That’s right, boobs. Or what-have-you.

“I don’t get it.”

Well, the other day, Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi–yes, he’s not even an Ayatollah. I know, right?–went and said some crazy shit about boobs and how they cause earthquakes.

Or more specifically, no, he didn’t really. As PBS explains:

While delivering his weekly address, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, Tehran’s hardline Friday prayer leader — the man who replaced Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the role — revealed what had caused the strange prognostications. “Adultery causes earthquake,” explained Sadeghi. “The incidence of sin has proliferated. Sins — such as the laxities of some women or the way some young people harass and ogle on street corners or some families don’t observe religious values and practices while they are traveling — have mushroomed,” he told millions of television viewers on April 16. “These allurements that some women and some girls apply to themselves outside their homes, the young people who are tempted and turn to promiscuity and commit sin — all this increases adultery. According to our sacred transmitted texts, this is one reason for the incidence of natural calamities. When sin proliferates, earthquakes become common.“

So of course, this was picked up by the international press. They love this stuff. The greatest focus, of course, was the sentence about “some women” and their “laxities”: namely, the “allurements” they “apply to themselves outside their homes”.¹

This isn’t about boobs. It’s a nod of support, under the guise of religion–and frankly, I’m not even sure if Sedighi means it as some kind of badly-translated “we will bury you”-esque metaphor–for Ahmadinejad’s odious, dissent-quelling plan to depopulate Tehran.

“Depopulate Tehran? I hadn’t heard anything about this!”

You don’t say.

As you will no doubt recall, former Friday prayer leader Rafsanjani is currently Chairman of the Assembly of Experts. He’s also a former President of Iran and political opponent of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During the 2009 Iranian election crisis, Rafsanjani’s July 17th sermon (ostensibly) called for an end of censorship of the press condemned the state-sanctioned violence against protestors.²

Consequently, he is no longer Friday prayer leader.

Flash forward eight months, and Ahmadinejad is throwing out crazy ideas like maybe moving five million people away from Tehran:

The issue of moving people and organizations from Tehran has received much publicity since the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent call on Tehranis to pull up stakes and move to other cities.

Last week Ahmadinejad called on Tehranis to move to other cities because Tehran is earthquake-prone and if a massive quake hits this overpopulated mega city, the ensuing crisis will be unmanageable.

“Thanks to people’s prayers, Tehran’s fault lines are not active now,” but the occurrence of a massive earthquake in Tehran is certain, so at least five million should leave Tehran to make the crisis more manageable, Ahmadinejad said last week.

“Wait, wait, wait. Speaking as a hypothetical pro-Ahmadinejad Iranian-Analogue-to-the-Daily-Mail-reading Tehrani, I have to say that this proposal exists solely to save us from earthquakes.”

No. No it does not:

During the post-election events Tehran was the heart of the protests. Initiating rallies in huge numbers and acting as a model for other big and small cities of Iran with a concentration of most of the top universities and political, civil, cultural and economic organizations and a great magnet for young people coming to Tehran to either work or study.

So, good luck with that, Iran. Sorry about the press focusing on the boob thing.

…which brings us to last Monday, when Jen McCreight, Outgoing President of the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University, threw up a quick blog post proposing an experiment to show Sedighi what’s what:

Time for a Boobquake.

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble.

As of this moment, the Facebook group for “Boobquake” boasts 60,000 members, and Google News is reporting over 430 separate news articles around the world. Countless blog posts have leveled criticism against McCreight, accusing her of…well, pretty much every nasty thing. I particularly enjoyed the concern over what would happen if there actually was an earthquake today. Cheeky know-it-all-ism–meet–Islamophobia, awesome.

“Say, this raises a good point! What do you have to say about this Boobquake stuff, Catherine?”

I’m glad you asked that question! It’s silly and irreverent and I’m going.

“Wait, you’re going!? But! But!”

Hush.

The most obvious criticism leveled against Boobquake is that it promotes the objectification of women.³ And honestly, it’s easy to see why. Vancouver’s print media have not exactly paid much attention to anything beyond ZOMG BOOBS:

News1130 is on the street, finding full support for the shaker. “God has given me eyes to appreciate beauties,” says Vikram. He may see some beauties!

He asks what’s wrong with seeing the human body. “I’ll be the happiest man in the world if a woman comes in front of me and asks, ‘Can I buy a soda?’ And why not? I’ll open it for you… I’ll open the soda for you!”

