April showers


will bring May flowers, but only if one is a bear...

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Advance-Decline line has just about reached it's limit. I'd give it another 2 weeks max and this thing's heading down and taking the stock market with it. Here's a 2 year 6 month daily cumulative chart:



Supportive data - the bond market. Yield curve steepening (i.e. long term yields higher than short term yields, usually expressed as the ten or 30 year yield divided by the 90 day, 1 year, or 2 year yield) is indicative of economic contraction. Here's a 3 year chart of the ten year government bond yield divided by the 2 year yield (I usually use 10 year divided by 90 day T bill yield, but this ratio has become almost meaningless with 90 day yield under 0.5%):



Bulls, protect or take profits. Bears, sharpen your claws and get ready. Gold bugs - continue to stand aside and hold your Gold.

Is changing the name of the state-sanctioned relationship for couples from "marriage" to "civil partnership" the same as abolishing marriage?

After many years of advocating that marriage should be abolished as a legal institution and left entirely to religion, I changed my mind at some point in the process of writing Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage. I heard so many gay men and lesbians talk about the importance of marriage to their personal happiness and sense of well-being that I decided (with uncharacteristic humility) that I was no longer willing to advocate denying so many people something that mattered so much to them.

I did –and do-- urge that the legal term for all state-sanctioned intimate partnerships be changed from “marriage” to “civil partnership.” I've blogged about it here. While the official term on all the state forms would be “civil partnership,” I fully expect most people to refer to themselves as married, and that doesn’t trouble me.

Well, earlier this week I delivered the Roger S. Aaron Lecture at Dartmouth College. In the audience was Beth Robinson, the attorney most responsible more than a decade of judicial and legislative efforts that brought us civil unions and now marriage for same-sex couples in Vermont. Beth considered my call to rename the legal status of couples no different from a position abolishing marriage.

I have assumed that what couples want is the blessing of the state, the ceremony that goes with that, and a stature equal to that afforded different-sex couples. As long as the name for that is "marriage," then same-sex couples should have that name also. But it never occurred to me that keeping a distinct legal status for couples, but renaming that status for all couples to reflect the modern values of partnership, would appear to anyone as indistinguishable from the abolition of marriage.

I'm curious what others think.

Explore Batu Malang

Agro tourism at Batu-Malang provide many fresh fruit`s for market and tourist. You can take a rest at the resort and do many activity like harvest the fruit at the natural garden.

Real estate - the broken link


that ensures the economy continues to contract and the bear market goes on. The real estate bubble bursting is the cornerstone of the entire economic mess we are in and it ain't even close to over yet. California is one of the "ground zero" states for the mortgage mess and below is a chart copied from MyBudget360, which was taken from Field Check Group according to their site (typical lazy internet reporting on my part, but what do you expect for free?). This chart shows the "Notices of Default," which start the foreclosure process in earnest in California once someone has missed several payments (each states handles such matters differently but a foreclosure is generally 4-6 months away once this formal notice is filed with the courts when the governments aren't running around constantly changing the rules and the banks aren't hopelessly behind due to the current avalanche):



The dip at the end of 2008 was related to a temporary government-imposed moratorium on foreclosures that has now been rescinded (for the time being). March of 2009 was of course a record month for the current real estate crisis in California. Now, couple that with this chart of mortgage reset dates from Credit Suisse, which has been posted so many different places that I don't remember where in cyberspace I copied it from:



Subprime is obviously so yesterday's news but we are in the eye of the hurricane for Option ARMs and Alt-A loans. These loans are heavily concentrated in real estate bubble states like California, Florida and Nevada. These loans were for higher priced homes, generally required little or no money down and many of these products used stated income (i.e."liars loans") instead of requiring formal documentation.

Add to this the stress on the commercial real estate market, which is absolutely imploding right now, and for mainstream economists to say that an economic recovery will begin in the next year isn't just dishonest, it's insulting to my intelligence.

We are talking about trillions of dollars of loans defaulting and dragging down hundreds of banks. We are talking about all of the big Wall Street firms and the largest banks in this country being completely bankrupt right now, not at some magical time in the future. Yes, the government is suspending the laws of accounting and dousing these corporations with taxpayer money in the classic fascist theft model we used to condemn in this country, but the real economy is withering on the vine as we speak.

Why? Because the money spigots have been turned off for those not in the "inner circle" and most businesses cannot function without adequate access to credit. While these gargantuan firms heal their balance sheets and fight to survive, they won't be lending to people and businesses who need the money and those who don't need the money (the only ones the banks would consider lending to) aren't interested in taking on loans because they are largely risk averse (appropriately so). Are there exceptions? Of course. But we are talking mega trends here, not swing trades (though I like trying to gamble in the casino as much as the next guy).

Deflation is king and the bear market is in full force until the real estate tsunami calms and we ain't seen nothing yet.

Don't forget the Japanese experience - it isn't an exact replica, but the 1990 top in their stock market coincided fairly similarly with a top in their real estate market. In case you forgot what happened next, here it is (monthly chart of the Nikkei stock index followed by a Japanese real estate price chart from The Market Oracle):






By the way, don't forget the demographic trends that we keep ignoring that are another 800 pound gorilla in the room weighing on the bullish case. The baby boomers want their entitlements (Medicare and Social Security) even though the kitty has already been emptied and is filled with IOUs and unrealistic predictions of growing our way out of this mess.

Gold and Gold mining companies will fulfill their historic role and will help to re-liquefy the banking system. Short-term movements aside, holders of Gold and Gold mining companies will have a net increase in wealth while those invested in stocks, corporate bonds and real estate will have a net decrease in wealth. Trading the swings is an interest of mine for now and fraught with speculative hazard, but the longer-term trends and fundamentals are unambiguous to me.

Lysistrata in Kenya

According to the BBC,
Women's activist groups in Kenya have slapped their partners with a week-long sex ban in protest over the infighting plaguing the national unity government.

The Women's Development Organisation coalition said they would also pay prostitutes to join their strike.

The campaigners are asking the wives of the Kenyan president and the prime minister to join in the embargo.

They say they want to avoid a repeat of the violence which convulsed the country after the late-2007 elections.

I bet you know what comes next:

But the BBC's Anne Waithera in Nairobi says the campaign is likely to meet stiff resistance from some men.

It did in Athens, too!

(image credit)

Lysistrata in Kenya

According to the BBC,
Women's activist groups in Kenya have slapped their partners with a week-long sex ban in protest over the infighting plaguing the national unity government.

