and alcohol problems of some kind, such as David Cassidy. Anyone see David spouting off anti-Semitic, racist, misogynistic terms when being arrested or caught in an embarrassing situation? Nope. How come the substances didn't do to him what they apparently do to oppressive and bigoted scumbags like Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson? Could it be because David Cassidy isn't a racist, anti-Semitic, battering misogynist and serial procurer of pimped women?

A typical quote by Charlie Sheen: "I hope you fucking die, b*tch." When will a man being an unrepentant misogynist be seen as reason enough to deny him any custodial parental rights to keep children in his home?

Just in: An all-new picture of Charlie Sheen and his new roommates, who include ex-wife Brooke Mueller, porn star Bree Olson and former nanny Natalie Kenly. The three women, who are pictured above in Sheen's home theater, are now living with the "Two and a Half Men" star, who is expected to return work on Monday after undergoing month-long rehab. Sheen and Mueller's twin sons Bob and Max, nearly two, are also living in the home and a source tells "The Insider" he would like to have an even fuller house. The source says the actor would also like his ex-wife Denise Richards and their two daughters, Sam, 6, and Lola, 5, to also live at his opulent Los Angeles home.[ Read full article on The Insider] [source for this blurb is *here*]

His dad Martin Sheen sees him as fully human, which Charlie is. But asking any of us to feel for the 45-year-old lad is a bit much, at this point. He's a big boy now. And even though too many men will be boys, this man has been a male supremacist for far too long.

I wonder if Martin has ever told him, "Charlie, using women as sex-things isn't cool and it's not okay. Renting, exploiting, and sexually abusing people is wrong and you ought to be put in jail for the way you mistreat women, particularly pimped women in systems of prostitution. You're also a racist, son. A racist misogynist. Now, when are you going to admit that with any degree of remorse or shame? And, when are you going to commit yourself to treating women--all women--with respect and regard for THEIR full humanity--the full humanity YOU demand everyone acknowledge you have?

He and Mel Gibson ought to take their millions and donate them to anti-trafficking and anti-battery organisations. They've sure got millions to spare.

What do you say, fellas? Care to transform yourselves into two men who don't fuck over women, beat women, harass women, terrorise women, and use and abuse women as sexxx-objects?

This just in: Two and a Half Men has been cancelled. Hurray!!! Now the producers CAN give the obscene amount of money that would have gone to C. Sheen to several international anti-trafficking organisations instead.

For the story on the cancellation of the show, see this, from the UK's Daily Record. You can link to the original by clicking on the title below.

Charlie Sheen rant results in hit show being cancelled as star goes off the rails

Feb 26 2011 Simon Boyle

TROUBLED Charlie Sheen's hit TV comedy was cancelled yesterday - after he unleashed a bizarre rant at the show's creator.

He branded producer Chuck Lorre a "stupid, stupid little man", then rounded on his critics, claiming: "I'm not perfect, but look what I'm dealing with - fools and trolls."

After the attack, TV chiefs cancelled production of his hit show Two And A Half Men.

But Sheen still refused to shut up.

In a letter to fans, he said of Lorre: "Clearly I have defeated this earthworm with my words - imagine what I would have done with my fire-breathing fists."

The outburst could signal the end of his £1.2million per episode deal with CBS to star in the comedy, which made him the highest-paid actor on TV.

Sheen, 45, was hospitalised recently after a cocaine and booze party with porn stars.

Earlier this week, he jetted out to the Caribbean with his ex-wife Brooke Mueller, porn star Bree Olson and "nanny" and glamour model Natalie Kenly. Mueller has since returned to Los Angeles.

From the Bahamas, Sheen called a US radio show to insist he had kicked his drug and alcohol addictions, roaring: "I don't have time for these clowns and their judgment and stupidity.

"They lie down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children, and then they look at me and say, 'I can't process it'.

"Well, stop trying, just sit back and enjoy the show.

"I'm gonna stay here with these two smokin' hotties and fly privately around the world. You know it might be lonely up here but I sure like the view."

Lorre quickly called a halt to the rest of the current series of Two And A Half Men.

That prompted Sheen to furiously pen an open letter to fans, stating: "I fire back once and this contaminated little maggot can't handle my power and can't handle the truth.

"I wish him nothing but pain in his silly travels, especially if they wind up in my octagon.

"I urge all my beautiful and loyal fans who embraced this show for almost a decade to walk with me side-by-side as we march up the steps of justice to right this unconscionable w rong."

During his on-air rant to US chat host Alex Jones, Sheen claimed his own methods of beating his addictions were much more effective than the techniques offered by support group Alcoholics Anonymous.

He sniped: "The only thing I'm addicted to right now is winning. AA has a five per cent success rate, my success rate is 100 per cent.

"Their entire manifesto is built on complete and total surrender. They say 'Don't be special, be one of us'. Newsflash: I am special."

And in an odd blast, he went on to attack United States founding father and former president Thomas Jefferson.

Sheen claimed: "I'm not Thomas Jefferson, he was a p***y, but I dare anyone to debate me on things.

"Debate me on AA right now.

I had a disease, I cured it with my brain, with my mind. I can't use the word sober, cause that's a term from those people, but I have cleansed myself. I closed my eyes and in a nanosecond I cured myself from this ridiculous model of disease, addiction and obsession."

He defended his relationship with a string of porn stars and models, claiming he and his group of "goddesses" enjoyed "a marriage of the heart".

The outburst leaves his Two And A Half Men career hanging in the balance - and threatens his return to the hit film franchise Major League.

Reports have linked the star to the third film in the series, but Sheen insists producers have yet to sign him, adding: "If they want me in it, it's a smash, but if they don't it's a turd that launches like a tugboat."

After Sheen's rant, the movie boss behind the Major League franchise James Robinson warned: "I'm not going to risk putting Charlie in the movie if he continues messing up."

[Charlie Sheen] ON HIS CRITICS

I don't have time for these clowns.. They lie down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children, and then they look at me and say, 'I can't process it.

[Charlie Sheen] ON HIS WOMEN

I'm gonna stay here with these two smokin' hotties and fly privately around the world. You know it might be lonely up here but I sure like the view

[Charlie Sheen] ON CHUCK LORRE

I've defeated this earthworm with my words. Imagine what I would have done with my firebreathing fists

Below is a time line of some of Charlie's abusive and/or illegal and/or notorious behavior. To the general public: How about caring more about the women and other people he fucks over than about him? Or, even, caring as much about them as so many do about him?

What follows is from TVGuide.com and may be linked back to by clicking on the title. Regarding that title: His behavior isn't "bad" so much as it is grotesquely and systematically white het male supremacist--whether or not he is of Latino heritage. His behavior is at times terroristic, abusive, threatening, criminal, illegal, and wrong. It's also obnoxious, selfish, self-absorbed, and not at all worthy of being reinforced with millions of dollars paid to him by men who want to profit off his abuses of other people. His behavior is disgraceful and ought not be condoned by anyone in Hollywood. At least he's no longer on the air in a weekly sitcom.

He and Mel Gibson need to call it quits with their careers and leave women and children alone for the rest of their lives. Maybe they--Charlie and Mel--can live together, hopefully without a boy (or girl) in the house, and hopefully they won't develop a reality show called "Two Racist-Misogynist Men".

Charlie Sheen: A Timeline of Bad Behavior

Feb 25, 2011 11:34 PM ET
by TV Guide News

Charlie Sheen

 

As Charlie Sheen continues his anti-Chuck Lorre and Two and a Half Men tirade, TVGuide.com takes a look back at more than 20 years of Sheen's bad behavior.
 