Is that a euphemism?

The Boobquake will be shaking from 4:00pm-8:00pm at the VAG.

That’s some classy stuff, News1130.⁴

However, I really want to emphasize that while this story promotes the objectification of women, it is possible to write one that keeps it to a minimum about the same topic.

Even still, that Vancouver Province article annoys me for a variety of reasons.

First, what the heck do those women from Mission in the photo have to do with the rest of the article? There’s no explanation given as to who they are or why they were interviewed. They do have a very nice photo though–ohhhhhh. Good one, The Province.

Angela Squires will be monitoring seismic activity Monday from Vancouver as she and other women take up the busty bid to prove the cleric wrong in a show of solidarity at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Right on, Angela. Of course, Metro Vancouver (yes, yes) does note:

“I thought, ‘how ridiculous,’” said Squires, who will be showing off her legs instead of her cleavage because she’s had a double mastectomy.

Yes, that’s some super fact-checking, The Province.

Metro Vancouver further quotes Squires as saying:

“People — especially (those) who have a perceived authority — are coming out with ridiculous statements that are not necessarily questioned. And it’s important for all of us to question what comes at us.”

Honestly, Metro Vancouver wins this one,⁵ though the Province does at least mention the word “skeptic”–though not any of background of there being a broader skeptics and humanists movement.

“But aren’t you afraid that if you show up wearing a low-cut top, guys will stare at your chest?”

First of all, my chest is at eye level for most dudes. It happens. Second, no. I’m not going to let concern over what guys may or may not do impact how I dress. That absolutely stinks of victim-blaming and I find it despicable.

Straight Dudes, I really hate to be blunt here, but I don’t notice you as sexual humans. At most, you are rivals–and let’s face it, even that’s a stretch. I don’t care whether you find me attractive, and I’m not going to use that as a consideration in how I dress. However, I am going to allow whether or not other lesbians find me attractive to influence how I dress. Sure, there may be overlap, but that’s one venn diagram I really don’t care about.

I want to be very clear on this: I do what I do for me, not for anyone else, and I do so because I have the freedom to choose.

1. “Outside their homes” is a great qualifier. Why, he’s practically Pierre Trudeau.
2. On the other hand, he’s wanted in Argentina on terrorism and murder charges. So really, this is a case where I can–at most–support his Selma-killing policies.
3. As we know, women’s bodies should be hidden away beneath a chador at all times. Y’know, so they’ll be respected.
4. Also, you can’t spell.
5. I know. I’m scared too.

October, 2000
I come out to a few select friends and family. My parents immediately fight over which one of them is most accepting of it. It later turns out the answer is “neither”.

September 11, 2001
The American Century comes to a close. The subsequent decade sees Western civilization dig its heels in, ineptly seeking security and short-term gains at all costs. I watch CNN for 6 months straight.

October 23, 2001
Apple releases the iPod. I fail to see what the big deal is. Investors disagree significantly on this point.

December 20, 2002
“Second Life? What’s that?” I ask as I click the link. “What a stupid name!”

February 1, 2003
I move to Vancouver on an ill-advised whim. The next three years are…interesting. To this day, I still wake up thinking cockroaches are eating dead skin off my face.

January 14, 2006
Some dude cuts most of my face off and totally goes to town on my skull with power tools. Fortunately, he was a doctor. I can breathe through my nose now.

August, 2006
As a part-time contract LSL developer, I am paid in US dollars. Currency fluctuations force me to give up LSL development in favour of working a minimum wage retail job. I like it a lot better.

November 18, 2006
I manage to get published for the first time. It is not exactly my finest work.

December 20, 2006
I’ve just been told about this new CMS that’s supposed to be pretty good. “Drupal? More like Poo–pal!” I exclaim to a circle of blank, embarrassed faces. Nice.

April 21, 2007
A lab test indicates I may have cancer. Subsequent tests indicate I have stress. I consider remedying both by having alcoholism.

July 22, 2008
My Palm Treo dies. I buy an iPhone. Unfortunately, everyone I know can be divided into two camps: People who already have iPhones and people who don’t care that I am now the coolest person ever.

August 15, 2008
I learn my knee pain is likely to be the result of osteoarthritis. At such an early age, the implication is that I will not be able to walk in 10 years.