The Women's Development Organisation coalition said they would also pay prostitutes to join their strike.

The campaigners are asking the wives of the Kenyan president and the prime minister to join in the embargo.

They say they want to avoid a repeat of the violence which convulsed the country after the late-2007 elections.

I bet you know what comes next:

But the BBC's Anne Waithera in Nairobi says the campaign is likely to meet stiff resistance from some men.

It did in Athens, too!

(image credit)

BURNING INCANDESCENTLY.

Leaving the technicolor dancefloors of "Sleepyhead" and "The Reeling" behind, "Moth's Wings" ebbs and flows as one of Passion Pit's most impressive works to date. A step in a more mature direction for the band, "Moth's Wings" displays a more restrained vocal from Michael Angelakos in place of the off-the-wall shrieks and wails found on Chunk of Change (not that we didn't love those, mind you). Leading in with ephemeral dulcimer loops and pristine keys, oceansized synths rise up and wash across the mix as the song shimmers and flutters like the diamond rings and moths wings referenced within. It's perhaps the group's most timeless pop offering to date and a resounding wake up call for anyone hastily rushing to cast aside Passion Pit as nothing more than another indie dance act. Haters beware, Manners is the real deal.

MP3: "Moth's Wings" - Passion Pit

New article of mine on goldseek.com and gold-eagle.com


Here's the links for those interested (both links are to the exact same article):

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1240988400.php

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/brochert042809.html

Hope-alicious

Naomi Klein's column in the latest Nation, "A Lexicon of Disappointment," indicates that satire isn't one of her strengths. As the title suggests, it's basically a list of terms based on the root of "hope": hopeover, hopesick, etc. Not one of her better efforts.

To add to the fun, Klein's piece gave Katha Pollitt an opening for a blog post in defense / support of her guy. "All is not well in Obamafanland," Klein wrote. A "growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard." I think Pollitt strategically misread Klein:

I have a lot of respect for Naomi Klein, but I think her own hopes for a mass radical movement are getting in the way here. According to polls, after all, Obama is wildly popular. A Harris Interactive poll released on April 7 found that 68% of Americans have a good opinion of him. That doesn't necessarily mean they approve of everything he's doing, but it means that a heck of a lot of people who didn't vote for him like him now. Is there any evidence that "a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard"? And by the way, did anyone over the age of 21 ever really believe this? That hope, an emotion, was going to "save the world," the way children clapping their hands saves Tinkerbell? Are Americans really such idiots? Hmmm, better not answer that.

It seems Pollitt realizes she wrote herself into a corner here. Did anyone over the age of 21 believe that faith in Obama would save the world? Well, yeah, though I'll concede that that belief seems to have been concentrated among the younger voters, the ones who got their first taste of electoral politics working for Barack. Like the student I quoted here, who said "For me, I think it's the idea of change ...", though maybe she doesn't actually expect real change to happen. Or the people in this video with their wishlists that Santa Obama was supposed to consult when he filled their stockings. Or the student who, confronted with Obama's actual positions during the campaign, told me that that he needed to have hope, and if he couldn’t have faith in Obama he might as well not vote at all.

Naomi and I must talk to different people. For example, I don't know anyone as stupid as the hopefiendish "Joe" who "actually believes Obama deliberately brought in Summers so that he would blow the bailout, and then Obama would have the excuse he needs to do what he really wants: nationalize the banks and turn them into credit unions." Think what you're saying, Joe! Had Obama intentionally put in someone he knew would fail, he would not only be a clairvoyant and a psychopath-- callously indifferent to the ruin of possibly millions of people-- he'd also be risking political suicide. Because had he first chosen a course he knew would fail he would not have the political capital to "what he really wants."
One commenter, beingalam at 04/20/2009 @ 8:18pm, responded neatly:

Note that hypothetical "Joe"'s reasoning is really not all that different from the "Obama is appointing establishment moderates to cabinet positions so that he can, under cover of establishment authority, really pursue an aggressively progressive agenda" line that was pushed by many liberal commentators when Obama was announcing his cabinet nominees. So I'm not sure that Klein is really all that off in terms of the characterization of Joe.

I agree, although "moderates" doesn't really describe Geithner, Summers, Gates, or Clinton. Maybe Klein's rather hamhanded attempt at satire failed to register on Pollitt's irony meter, or maybe being an Obama supporter has turned her irony meter off. She went on to finger the real culprits:
The only people I've found who've given up on him, who feel betrayed, misled, and foolish, are those leftists who didn't like him in the first place and voted for him in a weak moment as the lesser evil. They, predictably, went back to their cabins on Mt. Disdain before Obama had even been inaugurated.
This may be true among the people Pollitt knows, but it isn't always true. I voted for Obama as the lesser evil, but I don't feel betrayed, misled, or foolish; I knew exactly what I was voting for, but did so anyway so that Obama fans couldn't attack me as a Republican or a vote-waster when I criticized him. (And maybe we were right about Obama to begin with, unlike so many Obama fans?) Perhaps Pollitt is thinking of someone like Glenn Greenwald, who's become increasingly critical of Obama's embrace of Bush administration rationales for executive secrecy and arrogation of powers:
It is becoming increasingly difficult for honest Obama supporters to dismiss away or even minimize these criticisms and, especially, to malign the motives of critics. After all, the Obama DOJ's embrace of many (though by no means all) of the most radical and extremist Bush/Cheney positions -- and the contradictions between Obama's campaign claims and his actions as President -- are now so glaring and severe that the harshest denunciations of Obama's actions are coming from those who, during the Bush years, were held up by liberals and by Obama supporters as the most trustworthy and praiseworthy authorities on these matters.
As examples, Greenwald goes on to list the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Keith Olbermann, Senator Russ Feingold, Nancy Pelosi, and libblogger Digby, among others. No doubt Pollitt will manage to malign their motives; but maybe she just needs to get out more.
Pollitt protests:
Like everyone, I'm worried about the bailout, Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm appalled that he envisions no prosecution of those who set up the legal framework of torture and those who carried it out. And what about Bagram? On the plus side: he's been terrific on women's rights and reproductive rights here and abroad, made some excellent appointments (Hilda Solis at Labor), reached out to the Muslim world, opened communications with Cuba and Iran, said he'll close Guantanamo, declared an end to torture, and, with the stimulus, successfully challenged the notion that government spending (except on the military) is bad. He's made it less embarrassing to be an American. I think he'll make good judicial appointments. If another Katrina happened tomorrow, I think he'd handle it well.
I couldn't help noticing that the only "excellent appointment" Pollitt could name was Hilda Solis, who was indeed an excellent choice, but who stands out like a sore thumb in his Cabinet among the Bush holdovers and Democratic Leadership Council hacks. And it appears that Obama's support for labor ends with having appointed Solis; he seems to have lost interest in the Employee Free Choice Act, for example. Yes, Obama has done well on women's rights and reproductive rights here and abroad, though I think "terrific" is a slight overstatement. But Pollitt's other points aren't terribly convincing: they are mostly symbolic gestures ("said he'll close Guantanamo"and "declared an end to torture" while leaving other torture sites intact; "reached out to the Muslim world" while continuing to kill Muslim civilians; his openings to Cuba and Iran have been half-hearted at best, still laden with his predecessors' propaganda. As Mike Whitney wrote at Counterpunch yesterday:
Foreign leaders are clearly relieved to see the last of George W. Bush, and they appear to be willing to give Obama every opportunity to mend fences and break with the past. But Obama has made little effort to reciprocate or show that he's serious about real change. The emphasis seems to be more on public relations than policy; more on glitzy photo ops, grandiose speeches and gadding about from one capital to another, than ending the chronic US meddling and militarism. Where's the beef or is it all just empty posturing?
Dude! Barack totally shook hands with Hugo Chávez! Is that change, or what? ... "Less embarrassing to be an American" is still embarrassing. I remember the early 90s, when Pollitt lay into liberals who were excited by Bill Clinton's every burp; but if she was a Clinton partisan, she managed to hide it better then. Pointing to Obama's great poll numbers, fixating on the single token liberal in his cabinet, celebrating his symbolic send-a-message reach-out-and-touch-someone gestures -- these are not strong responses to Klein, especially granting how easy Klein made it for her.

