Douglas McKeown is the facilitator of the Queer Stories workshop – one of the results of which was the book Queer Stories for Boys. Doug has worked as a teacher, actor, writer, scenic designer, and a director of stage and screen; his low-budget sci-fi/horror movie The Deadly Spawn [1983], has been restored and released on DVD [2004]).
< one of Doug McKeown’s childhood costumes. For more photos, check the Queer Stories for Boys website.
1) With both Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica getting nominations all over the place, it’s like The Year for Mainstreaming LGBT Lives. Why now, do you think? How do you feel about straight actors getting all the good gay roles?
Well, exactly how many out gay actors are there in the upper echelons? I mean, considering that the answer to that has to be “precious few,†doesn’t one just want to cast the actor who best suits the character? Did McMurtry know or care about Heath Ledger’s sex life when he turned to Ossana during a screening of “Monster’s Ball†and whispered, “That’s our Ennis?†(Uh-oh, I’m answering with questions. Let me get my declaratives lined up.) As for why now, I have no idea. I could guess. It may be that people in this country in general (unconsciously?) have simply had it with the national bullshit of the last several years — in entertainment as well as politics — and are craving the strongest possible dose of truth and humanity (unconsciously?), especially if it shocks their systems. Like a bracing shower. Well, that may be wishful thinking. I really don’t know the answer.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Doug McKeown”
Heteronormativity
Much to my chagrin, Kiss of Athena discovered people were blogging against heteronormativity this past Saturday.
Better late than never, I guess.
You can read more about why at this blog, blac(k) academic.
Turn of the Century Tranny
The photo is of three Yale students, c. 1883, which I found courtesy of Staci’s blog, Passing Interest, where she notes that:
A Yale dean ruled that no member of the Yale Dramatic Association could impersonate a female on stage for more than two consecutive years ‘because continued impersonation tended to make men effeminate.'”
Slippery slope, indeed.
You can find more history of crossdressing at Yale at the Larry Kramer Initiative site. I recommend reading the whole of these archives of LGBT history at Yale, but if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, do at least check out the entry about two trans Yale alums.
Oops, They Did It Again…
More than a year ago now, SAMHSA asked a few therapists – including Reid Vanderbergh – to change the terminology of a workshop title – to a title that left off the LGBT altogether.
This year – as if to celebrate the anniversary of that fiasco – they’ve magically removed information geared toward LGBT people.
You can write Rep. Tammy Baldwin(D-Wis.), who has called for an investigation into the matter, to give her more reasons the LGBT information should be returned to the website. (Please don’t do so by coming off like a crazed loon, however.)
Received via Reid, via Smart Brief:
The federal government has removed information geared toward the LGBT population from its Substance Abuse & Mental Services Administration Web site. The move follows a letter to the government protesting the presence of that information, but the government says the information was scheduled to be removed anyway; Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., is calling for an investigation into the matter.
Interesting Comments
I’ve gotten some interesting comments to my post about belonging and thought more people should check them out.
To all you who responded:
Thanks all for very interesting insights & thoughts.
I have always been an ally of the LGBT – & felt welcome as one. (I was that person all the gay boys came out to after HS, & likewise a little later with lesbian friends.)
But my own sense of my LGBT-ness comes out of my own genderqueer qualities, and I wonder how trans partners who are more gender normative (& not otherwise gay, bi, or lesbian) might feel. To me, it’s all about creating safe spaces, and of course I’ll continue to do that.
On that note, the guys who date transwomen who identify as straight are *never* going to feel part of this community while we all gossip that they’re ‘really gay.’
< Jill and I right before the workshop on trans relationships at TIC.
We had a lot of great conversations with people up at TIC especially in the trans relationships workshop Jill Barkley & I hosted – about identity, compromise, sexuality, fetishization and respect. The one point that came up early was why non-trans people often are accused of being fetishizing or predatory for doing things that trans people might do and not be similarly accused – as in, if a trans person seeks another trans person as a partner, it’s understood as being a shared interest or experience, but if a non-trans person seeks a trans person as a partner, they are accused often of fetishizing transness.
I do value Betty’s transness because of my own gender stuff, but sometimes it feels like that wouldn’t “count.” It kind of reminds me of a story told by two professors I had (who had been married to each other for upward of 50 years), about when they met in the 1930s, when one of them was a Socialist and the other a Communist; their friends lay bets on how soon they would break up, since one was considered a “committed radical” the other only a “fellow traveler.”
I’ve also had people who’ve met me since the book or in my 20s “worry” that my own discovery of my gender stuff is somehow Betty’s fault. It isn’t, of course, and anyone who knew me when i was 20 or younger knows that.
The way these things interlap is of ongoing interest to me, and I welcome your further comments.
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”
Not Narnia
A reality TV show that featured a white, conservative, Christian town welcoming a gay family into their midst never saw the light of day.
I don’t think anyone should be surprised.
