Intersectionality, Sexuality and Psychological Therapies; dasNair and Butler eds.

Intersectionality, Sexuality and Psychological Therapies: Working with Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Diversity.  editors Catherine Baker and Rashan dasNair.   NewYork: Wiley, John & Sons, 2012.   approx. 288 pps., depending on format.

Yes, it is a very long and technical book.  Intersectionality, Sexuality and Psychological Therapies was designed with professional psychotherapists in mind.  At the bookstore the other day with e-reader in hand and the ability to read "for one hour free", I could not resist taking a long peek inside.  What I found was delightful and much improved over the usual doggerel about "being culturally sensitive and/or culturally competent."  For one thing, the GLBTIQ [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersexed, queer] population is usually left out of any discussion regarding diversity within a psychiatric population.  Those discussions by and large usually revolve around race and ethnicity as related to heterosexual populations.

In direct contrast, I found Intersectionality, Sexuality and Psychological Therapies to be a very thorough and engaging book.  Issues addressed included gender, race and ethnicity but did not stop there.  The collected essays also noted issues of religion, spirituality, age, immigration, physical health and disability.  For example, a lesbian woman from a small town somewhere in Africa was denied political asylum when she migrated to Great Britain.  Her lover had been killed and she herself in fact had been hospitalized with injuries.  Because the British Immigration examiner didn't understand that as a  Muslim woman, she could not freely inquire about the fate of her lover, she was denied sanctuary.  She is presently in hiding, this time from a government that wishes to deport her back to her homeland.  It was also pointed out that there are no common nouns in use in some places for same-gendered love.  Immigrants from those locations would use words other than "gay" or "lesbian" or bisexual" or "lovers" to describe their situation.

sapphoq reviews says: I think back to one therapist in particular that I was exposed to.  She was vetted as "understanding bisexual culture" because she had seen "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" five or more times as a teen and young adult.  Intersectionality, Sexuality and Psychological Therapies is a work that is sorely needly in mental health professional circles.  The knowledge within is accurate, timely, and thorough.  Highly recommended.

We Are Anonymous (a remix) by Miso Susanowa

In skating through blogs on my reading list, I found Miso Susanowa's remix called "We Are Anonymous."


I listened to it here at     http://inworld.sl/mp3/We_Are_Anonymous.mp3

My So-called Virtual Life blog at    http://gomiso.blogspot.com/2012/02/we-are-anonymous-new-music.html   lists several other places where you can listen to it.

This is excellent tunage replete with a pounding drive reminiscent of Axel the Crazy Frog music but much deeper.  I love the Anonymous voice overs in it, which I was first introduced to via YouTube®, things like "We Are Anonymous. We Are The Internet," and "You should have expected us."

I have to tell you that the RIAA and some other folks have gone drunken silly over things like a little girl singing along with a female vocalist in a vid which was subjected to a takedown; a fervor over both the Happy Birthday song written by Mildred J. Hill and her sister Patty S. Hill in Kentucky back in the 1800s and an old scout standby New Friends and Old Friends © Joseph Parry; the recent attempt by the good ol' U.S.A. to imprison a young man from England for LINKING to a file sharing site-- an act which in and of itself is NOT illegal in Great Britain.  Give a bureaucrat an important sounding title and that bureaucrat will scream piracy until the sun burns out of the sky.  Stealing is claiming someone else's work as one's own.  Sharing is keeping the creator's name and credits intact.  Singing is singing.  I'm pretty sure that the little kid who was singing along with a female vocalist in a vid was not in any way wanting to steal the song.  People, can we stop going nuts now please?

The Internet is what it is today in a large part because of some folks who were willing to experiment, folks who were in on ARPANET and the first BBS boards, folks who wanted to push their little Commodores to the limit.  Those folks are my heroes.  The drive to make criminals out of ordinary people who are just a bit more curious than the average sell out is based on fear.  Fear of profit losses.  Fear of the phreaks, the hacktivists, the file sharers.  Fear of people who think differently than the rest of us.  

We need Anonymous.  We need the phreaks, the hackers, the coders, the mavericks.  We need folks who are willing to think.  And so with these thoughts threatening to turn into a full scale rant, I leave you dear reader.

