LauraSeabrook

I decided to pay for a years worth of Core Membership today. Had I done this earlier it would have been 1/2 price, but I really didn't have the spare $$$ until now. I had to pay the proof reader for proofing my exegesis first.

Until I became a CORE member (heh - I'm a member of "The Core") I was unable to access comments, replies, activity notices  and so on. OK, I have been a member since 2007, so maybe it is time. But I'm not so sure about what the real perks are of this. Will I be able to create new categories? Why is there no TDOR community event?!  We'll see.

Who's going to contribute to this year's TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE WEBCOMIC PROJECT?

DETAILS
Just what is the Transgender Day of Remembrance Webcomic Project (TDOR  WCP)? As you probably know, TDOR is heald annually on 20th November. As  the "About page" of The INTERNATIONAL TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE  WEBSITE puts it...  

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who  were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is  held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th,  1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San  Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most  anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.  Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance  self-identified as transgender — that is, as a transsexual,  crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of  violence based on bias against transgender people.

Participating contributors of the WEBCOMIC PROJECT draw and publish a  relevant webcomic or image for the day (or equivalent date, depending on  schedule). The main thing is to educate the readership of each person's  webcomic or blog about the issues listed above. You don't have  to be transgendered to join, just appreciating the tragedy of the lives  lost that are memorialised here is enough. What you do need is a  suitable visual artwork that appears on a site (webcomic, blog, Deviant  Art type site, Facebook, Live Journal et cetera) read by others. What  matters is sharing your concerns in an artistic fashion, so that others  can hear of the Transgender Day of Remembrance.   

WEBCOMIC PROJECT ARCHIVE
It is a fact that webcomics are often a more transient medium than their  paper equivalents. There are numerous reasons why a webcomic may no  longer be available on the web: websites and authors disappear; urls  change and domains get deleted; the creator themselves might lose  interest, move on, or just be unable to access or update their webcomic.  Circumstances change, and with them sometimes the ability to view older  works. Because this is the case, it makes sense to have an archive of  each year's entries to the Transgender Day of Remembrance Webcomics  Project.   

SUBMISSIONS
If you're doing something for this year (or have done a comic or image  for previous years and it it isn't in the archive) we'd like a copy of  it for the Archive. If that's too complex, then a reply to this email  with a URL of the submission's fine (but if you include details that'll  make sure I'll get them right).  Because it takes time to process each submission, I usually don't upload  the current year's submissions to the archive until November 30th.  

 Links:
INTERNATIONAL TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE WEBSITE    
TDOR WCP ARCHIVE    
TDOR WCP SUBMISSIONS INFORMATION
#tdor #tdor2014

November the 20th is also THE TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE, and annual event in which those transgendered persons either murdered or driven to suicide in the last 12 months are remembered. Events are organised around the globe to commemorate this. One of those events is the Transgender Day of Remembrance Web Comic Project.

Participating contributors draw and publish a relevant webcomic or image for the day (or equivalent date, depending on schedule) with links to other contributors and/or the archive. The main thing is to educate the readership of each person's webcomic or blog about the issues listed above. In the past these have come from webcomics, submissions on DeviantArt, Blogs and forums, and elsewhere as the participants determine appropriate.

This year is a bit different from previous years because a number of social networks, such as Facebook, Google+ and DeviantArt, have added tagging to posts in their network, bringing them into line with networks such as Twitter. This is usually a hash symbol (#) followed by some text (withoutspaces) as a tag. For example, #transgender.  This means that if you're posting (without or without an image) about the Day of Remembrance, you can now add tags to make finding that post easier for people who are looking for it.

Here are my suggestions for tags relating to the Transgender Day of Remembrance:
   #transgenderdayofremembrance
   #tdor
   #tdor[year]  (e.g. #tdor2014)

Adding each of these to a post will help others find it, whether they're looking for a particular year, or in general.
Just a suggestion.

I think we need major voting reforms for Federal elections in Australia. This is not because of the election's result on the weekend, but because the system's misleading and confusing as is.

Currently at a Federal election you get two ballots - one for the lower house (House of Representatives), and one for the upper (The Senate). The House of Reps has candidates based on a regional electorate and seldom has more than a dozen candidates. Currently a vote must enter a unique number for each candidate, from "1" to "x" (where "x" is the number of candidates). If a candidate has an absolute majority of "1" votes then they win outright. But if that's NOT the case (and usually it isn't) then the candidate with the fewest "1" votes is eliminated, and each vote is then added to the candidate that was marked "2" on the ballot. If there's still no clear majority then the lowest scoring candidates continue to be eliminated one by one, with their votes going to the the next preference on the ballot. This means at some point there WILL be a candidate with a majority of votes (extremely rare to have ties). A ballot might be deemed invalid if it's unclear about the order of voting, like missing numbers, or duplicated ones.

