Well folks, it’s time for me to disappear into my (sadly, only metaphorical) cabin. I have a lot more work to do on She’s Not the Man I Married, so I won’t be as ‘around’ as usual. (I also won’t be as round, as I’ve lost 8 lbs. and nearly 4″ since March 19th, ha.)
So if I don’t answer an email, or host chat, or post here so much, or on the boards: please understand it’s because I’ve shut myself up in the cabin in my head, turned off the phone, and am writing, writing, writing.
I will try to post some previews as soon as I get word of when the official pub date will be.
Five Questions With… Josey Vogels
Josey Vogels is the author of the nationally syndicated relationships column My Messy Bedroom and the dating advice column Dating Girl. She has published five books on sex and relationships – the most recent is entitled Bedside Manners: Sex Etiquette Made Easy. Her fourth book, The Secret Language of Girls, has been published in several languages and was made into a documentary. Her website – www.joseyvogels.com — is visited by thousands monthly and she is a popular speaking guest at universities and colleges across Canada.
1) I was a little amazed at the ‘revelation’ of She Comes First – considering women have been basically saying the same thing as Ian Kerner (the author of She Comes First) did, for years. Why do you think it took a guy to say it before anyone seemed to listen?
It’s funny, I felt exactly the same way. In fact, this is what I wrote in a column I did about the book: “That Kerner comes off as the Neil Armstrong of oral sex is a little insulting when you consider how many women (several of whom he refers to throughout the book) have been saying for years that intercourse alone doesn’t cut it for the ladies when it comes to orgasm. But the fact that Kerner is on a mission to turn men into enthusiastic cunning linguists like himself is a welcome one. Because, clearly, they aren’t listening to us.”
I think sadly, the fact that it was a man made the mainstream media take notice. It was truly a bizarre thing. I thought it was interesting how though also how Kerner’s language in the book was very “male” which again, might have made it more palatable for a media that likes that kind of male authoritative approach to things.
As I wrote at the time:
“She Comes First may have indeed changed the focus from intercourse to oral sex but it’s still all about male performance. Kerner’s just shifted the pressure from the penis to the tongue. He even describes the tongue as the best “tool” for the job.
In fact, at times, with all the references to hoods and shafts and some rather creepy technical illustrations, She Comes First, reads more like a car manual than a guide to becoming a good lover. So while Kerner now describes himself as “happily married and able to make love successfully” (wonder what a good cunnilinguist pulls in these days?), being a “successful” lover isn’t just about having a skillful tongue — though that is, of course, welcome. It’s about knowing how to stimulate a woman’s mind, to make her feel amazing and sexy in bed and out. I’m all for improving your technique. But like a good mechanic, a good lover doesn’t just know how to operate the machinery, he knows how to make it purr.”
Memoirs
I’m reading Joan Didion’s remarkable The Year of Magical Thinking right now, because the book got such outstanding reviews (and a National Book Award), but also because I’m writing a memoir-ish book that will also go into more abstract issues – like gender, & marriage, & things such as that. I want to see how Didion did it; I like to learn from the best. (Actually, the best writing advice I ever got was to read good books.)
I was wondering if anyone else has recommendations for other good memoirs I might check out – obviously, ones on the serious side.
Identity & Belonging, Continued
As if to encourage me to pick up where I left off, I got an email today from Meg, who is both a talented cartoonist and writer. She’s been looking at resources for writers, and so came upon the Ghettoe of the Womyn Author – as I like to call it. So another aspect of this sense of identity has come to mind – of parsing not just who else decides you belong, but where you yourself decide you do. And whether you want to.
I’ll be honest – for me it’s a case of sour grapes. I was always too white and even middle-class for multi-culti spaces, and the connections I did make working for an African-American author for nearly a decade did me no good whatsoever. Likewise, I wasn’t actually white in the sense of having privilege or connections or time to do internships; like a lot of other poorer folks, I worked my way though college, but because my parents had a house, I didn’t qualify financially.
In a sense, culturally I always felt like the many millions of Americans who make too much money to qualify for Medicare but who don’t have enough money to get decent insurance: between pillar and post.
