Friday, May 17, 2013

The Slow Reveal: My fight against Homo and Trans* Phobia


To find linky-dinky goodness and the ease of having the whole hop at the tips of your fingers, take a trip (or a click) on over to the Hop's homepage... Right Here for the Hop  Go on. Click it. You know you wanna... 

Today is the first day of a ten day blog hop extravaganza dedicated to helping eradicate homophobia and transphobia. This is my little contribution...  So, there should be prizes in a hop, right? Okay. So in honor of the hop, my winner gets to pick which charity (and it has to be one serving the LGBT community) they want me to donate 10% of my earnings for the last three quarters of 2013 to. I'll send statements, receipts from the charity of their choice... and in addition, they get a book of their choice from my backlist. 
What about entering to win the prize? Um, easy peasy. Just leave a comment here on the blog.
Notification? Please check back on the blog. I'll announce the winner here on the 28th of this month. 

Also, while you are here, be sure to take a peek over here: International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (May 17th) You can find there link right here: http://dayagainsthomophobia.org



All right, then without further ado, here's my little offering. :) Enjoy.

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Prologue~ Tuesday


Jules came on Tuesdays without fail. At precisely four o’clock in the afternoon, he arrived to read to William from books they discussed with one another back when William could still talk. Though the last stroke changed William’s ability to converse coherently, they both still treasured their time together with one another and their favorite paper friends. So now, Jules read, and William listened with varying degrees of patience tempered only by his delight in watching Jules move lightly around his room like an energetic brown and gold wagtail bird. When leaning forward in his seat as though John Donne’s words held the elixir of life and he could breathe health back into William simply by shaping the words well enough, Jules was maddening. He made something sly and devious in William want to howl and yip at the indignity of his disobedient body.
Jules’s stylishly cut brown hair flopped over his forehead each time he tossed his head restively. The artfully placed streaks of light blond suited him very well. William exhaled as he wished, yet again, he could tell Jules how much the new splashes of color suited him. A mass of tangled feelings flooded up through William’s guts with the do or die insistence of earthworms pushing up through soil growing rapidly too wet for comfort only to lose their tiny lives to the puddles of a rainy day. As always, when he finally settled Jules sat parallel to the bed, in a battered old armchair whose color was so dimed with age and use it might well have been brown or green or lemon yellow—there was no telling now. He sat, relaxed as if in his own ruthlessly immaculate kitchen—and William knew full well how Jules kept his kitchen from stories told and years’ worth of pictures shared.


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Right now, you’re shaking your head and wondering what that snippet of a story has to do with hopping against homophobia or transphobia. It’s pretty a simple answer. Jules is trans*. William is gay.
Yeah, but those things aren’t in the snip I shared are they?
Nope. They aren’t. In fact the general reader, the one that didn’t travel around this hop checking out the posts isn’t going to be aware that Jules is trans* until after the second book in the series comes out. And in the first book, especially in the early section, they’ll be confronted with William’s struggles with life or death health issues—and no, he does not have HIV—long before any issues directly related to his sexuality play a major role in his story.

Why you ask?

Life happens that way. You meet people every day, and most of the time you don’t get a big slice of their life story right off the bat. Every now and again you might, especially if the stranger on the train you’re talking to is me, but most of the time you get tiny slivers of insight. Getting to know new people takes time, and by the time you find out they’re trans* or gay or into making really strange and somewhat disturbing clay art you’ve had time to know a lot about the person they are. You found out something about their sexuality, or an odd-ball hobby where they spend hours sculpting tiny peapods devouring a person at a vaguely Thanksgiving holiday style event… you didn’t however, just stumble over evidence that they systematically kidnap young children to torture and kill. You didn’t get socked with them actually having dozens of aliases they use to defraud vulnerable elderly people, leaving them destitute. You especially didn’t discover that they are the next infamous serial killer of people EXACTLY like you. So I’m still baffled about the fear. Any decision you make at that point about how you are going to view them is just that, a decision. There’s a lot of reliable information available these days, to anyone who cares to take the time to look for it, about what being homosexual or transgender really is or isn’t.
Fear?
Huh. I don’t think so. More like an asp you’re deliberately snuggling with. I’d rethink that if I were you, hon. Look what happened to Cleopatra. 

*********************************************************************8

Okie Dokie. Now I'm gonna try and get all fancy schmanzty and put in a link to all the other hoppers. *cross your crossables*


35 comments:

  1. Very intriguing prologue!

    vitajex(at)aol(dot)com

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  2. Fantastic prize! Thank you. xoxo madisonparklove@gmail.com

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  3. Now that is a prize I can totally get behind! Nicely done Cherie! And thanks for being one of the organizers of this year's hop. You already have my contact info, so I'm not worried about that. Hope all is good with you. :D

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  4. Fantastic! Great giveaway. *hugs*

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  5. LOL at disturbing clay art! Love the prize, thanks for the hop!


    emmasmom AT wi DOT rr DOT com

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  6. "baffled about the fear"

    There are so many other places to put that sort of energy. Great post. You made your point :)

    L

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  7. "Fear" is definitely a choice in this. Thanks for pointing that out and sharing that snippet. Even more, thanks for being a voice on the issue.

