Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
tv shows, magazine articles, movies
Today The Jeff Probst show is running a repeat about a couple who stayed together through transition; the episode got the show nominated for a GLAAD Media Award, too. You can look up where it might be airing near you today here.
(To be honest, we were called to do this one and both of us just couldn’t imagine doing anything like that again. Or at least for now.)
In all seriousness, this is why I went to the GLAAD Media Awards this year: their president announced that they will no longer use the actual words of the acronym because it doesn’t represent all the groups they are working for. They are just GLAAD now – the LGBT media advocacy organization.
Cool beans.
And can I just repeat for the 8 millionth time that I love Janet Mock? Mel Wymore was on the Melissa Harris Perry show, too, when they made this announcement, and I was happy to get to meet him that night as well – he’s the guy who is running for City Council on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a hotly contested race.
Mostly, though, I have watched as GLAAD became more hip to trans issues over the past few years, and I’ve been happy to see it. So congrats to them and their name change, of course. And a word of advice? Trans community politics change fast, so keep up.
What a terrifically sad story: Lucy Meadows transitions and is supported by her school and community but then excoriated and hounded by the press because of her transition.
She has since committed suicide, it’s reported.
This has to stop. There’s a petition to get the journalist fired who said all this crap about her – regendering her with male pronouns like the class act he is – and I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not but something’s got to give. I won’t like his hateful, transphobic screed.
She didn’t deserve this.
It’s especially sad to read this after just having attended the GLAAD Media Awards – which covers only the US but which has renewed its mission for trans people and coverage. But in the UK, do check out Trans Media Watch.
I suppose I can say “we knew her when” as Allyson was a member of our community forums for a long while.
To me, these are the standout pieces, but do go listen to the whole thing:
” In our society, and in all the groups and subgroups and sub-subgroups that comprise it, we treat inclusion as a good, a commodity. The work we do to secure this good for ourselves is conformity. It’s true, isn’t it? We perform a labor – we wear a particular kind of clothes, we speak in a particular way, we show interest in a particular set of things, we adhere to the norms of a particular group – and we’re rewarded by that group with included status. When we do the work of conforming, it’s like we’re buying inclusion; when we require others to conform in order to be included, we sell it. Are you with me? This takes place in a particularly transparent way among children and youth in traditional educational settings — think cliques — but we all do it. Our methods just become more sophisticated and more subtle as we mature.
And so we create a market, where buyers and sellers of inclusion come together to trade and the forces of supply and demand affect costs. In the social inclusion marketplace, a person’s ability to gain entry into a group is limited by the price she’s able and willing to pay, the norms she can and will adhere to. For some, those whose natural inclinations and disposition line up with the group’s norms, it’s literally a small price to pay. They receive the good of inclusion, and their need for belongingness is met, simply by virtue of who they are, like a privilege. But what of everyone else?”
and this:
” … we teach the natural conformers that norming others into submission and sameness is an ethical practice that brings about a common good. In fact, we teach that homogeneity is a common good, contrary to our message of respect for diversity and difference. We instruct non-conformers in the internalization of oppression, and everyone else to become oppressors themselves … “
And I’m so pleased to see her doing this kind of work, and doing it so well.
You’ve probably seen it already, but Jodie Foster burned the house down last night at the Golden Globes by coming out. She had, really, already, back in 2007, and before that – well, anyone who cared has known for a long, long while.
But she was under tremendous pressure to come out for a very long time. She’s been mocked, criticized, and accused of being self-hating because she didn’t come out in a big public way. But she has been out to her friends and family – and, as I said, everyone else pretty much knew too. She’s been raising two children with her (now former) partner for the past two decades.
And while this coming out has also been criticized – some people are never happy – I thought she was fucking amazing & actually broke the goddamn rules and told everyone to go fuck themselves. & She did it totally seriously, without conceding anything emotionally. Unbelievable strength is what I saw, wrapped in barbs and spoken through pounds of fear.
While people concede the whole “but she’s an actor, she doesn’t get a private life” in some conjunction with the whole Hinckley Jr. trauma – I can’t imagine she experienced it as anything less than that – I’ve chosen a pretty non-private life too, and either you get to do what you want to do or you don’t. & To do some things, you don’t get to be private. So is that really a choice? I guess. But that doesn’t make it easier, to be honest.
The rage in her speech I understand entirely. Her friendship with Mel Gibson is utterly baffling – except for this: she probably understands better than most what it’s like to be so publicly & thoroughly hated for being angry and unpopular. I’ve rewatched this clip about half a dozen times, & I am still struck by the awesome amount of gratitude she expresses – that is in her voice, and her face, and her body – and that barely keeps in check the disgust and frustration with feeling forced to say something publicly.
Anyway, there was just something about this that struck a nerve – something that resonated with what Iggy Pop had to say about turning 50, something that I am beginning to understand deep in my bone marrow. Something in me has changed, too, hardened with anger, exhausted with pettiness while simultaneously overwhelmed by how deeply I can still feel. I am pretty sure this is not something I would have understood when I was younger or at a different time in my life, but I do now.
Thank you, Ms. Foster, for being unpleasant, hard as nails, and inimitably gracious and full of as much integrity as you could be.
The movie Kinky Boots is being made into a musical: music by Cyndi Lauper, book by Harvey Fierstein, direction & choreography by Jerry Mitchell.
It opens in Chicago in October, then in New York, on Broadway, in April 2013.
Oh, you now I love this:
What I don’t like is that apparently American audiences have been deemed unready (unworthy?) as it’s not being shown here.
(h/t to the irreplaceable Diane Frank)
Nate Jones has done a nice photo essay on “what if all Olympic sports were photographed like women’s beach volleyball?” which makes the point very, very clear. (& Some of you out there will be all for this turn of affairs. Honestly, that swimmer is – wow. It explains why they’ve gone through more than 100k condoms in the Olympic Village. If everyone looks like that, well, DAMN.)
The people who made the documentary Two Spirits – about the Native American tradition of recognition of the kind of people we call LGBTQ – are trying to get more copies of the movie into schools and libraries across the country. Why?
According to the Youth Suicide Prevention Program (YSPP), gay teens are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. And Native American youths have the highest rates of suicide among all ethnic groups.
A cool exhibit of photographs of the trans women of 1960s Paris starts today at the ICP.
It’s open until September 2. I hope I make it. I’m glad Christer Stromholm took them.