September 1, 2008
I am told I do not have osteoarthritis after all. As such, I am likely to continue walking for some time. “Your knees look great,” the doctor says, peering at the x-ray. “Say, how much exercise do you get?”

January 1-Dec 31, 2009
I endure a great deal of bullshit. My friends are kept appraised of the situation–to their dismay.

And that’s what I did during the aughts. How about you?

I’ve written recently about why I like the Dyke March: its inclusiveness, the sense of community, the cute girls… but mostly, it’s an opportunity to feel normal without being normalized.

Despite popular rumours to the contrary, Catherine Winters is not a combination of Angelina Jolie as Acid Burn in Hackers and Katherine Moennig as Shane on The L Word. I’ve never been arrested by the FBI, I don’t bring a different–or even the same–girl home every night to my lesbian bachelor pad, and I’m not the greatest programmer ever. It’s true, I’m afraid.

In fact, I’ve only been in a stylized, cyberpunkesque sword fight at most three or four times. (I know, right?)

Still, while I may tend towards the femme/lipstick side of the scale these days, I’ve never exactly considered myself particularly straight-acting–whatever that means. For some reason, some people are still surprised to learn I’m gay though. In a way, it’s actually more irritating than my baby dyke phase^[3] when I buzzed my hair and was assumed to be a lesbian by pretty much everyone I met. At least then, I knew where everyone stood.

In fact, after I decided that maybe being gay and tall didn’t necessarily imply “butch”, I didn’t actually figure out how to come out to anyone for a while. I hadn’t done it since I was a teenager and even today, I’m out of practice. In fact, I still tend to assume everyone just knows at a glance. It’s always quite jarring to me when acquaintances ask about boyfriends or expect some commiserative banter about men: “You know what guys are like!” “Um, sure!”

Sometimes I don’t bother correcting anyone, and I wonder at times, if that’s being dishonest. Maybe. Then again, most of the time it isn’t relevant. What I’ve never become confident about is my ability to tell when it is.

As I pointed out to a friend over coffee recently, I hadn’t actually ticked the “Interested in Women” checkbox on my Facebook profile until a few months ago. On the one hand, if we’re friends on Facebook, you probably already know that about me. Still, what if you don’t? Almost nobody assumes “I don’t know” about people’s sexual orientation–that’s simply not how our society works. Instead, we assume a default of “straight”. In the absence of that bit of information, someone would have an inaccurate picture of who I am.

So what’s the rest of that picture? Well, I’m loyal to my friends. I like coffee. I’m into graphic design and web development and user interaction and typography. I read a lot of novels and like riding my bike. That’s what defines “Catherine”, not who I am–or am not–attracted to. That said, my sexuality affects who I am in a significant way, just as my height does. I see the world differently as a lesbian than I would if I was straight.

I wonder at times if I’m putting too much of myself out there when I share my thoughts about this kind of uncertainty. My overshares usually involve bodily functions, so I can’t use my usual tricks to figure out if this is getting too personal. At the same time, it’s impossible for me to write about queer topics or events without getting into my personal experience–and I do want to write about them.

So that said, how did the Dyke March go, anyway?

Good! Except it was really hot out. That’s definitely my least favourite part, honestly. I managed to escape without a huge sunburn, thankfully, but I still got more sun than I prefer.

I got to McSpadden Park early and chatted with a few women before my friends arrived. By the time it was ready for us all to walk up Commercial, there were a thousand women clustered under the limited shade provided by the trees at the edges of the field. “No, you all have to come over here,” the emcee shouted into her megaphone.

Mable Elmore, currently the Member of BC’s Legislative Assembly for my riding, LGBT and Filipino community activist, transit union organizer, and formerly my bus driver, opened the march. When talking with friends, I’ve been quite enthusiastic about her, (“You grew up in a big union town, huh, Cat?”) but sadly, we’ve never met.

The weirdest part of the day came at Grandview Park once we’d arrived: someone actually recognized me. By reputation.

I finally found a friend and her “lesbrarians” banner, complete with Venn diagram indicating the intersection between “librarians” and “lesbians”. Frankly, I’m guessing her illustration was conservative about the overlap.

She introduced me to a couple of the other lesbrarians: “And this is Catherine, the Drupal developer I was telling you about!”

“Wow, Drupal!”

“Drupal!?” my friend said. “Pfft, Catherine also invented Second Life–”

That is not even close to being true,” I said.