I didn’t get the perks of being a ‘woman author’ as a result – it’s not like there are a ton of grants & scholarships out there for women writers, anyway, as the people who might fund such things are often – ba rump bump! – women authors and not making a ton of money themselves (cf. A Room of One’s Own, of course). But being “just an author” is somewhat impossible, too – as in class after class, I watched guys of relative competence get more attention from professors then my fellow women writers did, and people who had more money and privilege who were able to afford even the time to write, and who Knew the Right People.
(My favorite story, told by a professor of mine, was from when he was deciding whether or not to do his PhD, as he was writing reviews for Vogue and doing alright, starting to make a name for himself. And at parties he’d talk to other freelance journalists, trying to find out if they were making a living writing, and they’d always cough into their hands, and quietly say, “I have a little something” which he finally parsed to mean trust fund. He got his PhD.)
That is, the system is biased against you, but doing anything about that bias – tosses you into the ghetto. And I imagine it’s similar with being an LGBT writer, or an African American writer, or – etc. Luckily some identities become fashionable, as an Hispanic writer friend of mine has since found out. But unfortunately, despite the paucity of women journalists, humorists, & the like, there is nothing fashionable about being a women author anymore. I’m not sure there ever was; after all, we did invent the form, so theoretically, the writer’s trade has been a woman’s all along.
So while I understand the urge to be only an author, and not a woman-author, I’m afraid that’s not possible. What I suggested to Meg and what I suggest to any woman author is to make a trip to Chicago’s Women & Children First bookstore, where she can – probabably for the first time in her life – be in a bookstore full of books by women, and see one dinky little shelf labelled “Books by Male Authors.”
Then laugh, & get back to work.
New Feminism Category
You know, it seems kind of funny that only tonight did I decide to add Feminism as a category for my blog posts. Maybe it was one of those ‘so obvious I missed it’ kinds of things.
I’m thinking of adding a Relationships category as well. Let me know if you think it’s a good idea (or not).
Now all I want to do is figure out how to alphabetize my category list.
Two Months
If anyone else has noticed, this now marks two whole months that I’ve blogged at least once a day. No, they’re not all long, meaningful essays, but I am currently writing a book, too.
Five Questions With… Arlene Istar Lev
Arlene Istar Lev LCSW, CASAC, is a social worker, family therapist, educator, and writer whose work addresses the unique therapeutic needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. She is the founder of Choices Counseling and Consulting (www.choicesconsulting.com) in Albany, New York, providing family therapy for LGBT people. She is also on the adjunct faculties of S.U.N.Y. Albany, School of Social Welfare, and Vermont College of the Union Institute and University. She is the author of The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide (Penguin Press, 2004) and Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and their Families (Haworth Press, 2004). Additionally, she maintains a :Dear Ari” advice column, which is currently published in Proud Parenting and Transgender Tapestry. She is also the Founder and Project Manager for Rainbow Access Initiative, a training program on LGBT issues for therapists and medical professionals, and a Board Member for the Family Pride Coalition. Her “In a Family Way” column on LGBT parenting issues is nationally syndicated.
< Arlene Istar Lev
1. You work a lot with LGBT parenting issues. What do you see as the major differences between LGB parents and T parents?
Lesbian and gay parents deal with numerous issues of oppression, and depending on the state or locality in which they live, this can be minor issues of societal ignorance, to huge issues of public and legal discrimination. However, as difficult as the issues facing lesbian, gay, and bisexual people may be, they pale in comparison to the blatant oppression transgender and transsexual parents face.
In many states, lesbian and gay people can now jointly legally adopt their children as out same-sex couples; this provides their children with many benefits and protections. However, transgender people experience discrimination in all routine areas of family life. Judges determining parental custody will rarely award custody to out trans people, except possibly in cities like San Francisco that specifically offer transgender protections. Trans people are viewed by the courts as unfit by the virtue of their (trans)gender status. Additionally, adoption agencies do not see transgender people as “fit†to be parents, and the obstacles faced by transgender people wanting to be parents can feel insurmountable.
Lesbian and gay people have fought for the right to become parents. I remember a time when simply being an out lesbian would bias a judge’s custody decision. Although there are some localities where this still would be true, even in upstate New York in rural communities, judges minimize the issues of sexual orientation in making custody decisions. However, I cannot imagine the same being true regarding gender transition. In my book, The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide, a transwoman tells the painful story of losing custody of her son after her crossdressing was used to “prove” that she was a deviant and a pervert. The legal status of trans people, regarding their rights to their children, is reminiscent of LGB legal rights 40 years ago.