Do take a listen to the song if you wish.  Learn some coding.  Learn something about how your computer works.  Don't be a push button ninny willing to believe the Corporate Lie.

sapphoq reviews says:  The remix "We Are Anonymous" is full of win.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir), Jenny Lawson "the Bloggess."  New York: Penguin Group (G.P. Putnam's Sons), 2012.  via NOOK® e-reader, 289 pps.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened had me reduced to hysterical laughter of the variety that woke up my flatmate from a dead sleep.  I couldn't help it.  There were 35 chapters and an epilogue of off the wall funny.  The author-blogger grew up in Wall, Texas.  Her parents decided to move back there after the author set a broomstick on fire at the age of three and went running through the apartment with it just because.  Jenny Lawson grew up poor, the kind of poor that had radon tap water in the pipes, chickens in filing cabinets in the garage instead of in a hen house, and a bloody deer being cleaned out for dinner that night.  Jenny and her sister ran around barefoot, or in bread sack shoes.

Jenny Lawson's dad was given to bringing home wild abandoned baby animals to raise, making puppets out of dead animal carcasses, and throwing a bunch of ducklings into the living room for his children-- and later his grandchildren-- to round up.  The author's abridged version of "The Dangerous Thesaurus of My Father" had me laughing while breathing in instead of out.  [sapphoq reviews says: As a child I had always laughed "in," that is to say while breathing in.  I didn't think anything of this until some kids in school pointed this out to me.  I learned how to laugh while breathing out like everyone else does, however I revert to laughing "in" whenever something is so funny that my natural laugh takes over.  I can only attribute this laughing "in" to something in my Swedish ancestry-- perhaps.  I've heard that some Swedes laugh the way I naturally do.  I've never been given any explanation for this by any family member.  My laugh was never commented on by any family member.  Tis a great mystery...]. Her mom was sensible and resigned.  Her sister adjusted well to rural living in a school that took kids to watch a cow being artificially inseminated for field trips and allowed the older kids to drive the family tractor to school.  Back in those days, Wall didn't have much in it, not even a gas station.  

Jenny Lawson got out and went to live in a Big City, where she met her now husband.  They prospered there for a bit and then decided to move to a small rural area like Wall so that their child could experience country living.  She reported that civilization in the form of a gas station and several chain stores has come to Wall.  She and her sister, both with kids of their own in tow, return to Wall yearly for an impromptu reunion.  Her dad has not mellowed in his older age as the grandkids were treated to rounding up ducklings in the living room for fun one day.


Ever present throughout the book was Jenny Lawson's anxiety.  She was anxious about the idea that her rural home was built on an Indian mound [it wasn't], anxious about meeting some other women blogging friends for a long weekend, anxious about giving speeches in class to the point of freezing into hysterical laughter, anxious about the sense of impending doom that walked with her as a child and still walks with her now.  Her anxiety and the foreign feel to her upbringing were the cause of various outbursts of verbal sparring with her husband-- things like whether one should throw up in a garbage can or in a vomit bowl, the proper way to sit on a couch avoiding the decorative pillows.  I could relate to her anxiety.  I've had my own bouts with anxiety and with a flatmate who doesn't relate to my own up-bringing. 

sapphoq reviews says: This review doesn't do the book justice.  Anyone who likes funny stuff will love this book.  Anyone who doesn't like funny stuff, if forced to read this book, cannot help but be overcome with laughter.  Highly recommended.  [But maybe not for folks who object to the f-word in their reading material].  

Double Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

Double Dexter, Jeff Lindsay.  New York: Vintage Books (Random House), 2011.  paperback, 337 pps.


The book Double Dexter begins darkly with Dexter speaking in a "we" voice as he and his Dark Passenger offs a pedophile clown.  The scene is set.  But someone else is a witness.



Dexter's brother, as a favor to Dexter, offs a bionic police co-worker who has been following Dexter.  A co-worker with bad breath and a pirate mask turns up in the family suite room in Key West unexpectedly.  Dexter's step-son Cody's scout leader turns up to take him and his sister Aster for a spirited adventure to find the sharks.  Rita, Dexter's adoring wife, scores a foreclosed house in an auction.


sapphoq reviews says: Double Dexter is a very satisfying book, complete with compelling information about Cody's growing Shadow and Aster's coming into her own confidence about who she is.  Highly recommended to fans of Dexter who don't object to the books being a bit different from the serialized H.B.O. smash hit.