Charlie Sheen: The history of a promising acting career


January 1990: While in their home, Sheen accidentally shoots fiancée Kelly Preston in the arm. The relationship ends.
 
September 1990: Sheen completes drug rehab a month after checking himself in.


July 1995: Sheen testifies in the tax evasion trial of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, admitting he spent almost $53,000 on her prostitutes.
 
December 1996: Sheen is arrested for allegedly beating porn star girlfriend Brittany Ashland, who claimed he slammed her into the marble floor of his home and threatened to kill her if she told anyone.
 
June 1997: Sheen pleads no-contest to the Ashland charges and is sentenced to a one-year suspended prison term and two years of probation.
 
May 1998: Sheen is hospitalized after a cocaine overdose. Father Martin Sheen turns him over to authorities for violating his probation. Sheen later checks himself into Promises rehab center.
 
March 2005: Denise Richards, Sheen's second wife, files for divorce while pregnant with the couple's second daughter. She says Sheen had been abusing drugs and alcohol.
 
Charlie Sheen: I'll go back to Men... without Chuck Lorre
 
March 2005: Porn star and escort Chloe Jones tells the National Enquirer Sheen was among her clients and had paid her $15,000 for oral sex. Sheen's agent disputes the claim.
 
April 2006: In order to obtain a restraining order, Richards signs a declaration stating that in the middle of an argument on Dec. 30, 2005, Charlie pushed and shoved her while she was holding their daughter Lola. According to the declaration, Charlie pointed his finger at her and screamed, "I hope you f---ing die, b----."
 
March, 2008: Jason Itzler claims he sent Ashley Dupre (the same Dupre who later had a relationship with Eliot Spitzer) and another girl to have a threesome with Sheen for $20,000. Sheen's reps deny the report.
 
December 2009: Sheen is arrested in Aspen, Colo., on domestic violence charges after an alleged altercation with third wife Brooke Mueller, the mother of his twins.
 
Two and a Half Men ends production for the season following Charlie Sheen's radio rant
 
February 2010: Sheen's Mercedes is stolen and found upside-down at the bottom of a cliff near Mulholland Drive. Police say they do not believe Sheen was in the car because he would have been injured in the accident.
 
February 2010: Sheen is charged with felony menacing and misdemeanor third-degree assault and criminal mischief in connection with the Aspen arrest. He pleads not guilty in March.
 
February 2010: Sheen announces he's voluntarily checking into rehab and takes time off from Two and a Half Men. In May, he signs a two-year deal that will pay him $1.8 million per episode.
 
August 2010: Sheen pleads guilty to the Aspen charges and is sentenced to 30 days in rehab, 30 days of probation and 36 hours of anger management.
 
October 2010: Sheen is reportedly removed from The Plaza Hotel in New York City after causing a disturbance, and allegedly doing $7,000 worth of damage to the room. Richards, who was also staying at the hotel, separately from Sheen, accompanies him to the hospital. His rep says Sheen had an "allergic reaction" to medicine.
 
November 2010: Capri Anderson, an adult film star who was with Sheen at The Plaza, sues him, claiming he choked her. Sheen countersues Anderson, claiming she tried to extort him. Sheen is not prosecuted for the incident at The Plaza Hotel.
 
January 2011: Sheen goes on a reported bender in Las Vegas — where he allegedly parties with a group of women that includes porn stars, strippers, and Michelle "Bombshell" McGee — but returns in time for work on Two and a Half Men.
 
What's next for Charlie Sheen?
 
January 2011: Sheen is rushed to the hospital for severe abdominal pains that a friend of Sheen says came from the actor laughing too hard at the TV. Shortly after, Sheen begins a rehabilitation program in his home. Two and a Half Men goes on production hiatus.
 
February 2011: Sheen begins a rant about Two and a Half Men creator and executive producer Chuck Lorre on The Dan Patrick Show, where he blames the producers for delaying the return of the show. Lorre responds with a vanity card reading, "If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I'm gonna be really pissed." Sheen's ensuing rants (challenging Lorre to a fight, and saying he owns him) and behavior force CBS and Warner Bros. TV to shut down production for the rest of the season. Sheen responds by saying he would return to the series for Season 9 if Lorre is not involved.

Hello, My Name is Dick Cheney and I Am A Warmonger. (Hi Dick!)

image is from here

What follows is cross-posted from AlterNet.org. Please click on the title below to link back.

One assumes against hope that at some point in time liberal, progressive, and radical men on the Left will "get it" that men are waging war against women, and for that we'll need far more than a 12-step program to remedy that recovery effort. We'll need a revolution. And I hope it is increasingly obvious to progressive men that for most women, whether men war against one another or not, men's interpersonal and institutionalised atrocities against women will continue unabated. What would help Afghan and Iraqi women considerably is to get U.S. rapists and warmongers out of those countries. ("Rapists" and "warmongers" being synonyms.)

It is clear to me that men on the Left only consider something "war" if men are killed; it is no different with men on the Right. This is a sad, tragic, callous, and patriarchally conservative viewpoint on "war" and "warfare". So where's that progressivism when we need it? I hope Tom Engelhardt will consider this omission of focus in his next book. But I want to thank him for exposing how addicted to militaristic war the U.S. government, and too many of its followers and apologists, truly are. I suspect if it didn't make the rich richer, the white whiter, and the men manlier, it would cease being an addiction.

Needed: A 12-Step Program for the Warmongers -- The Pentagon Been Hooked on Empire for 30 Years

Washington, the Pentagon, and the U.S. military need to enter rehab for their addiction to waging war and empire across the planet.

January 5, 2011  |  

If, as 2011 begins, you want to peer into the future, enter my time machine, strap yourself in, and head for the past, that laboratory for all developments of our moment and beyond.

Just as 2010 ended, the American military’s urge to surge resurfaced in a significant way. It seems that “leaders” in the Obama administration and “senior American military commanders” in Afghanistan were acting as a veritable WikiLeaks machine. They slipped information to New York Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins about secret planning to increase pressure in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, possibly on the tinderbox province of Baluchistan, and undoubtedly on the Pakistani government and military via cross-border raids by U.S. Special Operations forces in the new year.

In the front-page story those two reporters produced, you could practically slice with a dull knife American military frustration over a war going terribly wrong, over an enemy (shades of Vietnam!) with “sanctuaries” for rest, recuperation, and rearming just over an ill-marked, half-existent border. You could practically taste the chagrin of the military that their war against... well you name it: terrorists, guerrillas, former Islamic fundamentalist allies, Afghan and Pakistani nationalists, and god knows who else... wasn’t proceeding exactly swimmingly. You could practically reach out and be seared by their anger at the Pakistanis for continuing to take American bucks by the billions while playing their own game, rather than an American one, in the region.

If you were of a certain age, you could practically feel (shades of Vietnam again!) that eerily hopeful sense that the next step in spreading the war, the next escalation, could be the decisive one. Admittedly, these days no one talks (as they did in the Vietnam and Iraq years) about turning “corners” or reaching “tipping points,” but you can practically hear those phrases anyway, or at least the mingled hope and desperation that always lurked behind them.

Take this sentence, for instance: “Even with the risks, military commanders say that using American Special Operations troops could bring an intelligence windfall, if militants were captured, brought back across the border into Afghanistan and interrogated.” Can’t you catch the familiar conviction that, when things are going badly, the answer is never “less,” always “more,” that just another decisive step or two and you’ll be around that fateful corner?