Last summer Pollitt wrote hopefully, "An Obama victory could have big positive repercussions for progressive politics." Now she's reduced to insisting that he was the lesser evil, and scolding those on the left who aren't satisfied by him: "FDR didn't satisfy the left either," she sniffs. Be glad for what you have, Glenn and Digby and Russ and Noam! Surely, comrades, you do not want Bush back?

Hope-alicious

Naomi Klein's column in the latest Nation, "A Lexicon of Disappointment," indicates that satire isn't one of her strengths. As the title suggests, it's basically a list of terms based on the root of "hope": hopeover, hopesick, etc. Not one of her better efforts.

To add to the fun, Klein's piece gave Katha Pollitt an opening for a blog post in defense / support of her guy. "All is not well in Obamafanland," Klein wrote. A "growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard." I think Pollitt strategically misread Klein:

I have a lot of respect for Naomi Klein, but I think her own hopes for a mass radical movement are getting in the way here. According to polls, after all, Obama is wildly popular. A Harris Interactive poll released on April 7 found that 68% of Americans have a good opinion of him. That doesn't necessarily mean they approve of everything he's doing, but it means that a heck of a lot of people who didn't vote for him like him now. Is there any evidence that "a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard"? And by the way, did anyone over the age of 21 ever really believe this? That hope, an emotion, was going to "save the world," the way children clapping their hands saves Tinkerbell? Are Americans really such idiots? Hmmm, better not answer that.

It seems Pollitt realizes she wrote herself into a corner here. Did anyone over the age of 21 believe that faith in Obama would save the world? Well, yeah, though I'll concede that that belief seems to have been concentrated among the younger voters, the ones who got their first taste of electoral politics working for Barack. Like the student I quoted here, who said "For me, I think it's the idea of change ...", though maybe she doesn't actually expect real change to happen. Or the people in this video with their wishlists that Santa Obama was supposed to consult when he filled their stockings. Or the student who, confronted with Obama's actual positions during the campaign, told me that that he needed to have hope, and if he couldn’t have faith in Obama he might as well not vote at all.

Naomi and I must talk to different people. For example, I don't know anyone as stupid as the hopefiendish "Joe" who "actually believes Obama deliberately brought in Summers so that he would blow the bailout, and then Obama would have the excuse he needs to do what he really wants: nationalize the banks and turn them into credit unions." Think what you're saying, Joe! Had Obama intentionally put in someone he knew would fail, he would not only be a clairvoyant and a psychopath-- callously indifferent to the ruin of possibly millions of people-- he'd also be risking political suicide. Because had he first chosen a course he knew would fail he would not have the political capital to "what he really wants."
One commenter, beingalam at 04/20/2009 @ 8:18pm, responded neatly:

Note that hypothetical "Joe"'s reasoning is really not all that different from the "Obama is appointing establishment moderates to cabinet positions so that he can, under cover of establishment authority, really pursue an aggressively progressive agenda" line that was pushed by many liberal commentators when Obama was announcing his cabinet nominees. So I'm not sure that Klein is really all that off in terms of the characterization of Joe.