The Wrights – the gay family in question – have never gotten answers for why the show wasn’t broadcast, though they theorize that Disney, who are both the producers of the show and of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, might have pulled the show because they were simultaneously courting viewers for the Narnia movie.
Can I just say how much this makes me ill? I expect hypocrisy from television producers (and apologies upfront to any who aren’t full of shite) and I think anyone who doesn’t got hit with a naive stick. But mostly I’m tired of what people have made Narnia into – this behemoth of Christian Rightness.
Of course the people who produced it marketed it to Christians – it’s a family movie, there’s no cursing, nudity, and the morality works well within Christian morality. Lewis was of course a convert, against his own better judgement; his famous statement was that he became a Christian “kicking and screaming.” But the fact is he was a Christian, and while it’s highly debatable whether or not he intended to write an allegory – I’m of the camp that insists he didn’t, since he’s said himself that the stories started because he was simply havng a lot of dreams about lions – I’m very certain that seeing the Chronicles as simply Christian propaganda is missing so much of the point. And I mean that not just for the Christians and Disney producers whose hypocrisy pisses me off; I direct that as well to the kneejerk liberals who are demonizing the movie as if it represents all that is wrong with Christian Rightness.
It’s a little like faulting Nietzsche with the way fascists used his theory of the Ubermensch.
As I’ve said before, the gorgeousness of Narnia is not based in Lewis’ Christianity, but in his decency. In an era when we can’t even seem to like the French – the very same French who gave us the Statue of Liberty! – the story of Edmund seems a vital one for Christians and Americans to pay attention to. Sometimes allies are not allies; sometimes we have poked and teased and pissed off our allies so that they stop behaving like allies. And sometimes – even traitors can be redeemed.
The scene I was most pleased they left in – and most feared they would leave out – is the scene where Prof. Digory Kirke hoists Susan and Peter on their own illogical petard. If Lucy is generally truthful, and known not to be mad, then, he asserts: she must be telling the truth.
Imagine if the Christian viewers of Narnia heard that in respect to, say, homosexuality.
I like to believe that the real spirit of what Lewis put in those pages will be heard; maybe not by adults with ears closed by doctrine, but by the children who might see the movie and so pick up the books. There is so much more in the books, so much decency – and decency that is not easy to have, or express. Lewis’ decency – like Aslan’s – is all about admitting to yourself that you’ve been a prig and admitting when you did the shallow, selfish, show-offy thing instead of the right thing.
While it seems like the Narnia books might fulfill some dream of good propaganda by the Christian Right, a good book is never so predictable. As with any other good book, using it as propaganda will backfire; the real truth of a good story will have its day. After all, it’s not a tame book.
Still in all, my bet is that someone had something to say about a reality show which portrayed how a homosexual family found acceptance in a town that didn’t want to accept them. Blaming cynical advertising interests for such a cowardly decision feels good, but I’m not sure it’s the whole answer. And I for one want the whole answer, because it sickens me that the kind of crap on television can’t occasionally be offset by a show that actively created tolerance in its participants – and potentially, its viewers as well.
Curve Party!
To welcome new L Word cast member Daniela Sea – who’ll be playing an FTM love interest – Curve is throwing a party a huge party on January 13th. The proceeds will go to HRC, and Daniela Sea will be there signing authographs.
I wish we could go, but we can’t. But if you’re anywhere near SF, you should!
The Book of Daniel
Tomorrow night, one of my favorite actors, Aidan Quinn – of whom I’ve been a fan since way back, since Reckless, in fact, which my friend Julie and I used to watch with teenage lust – has finally gotten his own series, where he plays a minister who has a tendency to talk to Jesus and hits the prescription painkillers a little hard. It’s called The Book of Daniel.
He also has a gay son, a daughter, & an adopted Asian son. And a wife named Judith.
But two networks – one in Indiana and the other in Arkansas – are refusing to air it.
The saddest of it all is that the viewers in Indiana will be forced to watch re-runs of the show Simon Birch, instead, which is too bad, as Aidan Quinn has aged damned well. (I walked right by him in SoHo once, with my friend Brian, who swears I had a spontaneous orgasm as a result. I might have, I don’t know, but I do remember that I couldn’t breathe very well for a while after.)
Thanks to GAY (goodasyou.org) for the story, and thanks to ITL for doing a segment on www.goodasyou.org.
Did I forget to mention that the people who got those two networks to boycott the show haven’t even seen it? Right, they haven’t.
Aidan Quinn, I have to add, also played a gay man dying of AIDS, in the move An Early Frost, from way back in 1985, long before it was fashionable for straight actors to play gay characters.
Two Books
I was just reading some of Curve magazine book reviews, and came upon a couple of books I thought people here might be interesting to people here.
Here’s one about this nation’s “founding feminists,” called Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists.
(Note that she uses the correct term, suffragists, and not the derogatory ‘suffragettes’, in her title.)
For you musicheads, there’s one about the rise of queer rock via Homocore called Homocore: The Loud and Raucous Rise of Queer Rock.