“Second Life? Wait, Catherine Winters?”

Yes, seriously. It was the most impressed anyone has ever been with me. So that part was pretty rad.

As for photos, no, I didn’t bother taking my camera, and my iPhone is not well-suited for outdoor shots in incredibly bright direct sunlight. There aren’t many on Flickr either, as it happens. I guess the crazy social media circles I usually run in haven’t totally spread to Vancouver’s lesbian community yet.

I know there plenty were photos taken, mind you. While walking up the Drive, my friend noticed a couple dudes with fairly serious-looking video cameras.

“Wait, are we going to be on the news?” she asked.

I assured her I felt this to be extremely unlikely.

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Well, the media tends to not be sure how to describe the event…”

“Hmm?”

“Well, ‘Dyke’ is kind of a slur…”

“Ha!”

True enough, there’s hundreds of stories about Vancouver’s Pride Parade in Google News today and three about the Dyke March. So maybe next year.

[1] The rest of it will be spent being a tired old lady and going to bed at 9PM.

[2] Proof I can be wrong about things:

Girl: “Is this the first one they’ve had?“
Me: “No!“
Other Girl: “Like… the second?“
Me: “It’s the eighth, I think.“
Most Engergetic Emcee Ever: “WELCOME TO THE SIXTH ANNUAL VANCOUVER DYKE MARCH!“
Them: “Ha!”

And then they kept mentioning that! It’s like I have some kind of reputation.

[3] Disclaimer: while I had a phase–and it was a phase for me–where I thought I had to identify as butch in order to be a “real” lesbian, I do want to clarify that I’m not speaking of androgynous or butch lesbians in general. This is strictly my own personal experience of figuring out my sexual identity and the implications thereof. It took me a while to feel comfortable with the idea that I wasn’t betraying anyone by being true to myself. (And hey, I’m still compelled to write this footnote, so maybe I’ll get there fully one day!)

Frankly, in a thousand years, when Pride has become all mixed up with St Patrick’s Day and everyone carries a genetically engineered blue cucumber because that’s traditional, the origin of the day’s name–whatever that may be by then–is just going to be a weird bit of trivia mentioned on the news on years when they need holiday filler.

So there.

Speaking personally, Pride is generally not generally my thing: it’s loud, it’s hot, and the parade, at least, is not really participatory. I don’t like watching things, I like doing things. One of the things I like doing is the Vancouver Dyke March.

Rather than a spectator, I find myself taking the role of a participant, walking up Commercial Drive with friends, amongst a fairly laid-back crowd, where one is more likely to see women with strollers than thongs. Honestly, I like the fact that it’s a smaller event, as well: for me, there’s a much greater feeling of community than I feel at Pride.

But back to Midnight Mass. (“That’s a Catholic thing, right?”) Sometimes! In this post, however, Midnight Mass is Vancouver’s answer to LA’s Midnight Ridazz group: a regular late-night ride through LA — with a number of regulars numbering in the thousands.

When I look at the Midnight Ridazz site, the first thing that stands out to me is a shout-out to an LAPD officer that escorted them on a recent ride:

The Midnight Ridazz would like to extend a sincere thanks to the LAPD and especially to the officer (whose name we did not get) who recently helped to escort our ride through the streets of Los Angeles. We are all part of the neighborhoods we ride and we support the LAPD!

Hearing this message from a loose group with a strong DIY, anti-commercial perspective is likely surprising for anyone expecting this to be Critical Mass at night, but the Midnight Ridazz’ site describes the ride as both anti-confrontational and apolitical as well.

Respect for space, drivers and the sleeping residents of the neighbourhoods through which they ride is also a core value of Vancouver’s Midnight Mass community: In this post to Vancouver’s Midnight Mass LiveJournal community from 2007, one participant shares his concerns about the ride becoming too rowdy.

We don’t need to ride 6 people abreast and block 3 lanes of traffic. There are only like 20 odd people; this isn’t Critical Mass. We really should keep over to the side and just take one lane. It is all we need.

I can appreciate this because it’s not justifying, nor criticizing Critical Mass. The point is that this isn’t Critical Mass. Rather, the author is just pointing out the differences between conduct expected among the small crowd present at Midnight Mass and what was observed.

“So Catherine, if you’re skeptical of both Pride and Critical Mass and a fan of both their smaller, less-flashy counterparts, does that make you someone who just hates things because they’re popular?”

