Category: navel gazing

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Wishing You an Even-Tempered 2011!

A new day, a new year: I have so many resolutions to make – and probably plenty to break – it’s ridiculous. There’s no use in going into them, although I may try to do something I used to do: write out my top 3-5 changes I want to see, break those down into 12 components, and at the end of every month check the list to see if I’ve accomplished any of them. For example: if my resolution were “publish more” then I’d have a dozen smaller things on the list, like “get a short story published” or the like. As long as you make the lists when you’re in a mood that’s more pragmatic than euphoric, it works pretty well. You take the one you accomplished off the list & then paste the new, shorter list into the 1st day of the following month, & so on & so on. It’s good for more numerical goals, like weight loss or debt re-payment, too.

I for one would like to go on a month-long retreat somewhere, to rest and write and find some peace; my biggest challenge is often accepting what is instead of thinking about what was or what might be. Focusing on the what might be part of the equation is useful in terms of activism– but it can also cause you to overlook the good of the here & now.

Good riddance, 2010: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I have never had a year go so miserably and inexorably flat midway through before, and I’m hoping 2011, even if it isn’t brilliant, will be a little less uneven.

A very happy 2011 to you, my lovely readers, whomever you are: the emails and cards and comments you write me do more to keep me going than you might imagine.

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Busy Holiday Season

So for the first time in my life, I’m facing a huge holiday with no family and no old friends anywhere nearby, and it sucks.

First I’d like to apologize to anyone I’ve ever been around who wasn’t spending holidays with family when I was, as this week I’ve been awash in people telling me all about their plans – where they’re going, who’s coming in from how far away, what they’re eating, all of it. I’m sure I’ve done it myself because I was entirely clueless to what this is like. I’ve had many gracious invitations to join various festivities, too, but it doesn’t make being in a new place without my partner or any other family here any easier, really.

If you know anyone who doesn’t have anyone around, DO make plans with them around the holidays even if it’s not on the holiday itself. Ask them how they are. Let them talk. You won’t replace who they miss, but you might keep them sane, or even alive. All of us in the LGBT communities know family holidays are especially brutal – for many of us, the holidays are a reminder that our birth families don’t get it, or don’t accept us, or just don’t want our confusing identities & relationships getting in the way of their less complicated lives.

This year, then, I’m very thankful for a family who accepts me and her for who we are, because it’s easier to know I’m alone due to geography, not a lack of love, and I’m thankful too for the various new friends who have gone out of their way to find me something to do / somewhere to be this week.

For those of you who are without anyone, hold tight. Seasons change. But she’s got way better advice than I do…

… and she makes me thankful, even, for kind-hearted poets. If there’s anyone out there who would feel a lot better getting an email from me, let me know, & I’ll send one.

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Guest Author: The Tyranny of “Happily Ever After”

Kimberly Kael, a regular poster to our forums, wrote this recently & I thought it really stood repeating:

Here’s a question that has been bothering me lately and that I’ve been trying to put into words: does the social emphasis on happily ever after as the canonical goal for relationships do more harm than good?

Sometimes the notion of true love feels like the platonic ideals of male and female – it serves as an interesting point of reference but taken too seriously it becomes a source of frustration because none of us can really live up to the implied expectations. That’s not to say there isn’t merit in aspiring to a durable relationship. I’m sure it’s been reinforced in many ways. There are relationships that look perfect and effortless from the outside. There are times in our lives when we’ve had that kind of connection and we want to hang onto it forever.

Of course there are also good economic and emotional reasons to encourage stability by giving people an incentive not to split at the first sign of trouble. Indeed, I’ve never been in a rewarding relationship that didn’t involve working through rough spots. On the other hand, how many people fall into the trap of expecting love to be free of these kinds of challenges? I guess that’s a notion most of us take with a grain of salt by the time we get a little experience in balancing the needs of a partnership.

What’s more insidious is that society encourages us to make a lot of explicit or implied promises about the distant future that we simply may not be able to keep without making ourselves and everyone around us miserable. That sets unrealistic expectations for everyone involved, which evolve into a sense of entitlement: “Where’s my happily ever after?” It seems fundamentally implausible that so many relationships end in divorce and yet when people wind up there it seems to come as a complete surprise. They have no backup plan and only an incomplete set of life skills beyond those specialized for the role they played in the relationship.

At the root of it all is that unlike the male/female dichotomy there’s no spectrum implied by a single point. Where are the other archetypal relationships? Okay, so there’s the affair. The one-night stand. But is there anything else that doesn’t have a strong negative connotation?

I’ve personally been talking to an old friend about this idea a lot as she’s been unhappy recently & wondering if the source of her frustration was her relationship or the compromises it implies. That is, she wasn’t necessarily unhappy with her partner himself, but unhappy at the kind of compromises she’s made due to being in a relationship at all, with anyone. Her “pattern” – if she has one – is one of serial monogamy: relationships of several years that end when the compromise:satifaction ratio starts to fall short.