    ~Xakara

    My HAHAT Contribution Writing From the Middle: BiVisibility & BiErasure

    Xakara at Xakara dot com

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  8. What a great prize. Thanks. I'm so glad to be part of the Hop this year :)

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  9. Wonderful post and a wonderful prize! I am intrigued by Jules and William....with that small passage I am most intrigued by William...*sigh* Very captivating.

    Thank you for sharing and for participating in this great Hop!

    hugs from your fan,
    jo
    johannasnodgrass(at)yahoo(dot)com

    ReplyDelete
  10. I love the prize! It's rather an everybody wins situation. Thank,you!
    Urbanista
    brendurbanist @gmail .com

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  11. What an awesome prize! And I love the snippet you shared.

    Helen
    thylacine.yawn@gmail.com

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  12. So totally true! You get to know someone and like them, what do the little things matter?

    Amilyn
    lina7391(at)hotmail(dot)com

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  13. Fantastic prologue, Cherie! I'm intrigued. :) And a great post as well. :)

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  14. Loved the post; so very true :) While I love the prize don't include me in that please - I'm the wrong side of the Atlantic so I only really know about British charities :)

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  15. Thanks for the wonderful excerpt and for taking part in the hop.

    humhumbum AT yahoo DOT com


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  16. *squishes you tight* Love this post, Cherie! It's funny how Jules and William seem like normal people...because they are. Very poignant example that the way you think of people is always a choice. Fabulous post! And a fabulous prize as well. Thanks for sharing. :)

    bloodandfires (at)yahoo (dot) com

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  17. Thanks for a great post, Cherie. Very insightful!

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  18. Your excerpt made me think about my son who came out as transgender male last year. He's still technically a female although he now has a beard from his T shots. I wonder how, when he meets someone --male or female, how the issue of gender will come up. I know there's nothing I can do, but I do wonder how that will go. I hate the thought of him getting hurt.

    Thanks for participating.

    lena.grey.iam@gmail.com

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    Replies
    1. Lena, as a person who has dated trans* people, it will depend largely on his own attitude about being trans*. It's not something ever ever to be ashamed of. Unfortunately there will be people out there who will be unkind, and I'm sure at some point he will be hurt, but that is the risk everyone takes no matter orientation or gender identity when it comes to love. You are a wonderful mother! <3

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  19. Great post and prize!

    peggy1984 (at) live (dot) com

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  20. I feel I should examine the "disturbing" clay art before forming an opinion but would be happy to review it for you if you like. Enjoyed your post.

    ocanana@gmail.com

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  21. Terrific post but I was wanting to know if you could write
    a litte more on this subject? I'd be very thankful if you could elaborate a little bit further. Many thanks!

    My web blog :: http://Articles.okellysvarietyshoppe.ca/article.php?id=11977

    ReplyDelete
  22. Cherie, you amaze me with your beautiful generous heart.

    engineerqueen at rocketmail dot com

    ReplyDelete
  23. Thanks for sharing the great prologue.

    BeckeyWhiteATgmailDOTcom

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  24. Great prologue it really makes you think. Great prize too.

    ShirleyAnn@speakman40.freeserve.co.uk

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  25. I loved that snippet. ;)
    Also that's a very generous donation your going to make and Most likely very needed.

    Chris
    ceagles48218@yahoo.com

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  26. Thanks for the post and hop.
    cvsimpkins@msn.com

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  27. very generous donation from you Cherie

    littlesuze at hotmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  28. Thanks for the great post Cherie, and I love your prize, very generous and noble of you :)

    tiger-chick-1(at)hotmail(dot)com

    ReplyDelete
  29. Black fleshlight case included!
    Listen, if you look at things like, values, fulfillment, satisfaction and they relate to AOL
    may be found in the system tray!

    ReplyDelete
  30. Most people who "fear" homosexuality are either just ignorant, afraid of their own sexuality (if it becomes okay to be gay, then should they allow themselves to think about those unnatural "urges"?), or just plain stupid. I say stupid because people who follow teachings blindly without question aren't using their brains. They don't evaluate evidences, they just take things at face value because somebody says so. Of course, some people have been brought up in a way that makes it impossible for them to think for themselves and I truly do feel for them, but I will continue to try to help change their minds.

    Erica
    eripike at gmail dot com

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  31. Thoughtful giveaway :)

    penumbrareads(at)gmail(dot)com

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  32. Hi! Thanks for being apart of this fantastic hop! Wonderful post. I think its amazing what your doing! Thanks for sharing! Have a wonderful night!
    shadowluvs2read(at)gmail(dot)com

    ReplyDelete
  33. Great post! Thank you for taking part in the hop!
    sstrode at scrtc dot com

    ReplyDelete

What's your take?