How cool is this? A movie about an undefeated girls’ soccer team that ends up playing the boys.
Gendery Blogs
It may be an advertising hook, but this list of gender-y blogs is pretty thorough, covering feminist issues, LGBT issues, and even folks like me.
Transgender Workplace made it, as did other sites I contribute to, like Trans Group Blog and Invert(e), but I’m especially happy to see Sugarbutch rounding out the list at 100.
To the Femmes
As a little Christmas present to my lovely wife, and to all of you lovely femmes out there, I thought I’d post this lovely piece I found about a month ago & have been meaning to link to.
= and =
Does anyone else find it odd that Valkyrie comes out tomorrow? I mean, a movie about Hitler on the same day that all the Jewish folks go to the movies? Okay, it’s about killing Hitler, but still.
= and =
Merry Christmas Eve!
Girl Reader
From an article in the December 2008 Atlantic Monthly about why teen girls love vampires:
The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life – one that she slips inot during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice pasat her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs – to be undisturbed while she works out the big quetions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others – are met precisely by the act of reading.
I don’t agree with the gendered conclusion she comes to, but I thought it was a nice description of reading, especially of reading novels, especially when you’re a child or young teenager. At least it described me somewhat, right down to the passé composé (which I did manage to pick up, eventually).
I remember reading a theory once that young female readers figure out how to masturbate sooner than their peers, exactly because they’re used to & look forward to time alone.
Tomboys
How exciting is this? A book called Tomboys
Random page quotes:
“The link between childhood tomboyism and adult homosexuality might seem to have eradicated this code of conduct from American literature and culture, but the late 1950s and the decade of the 1960s actually witness the release of a considerable number of tomboy-themed novels and films.”
I suppose this is what makes me a freak, but I’m going to devour this one. Yay! Tomboys!
Jose O. Sucuzhanay
I mentioned, in She’s Not the Man I Married, that someone may not be gendered in American way when I wrote about looking around at people on the subway. Tonight I read, in the NYT, that a young Ecuadorean man and his brother were walking home from a night out at a bar with their arms around each other. A group of thugs pulled up in an SUV, yelled slurs about them being Hispanic and about them being gay, and only left when one of the brothers said he would call the cops on his cellphone. The other brother – Jose O. Sucuzhanay – died on Friday night in the hospital.
As GenderPAC regularly points out, anti-gay violence isn’t just a problem for gay people. Anyone who is presumed to be gay, for whatever reason, can be a target. And in this case, the brothers showed affection in ways that aren’t common here in the US – even if that kind of affection is very common between men in other counties – it caused these bigots to assume they were gay men.
That’s about gender: what kinds of affection are appropriate between men, which aren’t.
I’m just so sickened and sad reading about this. For this year and for many years to come, this family will remember this violent, senseless death and this loss right before Christmas.
(h/t to kiri for posting this story in our forums)
Muxe
The NYT did an article about the Oaxacan tradition of recognizing male-bodied people who grow up to live and fulfill a female role. What’s interesting to me is that a few people on our boards objected to the one time that one of the muxe was referred to as “he,” which started an interesting conversation about cultural imperialism, effectively.
- That is, can we tell a mother of a muxe that she is wrong for using the “he” pronoun for her child?
- Do we know that a muxe would find that problematic?
- Do we even know that someone muxe would identify as what we think of as trans?
I don’t think we can know any of that, but I do know that I’ve had enough people tell me I can’t call Betty my husband to object to anyone saying they know for sure what pronouns to use. An interview with a muxe that appeared in a gay magazine of Argentina (English translation) helps explain: he uses he for himself but does explain he doesn’t speak for all muxe, too.
Interestingly, perhaps, someone at the LGBT Blogger event asked me & Autumn about all the “correct” language issues within the trans, & we both kind of rolled our eyes. She points them to GLAAD’s usage guidelines, & I said he’d never make every trans person happy but to ask the person, if possible, or to ask others who might know. (I also mentioned that being upfront about feeling ignorant was entirely acceptable, & might defuse a lot of tempers.)
We didn’t quite come to a conclusion, but one of our frequent posters ended on this note:
“Trying to overlay one’s cultural understanding, whether consciously or not, over those of another is risky at best.”
Which is an excellent rule of thumb.
70 Under 30
’50 Under 30′ Youth Hate Crimes Report Re-Issued: Almost 20 New Victims; Re-Titled ’70 Under 30″
WASHINGTON (December 4, 2008) — The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition’s 2006 hate crimes report, “50 Under 30: Masculinity & The War Against America’s Youth” has been updated and re-issued. Because of the nearly 20 new murders, the new title has been changed to “70 Under 30.”
Said GenderPAC Executive Director Riki Wilchins, “It’s sad to see so many new murders so quickly. We had hoped to only need to update this report every few years or so, but the pace of violence has surpassed our expectations.”
The report highlights the continuing vulnerability to assault that individuals face if they are young, of color and gender non-conforming. It also underscores the limited resources for safety and support many of them have.
Écriture Masculin?
The webstie the GenderAnalyzer proposes to know the gender of your blog. Or its author, I assume.
(en)gender is apparently 67% male, and apparently it’s wrong about 47% of the time, which is probably not a whole lot better than just guessing.
I wonder if it would get Hélène Cixous‘ blog right.
Maddow Style
Did anyone else notice that Rachel Maddow seemed “poofier” tonight? Maybe it was just her hair. Maybe it was an accident. It’s not so different than how she usually looks, but different enough that I noticed. And was distracted by it.
Please, MSNBC, don’t make her over into a fembot, not when she can look like this. Which jeez louise, even I find hot hot hot. Personally, I love that she makes all the women on TV look kind of overdone with the big hair and big jewelry and pounds of makeup. It’s like she’s introduced a new gender to television, and it’s about time someone did!
& Here’s an article from New York magazine about her, if you can’t get enough!