As someone who once was poly – although initially somewhat unwillingly & eventually quite happily – I’m not sure why we persist in believing that one person can be all that we need emotionally, sexually, romantically. We often expect someone (1) we have good sex with, (2) get all tingly around, (3) whose conversation & company we enjoy, and (4) with whom we can build a life, a home, a family. It’s kind of a lot, no? I remember many years ago, before meeting Betty, at feeling astonished I could manage even two of those with the same person in a short period of time — but over a lifetime? In speaking with more & more poly people, and perusing Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up, the way that people “use” poly in their lives seems endlessly variable & creative. Still, though, it generally means to people “having sex with whoever you want.” Which I know, poly folks, is not what it means at all – but that’s still the popular perception.

I know, for someone like me, no one really bats an eyebrow if I mention missing having a male husband. Betty & everyone else knows I intended to be in a relationship with a man. So while Betty & I are still happy as two peas in a pod, there are days when what I’ve lost, and what I miss, is pretty acute. I don’t suspect I will ever stop missing having a male husband, even if the missing grows less acute and less chronic over time. As someone who has always had strong emotional relationships with men – the adoptive “older brothers” I talked about in She’s Not the Man – I miss some kind of masculine energy in my life (and not just sexually, you big perverts). This stuff is gendered because I’m the partner of a person who transitioned from within our marriage, but it strikes me that there are about a million things that a person might miss, or need, over time.

Continue reading “Guest Author: The Tyranny of “Happily Ever After””

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Reifications and Binaries

By people who don’t know anything about trans, I’m often assumed to be trans myself. I like to joke that is the very rare trans woman who would cut her hair as short as I do. Most trans women with voices as deep as mine would figure out how to raise their pitch. But it’s these signs of my gender variance that cause people to think I’m trans – the signs of my own masculinity.

What surprises me often is when I clarify that I’m not – if and when I do, which isn’t often anymore – is when someone asks me if it bothers me when people assume I’m trans. It’s such an odd thing to ask an advocate: if I thought trans people were less than, why would I be doing this work? I remember being asked a similar question when I was assumed to be/asked if I was a dyke, which I also found baffling. What’s insulting about people thinking you’re a lesbian? What’s insulting about someone assuming you’re trans? Either you believe all our humanities are equal or they aren’t, right? Shoot, I feel more often like I’ve been assumed to be of sterner stuff than I am, because I haven’t struggled with the kind of discrimination lesbians or trans women face (even if my own gender variance has caused some in my own life).

I know I am far from More Radical Than Thou when I say I hate the term cis, but one of the reasons I hate it is because it reifies, in my opinion, that I was declared a gender that is (theoretically) in congruence with my gender presentation and that other women were not. In the same way that MTF reifies a woman’s former maleness, cis disappears my own masculinity in a way I find both insulting and problematic. The thing is, I am still most turned on by Hirschfeld’s Theory of Intermediaries, where he posits that “male” and “female,” “man” and “woman,” are only ideals – not to be aspired to, but ideals more like Plato’s Forms. That is, they’re ideas, which all of us express in different ways, none of us perfectly. He tosses out the idea of dimorphism – the binary – entirely, which, as Kate Bornstein and now Lisa Harney have noted, MTF & FTM reiterate.

That said, I do feel the need to point out that I do think cissexual privilege exists & is a problem. That’s kind of exactly what I’m talking about, really. Do keep in mind that I wound up a feminist when I realized people actually thought I was different/less than because I was a woman, as in: Really? Are you shitting me? Do I really have to prove my humanity? The idea was so entirely unbelievable to me; it never occurred to me that someone could be stupid enough to believe something like that, & I feel the same way about people who can’t see trans people’s obvious equality/humanity.

So I will continue to insist that recognizing difference between types of women is only important when it’s specifically important, and not otherwise. I am done with using “trans” in front of any person’s identity because goddamn if I want anyone putting “woman” or “female” in front of mine.

(I’m dedicating this post to my dad because it’s his 82nd birthday and, who, when we came out to him about Betty’s transness, said “Don’t let anyone treat you like a 2nd class citizen.” And well – yeah. Exactly.)

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Shrove Tuesday…

… might be better known as Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, to those of you who weren’t raised Catholic, but it’s today. While in a Taco Bell I saw a sign that said Great Taste During Lent which listed a bunch of their vegetarian options. I grew up in one of the most Catholic cities in the world, but I have never, ever seen a sign like that. I shouldn’t be too surprised in a town that still has a “Friday Fish Fry” tradition, but okay – I was surprised. Taco Bell: where Catholicism and Vegetarianism intersect.

