Tag: letter

Do you feel like writing a letter?

I sure do miss the old days of composing reasoned missives off to other folks. But hey, there’s a veritable cornucopia of letter-writing opportunities today!
See, a few days ago, a few MTF women were sunbathing topless. Shocking, I know. Fortunately, the police were there to get involved. They told the women to please cover their boobs. [source] Think of the children! (If a child sees a breast, they perish. It’s amazing any of us survive to the age of solid food. Anyway.) Then, cue the news media.
Where should we start? The AP, which seems to have forgotten that it has a style guide, goes with the headline, “Transgender men go topless at Delaware beach“. Or there’s USA Today, with , “Topless ban at beach doesn’t apply to transgendered men with enhanced breasts.” Or literally hundreds more, because women sunbathing topless is the most exciting thing to have happened on the east coast this summer. But, I mean, if you were going to use the phrase, “transgendered men with enhanced breasts,” well, you really shouldn’t use that phrase, but if you were in a parallell universe where that phrase was remotely acceptable, you could misguidedly direct it at me. Directing it at women? Wrong wrong wrong!
So rather than go into a long post about how this is essentially an appeal for forced sterilisation for trans women and an appalling example of genital-essentialism, I’m going to ask you to write a letter. Pick one of the news outlets at random and politely correct them. (Don’t call them fucknecks, for example.) Here’s my letter to the AP:

To: info@ap.org
Dear Sir or Madam,

I recently came across your article, “Transgender men go topless at Delaware beach” ( http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwg8Mfyg6HGmXI6s1QycLqxGAU8wD9G3VVO80 ). The people in question were MTF transgender women. Referring to them as “men” violates your own style guide on dealing with transgender people and is also deeply offensive.

In the future, please consider remembering that you have a style guide that deals with these issues.

Thank you for your time,

Charles Céleste Hutchins

Ok, maybe that’s a bit snarky. But this is where you come in, Cis ally! You’re against transphobia? Write one letter! Pick one news outlet and write them a short little note! Cut and paste from this note or write your own. Then leave a comment here saying who you wrote to. You can share your note too, if you want. It doesn’t take much time and maybe the editor who gets it will realise he or she has made a mistake and might even do the right thing in the future. Or maybe it will be ignored. But it’s better to write the letter than not.
Everybody, now!

Writing Letters

Ok, so this arrested couple in Malawi has been in the news lately. To quote the New York Times, “A gay couple in Malawi sentenced to 14 years in prison for ‘unnatural acts’ . . ..” The good news: they were pardoned! Yay!
The bad news? From the same article, “Late Saturday, Mr. Chimbalanga, who has said he considers himself a woman in a man’s body, and Mr. Monjeza were released from custody.” What the fuck is this? I don’t even . . .
The AP Stylebook has fucking rules about how you talk about trans people. They do not include referring to women as “Mr.” nor “he.” Nor do they involve referring to man/woman couples as “gay.” That sentence above is the most ungendering piece of shit they’ve yet to turn out this century. Yes, he might consider himself a woman, but here in New York, we certainly know better! Because, apparently, Africans are not worthy of having their identities recovered? Or is the NYT just looking for any excuse to be transphobic in general?
Alas, the Times is not alone in this shit. I highly encourage you to write letters to any newspaper you see that disregards the gender identity of Ms. Chimbalanga.
Seriously, we in the first would want to be all moral high ground about this, but our newspapers can’t seem to manage to respect her either.

To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: AP Stylebook Guidelines for referring to transgender people
Dear Sir or Madam,
In your article, “Malawi President Pardons Gay Couple” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/africa/30malawi.html?partner=rss&emc=rss), you mention that one of the people arrested, Ms. Chimbalanga, identifies as a woman. The AP Stylebook has guidelines for how to refer to transgender people. It does not include referring to transgender women as “he” or “Mr” nor does it include referring to man/woman couples as “gay.” I have no idea what your motivation is to entirely disregard and disrespect this woman’s identity. It is entirely inappropriate and you should know better.
Thank you for your time,
Charles Celeste Hutchins

Letters to State Represenatives

Dear Honourable _,

I am writing to ask that more resources are allocated to higher education in the state of California. I’ve read that the regents of the UC system are voting to hugely increase fees. I’ve also read that the CSUs have been cutting services like library hours and doing no new admissions this spring.

While I understand that the state is having a budget crisis, the degree of cuts to the university systems and the size of fee increases is alarming. It’s actually cheaper for California students seeking a professional graduate degree to go out of state or even overseas. Our universities are excellent, but they must also be affordable to the populations they were established to serve. Raising fees may also have a detrimental effect on their standards as some of the most qualified students are simply unable to afford to attend and those that do attend can’t access the libraries except during limited hours.

Cutting the university system is short-sighted and foolhardy. It plunges middle class families into severe debt and puts education out of reach for much of the working class. Given that the Bay Area economy essential runs on brain power, this is not only dooming the would-be-students who cannot afford an education, it potentially harms all of the industries of the area. Our short-term downturn will become a long term one if we squander our human resources in a sort-sighted attempt to save money.

If we have to cut something, why not the prison system? It costs far more to house a convict for a year than to educate a student for year. Furthermore, every execution costs millions of dollars. Surely that money would be better spent on a young person’s future than ending a life. How many millions or billions of dollars do we spend on enforcing nonsensical anti-marijuana laws? Again, wouldn’t it be better to reduce student fees than to put somebody found possessing a joint through our justice system. If we neglect education in favour of prisons, I fear that over time we’ll need more and more prisons and have less and less for education until the outstanding know-how of the Bay Area is just a distant memory.

