Names and Regimes of Gender

Good news in New York: gender is performative.

Bad news: You need a doctor or therapist to prove it.

Curious standard: you must have changed your name (NY Times), which is, apparently part of what it means to "live your adopted gender for at least two years."

But who arbitrates the gendering of names?

Theater of the Obvious

Sometimes - too often, in fact - the obvious to be re-remembered: the crimes that Saddam Hussein was today sentenced to death for committing were committed with the full and enthusiastic support of the Reagan administration. The image above is our very own Rumsfeld with Hussein in the '80s. He was, at that time as today, doing a "fantastic job."

Update: Just in; a must read by Robert Fisk.

"Obsessively tolerant" EU

New York Times hyperbole/lie alert:

It began in Poland, where the conservative Law and Justice Party won elections last year. The twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, now president and prime minister respectively, have alienated much of the obsessively tolerant European Union with their conservative Roman Catholic, antihomosexual attitudes and talk of Poland assuming its rightful place on the Continent’s political map. (Velvet to Fringe in Post-Soviet Central Europe, Nov 1)

I'm sure we could undermine this claim with about, oh, fifty obvious examples..