As if timed exactly to make me nuts, there will be a film festival that intersects gender and South Asia. Really, I’m not kidding. I’m flabbergasted at how unfair this is.
The press release is below the break.
Barney Frank Rebuts Wingnut
It’s the answer we all should be giving in response to these people: yes, they have the right to speak, but no, we have no reason to take them seriously. It’s crackpottery of the 1st order, so ENOUGH.
Honestly, we need to get the media to start implementing Godwin’s Law – because once anyone is compared to Hitler, the conversation’s already over.
John Hughes Cuts Out
The creators of the 80s seem to be dying in packs. The most recent news is that John Hughes, the director, died at 59 – which for anyone is far too young. But this is the guy who directed The Breakfast Club and Some Kind of Wonderful and Weird Science and – everyone bow their head respectfully – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is, to my mind, still one of the best movies ever made.
The other ones pissed me off at the time, bringing all the cool music I loved – Echo, Oingo Boingo, etc. – to my more mainstream friends. In retrospect, it’s probably at least partly because of these movies that that music has also survived. His teenagers were unlikely, spoiled and rich, and not much like anyone I knew, but still they were there, flashing a kind of iconic power at people who knew me – so much so that my sister always said I reminded her of the girl in Some Kind of Wonderful, while honestly, I always felt a lot more like Ally Sheedy’s character in The Breakfast Club.
Watch it all flash before your eyes:
(video via Andrew Sullivan)
& People wonder why I’m feeling old these days, but you know, Sting’s turning 57 this year.
From a Child of a Trans Parent
This is B.’s reaction to the Chloe Prince documentary that was on the other night. Since I’m a partner, & have a soapbox from which to talk about my reaction as a partner, I thought I’d open my blog to the child of a trans parent on her feelings.
She’s 15, and her father, now female, transitioned about five years ago. She was about the same age as Prince’s eldest when she as told of her father’s imminent transition.
At first all I really felt was sadness for the children and the wife. The poor woman had to watch her spouse say on TV that she thought she might not have transitioned if she had stayed with her ex-girlfriend, something that must have felt awful and been humiliating to watch. I was shocked that the children’s reaction to the fact that their father was going to become a woman had been recorded in the first place, let alone aired on TV. As the child of a transgendered person I would be horrified if my initial reaction was shown to people all over who I didn’t even know. It’s an incredibly private moment that the rest of the world doesn’t have any business in watching.
As the show progressed I started to feel increasingly angry, and not just because she seemed to me a parody of a woman, intent on acting like a stereotype of how a woman “should be” and appearing very feminine, or because despite this femininity she still did all the “masculine” chores around the house, and we got to see pictures of her working with tools and at her job (I would have expected someone who had undergone a male to female transition to not be sexist).
I wanted to punch a hole in the wall every time it was mentioned that the children had “lost” a father. I never lost my father, just because she’s a woman doesn’t make any difference to the fact that she is my father. A sex change operation doesn’t change that. Chloe had no right to be upset about being missed out on the mother’s day photo- it was for mother’s day, not father’s day. Those children are going to have a hell of a time growing up now, and will have to deal with people they don’t know recognizing them and even judging for something they didn’t even do.
Thanks very much B. for sharing your thoughts with us. I would love to read comments from other trans people with kids, if their kids watched, what they thought.
Alcohol Poisoning
Sadly, it was a lot of the same old same old: cursory interest in parent, partner, & children. The kids were adorable. The wife was determined. The father was exhausted.
- Multiple shots and references to surgery, instead.
- Trans woman discovers surprising, sudden interest in men.
- Expresses longing to be mother while wife is pregnant.
- Voiceover talking about wife meeting her husband for the first time “as a woman” post Thailand, even though the husband had been living in female gender role for a year as per SOC.
Atypical trans documentary bits?
- Added insult to injury for wife, while trans woman wonders – fleetingly – if she’s married her ex-girlriend if she’d have needed to transition. Fleetingly, stressed by Prince, but goddamn do wives of trans women everywhere hate her for that one. Yeah, thanks, it’s our fault you needed to transition. Do you really think we don’t wish, sometimes, that you’d married your ex-girlfriend, too?!
- Newly female husband going up telephone pole in gear
- ” ” ” mowing lawn with reference to still “wearing the pants”
- ‘out of the mouths of babes’ testimony that natal female still does all the parenting and housework
- bee stings lead to discovering of IS condition which justifies transition. (the years of crossdressing certainly don’t count for shit, right?)
So yeah, I’m drunk.You?
They all seem like reasonably nice people. I hate documentaries about teh trans. Hate ’em. I hate the way our lives our distilled into reverse camera angles and earnest questions across kitchen tables. I hate how the beauty of a trans woman admitting that she still sees her wife the way “he” did is degraded by the “sudden interest” in men. I hate the sad, confused, tendentious quality of trans women’s wives who are obviously overwhelmed with the whole business and still in love with their spouses.
* sigh*
Having been someone who has done shite like this, my only excuse is: it was in my contract. Not that that’s much of an excuse, but you do usually have a clause saying that you will in good faith blah blah blah consent to blah blah blah that will help sell the book. I’m not sure there’s any other reason to do these things anymore, but I hope, for Rene’s sake, & the boys’ sake, & the dad’s & Chloe’s, that this one will be forgotten when it’s Sweeps Week next year or in five years. Not because it’s bad, but because it isn’t. There are things I said and wrote at the time of My Husband Betty that embarass me now, as well as plenty that I”m still happy about. But I wrote a book, so when I”m lucky, you can see its brown spine in the LGBT section of bookstores these days. But a show like this is going to be dredged up at 3am for a few years, and every once too often, Rene and Chloe and her boys and dad will be online at the supermarket / drugstore / in the waiting room / at the doctor’s office / showing up for parent teacher night when someone they’ve never met couldn’t sleep and saw them on the TeeVee. And then, well, then is when you wish you could change your name and move to Timbuktu.
