I meant to write. I really, really did. But I think part of me hoped someone else would, when they realized I was on vacation *coughcough*. Alas, they didn’t. And I was on vacation. The internet connection at the hotel I was staying at in the Dominican was not fast. It usually took about three or four vodkas before it would load a page. No, no. Seriously, I could have made a paper mache dead horse in the length of time it took to load Gmail. It didn’t even try to load WordPress. It just quipped at me in Spanish that there was no connection. Fair enough. So this, my friends, is why I have not posted since before New Year’s.

I hope you had a happy one.

So, right now, I’m working on planning a performance night. To bring in a little much-needed cash because the search for a job has turned up transphobic. So I’m working in the arts.

And actually, on that note, I think I’m going to talk about jobhunting.

During these “tough economic times”, this “Global Economic Uncertainty”, this “Global Economic How-Could-We-Have-Seen-It-Coming?” (I’ll tell you how!), many people are losing their jobs. Sure, Shoppers Drugmart employees are safe because their wage can’t be lowered and people will always need Tylenol, but in general, a lot of people are losing their jobs. Given this situation, it strikes me that trans and queer people are probably having an even harder time finding employment (of the minimum-wage sort or otherwise). Everybody who has lost/is losing their job will now, or eventually, turn to minimum wage jobs and will be “better qualified” and will, in most cases, probably be straight and non-trans. The people that unemployed trans and queer people rely on for survival – their parents who they call monthly for a small loan; their partner(s) who they promise will get paid back as soon as they have a job; their brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and anyone else who hasn’t disowned them, who they call when they’re about to lose their apartment again – are feeling the effects of this economic bullshit, too. It is getting harder on them to say ‘yes’, harder on them to lend away some of their money. It’s harder for them to justify to the rest of the family why they are feeding the black sheep. And this does not bode well for us. Us transpeople and queer people who already work so hard to get what little we can get to survive. And at the end of the day, the people we’re depending on may very well be saying to us now, like they always have, “Why can’t you just get a job?”. Maybe, in a few months, if the economy continues as it is going, we will be able to turn our heads to face them and ask, “What happened to yours?”