In this single New York Times piece (and other hints about cross-border operations), you can sense just how addictive war is for the war planners. Once you begin down the path of invasion and occupation, turning back is as difficult as an addict going cold turkey. With all the sober talk about year-end reviews in Afghanistan, about planning and “progress” (a word used nine times in the relatively brief, vetted “overview” of that review recently released by the White House), about future dates for drawdowns and present tactics, it’s easy to forget that war is a drug. When you’re high on it, your decisions undoubtedly look as rational, even practical, as the public language you tend to use to describe them. But don’t believe it for a second.

Once you’ve shot up this drug, your thinking is impaired. Through its dream-haze, unpleasant history becomes bunk; what others couldn’t do, you fantasize that you can. Forget the fact that crossing similar borders to get similar information and wipe out similar sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos in the Vietnam War years led to catastrophe for American planners and the peoples of the region. It only widened that war into what in Cambodia would become auto-genocide. Forget the fact that, no matter whom American raiders might capture, they have no hope of capturing the feeling of nationalism (or the tribal equivalent) that, in the face of foreign invaders or a foreign occupation, keeps the under-armed resilient against the mightiest of forces.

Think of the American urge to surge as a manifestation of the war drug’s effect in the world. In what the Bush administration used to call “the Greater Middle East,” Washington is now in its third and grimmest surge iteration. The first took place in the 1980s during the Reagan administration’s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and proved the highest of highs; the second got rolling as the last century was ending and culminated in the first years of the twenty-first century amid what can only be described as delusions of grandeur, or even imperial megalomania. It focused on a global Pax Americana and the wars that extend it into the distant future. The third started in 2006 in Iraq and is still playing itself out in Afghanistan as 2011 commences.

In Central and South Asia, we could now be heading for the end of the age of American surges, which in practical terms have manifested themselves as the urge to destabilize. Geopolitically, little could be uglier or riskier on our planet at the moment than destabilizing Pakistan -- or the United States. Three decades after the American urge to surge in Afghanistan helped destabilize one imperial superpower, the Soviet Union, the present plans, whatever they may turn out to be, could belatedly destabilize the other superpower of the Cold War era. And what our preeminent group of surgers welcomed as an “unprecedented strategic opportunity” as this century dawned may, in its later stages, be seen as an unprecedented act of strategic desperation.

That, of course, is what drugs, taken over decades, do to you: they give you delusions of grandeur and then leave you on the street, strung out, and without much to call your own. Perhaps it’s fitting that Afghanistan, the country we helped turn into the planet’s leading narco-state, has given us a 30-year high from hell.

So, as the New Year begins, strap yourself into that time machine and travel with me back into the 1980s, so that we can peer into a future we know and see the pattern that lies both behind and ahead of us.

Getting High in Afghanistan

As 2011 begins, what could be eerier than reading secret Soviet documents from the USSR's Afghan debacle of the 1980s? It gives you chills to run across Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at a Politburo meeting in October 1985, almost six years after Soviet troops first flooded into Afghanistan, reading letters aloud to his colleagues from embittered Soviet citizens (“The Politburo had made a mistake and must correct it as soon as possible -- every day precious lives are lost.”); or, in November 1986, insisting to those same colleagues that the Afghan war must be ended in a year, “at maximum, two.” Yet, with the gut-wrenching sureness history offers, you can’t help but know that, even two years later, even with a strong desire to leave (which has yet to surface among the Washington elite a decade into our own Afghan adventure), imperial pride and fear of loss of “credibility” would keep the Soviets fighting on to 1989.

Or what about Marshal Sergei Akhromeev offering that same Politburo meeting an assessment that any honest American military commander might offer a quarter century later about our own Afghan adventure: “There is no single piece of land in this country that has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nevertheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of the rebels.” Or General Boris Gromov, the last commander of the Soviet 40th Army in Afghanistan, boasting “on his last day in the country that ‘[n]o Soviet garrison or major outpost was ever overrun.’”

Or Andrei Gromyko, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, emphasizing in 1986 the strategic pleasure of their not-so-secret foe, that other great imperial power of the moment: “Concerning the Americans, they are not interested in the settlement of the situation in Afghanistan. On the contrary, it is to their advantage for the war to drag out.” (The same might today be said of a far less impressive foe, al-Qaeda.)

 

Or in 1988, with the war still dragging on, to read a “closed” letter the Communist Party distributed to its members explaining how the Afghan fiasco happened (again, the sort of thing that any honest American leader could say of our Afghan war): “In addition, [we] completely disregarded the most important national and historical factors, above all the fact that the appearance of armed foreigners in Afghanistan was always met with arms in the hands [of the population]... One should not disregard the economic factor either. If the enemy in Afghanistan received weapons and ammunition for hundreds of millions and later even billions of dollars, the Soviet-Afghan side also had to shoulder adequate expenditures. The war in Afghanistan costs us 5 billion rubles a year.”

Or finally the pathetic letter the Soviet Military Command delivered to the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan on February 14, 1989, arguing (just as the American military high command would do of our war effort) that it was “not only unfair but even absurd to draw... parallels” between the Soviet Afghan disaster and the American war in Vietnam. That was, of course, the day the last of 100,000 Soviet soldiers -- just about the number of American soldiers there today -- left Afghan soil heading home to a sclerotic country bled dry by war, its infrastructure aging, its economy crumbling. Riddled by drugs and thoroughly demoralized, the Red Army limped home to a society riddled by drugs and thoroughly demoralized led by a Communist Party significantly delegitimized by its disastrous Afghan adventure, its Islamic territories from Chechnya to Central Asia in increasing turmoil. In November of that same year, the Berlin Wall would be torn down and not long after the Soviet Union would disappear from the face of the Earth.

Reading those documents, you can almost imagine CIA director William Webster and “his euphoric ‘Afghan Team’” toasting the success of the Agency's 10-year effort, its largest paramilitary operation since the Vietnam War. The Reagan administration surge in Pakistan and Afghanistan had been profligate, involving billions of dollars and a massive propaganda campaign, as well as alliances with the Saudis and a Pakistani dictator and his intelligence service to fund and arm the most extreme of the anti-Soviet jihadists of that moment -- “freedom fighters” as they were then commonly called in Washington.

It’s easy to imagine the triumphalist mood of celebration in Washington among those who had intended to give the Soviet Union a full blast of the Vietnam effect. They had used the “war” part of the Cold War to purposely bleed the less powerful, less wealthy of the two superpowers dry. As President Reagan would later write in his memoirs: “The great dynamic of capitalism had given us a powerful weapon in our battle against Communism -- money. The Russians could never win the arms race; we could outspend them forever.”

By 1990, the urge to surge seemed a success beyond imagining. Forget that it had left more than a million Afghans dead (and more dying), that one-third of that impoverished country’s population had been turned into refugees, or that the most extreme of jihadists, including a group that called itself al-Qaeda, had been brought together, funded, and empowered through the Afghan War. More important, the urge to surge in the region was now in the American bloodstream. And who could ever imagine that, in a new century, “our” freedom fighters would become our sworn enemies, or that the Afghans, that backward people in a poor land, could ever be the sort of impediment to American power that they had been to the Soviets?

The Cold War was over. The surge had it. We were supreme. And what better high could there be than that?

Fever Dreams of Military Might

Of course, with the Soviet Union gone, there was no military on the planet that could come close to challenging the American one, nor was there a nascent rival great power on the horizon. Still, a question remained: After centuries of great power rivalry, what did it mean to have a “sole superpower” on planet Earth, and what path should that triumphant power head down? It took a few years, including passing talk about a possible “peace dividend” -- that is, the investment of monies that would have gone into the Cold War, the Pentagon, and the military in infrastructural and other domestic projects -- for this question to be settled, but settled it was, definitively, on September 12, 2001.

