Friday, July 4, 2025
Thursday, July 3, 2025
Restricting those Who Sell Guns that kill at Schools
Something was done, unlike our politicians actions. Now Trump as bullied then to change.
The bank is rolling back a policy it launched after the 2018 Parkland mass shooting, saying many retailers are following the practices it sought to promote.
NBC NEWS: Citigroup on Tuesday ended a seven-year-old policy restricting how it provides banking services to firearm manufacturers, sellers and resellers.
The bank launched the policy in March 2018 after a teenage gunman killed 17 people and injured more than a dozen in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14 that year.
Citi said at the time that it would require clients to "adhere to these best practices: (1) they don't sell firearms to someone who hasn't passed a background check, (2) they restrict the sale of firearms for individuals under 21 years of age, and (3) they don't sell bump stocks or high-capacity magazines."
The bank's policy applied only to its business clients, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500-sized companies. It did not restrict how Citi's personal banking customers used their cards. Citi says it provides banking services to more than 19,000 companies globally.
"As a society, we all know that something needs to change. And as a company, we feel we must do our part," Citigroup Executive Vice President of Enterprise Services and Public Affairs Ed Skyler said in 2018.
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| Firearms are seen on display during the National Rifle Association's annual convention, in Houston, Texas, in May 2022 |
March for Our Lives, a gun-control advocacy group organized in part by students who survived the Parkland massacre, slammed Citi's decision Tuesday.
"Citi just chose appeasing Donald Trump over protecting the lives of kids," said March for Our Lives Executive Director Jackie Corin. "Seven years ago, after 17 of my peers and teachers were murdered, Citi found the courage to say 'no more' — no more financing gun sales to teenagers. Today, they're saying our lives matter less than their politics."
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
I love a Success Story - Stefano Ferri
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| Stefano Ferri |
“No one should cut off their uniqueness”.
His extraordinary story in the autobiographical novel ‘CROSSDRESSER – Stefano and Stefania, the two parts of me’.
Written by Monica Landro
He is a journalist, communications consultant, writer, career man, attentive husband and caring father… and he has a total look out of the ordinary: as a woman! Yes, he is Stefano Ferri, he is 56 years old, beautiful blue eyes, totally heterosexual and crossdresser! In Italian we could translate it as ‘transvestite’ but he is not a transvestite. He is simply a man who has unhinged cultural and social mechanisms by going beyond, where only those who can free themselves from prejudice can go: where they feel good. And he feels good in women’s clothes.
We met him because his latest literary effort is indeed an autobiographical novel, written during the pandemic and which could only be entitled ‘CROSSDRESSER- Stefano and Stefania, the two parts of me’. Does this all sound strange to you? It isn’t! On the contrary, everything is extremely normal.
Who do I mainly talk to, Stefano or Stefania?
You talk to Stefano, because the idea of the woman next door expressed in the book is a metaphor. The whole book describes my psychotherapeutic journey. For many years with the psychotherapist we went on with this metaphor of Stefano and Stefania, and when she told me that in me the integration between the male and female sides had never occurred as it normally does, she was telling a truth: she was pointing out to me that in my childhood there was something left hanging, I accepted the thought but I had to work to accept the truth, because it struck my male pride. When you are unresolved and untroubled, one clings to things like pride, normality, tradition, which, however, are not for us human beings who by nature are warm, provocative and free, and so when you have something inside, which wants to come out, you have to give it a chance, you have to go beyond it, even if society challenges you.
Basically, everyone should be able to dress how they feel…
Exactly. All women have something masculine in their wardrobes. None of us can know the intimate web of motivations that drives a woman to always choose trousers. Is it just practicality or is there more to it than that? The women’s movement, which has thus gained the freedom to dress, makes it superfluous to investigate why because the woman in a man’s suit is normal. We, on the other hand, cannot: those of my age were the first to break through this stupid taboo… fortunately the very young today are free of it.