Since I seem to have mostly given up meat – it’s been about two months now, even if I am far from a purist about it – I’m not sure what exactly I should give up for Lent. That I should give up *something* is a no-brainer. I don’t give up anything because I’m a practicing Catholic – despite my mother’s best wishes, I am an apostate – but flexing a little self-discipline muscle isn’t particularly bad for a person. I have until midnight to make up my mind: suggestions? Is it possible to give up a negative? As in, can I give up not writing?

In the meanwhile: HAPPY MARDI GRAS! (I am so jealous of my friends who made it down to NOLA in the past week! What a party.)

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Internalizing Name Changes

As most of you know by now, I was not christened Helen Boyd; it is not my legal name, although Helen is my legal middle name. But I’ve come to be known as Helen Boyd, & so when I arrived at Lawrence to teach for only a term, in the winter of 2008, I didn’t think twice about people calling me Helen. I was just ending a year of book tour where being Helen was a normal state of affairs.

Since then, however, we seem to have moved to this Wisconsin town, and the people who met me as Helen still call me Helen, & they introduce me to their friends & fellow faculty as Helen. The name plate on my door says Helen Boyd Kramer. Sometimes, in places where I regularly present a credit card, say at my salon, it’s a little jarring to be called Gail, and even more jarring when one of my friends who calls me Helen is with me, and yet it’s still odd to me that I’m not Gail.

So I’m wondering, trans folk & others who have changed your names, when do you internalize a name change? I find I call myself Gail when I’m talking to myself (and I assume I am (1) not the only one who talks to myself, and (2) not the only one who uses a name when I do).

Then I wonder if it matters much, since my name change has nothing to do with gender.

Where I think it matters is how it intersects with other aspects me that go unrecognized here – like my history of heterosexuality, for starters, and sometimes even my trans-partnerness (since it’s not like we’re out as a trans couple when we talk to our dry cleaners, say).

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Moving Thoughts Pt. 1

I’m going to be an Old Person for a moment, so bear with me, but I just went through a lifetime of cassette tapes – and yes, I am keeping some – ones that my artist friends made me, or ones that were particularly good compilations (especially if they have music I haven’t otherwise tracked down in another form yet), compilations used at parties – it seems I used to throw a lot of parties, go figure – and other rare & interesting things, like a tape of Yul Brynner singing Romany songs.

& What I was thinking, in choosing a bunch for one of my students who likes cassette tapes – he has an older car that plays them – is that Kids These Days won’t have this kind of physical detritus to part with painfully at some point in their adult lives. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a thing, & I wonder what that means for them. I feel similarly about vinyl (although I know that’s kind of hip again, apparently) — these were all Things of Love, fetishy tokens of friendship and a shared love of music. So what do the kids swap these days when they have a crush on someone? Playlists? Seems a cheap imitation, but I suppose love & friendship are still the same, & heartbreak too.

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Unlikely Luddites

This blog post about the editors of magazines being stubborn about not accepting electronic submissions wouldn’t be half so amusing if it weren’t about the “big three” sci fi magazines.

That’s not to say editors shouldn’t have their cranky prerogatives. They should, and generally they do. I’d be disappointed if, say, Lewis Lapham didn’t. Older people who knew more than the average 20 year old – or even the average 40 year old – can even dream of knowing are allowed some room.

But it’s still funny when when it’s the editors of Analog.

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Douglass

One of the partners on our MHB boards mentioned recently that she’d never apply for an LGBT scholarship, because she doesn’t identify as LGBT, and it reminded me that I never told the story about me & the LGBT Blogger Initiative Conference I went to.

It seems I am perplexing to people, & I felt a little bit like an odd duck while I was there. It came up because at some point, someone announced that grants might become available for LGBT bloggers, and a few people told me that they hoped I would get one. But someone also mentioned that they could see others have an issue with the fact that I’m not LGB or T. My standard response these days is – “I’m the Q that gets left off a lot.”

But still it’s an issue that has come up, & may come up even moreso that I’m thinking about going back to grad school. Will I choose, like the partner above, not to apply for any LGBT scholarships? As a sort of liminal queer, probably I wouldn’t, except that then there’s the whole issue of what I do & what I’d want to study – which is all about the LGBT, and the T in particular.

The other question I was asked, which I’ve been asked before, is why? Why the trans community? & To be honest, I just don’t know. I was charmed by my very first meetings with trans people, & continue to have a deep love for the trans community & for trans people. Aside from my Debsian sense of social justice, that is.

Tim McFeeley did a wonderful “short history of the LGBT movement” (which I was pleased to note I knew cold!) as a workhop that Sunday morning, and he closed with a quote by Frederick Douglass:

When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of women, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act.

That’s my answer & I’m sticking to it.