I agree, although "moderates" doesn't really describe Geithner, Summers, Gates, or Clinton. Maybe Klein's rather hamhanded attempt at satire failed to register on Pollitt's irony meter, or maybe being an Obama supporter has turned her irony meter off. She went on to finger the real culprits:
The only people I've found who've given up on him, who feel betrayed, misled, and foolish, are those leftists who didn't like him in the first place and voted for him in a weak moment as the lesser evil. They, predictably, went back to their cabins on Mt. Disdain before Obama had even been inaugurated.
This may be true among the people Pollitt knows, but it isn't always true. I voted for Obama as the lesser evil, but I don't feel betrayed, misled, or foolish; I knew exactly what I was voting for, but did so anyway so that Obama fans couldn't attack me as a Republican or a vote-waster when I criticized him. (And maybe we were right about Obama to begin with, unlike so many Obama fans?) Perhaps Pollitt is thinking of someone like Glenn Greenwald, who's become increasingly critical of Obama's embrace of Bush administration rationales for executive secrecy and arrogation of powers:
It is becoming increasingly difficult for honest Obama supporters to dismiss away or even minimize these criticisms and, especially, to malign the motives of critics. After all, the Obama DOJ's embrace of many (though by no means all) of the most radical and extremist Bush/Cheney positions -- and the contradictions between Obama's campaign claims and his actions as President -- are now so glaring and severe that the harshest denunciations of Obama's actions are coming from those who, during the Bush years, were held up by liberals and by Obama supporters as the most trustworthy and praiseworthy authorities on these matters.
As examples, Greenwald goes on to list the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Keith Olbermann, Senator Russ Feingold, Nancy Pelosi, and libblogger Digby, among others. No doubt Pollitt will manage to malign their motives; but maybe she just needs to get out more.
Pollitt protests:
Like everyone, I'm worried about the bailout, Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm appalled that he envisions no prosecution of those who set up the legal framework of torture and those who carried it out. And what about Bagram? On the plus side: he's been terrific on women's rights and reproductive rights here and abroad, made some excellent appointments (Hilda Solis at Labor), reached out to the Muslim world, opened communications with Cuba and Iran, said he'll close Guantanamo, declared an end to torture, and, with the stimulus, successfully challenged the notion that government spending (except on the military) is bad. He's made it less embarrassing to be an American. I think he'll make good judicial appointments. If another Katrina happened tomorrow, I think he'd handle it well.
I couldn't help noticing that the only "excellent appointment" Pollitt could name was Hilda Solis, who was indeed an excellent choice, but who stands out like a sore thumb in his Cabinet among the Bush holdovers and Democratic Leadership Council hacks. And it appears that Obama's support for labor ends with having appointed Solis; he seems to have lost interest in the Employee Free Choice Act, for example. Yes, Obama has done well on women's rights and reproductive rights here and abroad, though I think "terrific" is a slight overstatement. But Pollitt's other points aren't terribly convincing: they are mostly symbolic gestures ("said he'll close Guantanamo"and "declared an end to torture" while leaving other torture sites intact; "reached out to the Muslim world" while continuing to kill Muslim civilians; his openings to Cuba and Iran have been half-hearted at best, still laden with his predecessors' propaganda. As Mike Whitney wrote at Counterpunch yesterday:
Foreign leaders are clearly relieved to see the last of George W. Bush, and they appear to be willing to give Obama every opportunity to mend fences and break with the past. But Obama has made little effort to reciprocate or show that he's serious about real change. The emphasis seems to be more on public relations than policy; more on glitzy photo ops, grandiose speeches and gadding about from one capital to another, than ending the chronic US meddling and militarism. Where's the beef or is it all just empty posturing?
Dude! Barack totally shook hands with Hugo Chávez! Is that change, or what? ... "Less embarrassing to be an American" is still embarrassing. I remember the early 90s, when Pollitt lay into liberals who were excited by Bill Clinton's every burp; but if she was a Clinton partisan, she managed to hide it better then. Pointing to Obama's great poll numbers, fixating on the single token liberal in his cabinet, celebrating his symbolic send-a-message reach-out-and-touch-someone gestures -- these are not strong responses to Klein, especially granting how easy Klein made it for her.

Last summer Pollitt wrote hopefully, "An Obama victory could have big positive repercussions for progressive politics." Now she's reduced to insisting that he was the lesser evil, and scolding those on the left who aren't satisfied by him: "FDR didn't satisfy the left either," she sniffs. Be glad for what you have, Glenn and Digby and Russ and Noam! Surely, comrades, you do not want Bush back?

Joe Phillips is the Bomb!

Joe Phillips is the Bomb!

Closed Southern Copper


(ticker: PCU) puts for a nice, quick profit (may re-enter later after a good bounce). Still holding FCX puts, RGLD LEAP calls, physical Gold and a little fiat U.S. Dollar cash.

Fly into Phuket Stars


Travel Bloggers' Contest of Dreams


Once upon a time in ‘The Bloggers’ Land of Dream’, The Queen of Bloggers invites hundreds travel Bloggers throughout the world to get on together in a very representative hall at a New Orleans hotel. Why New Orleans? The reason is that, although they are homogenous travel Bloggers, but in fact, they are multicultural and multilingual. And, New Orleans is a city reflecting on the same thing, as well as the most unique city in America. The other reason is that we can suit our budget, since there are many cheap New Orleans Hotels here. The Ambarawa Railway Museum.
“You are not a Blogger, if you have no dream!” The queen said. “I invite you here to join in this contest, The Contest of Travel Bloggers’ Dream. Here’s the rule of the game!” She added.
“Every Blogger should make a dream, the crazier the better. And, the prize for the winner who can realize the selected craziest dream is: He or she will be released from this craziness world to be sent to the real world. Now, it’s time for you to write down your dream then give it to me as soon as possible, since I have to choose the craziest one.” She gives a command. The Ambarawa Railway Museum.
We wrote down our own dreams then submitted it. Several times later she announced: “This is the craziest dream you must follow, that is “Free Fall”, free fall from the top of The Niagara Falls. Are you ready, Bloggers?”
“Yes!” I said loudly, since it’s my dream.
“Well. Prepare your self. We’re going to the Niagara Falls, soon. I will provide all accommodation in Niagara Falls we need. Don’t worry!” The Queen explains.
Coming to The Niagara Falls, as it’s promised before, all accommodation in Niagara Falls are already prepared, such as Falls-view hotels, Bed and Breakfast, etc. I really enjoy the milieu, ambience, as well as atmosphere here. And, the time is finally come. We must perform a free fall from the top of the Niagara Falls.
We all marched at the top of the bank of the Niagara Falls
“Are you ready for free fall, Bloggers?” The Queen shouts loudly.
“Yesss….!!!” Bloggers replies.
“Well. 3… 2… 1…. Go….!!!!” The Queen gives a command.
“Zzeee..hhewww…!!!!!” We then jump to the river for a free fall. I really enjoy this craziness. But, unfortunately….. Bang…..!!!! My head hits a big stone under the river. When, suddenly I wake up from my sleep. Oh my God. It’s just a bad dream. Nonetheless, Thanks God for sending me to the Real World back, though my head still dizzy. The Ambarawa Railway Museum.

New article of mine published on goldseek.com and gold-eagle.com


Below are the links for those interested (both links lead to the exact same article):

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1240768127.php

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/brochert042609.html



Four more bank failures this weekend plus a credit union. The 1930s continue to play out according to script and trust me, it ain't any different this time. As commercial real estate continues to implode, regional banks will be under even greater stress than they are now as more of these loans were held on the local books rather than sold to Wall Street (like home mortgages were).

Love and Haiti

John Caruso had a good post last Sunday on US policy toward the elections in Haiti, which I didn't look at closely until today. But then I noticed his quotation from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's remarks at the Haiti Donors Conference on April 14:
CLINTON: The U.S. removed a military dictatorship in 1995, clearing the way for democracy. And after several years of political disputes, common in any country making a transition, Haiti began to see progress. And the national and presidential elections in 2006 really moved Haiti’s democracy forward. What the president and the prime minister are seeking is to maintain a strong commitment to democratic governance which will take another step forward with elections for the senate on Sunday.
These remarks were so blatantly ahistorical that I decided to look at the full text, to see if Clinton might have filled in the gaps in her history.