My best to all of them. Can we stop making these now?
Trans Documentary Drinking Game
In light of the documentary about Chloe Prince that will air tomorrow night, I thought we should all be prepared for what looks like it’s going to be a doozy of a predictable documentary.
So, the rules, such as they are, for watching a trans documentary:
- Putting on makeup. Two drinks for reverse camera shot into mirror.
- Doing anything better done in jeans and sneakers in heels and a skirt. Examples: cleaning the house, shoveling the sidewalk, yard work, walking the dog.
- Before picture shown. Two drinks for picture in stereotypical male mode (sports team, facial hair, military, wedding tux)
- Camera shot putting on or taking off a bra.
- Photo of any wig, breast form, padding, etc.
- Surprise disclosure, when a trans woman is introduced and then partway through the piece, her secret is revealed.
- Camera focus on masculine body parts: hands, feet, Adam’s apple, height, etc.
- Any reference to genital surgery that refers to “becoming a woman” or “finally a woman”
- Minor chords played softly on a piano
- talk show host saying “you go girl”
- any discussion of plumbing or electricity
- black and white childhood shots, MTF with cap gun and cowboy hat, FTM as ballerina.
- Trans woman saying, “I am not a crossdresser. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
- Trans woman clutching large teddy bear in hospital bed.
- Birthday balloons after surgery.
- Trans woman with new boyfriend (after shot of tearful ex-wife).
- Trans woman sitting in chair in above-the-knee skirt, posed so you can see what great gams she has.
- Patient wheeled off to surgery …
- … lingering shot of the hospital bed with the teddy bear (or wife) left behind.
- Shot of protaganist sitting at the computer keyboard, looking at a trans support website or surgeon’s website….
- Any helping professional teaching deportment
- Camera in the operating room – just drink the whole bottle
- Any and all deployments of soft focus = 1 shot
- Close up of dotted lines in magic marker on pale fleshy body parts = 1 shot
- Earnest surgeon describes his motivation as “to help [girlname] become the woman she’s always really felt herself to be” = 3 shots
- Before picture with extreme facial hair – 1 shot
- Before picture in uniform – Military, Football, etc… – 2 shots
- Video from hair removal session : Laser – 1 shot, electrolysis – 2 shots
- Before picture – Last time she wore a dress (F2M) – 1 shots
- Breast binding – 2 shots
- Taking Hormones – Self-injecting -3 shots, orals – 1 shot
- Did anyone mention an arduous and lonely childhood?
- Meeting the school bully as “the new me” at the High School reunion?
- Looking at the old picture of self and saying something to the effect of “he was a nice guy….” or “Ken was a lot of fun, but his time is over. It’s Ginger’s turn now!”
- Trans woman claiming to have IS chromosomal pattern, an affinity for washing dishes, a sudden dislike of sports, etc.
Believe it or not, these are not the most snarky suggestions by some of our mHB board members. Also remember: there are quite a few people who hang out on our boards who have done this kind of media work, including me & Betty, of course, but also Jenny Boylan, amongst others. We need to laugh at ourselves as much as we laugh at the inanity of it all.
Twelve-Steppers should find their own version, of course. Maybe those ice cream poppers? But the point is to feel as physically ill by the end as the drinking crowd.
(Thanks and love to Gwen Smith who wrote her own version of this back in 2005 and to anyone else who has posted their version of this game.)
Safe (Virtual) Space
Yes, I am on a blogging kick.
GLAAD has now started a campaign to deal with homophobia in virtual spaces.
Groovoi.
Trans Salon
In today’s Salon, a nice piece about the failure of Thomas Beattie, and another about the romantic failure of Jennifer Finny Boylan.
Mara Keisling, quoted in the first piece:
Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, resents the way that the Thomas Beatie flap has overshadowed more important developments. “The media hasn’t gotten a message yet that they ought to get a life,” she snaps. Last week, Congress held its first-ever hearing on discrimination against transgender employees, and on June 17, the American Medical Association passed a resolution stating that it “supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender identity disorder,” but these items have received nowhere near Beatie’s media attention.
& Boylan, quoted in the second:
The women I knew, for their part, liked the fact that I had a feminine streak, that I seemed to be sensitive and caring, that I didn’t know the names of any NFL teams, that I could make a nice risotto. A lot of straight women love a female sensibility in a man, an enthusiasm that goes right up to, but unfortunately does not quite include, his being an actual woman.
The romances didn’t last, of course. Because, let’s face it: I was keeping the basic fact of myself camouflaged. How are you supposed to fall in love when you’re so frequently lying?
Iran’s Revolutionary Women
Roger Cohen followed up his column mentioning the women of Iran with a column about them entirely:
A friend told me he no longer recognizes his wife. She’d been of the reluctantly acquiescent school. Now, “She’s a revolutionary.†I followed as she led us up onto the roof. The “death to the dictator†that surged from her into the night was of rare ferocity.
Very much worth reading – go check it out.
Colbert Report’s “Stonewalling”
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Stonewalling | ||||
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(I got myself in trouble a long time ago for writing a short story about a lesbian teenager who went to her first support meeting at The Gay Center & who found her voice silenced by the voices of the young men around her. I called it “Stonwalled” and my gay but closeted writing professor was not happy with me about it.)
(h/t to Lena Dahlstrom)