You hush. The Dyke March has its roots in somewhat more confrontational politics than the Pride parade, originating as a protest both in favour of lesbian (and later, bisexual and transgender) rights, as well as against misogyny within the gay rights movement of the 80s and 90s.

(Also, yes, yes it does.)

So, if you’re interested, the Vancouver Dyke March begins walking towards Grandview Park from McSpadden Park at 12 noon this Saturday, August 1st. I hope to see you there!

Midnight Mass Vancouver occurs every second and fourth Thursday of the month, starting from Grandview Park at 12 midnight. I am usually in bed by this time.

Organizers of both events recommend showing up early to meet fellow participants.

In his post, Buzz asks if the imagery we’ll see in Vancouver’s Pride Parade this Sunday is really the best way to demonstrate that gays are just like everyone else. This reminded me of another familiar argument, about Critical Mass: are 3000 people on bicycles blocking commuter traffic really helping the image of cyclists?

Honestly, Buzz does raise a good point, though it’s hardly a new argument, going back to the exclusion of activists we would today consider to be transgendered in the immediate post-Stonewall era.

Still, as I wrote in Buzz’s comments, it’s a debate I feel is pretty well moot at this point. As of last week, it’s been four years since we formally enacted gay marriage nationwide here in Canada, an anniversary that totally passed me by due to no mention whatsoever in the media. People don’t care.

At the same time, though, it’s important to remember that Canadians are very cautious not to offend. At all. Ever. (We’re very passive-aggressive, though.) The problem I have with this is that it’s fundamentally dishonest. Frankly, as much as I like not having bottles hurled at my head should I choose to hold my girlfriend’s hand in downtown Vancouver, it would be nice if people advertised their hate and intolerance.

“Catherine, stop blogging while drunk,” you might say.

No, I’m serious. I want to know who to avoid. I want to know who’s trustworthy and who’s biased against me. It may not be popularly accepted that we’re all prejudiced, but I’m sorry, we are. Frankly, humans are a bunch of xenophobic jerks. Our ability to pigeonhole “the other” is why, as I mentioned to @_lisas on Twitter this morning–in the course of explaining why I’m freaked out by birds of all things–there’s a single species of human surviving today.

Everyone’s a little bit racist. Sure, we’re taught that it’s wrong, but I think this leads less to discussion and education, and more to bigots becoming closeted themselves.

So… obviously my friends are cool with it. Very few of the people I know are homophobic in the least. But I don’t date a lot. I haven’t had a girlfriend in… well, let’s just put it at “a while”. Very few people I know have seen me totally making out with girls. Doing so wouldn’t necessarily provoke a homophobic reaction, more “Cat does PDAs? Since when?”

Would my landlady be on board with my being gay? Probably not, but it’s never come up. She’s content to assume that my extreme height is what has prevented me meeting a succession of horrible, chainsmoking boyfriends to bring home to the hottest 300 square foot apartment ever known to mankind. But at the same time, it’s not like I would bring boys there if I was into that sort of thing either.

Last year, I remember her expressing skepticism about Obama and his ability to handle the financial crisis, which I presumed to be of the usual Canadian variety: “Can you believe he doesn’t support single-tier healthcare!?” It turned out that, no, she liked McCain better. I had definitely never heard this view expressed by anyone in Vancouver. I realize I’m stereotyping, but there is a bit of a correlation there.

The majority of Canadians are in favour of gay marriage, with an overwhelming majority at least being on board with some sort of “separate but equal” equivalent. The most conservative government of my lifetime has stated the matter is settled. That may be debatable, but it’s just not something we’re spending time on.

At the same time as this was going on at Buzz’s blog, there was a conversation occurring on my Twitter feed about the VPD advisory regarding the estimated 3000 cyclists participating in this month’s Critical Mass. (Mind you, I’m highly skeptical about the likelihood that so many people will brave 30° Celsius weather just to irritate commuters and climb up on top of the Lion’s Gate Bridge.) Still, the eternal “yay, Critical Mass”/“stop being assholes” debate rages on.

You know what? I support the Burrard Bridge bicycle lane project — which seems to be working out just fine at this point. (I do agree with Vancouver City Council member Andrea Reimer, however: “Enough about the Burrard Bridge.”) I support the construction of increased cycling and transit infrastructure. We need billions of dollars more for transit and millions more to improve bike lanes.