First of all, I'm sure you'll be pleased to learn that Secretary of State Clinton didn't limit herself to dry recitation of impersonal facts.
On a personal note, my husband and I went to Haiti for the first time shortly after we were married, so we have a deep commitment to Haiti and the people of Haiti. Our homes are filled with art from Haiti. We have friends who hail from Haiti. But it is not only my personal concern that brings me here today.
Some of her best friends are Haitians! Would you believe it? And she hailed the good example of "the defeat of slavery in Haiti which inspired slaves and abolitionists in my country, to the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who have emigrated to the United States and have strengthened us through their contributions in politics and business and health and education, in science, sports, and culture – the benefits of which I experienced firsthand as a senator representing New York, which has a vibrant Haitian American community." She didn't mention, of course, that Haiti was the original case of the threat of a bad example in the Western hemisphere, that the United States (which was still a slave nation when Haiti achieved its independence in 1804, and didn't want its own property to get any funny ideas) collaborated with Europe in crushing the Haitian economy. Or that the US invaded Haiti and occupied it from 1915 to 1934. Clinton did mention that
Not long ago, from the 1950s until the 1980s, Haiti endured a brutal military dictatorship. The U.S. removed a military dictatorship in 1995, clearing the way for democracy. And after several years of political disputes, common in any country making a transition, Haiti began to see progress --
It's a shame that Caruso didn't quote the first sentence in that paragraph along with the succeeding ones; it shows just how carefully, knowingly dishonest Clinton was. You don't have to read very closely to wonder what happened between the 1980s, when "Haiti endured a brutal military dictatorship", and 1995, when "The U.S. removed a military dictatorship ..., clearing the way for democracy." Aren't we wonderful? How would the poor benighted people of Haiti have been able to strive for democracy if the U.S. hadn't cleared the way?

Well, they might have done quite well on their own. Clinton did not mention the 1990 elections, in which the former priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected President, a development which shocked not only Haitian elites, but the U.S. government, which had backed another candidate and naturally expected him to win. Aristide was deposed in September 1991 by a military coup and went into exile. After the coup,
the Organization of American States declared an embargo. Bush I announced that the US would violate it by exempting US firms. He was thus "fine tuning" the embargo for the benefit of the suffering population, the New York Times reported. [President Bill] Clinton authorized even more extreme violations of the embargo: US trade with the junta and its wealthy supporters sharply increased. The crucial element of the embargo was, of course, oil. While the CIA solemnly testified to Congress that the junta "probably will be out of fuel and power very shortly" and "Our intelligence efforts are focused on detecting attempts to circumvent the embargo and monitoring its impact," Clinton secretly authorized the Texaco Oil Company to ship oil to the junta illegally, in violation of presidential directives. This remarkable revelation was the lead story on the AP wires the day before Clinton sent the Marines to "restore democracy," impossible to miss - I happened to be monitoring AP wires that day and saw it repeated prominently over and over -- and obviously of enormous significance for anyone who wanted to understand what was happening. It was suppressed with truly impressive discipline, though reported in industry journals along with scant mention buried in the business press.

Also efficiently suppressed were the crucial conditions that Clinton imposed for Aristide's return: that he adopt the program of the defeated US candidate in the 1990 elections, a former World Bank official who had received 14% of the vote. We call this "restoring democracy," a prime illustration of how US foreign policy has entered a "noble phase" with a "saintly glow," the national press explained. The harsh neoliberal program that Aristide was compelled to adopt was virtually guaranteed to demolish the remaining shreds of economic sovereignty, extending Wilson 's progressive legislation and similar US-imposed measures since.

So, to claim, as Secretary of State Clinton did, that "the U.S. removed a military dictatorship in 1995," is fudging the truth just a tad. 1995 was the year that Aristide left office, having been restored to the presidency in 1994; could that have been what she meant by removing a military dictatorship? No doubt she knew her audience would know enough to fill in the gaps without making a fuss about them. It wouldn't do to acknowledge the U.S. role in keeping those dictatorships in place, and in suppressing Haitian democracy until it could be brought under the proper control, which meant supporting the 2004 coup which sent Aristide into exile again. Oh, and by the way:
Refugees fleeing to the US from the terror of the US-backed dictatorships were forcefully returned, in gross violation of international humanitarian law. The policy was reversed when a democratically elected government took office. Though the flow of refugees reduced to a trickle, they were mostly granted political asylum. Policy returned to normal when a military junta overthrew the Aristide government after seven months, and state terrorist atrocities rose to new heights. The perpetrators were the army - the inheritors of the National Guard left by Wilson 's invaders to control the population - and its paramilitary forces. The most important of these, FRAPH, was founded by CIA asset Emmanuel Constant, who now lives happily in Queens, Clinton and Bush II having dismissed extradition requests -- because he would reveal US ties to the murderous junta, it is widely assumed. Constant's contributions to state terror were, after all, meager; merely prime responsibility for the murder of 4-5000 poor blacks.
Does Secretary of State Clinton know these things? She surely knows about Emmanuel Constant, one of her constituents from her tenure as Senator from New York, whom she doubtless regards as one of those "hundreds of thousands of Haitians who have emigrated to the United States and have strengthened us through their contributions in politics and business and health and education, in science, sports, and culture."

And Clinton is, after all, one of President Obama's appointees, one of the team of rivals who might have their own views but nevertheless do his bidding and serve at his pleasure. Obama didn't have much to say about Haiti during his presidential campaign, as far as I can find. He knows these things, I'm sure; but I suspect his view of Haitian history is now as twisted as his Secretary of State's.

Love and Haiti

John Caruso had a good post last Sunday on US policy toward the elections in Haiti, which I didn't look at closely until today. But then I noticed his quotation from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's remarks at the Haiti Donors Conference on April 14:
CLINTON: The U.S. removed a military dictatorship in 1995, clearing the way for democracy. And after several years of political disputes, common in any country making a transition, Haiti began to see progress. And the national and presidential elections in 2006 really moved Haiti’s democracy forward. What the president and the prime minister are seeking is to maintain a strong commitment to democratic governance which will take another step forward with elections for the senate on Sunday.
These remarks were so blatantly ahistorical that I decided to look at the full text, to see if Clinton might have filled in the gaps in her history.