However, there is good news to report. Trans parents are coming out of the closet in increasing numbers. Many trans people who have positive relationships with spouses and ex-spouses are finding ways to parent together and address the issues the gender-transpositions can have on family life. Increasing numbers of people are choosing to have children as out trans people. Some FTMs are getting pregnant, placing medical personnel in a position to work with pregnant men, creating a radical and challenging new phase of queer parenting. Additionally, many MTFs are storing sperm before transition, so they are able to have biological children as the sperm donor/father with a female partner. Clearly, LGBT people have developed innovative family-building forms, and I suspect we are only at the beginning of this process.
There is, of course, no reason that a trans person could not be as competent a parent as any other person, but like LGB people, they will likely have to “prove” that to the powers that be. In my experience, children take gender transitions in stride; it is adults who find the whole issue confusing and shocking. Older children might have more difficulties accepting gender changes, particularly as they near their own puberty. It is my contention however, that families can weather many challenging issues, and transgender status is no more, or less, challenging then other issues that families face.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Arlene Istar Lev”
Out of the Freying Pan and Into the Fire
Oprah just said that she doesn’t want kudos for admitting she was wrong because it was the only thing to do, and that was after cutting off Nan Talese mid-sentence. (Nan Talese is not the kind of person who is used to be cut off mid-sentence – she’s a Senior VP of Doubleday and owns her own imprint there). But Oprah is angry, and James Frey is starting to feel like the meat industry, I bet.
Frank Rich is angry, too, and just pointed out that being honest is usually the first step in any addiction recovery journey.
Stanley Crouch wants to know how much Doubleday had to do with coercing Frey into publishing it as a memoir.
And Maureen Down suggested Oprah cast Frey out of her kingdom.
A journalism professor (whose name I didn’t catch) just pointed out that when you doubt one memoir, you start to distrust them all; as someone who has put the truth of my life on the line, I really resent James Frey and even more the slick rationalizations of Nan Talese. Her attitude is exactly what sucks about the publishing industry.
Granted, our whole culture cries out for sensationalism: they don’t want to hear one woman’s story of pregnancy and childbirth; they want the post-natally depressed nearly-killed-her-baby mother. More than once members of the media (okay, including a producer from Oprah) stopped being interested in our story because Betty hasn’t had “the operation.”
So this is what I think: Nan Talese and Frey should figure out how much money they made from bullshitting everyone, and they should give it back. There are definitely 12-step programs that need funding and tons of individuals who could use some money to re-start lives that addiction has made a mess of.
And I know there are memoir writers out there that could use a grant. I just know it.
It's a Boy Meets Girl
It’s finally official, and I finally get to say it outloud: I’ve sold my next book, tentatively titled Boy Meets Girl, to Seal Press.
Their blurb:
•The author of MY HUSBAND BETTY writes about her husband’s crossdressing and the possibility of his undergoing a sex change, which frame her commentary on the pressures (both emotional and sexual) that traditional gender roles can bring to our relationships, marriages, and partnerships.
Thanks for all the support and encouragement and patience.
David Foster Wallace Ad Absurdum*
Tom Scocca’s piece in The New York Observer on the Frey hoo-ha might be overstating the case, but this bit of parody made me laugh really hard:
Fine. Then comes the opening sentence: “On my first day in jail, a three hundred pound man named Porterhouse hit me in the back of the head with a metal tray.â€
In other words: “On my first day in jail*, a three hundred pound man** named Porterhouse*** hit me in the back of the head**** with a metal tray*****.â€
*The author never went to jail.
**Weight is an estimate; also the author, not being in jail, never met such a person.
***Not his real name; also the author never met such a person.
****Because the author’s head was not present in jail, such a blow did not actually land.
***** The composition of the tray is a guess, because the author did not actually get hit by it, because the author was never in jail.
Thanks to GalleyCat for pointing out this passage in particular & the article in general, while simultaneously pointing out that JT LeRoy’s sales figures actually increased last week as a result of the fracas, proving once again that sometimes, bad publicity is still publicity.
* David Foster Wallace has nothing to do with this controversy; he’s just famous for excessive footnoting in his writing, in a postmodern kind of way.