But is Critical Mass the way to convince other people to get on board with this plan, necessarily? Yeah, probably not. I actually do understand the “now drivers know how we feel!” argument. But, dude? No they don’t. Now they hate cyclists even more. And the drivers who didn’t ever consider cyclists much? Yeah, they remember that it took them two hours to make their 20-minute commute home after a long week.

And ultimately, this acts against my interests as a cyclist.

At the same time, Critical Mass looks like a lot of fun. It’s just fun at the expense of other people’s day. And I’m a staunch believer in the idea that we’re all entitled to do whatever we want until such time as what we want interferes with others’ ability to do what they want. Also, separation of church and state.

So how do I pair my this with my moral outrage towards post-Stonewall activists fighting for “straight-acting” gay and lesbian rights 30 years ago, or my position that it was was wrong and ultimately self-defeating to deliberately exclude the rest of the LGBT community?

I don’t know. I’m judging history from the perspective of someone who didn’t live through it, who just inherited the world activists worked towards a generation ago. And frankly, that’s dangerous. Today, it may seem obvious that including bisexuals, effeminate men, butches and transgendered people has always been the right thing to do, but I have to consider the possibility that I can even assert that position today because of the fact that they were effectively booted out of the movement decades earlier. Which is actually really depressing.

So, would a 21st-Century-style Pride parade and LGBT movement have flown in the early 1970s? The spectators and participants definitely wouldn’t have been the same, but the fact of the matter is, if you think The Queers are doing things to the soil, nobody’s going to convince you otherwise with a float covered in incredibly ripped guys wearing thongs.

So maybe that’s not what Pride’s for anymore. Maybe it’s just a party. As Buzz’s commenter EternalCanadian points out, honestly, what’s the difference between Pride and Mardi Gras or Caribana?

Edit: Also see Critical Pride Part 2: Midnight Mass and the Dyke March.

I, on the other hand, share my name with a number of moderately Googleable women, none of whom seem to be serial killers or skinheads or anything terrible like that at all. That said, the most prominent ones tend to be fairly embarassing. So who are they? A couple other Catherine Winters have written embarrassing books, but that’s thankfully a lot better than it could be. No, my fellow Catherine Winters are pretty harmless.

The first Catherine Winters’ story is pretty tragic, however:

Nine-year-old Catherine Winters was last seen around noon on March 20, 1913. A family friend named Dan Monroe spoke to her as she walked along the town square toward her Newcastle, Indiana home. On that day, the schools had closed due to an outbreak of measles and Catherine had spent the morning playing with her pal Helen Stretch. As she skipped toward home, she wore a “red sweater coat,” a white straw hat, and a black and white checked gingham dress. She had brown eyes and light brown hair.

They never found her. At the time, it was a huge mystery — was she kidnapped by gypsies? Did she run away? Her disappearance was covered in a 1913 silent newsreel.

Of course today, we can all guess what happened and it’s pretty horrifying. I really can’t fault her for having the same name, particularly when she met such a tragic end.

Second to her is a Catherine Winters who is also pretty hard to be irritated by. Catherine Winters of Lindon, Utah is 12 years old and plays the flute really, really well. I figure she doesn’t need crazy people picking at her for being good at stuff, so I’ll forego linking to any of the sites that list a little too much personal info.

Catherine, if you ever read this:

• Tell your parents to think about password protecting some of those photos of you. Flickr is a good option for this.
• Don’t let high school get you down in a couple years. In my experience, Catherine Winterses don’t like high school.

So, with the exception of Catherine Winters who disappeared in 1913 and Catherine Winters who plays the flute, the rest are kind of lame:

There’s Catherine Winters, who in 1983, wrote a single entry in the 1980s Sweet Dreams series, How to Talk to Boys and Other Important People. I’ve had people ask me if that one was mine. (“Yes. Yes it was. I was a published author when I was 2 years old.”) I strongly suspect that this is the Catherine Winters who wrote for Young Miss magazine in the early 1980s. If it is, today she’s writing for Health.com and is not as lame as previously asserted. Either way, it’s surprising that someone as prolific as this Catherine Winters could be eclipsed online by a book written 25 years ago.

[Update: May 28, 2009: Catherine Winters good-naturedly confirms that she is, in fact, not as lame as other Catherine Winters have worried and doesn’t sue me. (Thanks, Catherine!)]

