If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

I would absolutely have to agree.
While the repercussions were minimal this time around - and hopefully the next time as well, It did steal our focus from the media and reports coming out of the Eastern side of the continent though.

All the media and hype sucks us in and consumes us making us a busy and keeps us occupied. Even if it doesn't effect us, it still takes up residence in our heads.

If nothing major comes of the storms in the east, at the very least, it twists people focus and keeps them hyper aware and conscious of pending doom whether it produces any or not.

---On that same note - I hope anyone that is on the East Coast are safe with all family members accounted for - enjoy your forced family gatherings and get to know your neighbours a little bit more. Make the best of it and turn it into something positive.

>> ^nanrod:

At the risk of jinxing us I'd say we must be karma positive to have a 7.7 quake that does no damage.>> ^Sagemind:
Westcoast BC, Canada - unlike the Eastcoast, we are more worried about earthquakes.
7.7-magnitude quake rocks B.C.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/28/b-c-earthquake/
...And countless aftershocks ranging from 2.5 - 6.3

At the risk of jinxing us I'd say we must be karma positive to have a 7.7 quake that does no damage.>> ^Sagemind:

Westcoast BC, Canada - unlike the Eastcoast, we are more worried about earthquakes.
7.7-magnitude quake rocks B.C.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/28/b-c-earthquake/
...And countless aftershocks ranging from 2.5 - 6.3

Better watch it, my umbrella turned inside out today!>> ^gwiz665:

I'm in Denmark.
http://i.imgur.com/EwDHC.jpg
WE SHALL REBUILD!

Ok, so the plaintiff's google searches are never applicable? Is that because they're "not related to the crime?"

>> ^bareboards2:

Principal would be --- the google search is related to the crime. The accused criminal does the action, not the victim of the criminal.
@Trancecoach, in my opinion. And as supported by the judge in this case, who did something unprecedented in voiding the subpoena.

So google searches are never pertinent in case of this type? Only for those case by which the computer is instrumental? No exceptions? I wonder if there is a principle which can be drawn.

>> ^bareboards2:

@Trancecoach, maybe if we changed the crime from rape, a notoriously difficult situation under any circumstance, to some other crime.
Because when the crime is rape, and a woman's sexual activities outside the actual event are introduced, things get hairy.
So. Push the reset button. Let's pick another crime and see if google searches are pertinent.
Building a bomb. How did they learn how to build the bomb? Did they search the internet for sources of materials? Did they order the materials online? Yeah, I'll say a subpoena for that information is in order.
Child pornography. Yeah, I think you are going to need the computer for that.
Organizing a terrorist cell. Yeah, email records, I think that is admissible evidence in court.
Even the judge in this case found the subpoena for her google searches and her journals that recorded her healing process after the rape to be inappropriate and voided them.
I glad she had that judge. Who restricted the case to the physical evidence of assault.

haha, @bareboards2, you seem quite eager to jump into epithets, dear.. even before responding to the question I'm actually asking! It isn't slut shaming so much as it is an inquiry into the facts of the case?
There's a lot of dubiousness when it comes to "he said/she said" accusations, let alone what constitutes "consent" between adults behind closed doors.

Let me reiterate for the third time (since you seem to have missed it the first two times I stated it) that I am not making any claims or suggestions about the facts or issues pertinent to the particular case described in this video (and, while you're attempts to suggest that I am are entertaining, I do feel somewhat insulted by them). My query simply poses the question as to whether a plaintiff's google searches are always immaterial or if there are special hypothetical cases (which I raised as such in my first and subsequent posts on this thread) by which that would not be the case.

In other words, where/how does one draw the line (without casting ad hominems at your interlocutor)?


>> ^bareboards2:

@Trancecoach, an interest in bondage is very far removed from being choked and raped.
This is classic slut shaming, honey. Interested in kinky sex? Oh, but then you changed your mind because you are a dirty dirty girl and are so ashamed of what you did.
The google searches are irrelevant.
What is relevant is what he did to her.

