Good Vibrations Magazine

There has been some really great offers to write stuff and blessedly great folks that I respect and admire appreciating something I never gave all that much thought (other then fantasy) to: Writing. I am a compulsive writer, so much so their is actually some sort of diagnoses for it.
I don’t much understand why something so wonderful for people to do gets lumped into some sort of disorder.
Just last night I was watching “The Notorious Betty Page” where a Christian woman, see’s that what she does, posing for pictures, making people happy, lumped in with some sort of disorder or perversity. I’m giggling at that something seems so absurd! You look at all these magazines and the media’s version of sexuality is shoved in your face with every airbrushed picture, every model so skinny she looks like some refugee from a camp, and that is what we all must accept as THE model of beauty.
It’s a farce, all of it. In an earlier blog I posted on MySpace (via Dr. Charlie’s post), I asked for folks to take a look at what the DSM book (this is a medical book that defines “disorders” for the medical community) is defining folks who involve themselves in a lifestyle that really bothers no one else, it’s just that it doesn’t fit some sort of puritanical ideal of what sexuality should be. By manipulating ideas of something that people have a right to, pleasure, while pushing down their own feelings of what could makes feel whole is such a travesty. This is a very individual thing and the fact I fight for this everyday, is a quality I hold most dear.

Just yesterday I took home a piece of our store’s history, our old Plexiglas sign that talked about the Mission of what was the Cooperative of Good Vibrations.

No longer being an owner of our company, I’ve looked at it as a blessing: the business end is taken care of folks that really have an understanding of business end so that we workers can focus on keeping on with the heart of the mission: To teach accurate sex information and promote HEALTHY attitudes about sex.
What the media gives us is not healthy. They shove it in our face and then yell at us to bury our own with double standards. Controlling people with fear based idea’s and telling them that they don’t deserve the right to pleasure!

“Pleasure is our birthright” my beloved co-worker Carol Queen has said. It has become our mantra.

I would get arrested for teaching people how to use a toy to enhance the experience with their partners in other states! This also applies to teaching folks about safer sex and use of a condom so that they can be empowered to lessen their chances of contracting diseases that plague the human race.

Sometimes I wonder, did someone create some of these diseases to get rid of a population that they fear? What rights do you fear that they will take away from you? Do you think that the LGBT community is going to take you all down into a life of sin?

Right now tour buses are driving in the Castro so that tourists can look at the Gay folks as if they were attractions in a zoo. The tourists are invited into the “wilds” of San Francisco to gaze upon happy people who have accepted their desires (not unlike their own) and their choices.
Here in my hometown I am viewed by some as a rarity. I am married to a “bio-male” who is accepted and loved in this community. A fave person of mine told me the other day that she felt my husband should have an award as a honorary Lesbian. Because he polite and respects all people regardless, they have felt he deserves this. Many women have told me they love him. I go to coffee bars in town and the women ask about him, profess their love! How lucky am I?
Just as I experienced, all, if not most of our friends, are of this community. They want the same things we want: love, acceptance and the right to live their life in the manner that makes them happy. California honoured our requests to let folks who love each other get married. Now others want to take it away.

This whole business about having to be this gender and that gender gets lost on me. I am so many genders, we all start in the womb as one and then hormones take over to assert other characteristics.

At first I was not ok with my lot. I am sure many a Tomboi like myself were not ok with having to put the shirt on when secondary sex characteristics kicked in. I relate most to 2 spirit people that define themselves and choose what makes them comfortable.I just can’t define myself. Others see what they want to in you. I feel I rather get on and not bother to classify myself.

I will respect whatever you choose for your self, name , gender (or lack there of) and lifestyle, all I ask for is the same.
In that respect I chose another route for myself. While somefolks change their bodies in one way, I have changed mine in another. I don’t feel there is much difference and I stick up for their right to do so. In fact, it is a factor in many of my decisions. I don’t feel comfortable in a place that is not available to a large part of humanity that is looked over in other areas, outside of San Francisco. Lack of acceptance? I take my business elsewhere. My choice of spiritual practices are the same: my higher power/god(dess) or what ever you choose to call it looks beyond gender into the person inside as I have always done.

How hard is that and why does it threaten you for someone to be themselves? Do you really know better?