Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Finalists for the 2005 Lambda Literary Awards (alphabetical by category):
Transgender/GenderQueer
Choir Boy by Charlie Anders (Soft Skull Press)
In a Queer Time and Place by Judith Halberstam (NYU Press)
Deliver Me from Nowhere by Tennessee Jones (Soft Skull Press)
Just Add Hormones by Matt Kailey (Beacon Press)
The Riddle of Gender by Deborah Rudacille (Pantheon)
Since October 11th is Coming Out Day, the whole of the month has become Queer Awareness Month, and as it turns out, Columbia University will be hosting a bunch of events – and I’ll be speaking on Monday, October 9th, as one of them.
You can always find my upcoming appearances on my author website, of course.
Santorum is for the rights of LGBT Americans, so much so he’ll sign a statement attesting to the fact.
But, um, wait a second. He might need to re-think that one. Someone might not vote for him if he supports the queers. Checks with aides.
Um, right: constituents are not for the queers: Santorum takes it all back.
I was researching some issues tonight concerning journalism and the proper use of pronouns and discovered that the NLGJA (National Lesbian & Gay Journalists’ Association) have a Rapid Response Task Force whose job it is to target any form of media that’s getting a story wrong about LGBT people.
From their site:
NLGJA’s members and staff work daily with our colleagues in the news industry to fulfill the organization’s mission of fair and accurate coverage. Sometimes, though, a more targeted response is required to promote greater understanding about how to fairly and accurately cover the LGBT community.
NLGJA’s answer to this is the Rapid Response Task Force. This panel of working journalists from mainstream and LGBT media answers complaints about reporting seen as unfair and/or inaccurate by readers, viewers, listeners and our peer journalists around the country. Since its inception, the Rapid Response Task Force has not only informed countless newsrooms about appropriate terminology and the appearance of bias, but has also used these contacts to spread awareness about issues facing the LGBT community.
And they encourage you to submit stories that you feel included unfair or inaccurate coverage. So you can do something besides gripe on the message boards!
You can catch the most interesting things on late night PBS; tonight at 4am was an hour-long tribute to Oscar Wilde in honor of his 150th birthday. Various actors and writers and dancers paid him tribute by reading his lines and wishing him a happy birthday. The very last was Jefferson Mays (the actor who played all the characters in Doug Wright’s “I Am My Own Wife,” the story of Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf) who described Wilde as “the most elegant subversive the world has ever seen.”
Just a reminder to check out your local PBS schedule during June. Our local PBS channel has been showing some great shows for Pride Month: things like back to back episodes of In The Life, a celebration for Oscar Wilde’s birthday, a great little documentary about Queerspawn (the children of LGBT parents, & in particular about Family Week in P-Town), a profile of Audre Lorde. Especially check out the late night programming; tonight at least it was all programming about LGBT folks. Screaming Queens, Susan Stryker’s documentary about the Compton Cafeteria Riots, is on the 30th.
A couple of nights ago I went to see Rufus Wainwright perform Judy Garland’s 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall — at Carnegie Hall. For whatever reason I was kind of dreading going; I don’t know why, but my best guess is that the show just got too much hype beforehand. Betty opted out of going pretty early, so my very good friend and downstairs neighbor (who was a friend long before moving in downstairs) came with me. He’s both a Rufus and Judy fan. We were seated quite far away from Sarah Jessica Parker, but quite close to Justin Bond, which seemed quite a propos.
I may have been one of the only 100% Rufus fans there; I’d never heard the 1961 concert, which I suppose makes me a very bad faghag indeed. In the weeks leading up to it, I thought about listening, but decided not to. I would probably be one of the few who wouldn’t be comparing it to the original, and I kind of liked that.
Rufus has one hell of a singing voice. The songs where he could belt them out I love especially. In fact, I’ve been wanting him to do a recording of standards, because I love so many of those old songs and I love his voice. Finally, he’s taken my advice.
In a Time Out interview, he mentioned how singing “The Trolly Song” from Meet Me In St. Louis would probably be that gayest onstage moment of his life. Oh, and it was!
Clang, clang, clang went the trolley
Ding, ding, ding went the bell
Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings
– as we started for Huntington Dell.
I didn’t see it so much as a gay seance (as the TONY journalist put it) but almost like a finishing touch to an era of gay awareness, and hopefully the beginning of a new one. As my friend said, on our way home, “The next generation doesn’t need Judy the way we did,” and while I think he’s right, I also think it’s a shame. We wondered too if there were as many gay men there that night in ’61 as there were tonight, and then wondered if maybe the only difference might have been that more of them are known to be gay now.
I’m glad at least that Rufus will be around to introduce this new generation of gay men to these songs he grew up singing, because some of them are not only touching, but sexy, and triumphant – and just remarkably pretty melodies with perfect lyrics. From what I hear, the event was filmed, so I expect both a movie version of the concert (probably with footage from both performances) and a CD of the music. Hopefully, anyway.
Other reviews can be found in my Rufus Wainwright thread on the boards.
Today’s the day we blog for LGBT families!
Betty and I have had the good historical luck to be able to be legally married, but most LGBT families don’t have that right yet. Ironically, it was a lesbian friend who got so angry with me that I was taking part in an institution that she couldn’t that made me even more sure I had to have the legal rights that come with marriage: hospital visitation rights and decisions about all sorts of important life & death issues. The default of course would be family/parents, and I had no doubt that Betty’s folks would make unfortunate choices if they had to be made.
Like not recognizing her femininity, or her multiple selves, or her queerness.
The poor family of a transwomen who was murdered in Chicago have had to deal with that from the press, & the courts; but imagine how heart-breaking and disrespectful it would be if a partner didn’t have the right to insist on her partner’s chosen name and gender. It’s more than insult added to injury; it’s salt in a wound.
I’ve come to believe that it’s more important for LGBT people to have the legal rights afforded to heterosexual folks, because heterosexual relationships are already socially and culturally recognized; since LGBT relationships are just becoming visible, they especially need the legal recognition. I know that I am often “disappeared” as Betty’s partner whether she’s read as male (in which case “he” is assumed to be gay) or female (in which case she’s “too femme” to be read as a lesbian). That is, there’s too much misinformation and outright ignorance out there for LGBT couples to count on a kind soul or an educated person to give them the access and power they should have as a partner, but that’s what we have to depend on without legal rights.
Please support whatever local efforts to get LGBT people that right. It’s better for the couples, it’s better for the kids; it’s better for the whole of society.
Here’s a list of participating blogs, too.
Apparently our current pope – who I prefer to call Pope Maledict – has called LGBT relationships “weak love.”
Sometimes I wish I could take people and shake them, or – as Jim Johnson of Straight, Not Narrow points out: to tell them to shut up when they don’t know what they’re talking about.
I could have never explained to anyone before Betty started presenting as female what it’s like to live in the world as an LGBT couple, and I thought I knew. I really did. Faghag for years, lesbian hangabout for years – but really, I didn’t know. Weak is not the word for it.
There is some good news, though – the religious left is on the rise. (Where have you guys been?)
Mombian has had the clever idea to start an LGBT Families Day, and I wanted people to know about it before it came and went.
On June 1st, blog about your LGBT family, or blog about why LGBT families rock, or why they should have more legal rights, or whatever pertains to the subject that you need to say.
HRC has it up on their site, too.
I’d also like to point out our own little clearinghouse of information for parents who are trans.
You can get more information at Mombian’s blog post about it, and do make sure they know you’re in on it!