And for all the unknown paths that might have been taken in this unique situation, the one chosen was familiar. It was, of course, the very one that had helped lead the Soviet Union to implosion, the investment of national treasure in military power above all else. However, to those high on the urge to surge and now eager to surge globally, when it came to an American future, the fate of the Soviet Union seemed no more relevant than what the Afghans had done to the Red Army. In those glory years, analogies between the greatest power the planet had ever seen and a defeated foe seemed absurd to those who believed themselves the smartest, clearest-headed guys in the room.

Previously, the “arms race,” like any race, had involved at least two, and sometimes more, great powers. Now, it seemed, there would be something new under the sun, an arms race of one, as the U.S. prepared itself for utter dominance into a distant, highly militarized future. The military-industrial complex would, in these years, be further embedded in the warp and woof of American life; the military expanded and privatized (which meant being firmly embraced by crony corporations and hire-a-gun outfits of every sort); and the American “global presence” -- from military bases to aircraft-carrier task forces -- enhanced until, however briefly, the United States became a military presence unique in the annals of history.

Thanks to the destructive acts of 19 jihadis, the urge to surge would with finality overwhelm all other urges in the fall of 2001 -- and there would be a group ready for just such a moment, for (as the newspaper headlines screamed) a “Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century.”

To take full stock of that group, however, we would first have to pilot our time machine back to June 3, 1997, the day a confident crew of Washington think-tank, academic, and political types calling themselves the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) posted a fin de siècle “statement of principles.” In it, they called for “a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.” Crucially, they were demanding that the Clinton administration, or assumedly some future administration with a better sense of American priorities, “increase defense spending significantly.”

The 23 men and two women who signed the initial PNAC statement urging the United States to go for the military option in the twenty-first century would, however, prove something more than your typical crew of think-tank types. After all, not so many years later, after a disputed presidential election settled by the Supreme Court, Dick Cheney would be vice president; I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby would be his right-hand man; Donald Rumsfeld would be Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Zalmay Khalilzad, head of the Bush-Cheney transition team at the Department of Defense and then the first post- invasion U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, as well as ambassador to Iraq and UN ambassador; Elliot Abrams, special assistant to the president with a post on the National Security Council; Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs; Aaron Friedberg, Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs and Director of Policy Planning in the office of the vice president; and Jeb Bush, governor of Florida. (Others like John Bolton, who signed on to PNAC later, would be no less well employed.)

This may, in fact, be the first example in history of a think tank coming to power and actually putting its blue-sky suggestions into operation as government policy, or perhaps it’s the only example so far of a government-in-waiting masquerading as an online think tank. In either case, more than 13 years later, the success of that group can still take your breath away, as can both the narrowness -- and scope -- of their thinking, and of their seminal document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” published in September 2000, two months before George W. Bush took the presidency.

This crew of surgers extraordinaires was considering a global situation that, as they saw it, offered Americans an “unprecedented strategic opportunity.” Facing a new century, their ambitions were caught by James Peck in his startling upcoming book, Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights, in this way: “In the [Reagan] era, Washington organized half the planet; in the [Bush era] it sought to organize the whole."

“Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” if remembered at all today, is recalled mainly for a throwaway sentence that looked ominous indeed in retrospect: “Further, the process of transformation [of the military], even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor.” It remains, however, a remarkable document for other reasons. In many ways canny about the direction war would take in the near future, ranging from the role of drones in air war to the onrushing possibility that cyberwar (or “Net-War,” as they called it) would be the style of future conflict, it was a clarion call to ensure this country’s “unchallenged supremacy” into the distant future by military means alone.

In 1983, in an address to the National Association of Evangelicals, President Ronald Reagan famously called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” It wanted, as he saw it, what all dark empires (and every evildoer in any James Bond film) desires: unchallenged dominion over the planet -- and it pursued that dominion in the name of a glorious “world revolution.” Now, in the name of American safety and the glories of global democracy, we were -- so the PNAC people both pleaded and demanded -- to do what only evil empires did and achieve global dominion beyond compare over planet Earth.

We could, they insisted in a phrase they liked, enforce an American peace, a Pax Americana, for decades to come, if only we poured our resources, untold billions -- they refused to estimate what the real price might be -- into war preparations and, if necessary, war itself, from the seven seas to the heavens, from manifold new “forward operating bases on land” to space and cyberspace. Pushing “the American security perimeter” ever farther into the distant reaches of the planet (and “patrolling” it via “constabulary missions”) was, they claimed, the only way that “U.S. military supremacy” could be translated into “American geopolitical preeminence.” It was also the only that the “homeland” -- yes, unlike 99.9% of Americans before 9/11, they were already using that term -- could be effectively “defended.”

In making their pitch, they were perfectly willing to acknowledge that the United States was already a military giant among midgets, but they were also eager to suggest as well that our military situation was “deteriorating” fast, that we were “increasingly ill-prepared” or even (gasp!) in “retreat” on a planet without obvious enemies. They couldn’t have thought more globally. (They were, after all, visionaries, as druggies tend to be.) Nor could they have thought longer term. (They were twenty-first century mavens.) And on military matters, they couldn’t have been more up to date.

Yet on the most crucial issues, they -- and so their documents -- couldn’t have been dumber or more misguided. They were fundamentalists when it came to the use of force and idolaters on the subject of the U.S. military. They believed it capable of doing just about anything. As a result, they made a massive miscalculation, mistaking military destructiveness for global power. Nor could they have been less interested in the sinews of global economic power (though they did imagine our future enemy to be China). Nor were they capable of imagining that the greatest military power on the planet might be stopped in its tracks -- in the Greater Middle East, no less -- by a ragtag crew of Iraqis and Afghans. To read “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” today is to see the rabbit hole down which, as if in a fever dream, we would soon disappear.

It was a genuine American tragedy that they came to power and proceeded to put their military-first policies in place; that, on September 12th of the year that “changed everything,” the PNAC people seized the reins of defense and foreign policy, mobilized for war, began channeling American treasure into the military solution they had long desired, and surged. Oh, how they surged!

That urge to surge was infamously caught in notes on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s comments taken on September 11, 2001. "[B]arely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon... Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq," even though he was already certain that al-Qaeda had launched the attack. ("'Go massive,' the notes quote him as saying. 'Sweep it all up. Things related and not.'")

And so they did. They swept up everything and then watched as their dreams and geopolitical calculations were themselves swept into the dustbin of history. And yet the urge to surge, twisted and ever more desperate, did not abate.

The Soviet Path

To one degree or another, we have been on the Soviet path for years and yet, ever more desperately, we continue to plan more surges. Our military, like the Soviet one, has not lost a battle and has occupied whatever ground it chose to take. Yet, in the process, it has won less than nothing at all. Our country, still far more wealthy than the Soviet Union ever was, has nonetheless entered its Soviet phase. At home, in the increasing emphasis on surveillance of every sort, there is even a hint of what made “soviet” and “totalitarian” synonymous.

The U.S. economy looks increasingly sclerotic; moneys for an aging and rotting infrastructure are long gone; state and city governments are laying off teachers, police, even firefighters; Americans are unemployed in near record numbers; global oil prices (for a country that has in no way begun to wean itself from its dependence on foreign oil) are ominously on the rise; and yet taxpayer money continues to pour into the military and into our foreign wars. It has recently been estimated, for instance, that after spending $11.6 billion in 2011 on the training, supply, and support of the Afghan army and police, the U.S. will continue to spend an average of $6.2 billion a year at least through 2015 (and undoubtedly into an unknown future) -- and that’s but one expense in the estimated $120 billion to $160 billion a year being spent at present on the Afghan War, what can only be described as part of America’s war stimulus package abroad.

