Death of a salesman's (expectations)....

This column by commentator extraordinaire, George Monbiot, discusses the demise of social and economic mobility in the US and Britain, accompanied by rising expectations among the young.

…A survey published in April by the economist Tom Hertz showed that the United States has one of the lowest levels of intergenerational mobility in the rich world. A child born into a poor family has a 1% chance of growing up to become one of the richest 5%, while a child born into a wealthy family has a 22% chance. Another study, published by Business Week, found that in 1978 23% of adult men whose fathers were in the bottom quartile made it into the top quartile. In 2004 the figure was 10%. But reality and public perceptions are travelling in opposite directions. A poll for the New York Times published in 2005 showed that 80% of respondents thought it was possible for poor people to become wealthy by working hard. In 1983 the figure was only 60%.

[snip]

Here too, declining mobility is accompanied by rising expectations. In January the Learning and Skills Council found that 16% of the teenagers it interviewed believed they would become famous, probably by appearing on a show like Big Brother. Many of them saw this as a better prospect than obtaining qualifications; 11% of them, it found, were "sitting around 'waiting to be discovered' ". The council claimed that the probability of being chosen by Big Brother and of becoming rich and famous as a result is 30 million to one. But the promise held out to us is that it can happen to anyone. The teenagers seemed to believe it can happen to everyone.

To read the whole thing, go here.

Staff Sergeant Raymond Plouhar, 30, killed by a roadside bomb in Anbar province, Iraq. Photograph: US Marine Corps/AP

Staff Sergeant Raymond Plouhar RIP....

The US Marine recruiter pictured in Fahrenheit 9/11 trying to persuade young men from the economically bleak town of Flint, Michigan, to enlist has been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, the Pentagon said.

Staff Sergeant Raymond Plouhar, 30, died on Monday of wounds suffered while on duty in Anbar province. He had barely a month left of his tour of duty in Iraq, where he was in charge of detecting and detonating makeshift bombs.

What he was shown doing in F-9/11 was low-down. But his death is still a waste of a young life. And it's probably the last thing he ever thought would happen when he agreed to be in Moore's film.

Complete story here.

Archbishop of Canterbury, the "Most Rev." Rowan Williams. [photo:Chris Radburn/Press Association, via Associated Press]

WWJD...?

In a defining moment in the Anglican Communion's civil war over homosexuality, the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed a plan yesterday that could force the Episcopal Church in the United States either to renounce gay bishops and same-sex unions or to give up full membership in the Communion.

And they call themselves Christians. How utterly sad.

Complete story here.

Oink, oink...!

Barbara Ehrenreich rocks! From her blog:

The Piggery Award

While pondering Congress’s rejection of a minimum wage increase this week, it’s helpful to recall the basic taxonomic distinction between Predators and Pigs. Predators – in this case, those who employ people at unlivable wages – suck the marrow out of their employees, transform eager young women into stress-injured cripples, and virtually orphan the children whose parents are forced to work two or more jobs to support them.

Pigs, on the other hand, sit by wriggling with delight at these cannibalistic proceedings. It’s their job to oink out choruses of praise for the Predators. “Predation is Prosperity!” they proclaim, all the while hoping that some little scraps of flesh will fall their way.

Read the whole piece here.

Michael Laurence Dillon, world's first known FTM.

Pride week in Dublin....

I’m scheduled to give a brief talk on transsexual health issues with an MTF friend on Thursday here. (On my lunch break from my corporate job and unbeknownst to my bosses at he bank!) To be followed by a question-and-answer period.

A lot of people don’t realize that sexual orientation is totally separate from gender identity. Thus, while transgendered folks and issues generally get lumped under the LGB banner, the grouping makes further sense because regardless of a person’s sexual-orientation before transition, afterwards trans folks can end up as straight, gay, queer, or bi.

Kinda like the rest of humanity.

Another little known fact is that the first FTM known to employ hormone therapy and surgery was Irish . Michael Laurence Dillon, born Laura Maud Dillon in 1915 in London, the daughter of Robert Dillon of Lismullen, County Meath. Entered Trinity College Medical School in 1945 and graduated in 1951. He practiced medicine at sea and was eventually outed because Burke’s Peerage refused to change his name and sex in their listing so that he could be identified as next in line to his childless brother to inherit their family's title. A reporter stumbled on the information and published a story about his sex-change. So the story goes, Michael was so mortified that he left Ireland and moved to India, where he joined a monastery, was ordained in Tibetan Buddhism and died in a monastery in 1962, at the young age of 47.

So I'm following in a proud Irish FTM tradition.

Another fact. “Lower” or genital surgery is problematic for FTM’s. It’s prohibitively expensive, carries a high risk of sexual or urinary problems afterwards, and offers poor “cosmetic” results.

Therefore, many—perhaps even most—FTMs at this time chose to skip it. We will undergo a double-mastectomy or cosmetic surgery to reduce breast size and re-sculpt our chest. And we'll inject testosterone to produce secondary sexual characteristics. The testosterone works very well, as you can see by my photo. Which means that FTMs can end up living long lives as men without penises. Which has profound implications for healthcare and our sexual lives.

Among other things it may mean that a person looks like me, but has to seek gynecological care. This, naturally, is something we’d much rather avoid. But avoidance could, in a worst case scenario, cost us our lives, as routine pap-smears can detect cervical cancer early enough to successfully treat it.

