"tell me your name and your address"

today,
i visited my parents. on my way back, i was sitting on the train reading a book on drag kings in berlin, when all of a sudden I heard a bang behind of me and saw green cullet next to me. then i smelled the beer. and i was afraid, cos what i saw next was a young teen boy entering the train. was he a drunken neo-nazi? i thought. a guy that i flirted with on entering the train, got up and asked the boy to stop. a woman on the bench next to me was touching her head and certainly had lost the good mood she was sporting earlier about the lovely day she and her friends had spent on their bicycles.
i got up to see if there was any first-aid stuff, but couldn't find anything. but she seemed to be halfway okay, just a little wound on her head.
the aforementioned flirted-with guy asked the teen boy for his name and his address, and then he called an ambulance for a few stops further and the police. the boy, saying he was aged 14, said his mother would kill him if he got an invitation by the police. the flirt-guy didn't care, he was totally into playing cop assistant. the boy insisted on that he didn't have anything to do with it, someone else pointed out it must have been one of his mates who threw the bottle. the boy told us the name of the culprit and insisted again that he wasn't responsible for the whole thing and so on. another person again said it were his mates, so he WAS indeed involved. i told the guy to shut up (well, i didn't use the words) cos he was sort of accusing the boy of something he didn't do.

and for the rest of the time, i said there feeling odd. i mean: i really didn't appreciate the calling-the-police-immediately-thing. wouldn't it have been right to talk to the victim first and ask her what SHE wants? instead some men dealt with the situation. but i couldn't really articulate this until i stepped out of the train.
i hate being mute and muted.

presets: so gay!

the presets are playing at berlin's christopher street day parade. which is a total gaystream parade, okay? for some reason i had thought they were sorts of "alternative".

but i should stay quiet i guess, cos wigstöckel is co-organising a contest for the christopher-street-day-highness. i haven't been to the mainstream csd in berlin for six years (we've got an alternative, more leftwing/radical political one) and i'm not planning to go there this year, but we need to embrace some of the mainstream transgender culture.

the other exciting thing in my life is that i've only two exams left till i'm finished with my studies. the next one is on this friday, and i'm really sick of it. so sick that i actually AM sick, but i definitely do not want to postpone this one, cos never ever again do i want to learn the stupid things that i have to learn for this exam. some isues are actually quite interesting, but the exam is basically about name- and concept-dropping, it's not about whether or not i've actually UNDERSTOOD what i'm talking about.

prosperous Friedrichshain

today, i went to a second-hand-market pretty similar to the one in Glebe in Sydney. the suburb of friedrichshain also reminds me of Glebe: it is an area where there were a lot of squats right after the fall of the wall being evicted (accompanied by a big street fight) and legalized in the following years. some alternative culture is left, but also there's a lot of gentrification with all the annoying yuppies that came along with it.
when my flatmate and me left the market today, we went to a cafe that offers yummy cakes. at our table, there were also two adults and a child. me and my flatmate had already been discussing the yuppie ("we're so alternative yet still we don't have to care about how much money we have to pay for a bloody coffee") customers of the store when the three left, chucking their half-eaten-cake into the rubbish bin. i said to the woman "hello? it would've been nice if you had asked us whether we want the food that you chuck away" (i didn't say exactly this sentence, but i can't translate the german words properly). she looked at me as if i had asked her whether she ever considered becoming a man. okay, maybe it just looked like i was really hungry and didn't have enough money to pay for my food (which would be just fair enough, i think!), but i was actually trying to criticise this careless buying-and-throwing-away-of-food. i guess this is a rather odd thought to most people, particularly not growing up in a working-class context, or having left such a context a long time ago

annoying marxists

aaaahhh, this is so annoying! if i didn't intend to wear it again, i'd puke into the whitest dress i own. today, i presented my thesis to some students in a seminar at my university. it's a seminar where many students present their thesises or their reflections on their internships. we discussed many things, amongst which was the issue of identity politics. someone said that of course feminism changed things such that some women can have a career now and get to upper positions. but for the mass of women, there was no progress. he seriously said this. someone else said it's strange that some gay men seem to seek a sort of ghetto with their gay bar and gay hairdresser and gay whatever. okay, i find this strange as well but certainly i'm coming from another perspective... aaaaahh this is so annoying so annoying. the most annoying this is that i wasn't able to explain my position such that these guys just shut up! a friend told me next time i should plan one day just for preparing arguments. i should write down the arguments i heard today and when i do it again, i should remember them and think carefully what i want to say. she's right but it's kind of annoying having to do all this work.
aaaahhh!

dove/how to produce beauty

here are some amazing videos. a debatable ad campaign by dove and a couple of parodies. i usually don't bother others with the youtube stuff i watch - but this stuff is amazing!

the original: dove's campaign for "self-esteem"


parody #1: real beauty


parody #2: trans version