And, of course, the talk for 2011 is how to expand the American ground war -- the air version of the same has already been on a sharp escalatory trajectory -- in Pakistan. History and common sense assure us that this can only lead to further disaster. Clear-eyed leaders, military or civilian, would never consider such plans. But Washington’s 30-year high in the region, that urge to surge still coursing through its veins, says otherwise, and it’s not likely to be denied.

Sooner than later, Washington, the Pentagon, and the U.S. military will have to enter rehab. They desperately need a 12-step program for recovery. Until then, the delusions and the madness that go with surge addiction are not likely to end.

[Note on sources: The National Security Archive, filled to bursting with documents from our imperial and Cold War past, is an online treasure. I have relied on it for both the Soviet documents quoted on the Afghan war of the 1980s and an analysis of the American version of that war. For those who are interested in reading PNAC’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” click here and then on the link to the pdf file of the document.]

Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's.

An Intergender-Transgender Sit-down Discussion

image is from here

Tonight two people sit together, talking about things that are pressing in their lives, while one makes dinner.

I: Thanks for making it tonight. What can I get you to nibble on before dinner?
T: [takes off coat and checks short, mussed up hair in the mirror] It's windy out there. No wonder they call this city what they do. Anything is good. 

I: [at the fridge] I've got some corn some chips and I've got some salsa somewhere in here.
T: That works for me.

I: [sets out the chips and salsa on the found-on-side-of-the-street coffee table that just needed some glue around one leg] I'm just feeling kind of pissed about so much. The struggles don't feel like they're getting easier. The country seems to be headed towards real crisis on a lot of levels, which it needs to be, probably, for anything to happen of substance.
T: What's getting you down? What's going on?

I: Do you get how much self-hatred there is in our community? I mean we're kind of all ready to yell at each other or curse each other out, at every turn.
T: I know. I know. Es una locura. That's why I'm steering clear of most stuff these days--events, clubs. Too much aggravation. I don't need more reasons to get upset.

I: What's the biggest thing for you right now?
T: Immigration issues on top of my mother being sick and me not being able to get back to her. And I get scared about the hormones sometimes.

I: Did you call that immigration attorney I gave you the name of? And what's the latest on your mom?
T: I haven't called yet. I'm just kind of overwhelmed. She's having some more trouble with her balance. No one seems to know what's going on and my father's not any help. He needs her for everything. He'd be lost within one day without her around.

I: I'm sorry. I can't imagine the stress of not being able to get back to see them and be there for your mom.
T: Thanks. [silence]

I: Call the lawyer, okay?
T: I will. I promise.

[T and I. hug on the couch and I. caresses T's back.]

I: What's going on with the hormones?
T: Things were going well. I was feeling pretty good about things--I got a good connection for the T and then my contact disappeared for a few days and I ran out and things got really shaky. Emotional rollercoaster time.

I: Yikes. What's going on with this person? Why aren't they available?
T: I'm afraid [name] is getting in trouble at work--I knew he was going to. He had a fake name and script to use to take stuff I need. But the head doctor is getting suspicious. And I'm just not sure if he's going to get fired.

I: He's too good a nurse--they can't afford to lose him.
T: They can't afford to keep him if he's caught.

I: So are you out? You ran out??
T: Yeah. And I'm feeling like shit. Moody. Weepy. Scared. The fucking roller coaster I hate and swore I'd never experience again.

I: What can I do?
T: Feed me a good meal and get me some T. [laughs]

I: I'm all over the first part. Can't help with the other. Wish I could. Have you called [name] to find out about their supplier?
T: No, I haven't even thought about it. It feels like I'm sinking and I don't want to bring everyone down with me.

I: [hands T the phone]. Call him. He'll help.
T: [dials Ts ex's number:] Hey [name]. I'm with I. who suggested I call you--I'm probably the last person you want to hear from but I'm out of T. I'm kind of freaking out. My connection might be gone. Not sure yet. [name] responds. T. listens. They hang up.

I: What?
T: He's going to make some calls and get back to me.

I: When did you know?
T: Know? About running out?

I: No. I mean know that taking T was right.
T: I just decided it would be worth it to try and see--I knew I could stop if things weren't getting better. The anti-depressants weren't really doing the trick. It is kind of a last straw. And it's been helping a lot. I've been a whole lot more stable. I like my voice lowering. I'm beginning to think I might pass... someday.

I: Does everyone at work still think you're a lesbian just because your hair is short and because of your clothes?
T: Kind of. But now with my voice lowering, I think they think I've just hit puberty and am some kind of freak who is changing sexes in the process.

I: I am glad I didn't go that route. But that's not really been my path--I'm just too damned distrustful of doctors.
T: Well, notice I'm dealing with a nurse! [laughs, then looks sad]

[I. leans over and gives T another hug]
T: Thanks.

I: I haven't really found much out there about what I'm experiencing. It seems like the medical world is convinced there's only one way to be transgender and that's about switching, crossing over, going from here to there.
T: No one gets it, really. That's the truth of it. We're all just making our way. Did you seriously ever consider taking hormones? I'm not sure I've asked you that before.

I: I just used to fantasize about waking up and being different--a total androgyne, intersex and intergender both. Not woman, not man. Just something that feels more like what I am inside.
T: Yeah, well, it's not so different for me, but I can't afford to not pass as something. I'm too vulnerable already. And besides, you have the luxury of passing as a man in social spaces.

I: Immigration, you mean? Is that the particular vulnerability you're getting at?
T: Damn right.

I: This country is so fucked up. Really. And getting more so every day.
T: [switches gears, mentally, to block out the stress of immigration bullshit] So you never wanted to do hormones, to maybe get more physically androgynous, or just to see what you'd feel like emotionally and mentally?

I: I just don't think what's going on with me is biological. I think it's social. It used to play out in my mind strongly as biological. Before I had any other way to understand my feelings. Truth is, I think I just don't fit in and nothing I do--hormones or not--is going to make me fit in any better; transitioning in some physical way will only add to my alienation from this world. And it's not exactly like my struggle is with being a woman or being a man. I'm kind of resigned to just feeling out of place. That's my thing--not fitting in anywhere.
T: Try adding on a constant fear of being caught and deported--or arrested.

I: No, I'll leave that to you. [smiles wryly]
T: [laughs] Thanks. You're a true friend.

I: Hey, I'm a better friend if we're both not in exactly the same level of stress, right?
T: Yeah, I suppose so. I need someone to call if I get arrested! [laughs]

 I: You can't get arrested. You've got enough to deal with.
T: Tell that to the government and let me know what they say.

I: I'll get right on that. Actually, no: I'll get right on dinner. Rice and beans good? Onions, peppers?
T: Sure. Sounds great. You got hot stuff?

I: You know it, baby.
T: [laughs] Only once. But we were drunk.

I: You were drunk. I was stoned.
T: Right. Sorry--you're "sober".

I: Two years next month.
T: And what do they say about that weed?

I: Depends on which meeting I go to. So I go to the ones where they don't ask.
T: You really have always known how to work a system.

I: [goes to kitchen off living room, puts water on to boil for rice. Begins opening cans of beans and chopping veggies.] So get this: after yesterday evening's meeting--the one where they only care if you're drinking--practically anything else goes--that guy I told you about--cute, sweet face, kind eyes...
T: Yeah? What happened??

I: He asked me if I'd take his phone number. He had it on a piece of paper, all ready to hand to me. His hand was kind of shaking when he asked. It was kind of adorable.
T: What'd you say??

I: I said I'll take your number, but only if it doesn't come with lots of expectations attached.
T: What did he say?

I: He put the paper in my hand and said, "Call me--I'll keep my expectations in check."
T: Can he? Do you think he can?