There’s a “Katherine Winters Hair Salon” in Irvington, New York. I’m not actually sure of the spelling of her first name, but apparently, the proprietor isn’t actually named Catherine Winters. I’m not totally sure where the name comes from. As of this writing, there’s only one extremely negative review available on Google:

“If she didn’t give me a bunch of attitude for leaving and offered me a discount to come back when she got her ____ together I might have come back. I wouldn’t go back if she paid me.”

Finally, there’s the Catherine Winters who self-published a 48-page book called Being Single and Loving It. In the author’s own words:

I wrote this book because I had experienced some shortcoming also in the area of being single and praying for the right mate to come my way after my journey on being single I am now happily married to a wonderful husband but if I had not stood still just for a second I also would of miss my blessing. I hope and pray that my book would give you some things to consider while your waiting on God and soul searching for what you want your mate to be.

You know, a lot of people look down on self-publishing because it’s not seen as ‘legitimate’ or because you don’t have ‘editors’ or ‘proofreading’ and can have ‘problems’ with ‘grammar’, but to them, I say, balderdash! I’m ordering this right now.

So that’s the big four. Still, that’s not even counting the myriad Katherine/Kathryn/Catharine/Cate/Kate/Kat/Cat/Cathy/Kathy Winter(s)es out there! There’s too many to count, so I picked out a couple entertaining ones.

• In 2008, New Orleans resident Mary Catherine Winters, a nurse at Omega Hospital, (Yes, really!) gave $419 to Hillary Clinton.
• In 1976, British ice dancer Kathryn Winter won gold at the inaugural World Junior Figure Skating Championships. At two sentences in length, she has the shortest Wikipedia entry I’ve ever seen.
• Kathy Winters, NASA Shuttle Weather Officer, gets quoted in the press all the time and apparently has the authority to scrub shuttle launches. I feel this more than makes up for going by “Kathy”.
• Dr. Kathryn Winters, a pediatrician from New Mexico, has at least one patient (or more likely, at least one patient’s parent) who likes her, but thinks her staff is rude.

Interestingly, Catherine Winters have a tendency to be fictional!

• “Catherine Winters”, “Cate Winters” and “Kate Winters” are all popular names in a variety of fan fiction: Twilight, (Damn it.) Smallville, Harry Potter, Boy Meets World, Doctor Who, and so on. The most blatant one of these, a Stargate SG-1 Mary Sue seems to have disappeared.
• Hilary Swank played Professor Katherine Winter in the 2007 film The Reaping, which I have not seen. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 9%, I have not made plans to do so. (Seriously, Hilary, who is your agent!? Most. Inconsistent. Career. Ever.)
• Kate Winters is the protagonist of Gerri Hill’s novel Coyote Sky, currently one of the top-ten books on Amazon’s ever-mercurial lesbian romance list. Unlike The Reaping, I have read this, and yeah, I’d say that ranking is fairly well-deserved. If your name is Catherine Winters, it might be weird to read though. I’m just saying.
• One of my personal favourites: “Catherine Winters” is the alias chosen by the protagonist of hetero romance novel Indiscreet by Mary Balogh.
  

  Lady Catherine Winsmore, a heroine of quiet courage, refused a forced marriage when rape left her with an illegitimate child. Exiled by her family, she poses as a young widow, Mrs. Catherine Winters. An innocent smile brings the unwelcome advances of another rake, the Viscount Rawleigh, Rex Adams.

  That’s super. Not only do I apparently have a name that makes me sound like a character from a romance novel, I have a name that sounds like a character from a romance novel made it up. Awesome.

Who shares your name?

So, my first Amazon sale completed, I was feeling pretty positive about them. Until yesterday.

Sunday morning, I was alerted to news of a somewhat poorly-planned decision at Amazon: to better cater to America’s “moral majority”, Amazon decided to excise the popularity rankings of LGBT books, delisting them from search results. Some authors’ books can only be found by searching for an unrelated title and clicking on the author’s name. Other authors’ entire selections have been delisted.

According to a thread on Livejournal’s Meta Writer community, Amazon has de-ranked such titles as Brokeback Mountain, Tipping the Velvet and Stone Butch Blues. This  begs the question: what on earth are these sheltered, bigoted Amazon customers searching for that is going to make them get all red-faced and choke down vomit upon discovering those books in their search results?