Yes, you're missing my point entirely.
She prevents the court from subpoenaing her google searches. What if said searches indicate that she was, in fact, seeking said experience? At what point are said searches immaterial in a court of law? >> ^bareboards2:

@Trancecoach -- you get that is this victim blaming, right? An interest in bondage et al does not mean you are consenting to being raped and beaten. Just as going to his house, which is a dumb move, doesn't mean you deserve what happens. Or wearing a short skirt. This is all the same thing -- be careful, or it is your fault.
The guy was a professional, he is good looking, I'll bet he was charming. There are loads of one night stands out there that take one of each gender (on average!) that don't end in rape.
Especially nowadays -- Fifty Shades of Gray, an apparently terribly written book, is the best selling book of all time. So if you have read that, you better not go to a stranger's house?
Am I missing your point? I feel like I might be missing your point...

does it matter in terms of the verdict or sentencing?>> ^bareboards2:

So.... aren't you proving in your question here that the Google searches are irrelevant? If nothing can excuse the abuse she suffered? If she had looked at bondage sites? So what? Clearly the safe word wasn't honored.

>> ^Trancecoach:
Not that I disbelieve the victim/woman in this case, but as a hypothetical (devil's advocate), what if the content of conversation throughout the date leading up to the attack pertained almost entirely to sadomasochistic sexplay? What if her google searches in the days/hours leading up to the date had to do with bondage and domination?
Not that such a finding would ever excuse the kind of abuse that it appears this woman had to endure, but could that have influenced the jury's verdict and/or the sentence of the defendant in this case?

So.... aren't you proving in your question here that the Google searches are irrelevant? If nothing can excuse the abuse she suffered? If she had looked at bondage sites? So what? Clearly the safe word wasn't honored.


>> ^Trancecoach:

Not that I disbelieve the victim/woman in this case, but as a hypothetical (devil's advocate), what if the content of conversation throughout the date leading up to the attack pertained almost entirely to sadomasochistic sexplay? What if her google searches in the days/hours leading up to the date had to do with bondage and domination?
Not that such a finding would ever excuse the kind of abuse that it appears this woman had to endure, but could that have influenced the jury's verdict and/or the sentence of the defendant in this case?

Thanks! I was so sad this languished at first. Your promote has helped get the story out...


In reply to this comment by Boise_Lib:
*promote

Why would any woman in this day and age go home with a man she met online on their first date? How can any woman think that is a good idea? Same goes for a man. Do people not understand how many sick, depraved people are out there?

It sounds like she was horribly raped and beaten. Terrible.

That defense attorney should be disbarred for requesting her diary and internet searches. Some defense attorneys are just scum. "It would help establish if she thought there was a criminal act from my client." Are you serious? So he assumes that she is into some kinky rape and beat me for 5 hours fetish?

What do you mean by "History is bunk" Yogi?

Re: previous post.
What a wonderful "Jewish State" it is too.

Here's a snippet of the official nature of it's democratic and liberal proclivities.

http://nigelparry.com/diary/ramallah/plates.html

"Jewish settlers living in Bet El settlement near Ramallah do not get plates with an "R" on an orange background. They have yellow Israeli plates. In other words, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jews and Arabs have license plates that show their race."

You can follow up with more official sources if you are in any way interested.>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Kofi:
The Daily Show covered this (I'm in Australia so I can't find the link) and they showed, through Fox news, that the 2/3rds say Aye was actually already on the teleprompter.
Either way, surely its WEST Jerusalem that is the capital of Israel if anything. Does history mean nothing??

History is mostly bunk.


>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Fletch:
>> ^quantumushroom:
Liberals purport to hate fascism but also hate Israel, the freest, most liberal nation in the Middle East.
The liberal mind, who can know it?
>> ^lantern53:
The UN set up Israel, didn't they? I thought the libs loved the UN.
What happened?


Well... the freest nation with mandatory military service, anyway. Occupying and oppressing the natives doesn't sound all that liberal to me, either. As far as the "liberal mind", you can't know what you're incapable of hearing.

It's also a "Jewish State" that has lots of Non-Jews yet they are held to the same laws. Because a state based on a religion will never work and cannot in anyway be Democratic.

Another reason to learn the 24 hour clock. Also, this prank was in that Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie. Except it was a Saturday I believe.

I just played through the Deadlight demo, really impressive visuals. Also I found some behind-the-scenes videos on their website. posted here: http://videosift.com/video/Deadlight-Diaries-Part-1-Back-to-the-80s