Now that seems a reasonable way of doing House of Reps ballots, because there are seldom too many candidates Even so, when it comes to State elections, there are variations on this. Both Queensland and New South Wales have an Optional Preferential Voting System, where the voter only has to mark at least one box with a "1". They can add "2", "3" and so on, but that's not compulsory.

The bigger issue is the Senate which has "State Wide" representation. Each State has the same number of seats (10 at the moment) and normally at each election 1/2 of these are up for re-election.  That seems reasonable, but at the last election in NSW there were 110 candidates for just five seats!!! The other States had roughly the same numbers of candidates as well. Currently the voting for the Senate uses the same rules as that for the House of Reps - with one addition. You can either vote "1 to x" by placing numbers in the boxes of each candidate, or you can "vote above the line".

The parties, and even independents, are grouped in columns and there's a line above this with boxes above each column. Instead of placing a number in EVERY box (which for me last election was 1 to 110!) with the chance of invalidating your vote if you make a mistake, you can place a "1" in one of the boxes above the line. What this means is that you have decided to vote in a manner that party has predetermined (which undoubtedly means voting for their candidates first). But there are issues with this - it gives the parties a lot of power in deciding how they swap preferences with other parties and candidates. It's not really a "fair choice" because voting below the line seems tedious and confusing. There are however, two ways this could be reformed.

The first is mentioned in this article by LifeHacker:

"In the long term, we need to change the rules of elections. This should be done by first abolishing above the line voting and the Group Voting Tickets. In its place, Partial Optional Preferential voting below the line should be introduced. Voters then only have to vote for as many candidates as there are positions to be filled for your vote to be formal."

The second is to actually extend the above the line voting system:

"NSW Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon said the Greens would talk to other parties about introducing an optional preferential above the line vote for the senate, saying the current voting system could deny the Greens a seat in the ACT. Under the proposition, voters would be able to rank parties in order of preference above the line, similar to lower house ballots, instead of just putting a '1' before their preferred party. 'It's actually a very simple way to give the preference decision back to the voters,' she told reporters in Sydney on Sunday. 'It removes the incentive for the preference deals that are now doing so much damage.' "

Maybe BOTH could be implemented. It's often said that a people gets the government it deserves, but if a system's so complicated that folk either don't understand it, or vote a pre-determined way because otherwise is too frustrating, then it's time to change.

Same-sex marriage is the addition of marriage between same-sex couples, to existing marriage legislation. The best example is the legislation in New York (see copy of the legislation in pdf form). This was seen as a huge victory when it was passed, and by it itself it certainly is for gays and lesbians in that American State.

But there are problems with this, especially if it's used as a model for legislation elsewhere. The main problem (especially from my point of view) is that it says nothing about trans and intersex persons. How would that be a problem? Well if you're intersex you may not necessarily be one sex or the other. That might not be an issue until of course there's a marriage dispute but it is none the less an issue - intersex persons are not covered in this legislation or existing legislation. The second issue is the sex of of a trans person.

In most Australian States and elsewhere it is possible to have one's birth certificate amended after gender transition (the exact conditions vary). This means that a trans woman would be considered female, and a trans man considered male. But this is not universal, nor are such changes always accepted in other locations. So far as I know New York state doesn't have this - what happens is that a trans person gets a BLANK birth certificate where the sex is not specified (more information please if anyone's got it).

That being the case, adding same-sex marriage in places where change of gender is not done/recognised becomes problematic for trans people. It means that a trans women could marry but as a man, and a trans man could marry as a women. If you're not trans you might not get what's wrong with that, but essentially it's a slap in the face about your gender! Also, some some States and places there are other issues related to Marriage for Trans people.

In several Australian States already married trans people cannot get either gender reassignment surgery or recognition until they divorce their marriage partners! Merely adding same-sex marriage by itself doesn't fix that problem. So only adding Same-Sex Marriage isn't marriage equality, it's extending the franchise.

Marriage Equality
I Australia last year marriage amendment bills that would have given marriage equality were defeated in both the Tasmanian and Federal parliament. Despite most of these removing gender from the equation, they were universally referred to "same-sex marriage" bills, essentially writing out trans and intrsex stake-holders and making them seem like a "favour" to gays and lesbians.

Ideally marriage equality means removing specific genders from marriage, rather than adding extra cases. In such circumstances it no longer becomes an issue over whether one is straight or gay, but becomes a universal right. People marry for any number of reasons, sexual attraction being only one of those. If marriage is between two consenting adults, then it doesn't matter what gender you are, does it? And presenting a "marriage equality" bill might be more acceptable than a "same-sex marriage" bill to the majority that aren't same-sex attracted.