Thank you for your time,

C. Hutchins
You can find your two state legislators here.

Write Letters

Dear Senator Feinstein,

I am writing to ask that congress investigate whether the president has violated Posse Comitatus. I’ve just read, in the Army Times, that an infantry brigade has been deployed domestically on a permanent mission. This would seem to be in direct violation of H.R. 4986, Section 1068, signed into law on 28 January 2008, which restored the Posse Comitatus to it’s original wording. I believe strongly that the army should not be used domestically and that the president should obey the law. I hope that congress will take action on this issue.

The Army Times article is here: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

Thank you for your time,
Céleste Hutchins

Posse Comitatus was a law passed in 1878 which prohibited using the Army for domestic law enforcement. There’s a lot of reasons that this is a good idea. Police Officers, for all their short comings, are employed by the area that they police and are subject to review by several layers of government. The National Guard is under the control of the governor of their home state and generally only deployed in emergencies. They are under review by the national government in addition to the state government. And really, they only ever should be mobilized during emergencies.
Police Officers, ideally, are trained in doing police work. Recently, they’ve been toying with becoming a military force, but their job is supposed to be public safety, which means that they use force only as a last resort and use non-lethal force whenever possible. The army’s job is to kill people. They are trained to be an occupying force. In the army, to “pacify” a situation means to kill everybody who is upset about it. People who have been doing a lot of killing overseas are not really the best folks to do police work at home or anywhere. Furthermore, the army’s chain of command goes up to the Commander in Chief. George Bush. They are loyal to the president.
Deploying the Army domestically is a violation of an important law. This is a blatantly illegal act. Their mission is contrary to our democracy. Action must be taken.

I’m in the newspaper

I wrote a letter to Jon Carrol of the Chronicle and he ran it. The topic is bike routes and traffic in the East Bay. I tried to make it really short, but I worry that I sounded like an asshole.
I run stop signs all the time on the Berkeley Bike Boulevards. These are bike routes that run parallel to main streets in Berkeley. The roads are very residential and have stop signs on them quite frequently. There is not much cross traffic at these signs , nor much car traffic on the streets. In some places, they are blocked so that bikes can get through but cars can’t. The system is imperfect because the frequent stop signs technically apply to bikes, but the routes would be unusable to anyone who actually obeyed them.
What I didn’t say is that I don’t cut people off or aggravate car drivers or risk my own safety. I slow down for stop signs, which, honestly, is all the many car drivers do as well. Also what I didn’t say is that the problem could be mitigated by better signage. They need to put in one set of “yield” signs for bikes only and leave the stop signs for cars. Most issues with bike routes in suburban cities like this could be alleviated with better signage, but the ideas for how to post them are foreign and would not occur to somebody who hadn’t biked overseas.
Also what’s not obvious is that taking out stop signs would greatly increase safety. People are more cautious in uncontrolled intersections and this increases safety. Accidents aren’t avoided by just carefully following the law. Accidents are avoided by people seeing each other and being careful. So either better signs or no signs would help a lot. And roundabouts. How to design to increase safety isn’t some deep dark secret. The information is easily accessible and sometimes discussed in the newspaper and whatnot, so the city planners are aware that they’ve created a situation that’s dangerous to bikers and annoying to car drivers, but they make no major changes, even when the cost would be low. Why?
Well, I’ve dealt with the city of Berkeley planning commission and I suspect that they want to share the pain of their bitter twisted lives with others and also are frequently drunk at work plus they are resistant to any kind of change at all, even when it’s entirely sensible.
Carroll cut the part of my letter where I talked about the end of the California/ King bike boulevard. The bike route just dead ends at a major street with a median strip. The Oakland bike route picks up on the other side. There is no legal way to get across the major street without getting off your bike and walking it across a zebra crossing. Cops don’t give you tickets for biking across it, but they could. Also, it’s dangerous and scary. I hate that intersection so much and yet it still seems safer than biking along a more major street.
My hope and expectation is that since we’ve passed peak oil, there will be more and more and more bikers and numbers will increase safety.
Isn’t it amazing that I can live on another continent and still be opinionated about biking in the East Bay. Don’t worry, I have suggestions for London as well, starting with replacing the congestion charge with an outright ban on private cars for non-disabled people.

Writing my congress people

Dear Honorable –,

I’m writing because I want American immigration to be the best, most navigable process that it can be.

I’ve been studying in Europe the last couple of years and as I try to get student visa number three for country number three, I sometimes feel very frustrated. Some countries explain things very clearly, and some do not. Some seem to operate more or less at the whim of the official with whom I am speaking and others have clearly defined processes. Some are flexible and reasonable and others are legalistic to the point of absurdity.

The immigration process creates my first impression of what life in these countries will be like. It reflects the culture and the national character and showcases the strengths and weaknesses of their systems. The consulates and immigration offices are reflections of their nations – a miniaturization of what I can expect to encounter during my period of study.

Therefore, I would expect the American immigration process to be similarly a reflection of American culture. We see ourselves as friendly, fair and efficient and our process should be the same. However, when I speak to other students who have studied in the US, this is not what they report. The system they describe is so frustrating that some of them quit their studies there rather than struggle with it further. I feel guilty complaining about how I’ve been stymied in my attempts to get my paperwork in order, when the stories I hear coming from my own country are so much worse.

We have some of the best universities in the world. They retain their reputation by being able to attract students from all over the world. What’s more, cultural exchange is extremely valuable for everyone involved. Those who travel abroad are made richer by the experience and those who study at home gain wider perspective from their foreign classmates.

By rights, America should have the best immigration process in the world. We have the best schools. We’re a nation of immigrants. We’ve got a lot of pat practice to draw on. I’m saddened that it’s not the case.

Please, let’s make our consulates and immigration offices reflect the very best of our culture. At the very least, let’s make it so I can whine without my fellow students rolling their eyes.