In Curve magazine’s current issue (Vol. 17, #8), there’s an interview with me and Julia Serano aptly titled “A Queer Three-way.” The interviewer was Curve editor Diane Anderson-Minshall.
Not Queer Enough
There’s an event happening in San Francisco (of course) called “Not Queer Enough” on June 27th. Among the speakers are people like Max Wolf Valerio & Julia Serano.
I wish I could be there.
My own feelings of being “not queer enough” I’ve mentioned at various times, usually when I’ve felt shunned at an event or gathering, or been made to feel otherwise square for being married or monogamous or heterosexual. Shoot, I’ve felt “not feminist enough” for being heterosexual & married, too.
& I’m very very certain that plenty of trans people feel “not trans enough.”
But not queer enough? What defines someone as queer? Their politics? Being visibly queer? Their worldview? Their haircut? Who they have sex with?
I don’t know. But I’d like to be in San Francisco that night to hear other people talk about their experiences.
Info about the event below the break.
Trans Couples: Mark and Violet
I was like an addict trying desperately to find love, or even the perfect relationship. But I always fell short and was disappointed. Little did I know it was never the relationship; it was the image in the mirror that made no sense. I was the one that needed to change. I was lost, I felt broken, it wasn’t until I was 38 years old when my life finally took a right turn. I met the most amazing female. She was different, not like the other girls I had known. She was special, something about her allowed me to be myself. She was straight and had lived with men all her life. Yet, she was curious about girls, having had a few encounters in the past, but nothing too serious. Continue reading “Trans Couples: Mark and Violet”
Non-Monogamous CDs (& Their Partners)
Just a reminder: Tristan Taormino is specifically looking for CDs & their partners who are in non-monogamous relationships. You can read her description of the book she’d be interviewing you for and more about what she’s looking for below the break.
Wrong Side of a Good Thing
I read this great article about Diane & Jake Anderson-Minshall, who just co-wrote their first mystery novel, Blind Curves, and this line stopped me short:
“I would say Susannah was my wife, and they’d tell me she would have to contact them,” Diane says. “Now I say Jacob is my husband and it’s immediately accepted.”
Because Diane is, of course, talking about the difference in how their relationship is perceived by others now that they’re “straight.” I’m pretty certain they don’t think of themselves as straight, of course, but they are legally married now, and wow – it surprised me how much that one sentence stuck in my craw. I feel like I’m on the wrong side of the equation, even if I know full-well how difficult it is for partners like Diane and other lesbian-identified women to “give up” having others perceive them as lesbians.
But still. Damn.
Trans Partners Drop In Group
Tonight is the Partners’ Drop-In Group at the LGBT Center. 7:30 – 9PM. Details here.
No Kissing in Public
One of our mHB board regulars recently mentioned kissing her wife while at a conference, and I was reminded that I wanted to post something about kissing Betty at trans conferences.
The thing is, I’m not comfortable kissing her in trans spaces, often.
I noticed that I wasn’t while we were at IFGE, most likely because we were at DO the weekend before. But the thing is, DO has some queer folks, and some trans, but mostly hetero BDSM people and swingers and pagans and polyamorous people. That is, there’s no reason *except* a sex-positive atmosphere that should make DO as welcoming to a dykey + trans couple like ourselves, but we are.
& The thing is: there is *every* reason in the world a trans space should feel welcoming & safe to a dykey + trans couple, but it isn’t. & That, I think, is exactly what can be so wrong about trans spaces.
Born in the Wrong Body
I’m up in the middle of the night for no reason whatsoever, so I wanted to let people know they should keep an eye out for an MSNBC program called Born in the Wrong Body. We caught it tonight & were pleased to see the focus on a younger trans generation, since their situation is sometimes very different than ours.
I especially loved a male partner’s description of being with a transwoman, which he explained by saying: say you like hamburgers but you don’t like fries, & someone offers you a happy meal – you’re not going to turn down the whole thing just because there’s one part of it you don’t like.
Clever. I wanted to wish all the young adults and the author Cris Beam – whose book Transparent is (I think) the impetus behind both this show & Barbara Walters’ upcoming 4/27 show on trans youth – the best of luck.
(& We are, of course, discussing it over on the mHB message boards, though feel free to post a comment here if you’d prefer.)
The Penn State Law Talk
I’m hoping that this talk was recorded as planned and so will be available on Penn State Dickinson School of Law’s website, eventually, because there were a lot of interesting questions discussed in the Q&A after I spoke. Prof. Rains also added a lot of useful legal insight.
I started with a kind of preface in order (1) to define terms like transgender, MTF and FTM, and also (2) to explain that while people like drag queens and crossdressers are considered part of the transgender community, discussions about legal marriage issues don’t always or often effect them; that is, this talk concerns people who identify nearer to the transsexual end of things. that said, drag queens are often already gay and so deal with the same marriage discrimination all gay people do, and crossdressers often suffer with the stigma of being perverts, and one of the reasons they are not out is exactly because they don’t want their wives to divorce them, or lose custody of their children, or lose their jobs, all of which can & does happen to crossdressers who come out.
I never expected that any aspect of my life would cause me to speak at a law school to future lawyers about the odd ways that my life has become complicated by laws about gender and marriage. I’m surprised two-fold: for starters, I never expected to get married, since as a younger and Very Serious Feminist I saw it as a Tool of Patriarchy, symbolic at least of the ways women have always been chattel, and so, not for me. But I also never expected to get married because I was, starting as a teenager in the late 80s, an ally of gay and lesbian people.
& Then I met Betty, who at the time we met presented as male, and as she likes to explain, we knew, both of us, nearly from the get-go that we were supposed to be together. It’s a difficult feeling to explain, and poets have tried, but it took us a few years to decide once & for all that we were in this thing together. We decided to get married because things were so easy between us; on our 2nd date we sat together and read, one of us The Nation and the other The New York Times. When you’re something like an old married couple on your 2nd date, you know that you’re doomed.
Penn State on Friday
I’ll be speaking at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law this Friday at 11:30. This event IS open to the public, so do come if you’re in the area. A law professor, Robert Rains, who is well-versed in trans legal issues and who wrote a great article about the history of the legal recognition of gender change in the UK, will be speaking with me. Directions, parking info, & all the logistical details can be found on our calendar.