Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Lawrence King was killed in 2008 and Taylor Mac performed this piece that same year – the very first year I taught Transgender Lives at Lawrence. Ever since then I’ve shown this video, but somehow failed to put it here.
I love this piece so much, and it’s so good to see Taylor Mac getting credit from the likes of PBS. He’s a very old friend of ours who acted with Betty in an era that seems like a lifetime or two ago now.
Imagine 59 years together! I can’t. I’m not sure they can, either, but my parents have been married that long. Here’s a couple of tracks that remind me of them; “The A Train” because that’s my fad’s favorite music. Danny Kaye for multiple reasons: he & my dad went to the same high school, and my mom loves them both.
They were both raised in Brooklyn, so when I moved back, it was like home-coming. Now, like good retired NYers, they live in Florida.
There is too much to say, to feel, to think. I cried through the President’s announcement the other day – tears of relief, not joy or sadness. But I am most happy for the people who might be able to get out from under the evil that Bin Laden was:
Something similar was on the minds of residents in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, home to the city’s Little Pakistan. A group of men at a halal butcher shop called Bin Laden’s death a blessing. In the office of a Muslim community group, advocates handed out celebratory sweets. In a kebab restaurant, an Afghan waitress said she hoped people would finally stop linking her people with terrorism.
Indeed, the neighborhood was alive with hope on Monday that the terrorist’s removal would mark a new beginning for Muslims in New York, many of whom have felt under suspicion since the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Thank God he’s gone — it’s good news for the whole world,” said Ahmad Sajjad, the owner of a grocery store where men gathered to discuss the news. “It’s finished. Now we can go back to 2000.”
But Mian Zain, a customer, was less sanguine. “Someone will take over for him,” he said. “The game is not over.”
Mohammad Razvi, executive director of the Council of Peoples Organizations, a Muslim advocacy group, cloaked his building on Coney Island Avenue with a two-story American flag on Monday. “It’s a celebration for everyone,” he said. “This guy had nothing to do with Islam.”
At the Islamic Cultural Center on East 96th Street in Manhattan, the imam, Shamsi Ali, agreed. He likened Bin Laden to a cancer growing in the body of the Muslim community that had finally been cut out.
“We really applaud the efforts of the U.S. government,” he said. “Hopefully this will be the start of Muslim communities living in tranquillity and peace.”
At the largely Afghan Hazrat Abubakr Mosque in Flushing, Queens, celebrations were being planned for the weekend, and the imam, Mohammad Sherzad, said he was overjoyed at the terrorist’s death, not least because of the violence he had perpetrated against his own people.
“Everybody was happy because we suffer a lot from that criminal,” he said. “Before anybody else, he did a lot of crimes against the Muslims.”
The whole piece is very well done – balanced, thoughtful, varied. It put me back in NYC for an instant, and in Brooklyn in particular. I think it is hard to understand that we never stopped mourning in New York, and probably never will, but this death, at least, is a sign that someday we might.
My god do I wish I were in NYC.
Osama bin Laden is dead. I may be drunk for a week.
I had two year-old kittens on 9/11 who are 11 now; one was diagnosed with cancer last week.
It’s the 8th anniversary of Dubya’s bullshit “Mission Accomplished” photo op.
Nearly 50K US soldiers have been killed or wounded in the time since.
I hadn’t been married for even two months; in two months, we celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary.
& That asshole has been alive all that time.
Osama bin Laden is dead.
For the last day of Women’s History Month, I give you Sylvia Rivera, proud, out, trans woman who participated in the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, and only a year later watched as gender and trans rights were disappeared from the new Gay Rights’ movement’s agenda.
On June 27, 1969, Rivera was in the crowd that gathered outside the Stonewall Inn after word spread that it had been raided by police. The sight of arrested patrons being led from the bar by authorities riled the crowd, but it was Rivera who threw one of the first Molotov cocktails that actually initiated the riots and sent Stonewall into the history books.In 1970 Rivera joined the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and worked on its campaign to pass the New York City Gay Rights Bill. She attracted media attention when she attempted to force her way into closed-door sessions concerning the bill held at City Hall. In spite of Rivera’s (and other drag queens’) participation in the GAA, the organization decided to exclude transgender rights from the Gay Rights Bill so that it would be more acceptable to straight politicians.
Rivera was shocked and betrayed by this decision. She also became disillusioned with the gay rights movement in general and dismayed by the backlash against drag queens that had developed by the mid-1970s.
Perhaps already sensing that transgendered people could not rely on the gay rights movement to advocate for their civil rights, in 1970 Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson had formed a group called Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.). The members of this organization aimed to fight for the civil rights of transgendered people, as well as provide them with social services support.
At this time, Rivera and Johnson began operating S.T.A.R. House in the East Village, which provided housing for poor transgendered youth. S.T.A.R. House lasted for two years, but was then closed because of financial and zoning problems. Although in existence only a short time, S.T.A.R. House is historically significant because it was the first institution of its kind in New York City, and inspired the creation of future shelters for homeless street queens.
Shelters seems like an exaggeration, since the only other I know of is Transy House (which was around the corner from where we lived in Park Slope). I’m pleased to see the Day of Silence and GLSEN are honoring her as well this year.
From the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF):
We are happy to announce that the city of New York has adopted a new policy designed to ensure that transgender people have equal access to marriage licenses. The policy was adopted as part of an agreement to resolve threatened legal action involving a transgender couple. The couple wishes to remain private and we refer to them as Jane and John.
Jane and John are both transgender. They are an opposite-sex couple who have been in a relationship for over a decade. In Dec. 2009, they attempted to marry in the Bronx. They fulfilled all of the requirements for receiving a marriage license in New York City and presented their government-issued photo identification – the only identification required by the City Clerk’s office. Rather than issuing the marriage license, the City Clerk refused and instead demanded that Jane and John produce their birth certificates before they could be married – something not required of other marriage license applicants.
Under the terms of the new policy, issued on Feb. 7, 2011, once a marriage license applicant produces the required photo ID, the City Clerk may not request additional proof of sex. Moreover, City Clerk employees are forbidden from considering the applicant’s appearance or preconceived notions related to gender expression when deciding whether to issue a marriage license.
“Transgender people are challenged all the time about their status as men and women,” said TLDEF executive director Michael Silverman. “Our clients are legally entitled to marry and were denied that right just because they are transgender. We applaud the City Clerk’s office for adopting this policy and for taking steps to ensure that this does not happen again.”
In addition to the adoption of the new policy, the agreement to resolve the couple’s claims calls for the City Clerk to apologize to Jane and John, to institute training for all City Clerk employees on issues relating to gender identity and gender expression, and to ensure that Jane and John are free to marry at a time and place of their choosing.
For more about this new policy, read up at TLDEF’s site.
Harvey Fierstein takes over as the new Zaza in NYC’s La Cage production:
They’ve got cheap tickets & a sassy door girl: what more could you want?