Do you have women’s trousers in your wardrobe?
During the pandemic I threw away the last two pairs. The trousers were a compromise, where society still did not accept me. Unlike a woman, a male Crossdresser has to react to the social stigma with exaggeration: if a woman puts on a jacket and trousers, I can see that she is a woman but if I, a man, put on a jacket and trousers, the Crossdresser is no longer seen… I want it to be seen because it is a matter of identity.
Is there a provocation in this?
No, I can’t help wearing women’s clothes. In me, psychological development has followed a very original path and this happens to everyone because we are all unique. Let’s say that my originality is very evident. I can’t wear clothes other than these (Stefano is sitting in front of me in an orange silk jersey, a blue skirt and orange sandals that match the jersey beautifully). I have done 36 years always in trousers and now I want to break free, so I don’t wear them willingly.
Following your inclination to dress as a woman has put you in touch with your true ‘self’. How do you combine this form of selfishness, bordering on hurting or upsetting those around you, with the fact that you have found yourself again?
It was a gradual process. Cross-dressing started in 2002, but it wasn’t like I started dressing as a woman overnight, out of respect for the shock I would have caused my wife and family. Now I walk around quietly, but 20 years ago, I didn’t leave the house like that. It all started with an effemination. After all, when my wife met me I already had an effeminate and eccentric outfit and she fell in love with that Stefano. I believe my wife saw what I would become and loved it.
She sublimated your soul compared to your appearance. What we should all do…
In 10 years we should all be prepared for the mass arrival of the fluid generation.
Stefano, what is your relationship with God?Let’s say that I believe in God as Indro Montanelli did, whom I loved very much by the way. There is a phrase of his, which I feel very much my own. ‘In dying, it is not we who owe God an explanation, but if there is a God, it is he who owes it to us’.
What has this journey taught you?
My realization implied such a visible condition that I make it a kind of message: NO ONE SHOULD TIRELESSLY TIRELESS THEIR OWN UNIQUENESS. Whatever the cost, because away from yourself, you are nothing. Your existential field is yourself, not out of selfishness, but because physiologically we are made that way. If you want to express as much good as you can and thus come to leave more than you have found, you must go through you.
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Gerda Wegener Revolutionized Paintings of Women
A One-of-a-Kind Muse
Art History
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| Gerda Wegener - Portrait of Lili Elbe with a green feather fan, 1920. |
Although transgender people still face a multitude of difficulties in various environments across the globe, a significant increment in their visibility happened in the recent few years mostly through popular culture. Despite the fact trans identity has a very long history dating to various concepts of the third gender found in the ancient civilizations, it was found degenerative, offensive, and therefore marginalized and sanctioned for centuries.
Now, when it comes to visual art, the representation of the same was rather obscure, until the beginning of the 20th century when modern artists started exploring their identities. Although the European societies were conservative, scrupulous and embedded in patriarchy, during that time a significant number of them who identified as lesbian, gay or trans found different tactics most often affiliated with costuming (dragging) to present their queerness without being too much for the public moral.
Gerda met Lili Elbe, formerly known as Einar Wegener, at art school. The two married in 1904, traveled throughout Italy and France and settled in Paris in 1912. They quickly became part of the thriving bohemian art scene, connecting with various artists, dancers and practitioners, indulging costume parties and other public festivals.
During her Parisian years, Elbe started flirting with drag by adopting a female name and persona, after being asked by Wegener to pose for her instead of a friend, model, and actress Anna Larssen, who was late. Elbe found it appealing and she quickly became Wegener's favorite model, an inspiration that the artist expressed in numerous paintings of beautiful women dressed in chic attires. Although she presented Lili Elbe as the cousin of Einar Wegener, in 1913 after acknowledging that the person who inspired her femme fatale paintings was her husband, the art world was shocked.
Sound familiar: Lili Elbe was the subject of the 2015 film “The Danish Girl”.