“Well, I never!” they’ll exclaim, spittle flying forth, “I wanted to read about the non-gay history of Brokeback Mountain! How was I to know it was fictional?”

In his blog post on the subject, Raul (Hummingbird604) compares the move by Amazon to last year’s “Motrin Moms” debacle. He also raises the question, is Easter Sunday a good time to be organizing a protest? Absolutely. Is Easter Sunday an okay time for Amazon PR to take the day off? Obviously not.

Worse, Amazon’s responses have ranged from “yes, we de-rank adult content” to “uh, it’s a glitch?” They haven’t demonstrated any cohesive strategy to managing their response, and continue to look worse and worse, the longer this goes on.

Since breaking Sunday morning, the #amazonfail and #glitchmyass hashtags on Twitter continue to trend highly a day later, inviting responses from Amazon’s competitors.

Amidst a flurry of suggestions that they hold a sale on LGBT books, Powells Books’ Twittter account notes that they will definitely not censor the presence of LGBT material on their site.

@cinemaestro That certainly is disturbing. Fortunately, Powell’s will never censor this material #amazonfail http://bit.ly/3Me5Un

about 7 hours ago in reply to cinemaestro

@zentinal A GLBT sale sounds like a great idea to me. I will check to see if this is something we can get going #amazonfail

about 6 hours ago in reply to zentinal

By Monday morning, the mainstream media was already reporting on the issue:

• Amazon blames ‘glitch’ for removal of gay titles from sales rankings, CBC
• ‘Gay writing’ falls foul of Amazon sales ranking system, Guardian.co.uk
• Amazon website censorship row, Channel 4

Oh, and per Smart Bitches, Trashy Books’ advice: Amazon Rank

Update, April 13, 2:50pm:
An email from an Amazon.com spokesman, reproduced by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, describes #Amazonfail as “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.”

The email goes on to say that a total of 57,310 books outside of the Gay & Lesbian categories were deranked and that they’re in the process of reinstating them.

So what happened? Did some mid-level manager enact some crazy new policy? Can Amazon’s ranking and reporting mechanisms be gamed?

It’s taken me a long time, but I’m finally feeling more comfortable with my body. I actually own (and occasionally wear!) heels now. Take that, feet!

Now I’m starting to warm up to my voice as well. When I think about it, one of the biggest catalysts happened several months ago. I randomly met a group of women visiting Vancouver from Seattle — two couples a decade or so older than me. We struck up a conversation and, one of them mentioned –without any fishing on my part– that she thought I had had a great voice. The other three chimed in, agreeing that my voice was “hot” and did I sing? Oh, but I should! I’d sound great. One of them compared it to “Shane, you know, from the L Word?” This was met with agreement and much nodding.

What!? These are not sentiments I’ve often heard. Were they messing with me? No, that didn’t seem likely, given the spontaneity and apparent sincerity of their words. Sure, perhaps their comparison to Katherine Moennig as Shane was a bit of a stretch, but then again, I’ve always known that I was being just a tad insecure and self-deprecating by describing my voice as sounding like Captain Janeway as portrayed by Bea Arthur.

Days later, after I’d given their words some thought, I realized that even if their opinion isn’t one that’s broadly agreed-upon, that’s not important. What is important is the source of the sentiment: a group of seemingly successful, socially-inclined gay women. Sure, in general terms, it’s nice being told you have an attractive quality, but I know that I’ve always been far more receptive to compliments from the cute girl handing me my coffee than from some random dude as I step around him on the street.

So maybe it doesn’t matter if everyone thinks my voice is hot, so long as it’s possible that someone does. We all seek validation from others, despite mostly realizing that it’s not particularly healthy and that we should feel good about ourselves without needing someone else’s approval. Still, free compliments feel good, particularly when they come from someone unexpected. The fact that it came from several someones — several lesbian someones — made it all the more satisfying to hear.

So where does this newfound sense of not-total-loathing leave me now? I came away from the Northern Voice 2007 conference with an interest in video blogging. I’m beta testing Second Life’s upcoming voice chat system, and as I write this, I realize that I can’t remember the last time I felt anxiety about using the phone. Wow. Maybe just singing along to Dar and Ani isn’t such a far-fetched idea after all.

Sometimes, positive change happens without us even being fully aware of it. I’d like to keep that up.

(Crossposted from a comment on ChangeEverything.ca)