The Lair of the Lividly Lord of the House of Henry whose name is Alfred

Gay Rights in 2010 : Equal Opportunity and Diversity in the Echelons of Government via Census

Wed, 06 May 2009 00:57:41 GMT

My job has taught me much in terms of diversity in the workplace. Every 10 years, the U.S. takes a Census. I used to read these things dating back to the 1800s when it was organized by Soundex when my mom was doing geneology for the Mormon church. I like geneology as a past-time but now my interest in the Census is a bit different.

You see, in 2010, the government will be checking to see how many people live where, in what dwelling, (in the 1800s, and again during the Great Depression, it was not uncommon for hired hands on farms and students and other workers to be boarders and not actually part of the family, and as you may recall, many extended family members might have been invited as either hands or working other roles (mining for example)).

The private sector asks standard HR questions to all it's employees...for affirmative action practices but the government is *REQUIRED* to have that information. e.g.: Those categories we all balk about. a) Male, b) Female. a) White/Causasian, b) Hispanic/Latin American, c) Black/African American, c) Polynesian/Pacific Islander etc. and they recently added "Two or More" as a catch all and so on.

Here's the thing, there are in fact diversity requirements. Investigations and reports that analyze the civilian labor force and why a government agency does or does not have numbers that match the local population based on the Census. Yes, you heard that right, the Census. Ok, this is preschool for some of you so I'm going to make my point here. (see subject line again)

One part of LGBT rights might involve (beyond passing the Matthew Shepard Act or finding a gay gene), getting into the census. A gay couple will get more equal opportunity enforcement if the Census were to record this kind of information. The government would then be able to help us out more. Millions of dollars are being spent on everyone else really because of this...but why not us (LGBT)?

So what I would like to see, (in addition to the cure for AIDS, a gay gene (because this helps), is to be included here. There is a mountain of efforts made by agencies to meet quotas based on race, disabilities, and create job fairs, training seminars and a host of other activities based on race and gender and more recently disability but ominously missing is sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is also not a part of most discrimination clauses for equal opportunity in housing, work (and taxes...e.g.: marriage).

Please make this a point whenever the discussion of equal rights comes up. Please understand the system and how it systematically excludes us.

Gaydar

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:45:29 GMT

View Poll: Gaydar

We know about hair whorls and finger lengths but there's a LOT more to gaydar than that.

*** Click to Enlarge ***

Gay Men

Straight Men

1. Look at the eyebrow. Angular and pointed. Not flat. High above the eye, not low.

2. Look at the space between the outer brow and the outer corner of the eye. Larger space.

3. Look at the distance between pupils. (aka Hypertelorism*) Wider. If the pupils are not noticibly farther apart, the eyebrows will. Sometimes, this will help when a straight man has slightly pointy looking brows.

Some gaydar recent successes that can be attested to by my partner pangolin -

Fright Night - gaydar goes off on the Evil Ed character, sure enough, thanks to some perusing of imdb and wikipedia, after he did Fright Night, he went into porn.

Serpent and the Rainbow - gaydar goes off with some help of my partner. He asks me regarding Paul Winfield, and while I sometime inform him that there's not enough signal, sure enough, this one was correct.

Beetlejuice - the gaydar goes off twice. The first case is obvious (Otho) but the second character (the dad), less so (he seems to like them young from the news readings on him).

I've long known about B52's singer Fred Schneider before anyone told me based only on the album cover I had of him when I first got into them. I don't need the mannerisms or a scent or voice. (although all those things ring signals)

I've consistently been getting 75%, 80% on gaydar test at OkCupid. The photos however do not reveal enough "eye information" sometimes so it's only when there are no sunglasses, no shadows that I am able to attain perfect scores. I've really never missed (this past year) on actors.

These successes led me to study it more to see if I could increase it or if any of them mentioned the eye patterns I've found.

The Science of Gaydar
http://nymag.com/news/features/33520/index6.html

Wikipedia Article on Gaydar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaydar

Ok Cupid Gaydar Test
http://www.okcupid.com/gaydar

Gaydar secrets
http://hubpages.com/hub/Gaydar_Secrets

While looking for more pictures of Viggo, I instantly saw a gay man (turned out to be someone at the Advocate) and picked this one for a side by side.

It sucks to be hitting up the wrong tree or be cruising for punches. It's quite true that most gay men know gaydar best for perhaps our very survival. While many autistics have prosopagnosia (face-blindness), other studies show that gay men have a penchant for faces and facial recognition. I happen to have this. I don't know that anyone will want to study eyes like I do. It's a lot more reliable than hair whorl anyway. A lot of gay men are extremely subtle but don't think you can fool me too easily. I can usually spot the straight for porn actors a mile away. (yes, Sean Cody is a great resource for that http://www.seancody.com as he has a lot of them)

What keeps me up at night though is if someone will abuse this knowledge or find it out. I thought about a research grant proposal but I'm certain someone will just dismiss this so I just keep it to myself. I'm sure there are no firm and fast rules either. This is just a very common phenotypical expression. I'm not claiming universality or the lack of a spectrum of sexuality. Further, I strongly believe in several, not just this one, phenotypes being a cause which similarity is shares with autism being that there are many genetic conditions that can cause the class of behavioral profiles fitting within autism.

What I'm glad of though is the fact that I was given this birthright genetically. I don't care so much if this is a choice or not. I do feel however that if there is some Higher Power, said Higher Power made me this way, allowed me to be this way and so there's no way in Hell, literally, that I can be condemned based on how I was made. I simply don't believe in that. I am who I am. I'm happy to exist and be who I am....an autistic, gay, left-handed male of the 21st century.

* It's long known that those with genetic anomalies like autism, Cri du Chat Syndrome have a higher than usual percentage of alternative sexuality in their subpopulations. (for the autistic sample, see the rdos autistic quiz site: http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php)

Here are a few more markups. Keep in mind that some faces are more obvious than others but I can still tell even the random actor.

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I have aspergers

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:52:59 GMT

Here's just one of the many you can find in my tin, brass and oakwood collection:

Friendslist chopping

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:52:03 GMT

I've been chopping away at the friend list about a couple dozen or so and I think I chopped a few by accident. My friendlist is only chopped if most/all the following are true: a) I don't read/you don't post enough, but your latest post must have been interesting and b) I don't know you at all IRL. c) you didn't friend back or respond to me after a couple requests or some such. There are some who don't friend back of course that I enjoy reading so it's not just because of that. If you were chopped and you are reading this now, you were probably chopped by accident and I would ask you to leave me a message here so I can add you back. I did no chopping out of personal angst or ill-wish at this time except the one I talked to very recently and you know who you are and it will be our private concern.