I: I don't know. I think he's kind of a serial monogamist. He hasn't been alone that long since leaving his abusive-drunk-for-a-boyfriend.
T: Well, his taste is getting better--you've never been abusive.

I: No, I just let my negligence and distance and dissociation do their thing. [laughs]
T: How do we get through this? I mean how is it done? How do people get through each day with so much weighing them down?

I: [mimes taking a hit off a joint] By smoking weed?
T: [laughs] Yeah, well, that's your way. I'm going to go with T and hope that helps enough to make life seem worth living.

I: You have seemed better since starting it--since getting over the fears about starting it, especially.
T: I think it's been good for me. Except it's not so good for me when I'm not sure of when I'll get more. If I get sent back, or even somehow can get back to visit mom, how will I be able to bring enough with me--I don't even know how long I'll need to be there? Or if I'll be able to come back?

I: Let's wait until you know more about how your mom is doing. She might be okay. Don't play every scenario out at once. You've got enough to deal with in the present.
T: That's for damn sure.

[T's phone rings]

T answers, listens, seems to relax, and hangs up.

I: What??
T: He's getting me some. He's going to drop it off here. [pause] Why did I dump him?

I: Because he's a drunken cheating bastard?
T: Oh, that. Well, you know. Nobody's perfect.

I: Especially him.
T: You're just jealous.

I: No. But I do love you.
T: I know you do. And I'd come over and hug you but those onions will kill my eyes.

I: This should be ready pretty soon. The rice is on, I'm getting ready to cook up the veggies and add in the beans. Another fifteen minutes maybe.
T: I'll live till then.

I: Damn straight you will. I'm not burdening your sick mother with the news of your sudden death.
T: Yeah--it's kind of sick when you have reasons like that to stay alive, though, isn't it?

I: Those are sometimes the only things to keep us going--not making life harder on everyone else. That's why you came here, remember?
T: I just couldn't come out to them about this stuff. It wouldn't make any sense. Mom doesn't even know I'm a lesbian.

I: Won't she be thrilled in a year or two when you're not?!
T: Cute. Very cute. I don't know what I'll be then. I don't think I'll ever be heterosexual. I never have been--I don't know how to do it.

I: I hear you. I don't get heterosexuality either.
T: You don't get sexuality, period.

I: Well... that too.
T: You always been asexual?

I: I did the compulsory sexuality thing. But I think honestly a lot of that has to do with the abuse.
T: Childhood?

I: Yeah. I honestly wonder how many kids and adolescents are sexual because they are acting out being abused.
T: But you weren't acting out much, were you? You had a boyfriend--that wasn't acting out was it?

I: No. I loved him. But there's always been a weird line for me. Like doing what adults do isn't really what I want, but if I'm with someone, I'm so used to trying to please them that if I'm in a sexual situation, I kind of just go on autopilot. I disappear, please them, and then come back into my body.
T: That's not very loving of them or especially of you if Mr. Serial Monogamy wants to kiss or fool around?

I: My goal is to tell him pretty up front, if he's actually interested in me that way...
T: He is. Trust me. He is.

I: How do you know, Mr. Smartypants??
T: Because his hand was shaking. Please. Don't be so naive.

I: Okay. He's probably interested. [pause] I just have to tell him I'm asexual.
T: And what will you say when he asks what the hell that means? Will you come out to him as intergender too?

I: I can't seem to come out as intergender to anyone who doesn't get something about being transgender. And I don't know--he could just be a gay boy who is clueless about all this. I'll let "asexual" sink in and see where it goes, because in some ways if he respects that, there's no need to get into the intergender stuff.
T: A convenient way to stay in the closet. Aren't we done with closets?

I: Right, Mr. I Can't Come Out To My Mother.
T: That's low. She's ill.

I: [snidely, but only the kind that comes with a loving challenge, like between siblings] She wasn't ill last year. Or the year before.
T: I wasn't on T then. I didn't know what I was going to do and didn't want to come out and then have her ask what that meant and not have an answer for her. I'm going to see how far I go on T before telling her.

I: You don't think she'll know just from your voice that something's going on?
T: I can kind of disguise that, sort of. Or just say I've got this cold thing that's going around.

I: Are you really happy with the T? What is it doing for you, exactly? I mean what besides mood stabilisation and lowering your voice? What else are you noticing?
T: I think my body is shifting its shape a bit. I'm getting a bit more muscular in my arms. Less "soft". Can't you tell?

I: I see you too often to notice changes like that. I can hear it in your voice though, when I get a message from you on voicemail. Then I notice it especially.
T: Yeah, when I hear my voice recorded it is kind of shocking to me.

I: How's it going at work? What do the guys say you work with?
T: They don't really get it. And they're too straight to get it. I'm just going to let them be confused. I think that's their permanent condition anyway. [laughs]

I: Yeah, them and my family!
T: You haven't come out to anyone yet?

I: We agreed to come out to the people who matter most. That wouldn't be my family. That'd be my friends.
T: I kind of wish you were closer with them.

[I. stirs the veggies, adds the beans. Checks the rice. Put's the lid down to let the rice finish.]

I: Why? So I could feel invisible? So I could feel misunderstood? So I could feel neglected by people telling me how much they love and miss me but don't ever really want to know anything that's going on within me?
T: They weren't raised to want to know that--they don't want to anything significant about themselves either. It's kind of the same with my family. You get through life, you don't examine it. That's their way. Sometimes the burden of knowing is too much.

I: I get the appeal of "not knowing". I just never could be like that. I was always questioning everything--all my feelings, the feelings of others, their rules, why society is what it is. Since childhood, really. I think being intergender put me on this course of feeling so outside everything that was being told to me about how the world is. And not being heterosexual too.
T: I know. Same here. You can't be a lesbian girl and a trans teen and not be burdened with questions that don't have easy answers.

I: How is your roommate dealing with this. Is she still separatist?
T: Yeah. She's not a happy camper. I get it. She's had enough with the boys for one life. She doesn't need her lesbian roommate turning into one.

I: But you're not really turning into a boy. You're turning into a more whole version of you. You're becoming you.
T: Still, the pronoun thing is hard for her. I get it. She's been a separatist for a long time. Her generation didn't deal with this stuff. Back when she came out, you had two choices if lesbian: separatist or not separatist. And that decision often got made based on who you were going out with.

I: All of this really is a lot more social than we want to admit some times, I think.
T: I think it is too. But knowing it's social doesn't make taking T a wrong move for me.

I: No, I wasn't meaning to imply that. I just meant that it's all kind of unknowable--what causes what. Why we make the decisions we do.
T: If I was a twentysomething back when my roommate was, I'd probably be a lesbian separatist.

I: Really??
T: Yeah. Well, if I was around separatists I would be. I mean it's really cool just being with women. It's soooo different than being around guys who are into putting on their guy acts.

I: Do I do that?
T: You're intergender. Believe me--it shows. How everyone doesn't just know automatically when meeting you is beyond me, except that they don't know there is such a thing.

I: Yeah, it's like when new white people meet me and want to know my race--with that questioning face that is scanning for tell-tale signs of Blackness or whiteness or being Latino or American Indian. It's like the way strangers look anxiously at new babies who aren't wearing pink or blue. And they're kind of freaking out that they might guess wrong.
T: Well, they'd be right on all counts.

I: But you know that's not how race works here. It's primarily white or nonwhite. Black, or something that tips you into being close enough to Black to not be seen as white.
T: So what do most white people assume?

I: They kind of are willing to accept me as white except that I talk about the problem of white people too much. So they know I'm not. But I'm light enough. Not as white as them, but not dark enough to be clearly and unequivocally "nonwhite".
T: This country is crazy. It can't deal with anything "in between".

