I got the news this past weekend that one of the SOs (half of one of the couples) I interviewed for the book passed away this past Sunday, May 15th, after two years of battling breast cancer. She was 40 years old, only, and is survived by her husband (Heather) and two daughters.
I’ve been thinking and mourning for Minna, in some obvious ways, like just sitting here crying, reading old emails from/to her, but also in maybe atypical ways: by toasting her at our birthday party Friday night.
Minna was a gem. She was enthusiastic and willing to help with the book, and did her own kind of outreach – within the BDSM scene she & Heather belonged to.
So I thought, in her memory, I’d reprint her words here, because no one could explain Minna – except maybe herself.
I wish you could walk a mile in my shoes. See what I see the way I see it. See what I know and experience it. Taste what I taste and see how I enjoy it. My life is not the same as yours. My husband is a crossdresser. I am a dominantrix. I am a mother, a wife, a lover and a sadist. I am Republican. I am Wiccan. I am not the average person and thank the Goddess I am not.
You walk by me everyday and do not know any of this. I don’t stand out in a crowd. Well, yes I suppose my bright red hair does and the way I walk does, but I don’t look threatening. I look like an average woman with 2 kids.
You do not know what my double life entails. The frustration of not being able to let my husband walk out of our house dressed because we are a military family on a military post and that’s grounds for him being discharged from the service to his country that he loves. My kids can’t know about dad because my son is from a previous marriage and my ex-husband would take him from me in an instant if he knew.
I worry every time my husband goes out dressed without me that he will be hurt. It’s why I usually don’t allow it. Not because I don’t trust him, but because I don’t trust you.
I hear what others think about crossdressing and I really want to take interviewers like Jerry Springer out back and get a switch. The average crossdresser is not the one you see on TV talk shows. They are normal men and women who have a need to dress in the clothing of another gender.
My husband is not a child molester, a rapist, or some sick perverse serial killer. He isn’t morally loose and sleeping around with everyone and everything. He is a man whose internal gender does not match his external gender totally. That is the definition of a Transsexual, but he doesn’t want to be a woman full time either. It’s more complex than him just wanting to be a woman; he wants to be a man too. It’s not some sexual fetish either; he doesn’t need to dress in order to get sexually aroused.
I wish you could walk a mile in my shoes. In my friends’ shoes. In my husband’s shoes. See what we go through every day.
Maybe you’d be a bit more tolerant of those different than yourself.
The Nuclear Option
From MoveOn.org:
This is it — they’ve pulled the trigger.
On Tuesday May 24th, the Senate will vote on a motion to end debate on judicial nominations, and when that motion fails Senator Bill Frist will launch the “nuclear option” — an unprecedented parliamentary maneuver to break the rules of the Senate and seize absolute control over lifetime appointments to the highest courts in the land. The vote is going to be incredibly close, and there are as many as 6 votes still up in the air — more than enough to win. We must act now.
We’ve launched an emergency petition and, starting Monday, we’ll deliver your signatures and comments to the Senate floor every three hours until the vote is complete. As the debate rages on, Senators fighting to preserve our independent courts will read your statements from the floor of congress. And every senator, every 3 hours, will receive thousands of pages from their constituents demanding that they stand up and do the right thing.
We have less than 72 hours to win this vote and save our courts. Please sign today.
Go here to sign.
New Board Confusion
Since the new boards have caused some confusion, I need to explain that Betty and I decided to start fresh with the new boards,
- which means:
- everyone has to register again
- everyone will have 0 (zero) posts, and “beginner” avatars
- none of the old boards will be imported into this one
however, the old boards – what of them we have – will eventually be posted as an archive. searchable and readable, but no longer active. that way people can still refer to old posts if/when they need to, and they will still have their ‘rank’ preserved for posterity.
we *think* we have a decent backup from early april of this year, which means about 45 days worth of posts are gone.
again, our apologies. we weren’t the only PHPBB that was hit, unfortunately, but we have switched to new software that will make it difficult – if not impossible – for this to happen again.
New Message Boards
After that awful hacking we took, Betty & I decided it was time to start fresh, and we’ve got the new boards up and running.
So please come join us – the water’s fine.
