Category: comings & goings

when we’re up to.

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Moved In & Getting to Work

We’re basically moved into our groovy new apartment in Appleton; it’s in the house next door to the house I lived in last year, & I’ve already nearly walked up those steps instead of the new ones a few times.

We have a lovely big porch to the front & side of the place, a big picture window, high ceilings, a big bathroom. It’s a lovely apartment, and because we both came this time, it already feels like home. When I’ve lived by myself here, for three months or six months, I tended toward monasterial. Or bachelor. Or both.

Tomorrow I attend a small symposium about pedagogy; Saturday I meet with a student about her senior project.

It’s nice to be back at work, & to feel the cold floorboards of the porch under my feet in just socks; better still to look up at a nearly full moon and a sky full of stars.

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LOLCat Carrier

For those who have ever had cats who have to be put in carriers:

(Actually, ours just get in them, for the most part. They’re very good cats.)

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Not Really Around

In the next four days, I am packing up someone’s truck with our stuff which they’ll then drive to WI; meeting with an elected official about ENDA, dropping off the last of our donations; putting a bunch of stuff into storage, and finally, at long last, packing up the kittoi and the car and heading to WI.

So I won’t be around much. Consider this my annual blog vacation.

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TransOhio Keynote: The Metamorphosis of Us

This is the text version of the keynote talk I gave at TransOhio this past Saturday. From what they’ve told me, it was recorded so hopefully we’ll get a video link in not too long.I did interrupt myself so that the people listening could participate in the Nationwide Kiss-In.

First, thank you to Shane and Sarah and all the other TransOhio people who made this event happen. It is a very cool event, & I’m honored to be a part of it: thank you again for inviting me.

Recently I received a letter from a woman who had transitioned. She was married and had two young children, and was trying to figure out if there had been any way she could have transitioned where she might have left out some of the pain & confusion her wife and family had experienced. In the email she sent me, she mentioned how it’s expected for couples to try to stay together through transition, and I had to rub my eyes and read it again.

Is it?

Whether it was her perception or indicative of a larger change, it surprised me. When Betty and I first met, it was considered absolutely unlikely that any couple would make it through transition. Shoot, it was a huge toss-up that any wife could tolerate her husband crossdressing. But it was when I started writing back to this woman, to explain how that had never been the case before, that it hit me: I started my first online support group nearly 10 years ago – 10 years this coming February, actually. That’s like 50 in trans years, right? In large part I founded it – and this might make some of you laugh – because I wasn’t angry or sad enough to fit in with the culture of the existing partners’ groups. I was weird for being supportive, and occasionally felt like I was a minority of one. I wasn’t, of course – people who are good with the whole thing don’t seek out support groups – but it was still rare, then, to find anyone who was just looking for community, for other couples in similar situations, to share notes and stories and have someone to be “out” about their partners’ transness with. So to hear, 9 short years later, that now it’s assumed that a couple will stay together, or at least try like hell to do so, shocked me.

Continue reading “TransOhio Keynote: The Metamorphosis of Us”

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Moving to WI

I don’t think I’ve explained very much about what’s going on with us these days, & in the upcoming weeks, & I’m starting to get a lot of emails and messages asking what’s up.

So, here’s the nutshell version:

  1. Betty is now officially Rachel Elizabeth. She’ll always be Betty – since that’s a short form of Elizabeth. She got a court order to change her name & the kind folks she ran into at the DMV changed her gender marker for her. The combination will really help out in our day to day lives, and yes, I’m more than okay with it, I’m happy for her, and for me, since I won’t have to buy the beer anymore.
  2. I was offered a part-time teaching gig at Lawrence University for the upcoming 2009/10 school year, which I accepted. We will be living in university housing, which means I get to walk to work again, as I did the past two times I worked there, which I love. She is coming with me this year, since the 6 months apart this past year really sucked, and because this will be for 10 months.
  3. We are subletting our Brooklyn apartment with the blessings of our landlord and to people who know our downstairs neighbors and who need our furniture. So it’s win-win, since we’re not actually moving to WI (yet) – just going for the 10 months.
  4. Rachel is currently looking for work in Appleton, and is otherwise (of course) always looking for clients she can build/design websites for. You can contact me at helenboyd (at) myhusbandbetty (dot) com if you’re one of those potential clients.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

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TransOhio in 2 Days

I’m leaving today for Columbus, OH, where I’m speaking at the TransOhio Conference, & yes, I am traveling by train. Tons of people from our MHB boards are joining me, including my lovely wife. (“She said ‘wife’!”)

They closed the online registration yesterday, but they WILL be registering walk-ins at the conference, so even if you haven’t registered yet, you can still come. They’ve made it very reasonable – $30, $20 for students, and that comes with lunch. Students can go for $11 but with no lunch & no me. Basically, it’s a tiered system, allowing people as much conference access as possible. There’s a meet & greet on Friday, 8/14, AND a brunch on Sunday. (The day-of registrations are more expensive, and may not come with a guarantee that there will be room for you at lunch.)

So yes, make your plans to come while I’m on a train to Pittsburgh!

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Worse Than Janice Raymond

On a trans blog, during a conversation about Lady GaGa & her being supposedly intersex (information that I didn’t blog, because I don’t think it’s anyone’s goddamn business), I’ve been described as

boyd ain’t no ally, that’s for sure. she’s worse, in a way, than even radfems and the Raymond crowd – the latter are up front with their hatred of trans women. boyd, on the other hand, stabs trans women in the back

and

And yeah, Ms Boyd is a giant problem. Making money off trans women, setting herself up as an expert, and getting stuff so wrong so often.

and

Helen Boyd has some serious boundary and entitlement issues.

all of which is utterly fascinating to me. If anyone has all the money I’ve been making, please do give it back. In all seriousness, though, Betty’s and my finances are joint, & have been for more than a decade, so any money I’m making is helping Betty transition. Which is, you know, the worst thing any transphobic asshole could do – financially support someone who is transitioning. It’s evil, I tell you.

I am occasionally wrong; I’d be suspicious of anyone who claims they aren’t. That I disagree with some people within the trans community nearly goes without saying: if I found one person who agreed with every opinion or “fact” shared within the trans community, I’d stay well away from their confusion. The diversity of the trans communities is one of the things I like the best.

Anyway. All in a day’s work. That I was initially quoted as criticizing the hyperbolic style of argumentation employed by some trans people makes it exactly perfect that I should be called worse than the radfems and Raymond crowd, since it’s – um, hyperbolic.

I am, as others of my dissenters have discovered, very much open to criticism. That said, I will only do so if the person making the charges has a name, and a face, and a track record. I will not argue with sock or meat puppets, and I don’t abide name-calling.

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Getting Married

We’re with some friends today who are getting married, and with other friends, friends of friends, family of friends. It’s lovely to be around all these people celebrating the love & commitment of two fantastic people.

There are two poems that will be part of their ceremony below the break.

Continue reading “Getting Married”