I: Well, I don't really think getting to that place would even be sufficient.
T: What do you mean?

I: I mean that unless we end male and white supremacy, "in between" is just a few more options in an oppressive system that's still killing people in a whole lot of ways. We don't need more choices as much as we need an end to oppression by the social dominants. Because no matter how many genders there are in CRAP, it will remain male supremacist, and that means it'll remain misogynistic, and that means anyone deemed "not man enough" is targeted for a certain kind of violence. Same with race. Even though dominant society is learning to get it that there are more races than just white and Black, white supremacy is still the problem when it comes to race. That's why everyone else hates themselves so much. Male supremacy is why so many women hate themselves so much.
T: Well, why does it have to be either/or? Isn't that the same old thinking--that we only have one route? That we can't both work to expand the categories AND end male and white supremacy?

I: That's what we are doing, T. That's what our community has been doing for over a decade now, thanks to post-structuralism. We're making more and more and more categories.
T: Like "intergender" you mean?

I: Well, kind of. I mean me being intergender, really, what does that mean? It's a subjecting thing. I mean it's real, as real as anything else that's subjective. But it's not medically recognised so it doesn't really exist in the dominant society. And even if it were, it'll just be used to reinforce the binary, the hierarchy. I'll just slip a bit lower on the "real man" scale.
T: Honey, you're already kind of low on that scale! You think calling out men all the time makes you "one of them?"

I: I know. But I have male privilege, and some strange kinds of white privilege because depending on where I am and what I'm doing, whites won't interrogate me or wonder why I'm hanging out with them.
T: You mean like if you're not with me.

I: Sadly, yes. If I'm with anyone else of color, then somehow to whites, that means I'm of color too because then I'm not acting as white. I have only being around white people. It's really oppressive. It's just like only being around men. It's suffocating.
T: Don't worry--I'll never really be a man. I have no interest in "being A MAN".

I: I'm not worried about you. You'll always be "you" to me. No matter how deep your voice gets.
T: Even Barry White deep?

I: If I hear a voicemail from you and I think Barry White was calling from beyond, we can talk about it then. And if your voice goes that deep, you've got one helluva singing career in front of you.

[they both laugh out loud and fix plates of food and sit at the kitchen table eat, talking more about T's mom's balance problem.]

Glee, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Stereotypes, Transsexuals, Transgender, Radical Feminism. Part 2: Rocky Horror

image is from here

Series links:
Part 1: Glee
Part 2: Rocky Horror
Part 3: Transsexuals, Transgender, and Radical Feminism
Part 4: Racist Patriarchy, Post-Modernism, Genderism, and Bigotry


I can't describe fully to you what the experience was for me, just out of adolescence, still a teenager, sitting in a movie theatre watching giant painted red lips (not those of a woman) singing the opening number to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

A white male friend had told me and a few mutual white friends, "You HAVE to go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show!!" This cultural mandate was declared ages before Netflix and movies coming out on DVD or video so soon after initial release. If you didn't see a movie in the theatre, you had no assurance you'd ever see it any other way, especially if it didn't grab great box office. But this wasn't the initial release of the film, and so was kind of in a category of its own: the first cult film I'd ever seen as it was still becoming a cult film.

He was so enthusiastic about this cultural phenomenon that a couple of mutual friends and I made plans with him to see it ASAP. Probably the following Saturday night! This whole seemingly secret society had thus far totally gotten by me. Yes, I was sheltered in some ways from everything other than what was on television--I was a complete TV addict--into The Waltons and Little House on The Prairie, among other shows. I didn't yet know that "TV" meant anything other than "television". I had NO IDEA those two capitalised letters could also mean "transvestite" nor was I especially sure what it meant or didn't mean to be a transvestite.

Once, in my memory, when age five or so, my brother and I went to a white male friends home and he led us into his older sister's room and we all got into some of her dresses. DRESSES. I think she only had a few. And it was kind of thrilling, to be honest. Not sexually exciting, but just fun and boundary-pushing for us three male children to be running around in a home without any adults in it, in dresses! Sex codes and rules were so rigid then. I liked the experience and wouldn't put on another dress or skirt for about twenty years, when at a progressive, queer-friendly place where males could wear skirts--not to look like "women" but just because they were comfortable. That was what I liked: the option to dress comfortably. And the skirts males wore weren't short. The "comfort" wasn't in showing off our tighty-whiteys. The "comfort" wasn't in being gawked at or commented on as "sexual objects for a male (or female) gaze". We just liked having the choice to wear what we wanted without fearing being beaten up by misogynistic and homophobic (while strongly homosocial) guys for doing it. I'll be speaking more about "drag" later in this series of posts.

With our expectations set for "high", the four of us (two females, two males) went to see the movie at a local theatre. Before entering it was clear this wasn't going to be like any other movie theatre experience I'd ever had. For one thing, I was going to my first midnight show--of anything. For another, there were some people outside, young--we were all young--no adults at all--who were dressed up like some of the main characters. It was wild. I was filled with antici..... pation! We went in, got seated, and watched the characters--literally/figuratively--walk around laughing with one another. I sensed these people had been doing this for a while--how did this get by me?! (That's what good friends are for--making sure you don't miss out on the coolest thing ever.)

Before the film began some of those "regulars" began to shout to the screen--LIPS! (They wanted lips.) I was confused. And then bright red lipsticked lips--and quite possibly not a woman's lips--appeared on the dark screen. They came from the center, small and grew huge and began singing the opening number. This was definitely not like anything I'd ever seen before.



The next two hours were spent laughing hysterically, delighting in the music and characters, and being amazed at how the audience "regulars" were calling out comments to the movie as if scripted--as if these things were all supposed to be said and the movie wouldn't even be the movie without the audience's participation. That was what was so amazing: "we" were part of the show. The people in the rows in front of us and behind us who were wearing costumes like the characters were introducing us into part of the script that the screenwriters never wrote. It was like a strange and wonderful portal to another world had opened, just for people like us. Freaks. Odd-balls. "Queers". Two of the four of us, including yours truly, would come out as gay within ten years time, but for now just seeing bisexuality and transvestitism and lust depicted on screen and celebrated by the audience was kind of emotionally liberating. There weren't many places then to show overt regard for gendered experiences that weren't "normal" and "normal" then was very boring--at least my normal was. Until that night, probably around Halloween, circa 1978.

We caught wind of the fact that in a bigger city we had access to, there was a much better audience production. That's where we went several times over the course of a few months, some of us dressing up more and more. I was shy about stuff like that, so probably just wearing lipstick and eyeliner was as brazen as I got. But the male not-yet-gay friend who introduced us to this experience would later rival anyone else's impersonation of Frank-N-Furter. He had all the facial gestures down pat. He had acquired the outfit, piece by piece. And another of our little group of four would perform a fabulous Magenta. By then we all knew how to dance the Time Warp and had memorised the lyrics to all of the songs. What never occurred to me to consider was how I'd never really heard the actual soundtrack uninterrupted constantly. When, many years later, I rented and watched the film at home on video, I couldn't believe how mild an experience it was, by comparison. I don't recommend anyone do that--don't rent the movie and watch it alone or only with people unfamiliar with it.

The storyline, in a nutshell, is as follows: two white middle-"American" suburbanite newlyweds head off for their honeymoon and wind up more or less trapped inside a scary castle on a hill, occupied by various characters who engage in questionable activities, some of which we get a taste of, and some of which are only alluded to in song. This is place of transgression and sexual exploration--of being taught new values and how to embrace them. And it is also a place where some sinister things are going on that might spoil your appetite.