Helen & Betty
Voices of New York
Last night I had the pleasure of reading with 7 other Lammy nominees at the Center, and it was a very cool event. (Aaron Krach, author of Half-Life, commented that he wished all readings had been like last night’s: five minutes, no Q&A, with a bunch of queer, friendly people in the audience.) I’m really thankful for Lambda Lit, because as I sat there listening to the readers, it occurred to me how stupid it is that there is so little room in mainstream publishing for GLBT writers. The stories were remarkable: one about an older man who’d fallen in love with a man with Downs Syndrome (Perry Brass, from Serendipity); another about a married man whose male lovers were being killed by a murderer (Gary Zebrun’s Someone You Know); another about a young Irish lad’s meeting with his priest at his mother’s behest (Damian McNicholl’s A Son Called Gabriel, and whose blog I just checked out); another a confrontation between a lesbian of color and her father (Laurinda D. Brown’s Fire & Brimstone).
They were all powerful stories, they were all stories that went beyond some definition of GLBT. They were about what stories are supposed to be about, the quiet little ways we suffer and rejoice in being our lovely, pathetic selves. But at the same time, without the Lammies, who would recognize a wife’s story of her trans husband’s beauty? Where else would I meet people who’d tell me about the tranny they knew, growing up?
It was a lovely night. I’m not 100% better, not yet, but I was damned glad I wasn’t still contagious, and could be there. I regret having missed the reading in DC even moreso now, but I am very much looking forward to the Awards Night at on June 2nd.
Glamourous Friday Cat
Here’s me at my desk, trying to work, with Aeneas telling me its time to take a break. Or feed him. Or scratch him. But enough of the gender stuff, mom.
Hacked
we got hacked, and we got hacked bad.
the database of all the posts is gone, empty, zero.
betty has a backup at work from a few months ago, which we’ll eventually put back up as a searchable database, and in the meantime, we’re going to use the opportunity to change the software for the forum to vBulletin, which updates its software more often (which makes it more impermeable to hackers).
betty has been struggling to fix what she could, find out what they did, & all with a migraine. she rocks. we had hoped there was more left. the user list remains, and ironically, the private messages. but everything else is gone.
i will put up a skeleton of the former boards so that people can post, and gather, while we get the new version ready – hopefully by tonight.
helen & betty
While the Boards are Down…
… you can check out this new project by the Museum of Sex. Intriguing, and nice piano music while it’s loading. It’d be a great idea to get some samples of trans/crossdressed/genderqueer sex into the story collection.
Here’s more about the project from the folks at the Museum of Sex:
We are about to launch a new online interactive installation entitled “Mapping Sex in America.” This ‘art-slash-anthropology’ project collects stories submitted by visitors and plots them geographically on a map of the US. In addition, historically significant points are “flagged” for
additional visitor enjoyment and enlightenment.
http://museumofsex.com/USAmap/
“Mapping Sex in America” takes its inspiration from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the 1930s, through which oral-history interviews with everyday Americans across the country were recorded; StoryCorps, a national project whose aim is to record peoples’ stories in sound with ‘StoryBooths’ in places like Grand Central Station, NY; and the work of Alfred Kinsey, whose documentation and analysis of America’s sexual histories and practices transformed America’s understanding of itself forever.
Conceived and designed by award-winning web artists Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn, “Mapping Sex in America” is based on a previous onsite/online installation launched for our inaugural exhibition “NYCSEX” which focused on the New York City region alone. With “Mapping Sex in America” we have broadened the concept to cover the entire geographic US; it will remain online permanently as well as onsite in our Spotlight gallery.
Hacked Again
I think the MHB message boards have been hacked again. Stay tuned for more details, and apologies. I hate these creeps.
Lambda Literary Awards – Finalist Reading
I’ll be reading this Thursday, May 19th, as part of the Lambda Literary reading for Awards’ Finalists, starting at 7 PM, at the Center.
Here’s the complete bill:
Mickey Small – Up All Night
Perry Brass – Serendipity
Gary Zebrun – Someone You Know
Kristie Helms – Dish It Up, Baby!
Damian McNicholl – A Son Called Gabriel
Laurinda D. Brown – Fire & Brimstone
Aaron Krach – Half-Life
Helen Boyd – My Husband Betty
Han Ong – The Disinherited
Alison Smith – Name All The Animals
I’ll be reading at around 8 PM, but the event starts at 7 PM.
Location: New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center, 208 West 13th St.