First of all, I'm sure you'll be pleased to learn that Secretary of State Clinton didn't limit herself to dry recitation of impersonal facts.
On a personal note, my husband and I went to Haiti for the first time shortly after we were married, so we have a deep commitment to Haiti and the people of Haiti. Our homes are filled with art from Haiti. We have friends who hail from Haiti. But it is not only my personal concern that brings me here today.
Some of her best friends are Haitians! Would you believe it? And she hailed the good example of "the defeat of slavery in Haiti which inspired slaves and abolitionists in my country, to the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who have emigrated to the United States and have strengthened us through their contributions in politics and business and health and education, in science, sports, and culture – the benefits of which I experienced firsthand as a senator representing New York, which has a vibrant Haitian American community." She didn't mention, of course, that Haiti was the original case of the threat of a bad example in the Western hemisphere, that the United States (which was still a slave nation when Haiti achieved its independence in 1804, and didn't want its own property to get any funny ideas) collaborated with Europe in crushing the Haitian economy. Or that the US invaded Haiti and occupied it from 1915 to 1934. Clinton did mention that
Not long ago, from the 1950s until the 1980s, Haiti endured a brutal military dictatorship. The U.S. removed a military dictatorship in 1995, clearing the way for democracy. And after several years of political disputes, common in any country making a transition, Haiti began to see progress --
It's a shame that Caruso didn't quote the first sentence in that paragraph along with the succeeding ones; it shows just how carefully, knowingly dishonest Clinton was. You don't have to read very closely to wonder what happened between the 1980s, when "Haiti endured a brutal military dictatorship", and 1995, when "The U.S. removed a military dictatorship ..., clearing the way for democracy." Aren't we wonderful? How would the poor benighted people of Haiti have been able to strive for democracy if the U.S. hadn't cleared the way?

Well, they might have done quite well on their own. Clinton did not mention the 1990 elections, in which the former priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected President, a development which shocked not only Haitian elites, but the U.S. government, which had backed another candidate and naturally expected him to win. Aristide was deposed in September 1991 by a military coup and went into exile. After the coup,
the Organization of American States declared an embargo. Bush I announced that the US would violate it by exempting US firms. He was thus "fine tuning" the embargo for the benefit of the suffering population, the New York Times reported. [President Bill] Clinton authorized even more extreme violations of the embargo: US trade with the junta and its wealthy supporters sharply increased. The crucial element of the embargo was, of course, oil. While the CIA solemnly testified to Congress that the junta "probably will be out of fuel and power very shortly" and "Our intelligence efforts are focused on detecting attempts to circumvent the embargo and monitoring its impact," Clinton secretly authorized the Texaco Oil Company to ship oil to the junta illegally, in violation of presidential directives. This remarkable revelation was the lead story on the AP wires the day before Clinton sent the Marines to "restore democracy," impossible to miss - I happened to be monitoring AP wires that day and saw it repeated prominently over and over -- and obviously of enormous significance for anyone who wanted to understand what was happening. It was suppressed with truly impressive discipline, though reported in industry journals along with scant mention buried in the business press.

Also efficiently suppressed were the crucial conditions that Clinton imposed for Aristide's return: that he adopt the program of the defeated US candidate in the 1990 elections, a former World Bank official who had received 14% of the vote. We call this "restoring democracy," a prime illustration of how US foreign policy has entered a "noble phase" with a "saintly glow," the national press explained. The harsh neoliberal program that Aristide was compelled to adopt was virtually guaranteed to demolish the remaining shreds of economic sovereignty, extending Wilson 's progressive legislation and similar US-imposed measures since.

So, to claim, as Secretary of State Clinton did, that "the U.S. removed a military dictatorship in 1995," is fudging the truth just a tad. 1995 was the year that Aristide left office, having been restored to the presidency in 1994; could that have been what she meant by removing a military dictatorship? No doubt she knew her audience would know enough to fill in the gaps without making a fuss about them. It wouldn't do to acknowledge the U.S. role in keeping those dictatorships in place, and in suppressing Haitian democracy until it could be brought under the proper control, which meant supporting the 2004 coup which sent Aristide into exile again. Oh, and by the way:
Refugees fleeing to the US from the terror of the US-backed dictatorships were forcefully returned, in gross violation of international humanitarian law. The policy was reversed when a democratically elected government took office. Though the flow of refugees reduced to a trickle, they were mostly granted political asylum. Policy returned to normal when a military junta overthrew the Aristide government after seven months, and state terrorist atrocities rose to new heights. The perpetrators were the army - the inheritors of the National Guard left by Wilson 's invaders to control the population - and its paramilitary forces. The most important of these, FRAPH, was founded by CIA asset Emmanuel Constant, who now lives happily in Queens, Clinton and Bush II having dismissed extradition requests -- because he would reveal US ties to the murderous junta, it is widely assumed. Constant's contributions to state terror were, after all, meager; merely prime responsibility for the murder of 4-5000 poor blacks.
Does Secretary of State Clinton know these things? She surely knows about Emmanuel Constant, one of her constituents from her tenure as Senator from New York, whom she doubtless regards as one of those "hundreds of thousands of Haitians who have emigrated to the United States and have strengthened us through their contributions in politics and business and health and education, in science, sports, and culture."

And Clinton is, after all, one of President Obama's appointees, one of the team of rivals who might have their own views but nevertheless do his bidding and serve at his pleasure. Obama didn't have much to say about Haiti during his presidential campaign, as far as I can find. He knows these things, I'm sure; but I suspect his view of Haitian history is now as twisted as his Secretary of State's.

Surprise, surprise2...


(not really). This bloomberg.com link describes how corporate insiders are selling their stock at an alarming pace on this bear market rally (sales outnumbered purchases 8:1 in the first 3 weeks of April). Confirmation that this is a sucker's/bear market rally wasn't necessary, as the fundamentals and technicals support this concept, but this is absolute confirmation that we are going much lower in general stocks.

The topping process could potentially last until the end of May but all of the risk right now is to the downside IMO if one is looking at the intermediate to long term (anything can happen in a single day or week, of course). Go short almost any stock sector (be careful if you're shorting gold miners, though, and I remain long Gold royalty company RGLD) if you have a horizon of at least 3 months and you should do well. If you're not comfortable going short, sell equities and move to cash (i.e. Gold or U.S. paper Dollars) or short-term U.S. Federal government bonds (avoid corporate and municipal/state bonds).

Lambda Legal gets big win for children of disabled parent...but the case shows the risk of parentage orders

Lambda Legal announced this week that the Social Security Administration has agreed to grant child benefits to the two children of a father receiving social security disability benefits. The issue concerned recognition of the parent-child relationship based on two California parentage orders declaring Gary Day the father of his two children. Day now lives in Florida.