Here are a couple of other plot descriptions from IMDb:

After Janet accepts Brad's marriage proposal, the happy couple drive away from Denton, Ohio, only to get lost in the rain. They stumble upon the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite who is holding the annual convention of visitors from the planet Transsexual. Frank-N-Furter unveils his creation, a young man named Rocky Horror, who fears the doctor and rejects his sexual advances. When Frank-N-Furter announces that he is returning to the galaxy Transylvania, Riff Raff the butler and Magenta the maid declare that they have plans of their own. (An audience participation film) Written by Rick Gregory

While driving home during a rain filled night, straight-laced lovebirds Brad and Janet, by chance, end up at the castle of one Dr. Frank-N-Furter and his strange and bizarre entourage, and find that he's having a party. This is no ordinary party, no ordinary night. This is the unveiling of the Dr's latest creation: Rocky; A man-made Adonis that will give...absolute pleasure. This is an exceedingly grand visual and musical camp satire of the golden days of the B-movie horror and science-fiction genres. Projected along with a musical soundtrack to give "audience participation" a new meaning in dimension, time and space, this shall be a night that both Brad and Janet will remember for a very, very long time in the sexually kinky, rock 'n roll (f)rock-opera world of a gender-bending scientist...and his time warped plans. Written by Cinema_Fan


The theatre was an oasis of sexual libertarianism and while we all came from white suburban liberal families we didn't have permission to get decked out in this form of drag unless it was Halloween, and Halloween then wasn't what it is now: pornography hadn't yet taken over the society imposing its anti-sex, pro-sexxxism values on everything. Dressing as any of the stars of our midnight picture show was risque, but quite tame by contemporary standards. Our parents and care-givers knew we were getting heavily into the movie though, and assumed it was, more or less, harmless fun--which was the case for us. There were no drugs or drunks there that I could see, and it was just a place for teenagers and people in their twenties to rock out to this crazy theatrical experience that excluded no one who would be considered an outsider in our more or less white middle class suburban lives.

It would be safe to come out as, well, just about anything in this environment. It sure was not a place where being lesbian, bisexual, gay, or transsexual were "bad" and "shameful" things. Queer youth needed a space like this, and the theatres showing the RHPS at midnight were one such space. Whether it was genuinely liberatory or just a form of WHM supremacy draped in drag-queen garb is a question that will be taken up in the next post in this series. I'll also be discussing the role of this film and other events through the 1980s played in the social construction of dominant queer culture.

Over the decades, I went on to introduce other generations of older teens to this cinematic/theatrical experience, much to their delight. It was, for many of us, a rite of passage in a culture that usually only has rites that involve gross forms of self-destruction or destruction of other people, by humiliating and violating them, for example, such as in grade school bullying or college hazing rituals. That this was, for me, completely harmless fun cannot be overstated. I felt safe. I had a very good time. No one around me seemed to be out of their minds drunk or drugged, no one appeared to be harassed or violated, and at the end of the day--er, in the wee early morning hours, all I had to do to "recover" was use remover to get the black polish off my nails, and some cold cream to get the eyeliner and lipstick off my face. From there it was off to bed for sweet dreams of sweet transvestites from Transylvania.

The remainder of this particular post is a description of what any intrigued "RHPS virgins" out there needs to know, from the official website, rockyhorror.com. Please be on the look-out for Part 3 on the rise of Queer Culture and Feminist Activism.

VIRGIN - In the common world, this usually refers to a person who has not engaged in sexual relations. In the ROCKY HORROR world, this word refers to the many unfortunate people who have never experienced THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (RHPS) in a theater with an audience and a live cast. Seeing it on home video (Blu-ray, DVD, VHS, Netflix Instant, etc.) or on TV doesn't count! You came to this page because you are hopefully going to consider attending a showing of Rocky Horror in a theater. If you've already seen the movie by itself on TV or home video and wondered what all the fuss was about, read on. If you haven't seen the movie on TV or home video - GREAT! The more surprised you are on your first time, the more fun it is. Rocky Horror is the first and only true audience partici-(SAY IT!)-pation movie. People yell back lines at the screen during the extended pauses between dialogue, dress up in costume and act out the film, and throw props various times during the film. The audience participation phenomenon was observed as early as the film's first run in 1975 (when it bombed during limited engagements in 7 of 8 cities), and was later re-released as a midnight movie where the audience participation really began to flourish. And by the way, for the "gore sensitive", Rocky Horror is NOT a horror film. It is a rock-musical send-up of old science-fiction and horror films. Enough history! You are interested in going, so here's what you really need to know. First, the only thing you really need to bring your first time out in order to have fun is a sense of humor, and money for admission (and food at the nearest 24-hour diner afterwards.) Of course, being surrounded by 10-15 of your friends is also a good thing. You should dress in whatever makes YOU feel comfortable, but also does not violate any local standards (this usually means nudity is out.) Speaking of violating laws and norms of society, it is usually best to go to RHPS sober the first time. Not only will you be more in-tune to pick up all the clever things going on around you, some theaters will not admit those people who look drunk - what theater manager wants to clean up after a drunk at 2:30 a.m.? But hey, what about the props and audience participation lines and dressing up in costume? Well, no one expects you to know much of anything your first time out. While audience participation is mandatory to keep the show alive, it is not mandatory that everyone participate, every time. Virgins are not expected to know a damn thing (just like in sex.) If you really want to bring props, check with your local theater and ask what props are not allowed. The safest ones to bring are rice (banned at some, but not most theaters), toast (unbuttered), toilet paper and a deck of cards. A newspaper may help keep you from getting wet, but water is banned at many theaters. Watch everyone else to figure out when to throw these items. A prop list is available on this website. Oh, and if you need to know one AP line, there is one that is almost universal to every theater, that you can use multiple times. Whenever you hear the name "Brad Majors", yell "ASSHOLE", okay? An important note here: AP is NOT fixed from theater to theater and night to night. If you feel an new line coming on, YELL IT! A big part of keeping the show fresh is creating new lines with topical humor. (i.e. "Is Jessica Simpson a real dildo?" film: "YES!") Hmmmm... sounds interesting. I am not going to be targeted for some humiliation because I am a virgin, right? Maybe. Usually, theaters will have some sort of virgin ritual which almost always only includes 2 virgins. Since at any one time, an audience can consist of 25%-50% virgins, it is not likely that you will be chosen for this harmless ritual (well, usually harmless, it varies by theater!) If it looks like you are about to be picked, the best thing to do is point to a friend of the same sex and mouth to whoever (whomever?) is looking at you that he or she is a "virgin" (the soon to be ex-friend that you are pointing at.) Once you have completed an entire showing of Rocky in a theater, they can not ask you to participate in this ritual... you only have to worry about this once. (And once you see it, sometimes you actually WISH you were picked!) Now get off your butt, check the showtimes list and find out where to see Rocky (and don't rent the damn thing again until you do see it.) REMEMBER: Rocky Horror is like sex, you can only have one first time so make the most of it. A 7 November 2010 ECD addendum: Ruth Fink-Winter contacted me by email to alert me to some problems with the "contributors" listed below. What is below is exactly what appears on the original site--I just copied and pasted the whole thing. But below what follows I'll list the names as she believes would be more appropriate, honest, and accurate. Thank you, Ruth!! As listed in the original: CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS DOCUMENT: Christopher Amblers, Ruth Fink-Winter, Karen Majors, David Shetterly As listed according to Ruth's helpful corrections: Christopher Ambler, P7A77, Ruth Fink-Winter (for a latter period of time when some of this was written up), Karen Majors, and David Shetterly.