I have a massive collection of tabs that I don't want to lose, so thought I'd dump them here. Sorry?

Protest:
The protesters seem more adult than politicians and plutocrats

Who is truly the more adult: the protesters or an establishment that regards itself as older and wiser? The protesters have largely been very decorously behaved. They have thus far displayed no propensity to riot or to loot. Their tents are erected in rather neat rows. They hold laboriously consensus-seeking meetings at which they keep minutes and take votes. Their spokespeople are polite and articulate. If they do not have all the answers, they are at least posing some of the right questions. I don't see why they should be criticised for the absence of a manifesto when the leaders of Europe spent months quarrelling and flailing over the euro crisis before scrabbling together an expensively botched compromise.

The protesters shun formal leaders and hierarchies – and I also don't see why they should be criticised for this at a time when conventional leaders and hierarchies have been so conspicuously useless.

Occupy London could be protected by Christian ring of prayer

Christian groups that have publicly sided with the protesters include one of the oldest Christian charities, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the oldest national student organisation, the Student Christian Movement, Christianity Uncut, the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust and the Christian magazine Third Way. In addition, London Catholic Worker, the Society of Sacramental Socialists and Quaker groups have offered their support.

A statement by the groups said: "As Christians, we stand alongside people of all religions who are resisting economic injustice with active nonviolence. The global economic system perpetuates the wealth of the few at the expense of the many. It is based on idolatrous subservience to markets. We cannot worship both God and money."

I think the links between Christian groups and the protests are potentially interesting. There's a history of left-wing/socialist/radical social critique and social justice work in Christianity and it's a shame? disingenuous? frustrating? that this isn't given more attention. Helping out at a homeless shelter isn't very newsworthy though; however, making horribly conservative and heteronormative statements about homosexuality/abortion/marriage/gender is. I'm sure I wasn't always this cynical...

American Paki - Why I Am Not Protesting at Occupy

I don’t protest at Occupy because I know that my name has long existed on some intelligence database and I do not know what on earth it will be used for and how I will be targeted because of it – especially if I begin to show my face more regularly protesting at my local encampment.

[...]

As tempted as many white Occupy protesters are to proclaim “we are all one and the same!”, you cannot expect minorities, whose communities have been subjected to intimidation and abuse, to suddenly throw away the race card and jump on the bandwagon. These are critical times, and as such, it is important for Occupy to get it right. We are all part of the 99% – and the concerns of some should fast transform into the concern for all.

Paul Mason - Global unrest: how the revolution went viral
Paul Mason wrote Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere a few months ago and has expanded these ideas into a book.

For the first time in decades, people are using methods of protest that do not seem archaic or at odds with the contemporary world; the protesters seem more in tune with modernity than the methods of their rulers. Sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris calls what we're seeing the "movement without a name": a trend, a direction, an idea-virus, a meme, a source of energy that can be traced through a large number of spaces and projects. It is also a way of thinking and acting: an agility, an adaptability, a refusal to accept the world as it is, a refusal to get stuck into fixed patterns of thought. Why is it happening now? Ultimately, the explanation lies in three big social changes: in the demographics of revolt, in technology and in human behaviour itself.

Encountering Tear Gas & Pepper Spray, OWS Defending Against Tear Gas (image) and Survive a Mace Attack
Useful for some protesters - be aware of what the police force you're likely to come across are authorised to use.

Trans:
Binary Subverter - To Parents
I'm still mulling this over, but I found it really interesting.

This isn’t about presentation- although it's infuriating as hell that we still live in a world where it’s exceptional for any child to be free in how it presents, this should seriously be the norm- this is about gender. The most masculine trans woman in the world can feel social dysphoria. The most feminine trans man in the world can still feel like he isn’t free to express himself. Because that’s just it. I wasn’t allowed to express myself - by calling me a girl the message was that I was only free to accept myself if myself was a herself, which it wasn't. That masculine trans woman wasn’t allowed to express herself, only a non-existant "himself", that feminine trans man wasn’t allowed to express himself, only a non-existant "herself".

Janet Mock - Trans Day of Remembrance: A Letter of Blessings to my 16-Year-Old Self

Now, more than a decade later, I look at how lucky I was to get to walk out of that car. I now know the world can sadly be a cruel place. I could have been hit or beat or killed. A victim of a hate crime, one that could have been deemed a mistrial due to the trans panic defense, one where my family would have no closure, one where I’d be buried as a boy because no one but my friends knew my dreams of womanhood.

Fucking tired of arguing with people about using they as a singular pronoun
Always useful to have ammunition for this :D

Other stuff:
Queer and Then?

At its best, queer theory has always also been something else—something that will be left out of any purely intellectual history of the movement. Like "I want a dyke for president," it has created a kind of social space. Queer people of various kinds, both inside and outside academe, continue to find their way to it, and find each other through it. In varying degrees, they share in it as a counterpublic. In this far-too-limited zone, it has been possible to keep alive a political imagination of sexuality that is otherwise closed down by the dominant direction of gay and lesbian politics, which increasingly reduces its agenda to military service and marriage, and tends to remain locked in a national and even nationalist frame, leading gay people to present themselves as worthy of dignity because they are "all-American," and thus to forget or disavow the estrangements that they have in common with diasporic or postcolonial queers.

That effect has been possible not just because of the theories themselves, but because of the space of belonging and talk in which theory interacts with ways of life.

I'm pretty much as much of a baby queer theorist as it's possible to get but I did like this essay and am attracted to queer spaces, both physical and intellectual, for similar reasons.

Mysterious paper sculptures in Edinburgh. Gorgeous and imaginative and with a message about the importance of the arts. Well worth a look.

Couple of Doctor Who links: Doctor Who and its Discontents: Part I - Moffat, Misogyny and the Problem with Pond and Fixing Doctor Who – Season Five Edition. I love that someone's outlined an alternative S5 with themes and character development and narrative arcs. No, I do.