Marcy's Musings

  My frustrations with gendered restrooms started long before my transition. To be more precise, they started with parenthood. As a male presenting parent, who was determined to be involved with my children, I quickly became aware of an of an odd form of sexism: changing tables. For some odd reason, most men’s rooms are not equipped with facilities for changing babies’ diapers.   Apparently, women are the only ones that need those. This left me as an engaged “father” with a few limited choices. Either make my wife change all the diapers when we were in public or kneel down on dirty bathroom floors and hope my child did not wiggle off the changing pad I had brought. This led to a parenting experience that me and wife laugh about …now in retrospect. My 10-month-old child had a massive blow out in a fast-food restaurant. We are talking kid goo everywhere all over my kid and all over the wooden high chair and down to the tile floors. So, we had to divide and concur. My wife cleane...

Queer is a funny word --- or should I say a “queer” word. The first time I made mention of “The Queer Community” in front of an intern I was supervising, her chin about hit the floor and she corrected me to LGBTQ as politely as she could. I got a very different reaction when I causally mentioned to a group of teenage patients that queer was a slur. I think I blew their young minds. They couldn’t imagine the word having any derogatory connotations. Language is fickle and fluid. “Queer” is my word and I love it and embrace it with joy. I am old enough to remember when the word was a filthy slur. It’s a slur that I have had hurled my way long before I came out. Next to the F- slur, queer is probably the one I’ve heard the most. I am also old enough to remember marches in the street where the then GLB chanted “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” I was told “those people” were dangerous deviants who violated God’s laws and threatened to destroy society by corroding its moral virtue. ...

 July is a wonderful month full of celebrations. It starts with a celebration of our national heritage and ends with a celebration of my (perhaps our) LDS heritage. The fourth of July is amazing for its inclusivity and broad reach. All people join in celebrations of our shared heritage as Americans. We all honor our brave founding fathers and the democratic ideals they fought for. Individual linage is not important we all celebrate OUR founding fathers and national principles whether we are newly naturalized immigrants or we can trace our lineage back to Plymouth Rock or Jamestown. For various reasons, Pioneer Day seems to have a different feel to it. I consider myself culturally Mormon.  I understand that the LDS church is doing its best to eliminate the usage of that word. My use of the word here is very intentional because I am not only referring to the Brighamite Salt Lake City church. I use that word to the place myself and my culture within a broad sociocultural contex...

I’m realizing it has been three months since I’ve written here. I try to make it monthly. If you’ve been following me on Facebook you hopefully know why I’ve been absentee – in brief my life was turned upside down and I unexpectedly bought a home and moved. I intend this post to be the exciting conclusion to my Science and Falsehood series. Allow me to recap briefly. In Part one, I discussed what is academically referred to as nomothetic structures, which is basically the idea that there are multiple different ways to know and that each way of knowing rests on a specific set of assumptions (the bottom most turtle). I also introduced the idea of “The Tabacco Strategy,” in which poor science conducted outside of the main stream community lends an air of legitimacy to ideas/agenda’s that developed from other ways of knowing – using science for support of a pre-existing ideology rather than illumination of the facts. In part two, I applied these ideas examining the standards of care for ...

 A s a child of the 80’s/90’s I have always loved long hair and aspired to the lushes locks of the grunge rock superstars I grew up watching on MTV. Yes, remember MTV used to actually play music videos? It was an MTV music video that first brought my awareness to hair. It must have been ‘92 or ‘93 which would have made me about eight years old. The video was the ubiquitous “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. If you are not familiar with the video or you are feeling nostalgic you can check it out here -   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwlogyj7nFE . I was enamored with the gorgeous Anthony Kiedis and his shiny waist length hair. I was eight so we are not really talking about sexual attraction – that wouldn’t come until high school. I was drawn to Kiedis’ nonchalant confidence as he walked through the streets of L.A. greeting people. This man was pretty in a feminine sort of way, yet he knew who he was and loved who he was. I wanted to be him and I wanted to be bea...