In the past, females who cross-lived sometimes died rather than seek out medical care for curable health problems. Being outed, apparently, was considered a fate worse than death. One famous example was jazz musician, Billy Tipton. Born one year before Michael Dillon, in 1914 in the US, he cross-lived his entire adult life. He was married five times, told each of his wives that he had been in a grave car accident that had left him with genital disfigurement and sterility, and so they apparently never saw him naked nor had sexual intercourse. He adopted three boys. Only his parents, brother, and cousins knew he had been born female.

In 1989, Billy suffered from hemorrhaging ulcers and refused to call a doctor. After his death, the coroner told his family the truth of his biological sex. None of his adopted sons, ex-wives, associates or band members have ever admitted to previously knowing he was born female.

In my own case, I always come out to my doctors. I do this as a matter of principle: I feel it’s both good for them to understand that life isn’t necessarily so black and white as they might think, and it’s important for me to get the best healthcare possible. It's sometimes an unnerving experience. A few times, the doctor or nurse has been so visibly flummoxed by my revelation that they’ve been obviously too distracted to give me even the most basic care. Luckily, this has never occurred in the context of a critical emergency—and I sincerely hope it never does.

But imagine if a person like me has a serious accident, one that renders us unconscious. We’ll be there helpless and in need of medical help and the doctor or nurse will be confronted with a person who looks male, but who was clearly born female. This is a scenario that freaks me out and one reason I feel it’s so important to educate medical care providers that we're out there.

The closest I came to this scenario was a bad bicycle accident I had. I was knocked unconscious for about 10 or 15 minutes, but luckily, I’d only started testosterone a week before. So though I looked very gender ambiguous, with short hair and men’s clothing, I’d had no surgery yet and was still without a beard and chest hair. So the nurses found no big surprise under my clothing.

The situation now would be very different.

What have we wrought...?

Based on what many consider to be a low estimate, some 50,000 Iraqis have died violently since the US invasion in March, 2003. To put this in perspective, consider:

... the 50,000 number is daunting, particularly in a country with a population of about 26 million. "Proportionately," the Times says, "it is equivalent to 570,000 Americans being killed nationwide in the last three years." Put another way: It's as if the United States had suffered an attack of the magnitude of 9/11 once every five or six days since March 2003.[emphasis mine]

Salon story (quoting the LA Times) here. (Subscription required.)

A tale of two ledes....

I almost never read the New York Times anymore, although I'll frequently glance at the headlines.

I quit trusting their editorial judgment during the lead up to the Iraq invasion, so obvious was their slant in favor of Bush and the war. The Jayson Blair scandal confirmed my low opinion. Then they started to charge for op-eds. I finally reached my point of no return with Judith Miller's martyred posturing in prison and the paper's passionate defense of her.

Take a look at this headline and lede from today’s edition.

Militants' Raid on Israel Raises Gaza Tension

JERUSALEM, June 25 — In an ominous development, Israel threatened strong military action on Sunday after eight Palestinian militants in Gaza, including members of the governing faction Hamas, emerged from a secret tunnel dug 300 yards into Israel, killed two soldiers, wounded three and kidnapped another.

Compare it to the headline and lede on the same story in today’s (UK) Guardian.

Palestinians hunt for Israeli hostage

Palestinian security forces under the command of the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas were desperately searching today for the Israeli soldier kidnapped by militants the previous day, as the army massing on Gaza's border stood poised to invade.

It's a mild, but noteworthy example of what bothers me about the NYT. The Guardian’s story conveys a strong sense of disorder, desperation and vulnerability on the part of the Palestinians. While the NYT gives the impression of two near equals, Israel and Palestine, poised in a military stand-off.

Which do you think is closest to the truth?

It only confirms my decision not to waste my valuable time on the formerly praiseworthy flagship publication.

The NYT story here and Guardian here.

The credit card blues....

Got into a heated discussion with a friend of mine today. She felt that the reason there's so much consumer debt nowadays is that, due to rampant materialism, people habitually live beyond their means. I felt that the reason there's so much consumer debt nowadays is that most people don't make enough to live, so they use credit cards to make up the difference.

I was arguing from the perspective of someone socialised as a female in the 1950's, who even though I've been living for the past 12 years as a man am still making waaaayyy below what most men my age and with my level of education earn--heck, I'm making significantly less than my ex-girlfriend who's 28 years old and has a bachelor's degree (to my 50+ years old and master's degree).

And I was arguing from the perspective of someone from the working class, first person in my immediate family to not just finish college but earn a master's degree, albeit when I turned 41, and who raised my daughter mostly as a single parent.

My working life began at 16 when my mom brought home piece-work. Then I graduated to part-time library-page while still in high school.

After graduating high school on a college-prep track sixth in my class of more than 350 students, I got a job cleaning motel rooms. I didn't know any better: none of my high school counselors prompted me to apply for university. My mother had commited suicide when I was a junior and I was still reeling. And my dad, having never gone to college, didn't really understand the system. Several years later, when I landed my first office job, I thought I'd positively arrived.

Frustratingly, though I'm much better educated both formally and in the ways of the world, I've barely progressed salary-wise since then.

So, what do you think? Is frivolous, out-of-control middle-class spending mainly to blame for raging consumer debt? Or working people making too low of a wage to reasonably get by?