SSA never issued a ruling on the children's claim for benefits, in spite of two letters from Lambda Legal. It simply cited "legal issues and policy questions" in holding up an initial determination. Without a determination, Day could not appeal. More than two years after Day's application, in May 2008, Lambda filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia. The letter this week granting the benefits successfully concludes the litigation.

Eighteen months ago, in another case, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum opinion authorizing child benefits to the child of a nonbiological mother who was the child's legal parent because she was in a Vermont civil union with the biological mother. The opinion concluded that recognition of the parent-child relationship did not violate the Defense of Marriage Act.

Lambda's complaint on behalf of Gary Day and his children demonstrated that a parent-child relationship existed based on five different legal criteria in social security laws.

This case highlights an ongoing concern about recognition of parentage orders for nonbiological parents. If Day had an adoption decree naming him the father of the children it is unlikely he would have faced difficulty in obtaining benefits for them. But lawyers are increasingly seeking parentage orders rather than adoption decrees because they are a more accurate reflection of the family's situation. A person does not adopt his or her own children. So when a lesbian couple plans a child through donor insemination or a gay male couple has a child through surrogacy, the intended parents consider themselves the child's parents the whole time. It's analagous to a married heterosexual couple having a child conceived through donor semen; the husband does not have to adopt the child.

Parentage orders can also be obtained more quickly and without the home study that adoption proceedings usually require.

Somewhat ironically, a paternity order should be more secure than a parentage order granted to a nonbiological mother. That's because all states -- in their efforts to obtain child support for children born to unmarried women -- have strict laws requiring that a paternity order from another state receive Full Faith and Credit. Some states may think they need not extend that recognition to an order establishing motherhood.

This is a very new area of law. We lawyers hope that someday parentage orders will be as secure as adoption decrees and that someday laws will establish parentage without needing a court order of any kind...and that those means of establishing parenthood will also be universally recognized. The Day case is a step in the right direction.

KL pictures (girls nite out)

Dinner at Fish & Chips in Bukit Bintang Area


Party Nite at Bukit Bintang "Club 21"


Poetry Friday - The Minister of Dreams

The Minister of Dreams

The future lies enwombed in dreams, as wheat
in seed. Indeed it dreams there like the child
who sleeps beneath its mother's heart, beguiled
by darkness and engulfed within her heat.
Just so, the future waits the midwife's hand,
the hand of one who has the wit to draw
it forth to light and hold it, dumb with awe,
that it may speak. For dreams I understand.
Since childhood I have dwelt among my dreams,
a shadow-dweller like the forest folk,
who only by such rays of light as broke
between the leaves could see at all. What seems
to be is truer than what is, and so
what is not yet is given me to know.

Poetry Friday - The Minister of Dreams

The Minister of Dreams

The future lies enwombed in dreams, as wheat
in seed. Indeed it dreams there like the child
who sleeps beneath its mother's heart, beguiled
by darkness and engulfed within her heat.
Just so, the future waits the midwife's hand,
the hand of one who has the wit to draw
it forth to light and hold it, dumb with awe,
that it may speak. For dreams I understand.
Since childhood I have dwelt among my dreams,
a shadow-dweller like the forest folk,
who only by such rays of light as broke
between the leaves could see at all. What seems
to be is truer than what is, and so
what is not yet is given me to know.

Never The Twain Shall Meet

The other day I quoted Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's critical take on those scholars who "implicitly ... underwrite the notion that 'homosexuality as we conceive of it today' itself comprises a coherent definitional field rather than a space of overlapping, contradictory, and conflictual definitional forces." This notion turns up often both in anthropological writings on sexuality and gender in "non-Western cultures," and in writings on history or literature in the "West".

For example, last weekend I read a paper, "The Romance of the Queer: The Sexual and Gender Norms of Tom and Dee in Thailand," by Megan Sinnott, in a collection called AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities (edited by Fran Martin, Peter A. Jackson, Mark McLelland, and Audrey Yue [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008]). Rethinking genders and sexualities is a noble project, but as I've argued before, it's not quite as simple as invoking the names of Foucault, Butler, and de Lauretis. I haven't read the whole book yet, so let this be the first progress report.

Tom and Dee are, according to Sinnott (author also of Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same-Sex Relationships in Thailand [Hawaii, 2004], English words (tom from "tomboy" and dee from "lady") that made their way into Thai culture sometime in the 1970s. Both in Thai society generally and among toms and dees themselves, "Tom and dee subject categories are not defined in terms of heterosexual/homosexual binary; they are not defined in opposition to heterosexuality," Sinnott declares (134), which isn't surprising since most heterosexuals do not think of themselves as heterosexuals; they tend to identify as men and women, with men assumed to be butch/penetrators and women assumed to be femme/penetrated, unless something goes awry.
Toms are typically understood to be masculine beings, who express their masculinity in their personality, dress, and sexual attraction to females. Most toms and dees I interviewed described dees as "ordinary" women (phu-ying thammada) who were normatively attracted to a masculine partner who could either be male or female bodied. Dees are described as being capable of attraction to males or toms. This description was borne out in the life stories of many of the dees with whom I spoke. Many (but not all) dees had had relationships with both males and toms, and considered themselves to be "ordinary" women who were currently involved with toms. The term dee includes, without distinction, women who consider themselves to be exclusively interested in toms and women who perceive themselves as possible partners with either males or toms. Therefore, "dee" is an ambivalent category, differentiating women who are sexually involved with females from women sexually involved with males, with the implicit understanding that dees are probably not exclusively attracted to toms, and not essentially of a different nature from women in general. In contrast, commonly among toms, dees, and Thais in general, tom is understood as a transgendered female, with a core, inborn masculine soul (cit-cay).

... Peter Jackson has analyzed the Thai cultural system as one based on the primacy of gender, in contrast to a Foucaultian grid in which sexuality, sexual object choice, and sexual preference are the primary categories of the Western sex/gender order. ... Sexuality in Thai culture is understood as an extension of one's gender; homosexuality is understood to be, in mainstream Thai interpretations, a result of psychological transgendering -- a man in a woman's body, or vice versa. For many Thais, including academics and psychologists, the western concept of "homosexuality" is interpreted in terms of the local concept of "kathoey." The term kathoey refers to an intersexed, transgendered, or transsexual person, usually male to female. ... From oral histories with people over sixty years old, I have learned that masculine women were known of in the past in rural settings. These women often had female partners and lived their lives as social men. While these individuals were called kathoey at times, people usually referred to such a masculine-identified woman as a "woman who is a man" (phu-ying thii pen phu-chaay). These masculine women, like toms today, generally were not "passing" as men. They were known to be physically female and did not claim otherwise. ...

Most obviously, toms and dees explicitly reject the English term "lesbian" largely due to its explicitly sexual associations "Lesbian" is understood to refer to two feminine women who are engaging in sex with each other. ...Toms and dees explained that they could only see this kind of sex as a possibility when it was a performance for a lascivious male audience. For Thai women, the sameness of gender that is implied in the term "lesbian" carries an additional stigma of explicit sexuality, rather than a gendered relationship [134-135].

Almost all of the toms and dees interviewed described sexual relationships as only reasonably possible between masculine and feminine beings -- men and women, toms and dees, kathoey and "men." Any suggestion of sexual relationships between two toms or two dees was described as bizarre and ludicrous [136]

One area in which toms and dees reverse normative discourses of sexuality is in the common practice of tom untouchability. Many toms and dees have described toms as unwilling to be touched sexually by their partners or to remove their clothes during sex. ... Dees, as appropriately "passive" (faay-rap), expect to reach sexual climax because they are acted upon by a masculine partner. Toms also generally expressed the belief that it was their duty to bring about a dee's sexual satisfaction.

Both toms and dees repeatedly expressed hilarity or discomfort with the idea of a same-gendered partner. The idea that toms could partner with toms and dee with dees clearly violated normative models of sexuality and identity [140].
All very interesting, and far be it from me to tell Thai queers how to arrange their sexual relationships. But there's nothing specifically Thai, let alone non-Western, about the gender/sex system Sinnott describes -- quite the opposite. The untouchable or stone butch is not only familiar from long history in the English-speaking world, she has become a motif in newer dyke erotica, starting with Joan Nestle's groundbreaking work on American butch-femme sexuality of the 1950s. (The image above comes from Nestle's blog.) So is the notion of the homosexual as a man trapped in a woman's body, or a woman trapped in a man's -- defined as such in the 1800s by the Uranian reformer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. It also is the basis for Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness, and you can't get much more "Western" than Hall (image below from here). There's no reason why Thais should be familiar with this history, but a Western scholar like Sinnott should take notice of it.

In her influential book Female Masculinity (Duke, 1998), Judith Halberstam mentions that the 19th-century English diarist and sapphist
Anne Lister spoke in quite similar terms about her desire to touch her beloved without ever permitting her beloved to do the same to her for fear that it would “womanize” her too much. As we shall see in the next chapter, this particular version of female masculinity comes to be named “stone butch” within a lesbian vernacular in the 1950s, and as such it represented a privileged and ideal version of butch gender and sexuality among butch-femme communities. In fact, we could say that stonebutchness – Lister’s untouchability in the 1820s, Hall’s role as worshiper in the 1920s, the impenetrable butch in the 1950s – marks one particular historical tradition of female masculinity [102].

(In her paper Sinnott cites a later book of Halberstam's; it's hard to believe that she's unaware of Female Masculinity as well.)

Halberstam criticizes what she calls "the emphatic defense of modern notions of lesbianism" (109), which won't work because Hall and her circle were modern lesbians in the Foucauldian view, with modern ideas about sex and gender which, remarkably, look a lot like supposedly pre-modern or un-modern non-Western notions Sinnott describes. She also tries to explain Hall's apparent ambivalence about her body and identification with the male drag she used to cover it as "disidentification with the naked body," pointing out that in the early 1900s, "in Hall’s circle were many women who felt that their masculine clothing represented their identities. The new formed Women’s Police Service was filled with women who seemed to want to join up to wear the handsome uniforms" (106).

This might be more convincing if it worked both ways, as shown in this anecdote from Annick Prieur's Mema's House, Mexico City: on Transvestites, Queens and Machos (Chicago, 1998, page 165):
This cheating [that is, deceiving their male partners by pretending to be female] might be interpreted as a game, a play. But if it is, the vestidas definitely are bad losers. Marta was picked up on the highway: 'It was dusk, it was in November in 1987. I'll never forget it. I wanted a lift, and nobody would stop. It's getting dark and more difficult to get a ride. Then a car stops, a green Datsun. The driver, he's very handsome, you know, all my respects, he asks me "Where are you going?" "Home." "Come on, I'll give you a ride." We talked, and I told him I'm a hooker. Then he stops there on a flat stretch, and says "Straight away, how much is it?" "That much, my`love." "O.K." I was flattered, because he was really handsome, with a mustache, and not a fake one. I started to touch him with my hand, and I didn't find anything! Then he says, "It's because I'm lesbian." Oh my God, take a leave! I got out of the car, throwing up, traumatized. Because he was a man with a mustache and hair on his chest. He was a little fat so he had a bit of breasts, but I never could have imagined he was a woman. So I say, just like I have fooled them, I was fooled that day. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth."
In other words, if clothes make the Mythic Mannish Lesbian (.pdf) would the "women who felt that their masculine clothing represented their identities" have accepted vestidas as their partners? If Radclyffe Hall had met a lovely woman at a ball, seduced her and found a penis between her legs, would she have accepted that for this man, his feminine clothing represented his identity? I rather doubt it, and I'm not saying that she should have. But I find it ironic that supposedly non-normative sex/gender actors should have such quaintly heteronormative, downright traditional ideas about homosexuality: two guys (or girls) together -- eeeeeeeuuwww! Gross! Queer! Prieur's vestidas, by the way, "comment with disgust at the sight of two mustache-wearing men kissing each other, seeing it as something 'abnormal'" (149), and queens around the world are revolted by the idea of two sissies having sex together, which they regard, significantly, as "lesbianism."

Which doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Even in Radclyffe Hall's England (and Paris, with its famous sapphic salons), there were competing models of eroticism between women. I daresay that in Thailand, toms and dees don't exhaust the gender/sex landscape for women; but same-gender homosexuality has the advantage (or disadvantage) of being socially invisible. Let me stress that I don't think that same-gender homosexuality is superior to, or more authentic than gendered homosexuality -- I just don't think that gendered homosexuality is superior either. They're simply different patterns, and scholarship which fails to take the different varieties into account isn't doing its job. To return to Eve Sedgwick's remark quoted at the beginning of this post, scholars need to be aware that historically, tom/dee relationships have been, and still are, part of "homosexuality as we conceive of it today", not some exotic Oriental prodigy.