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Kittens

We happen to be fostering three kittens at the moment, all of them goofy, clumsy little ninjas, hungry and recently weaned. One orange, one grey, one tortico. And they have been amusing the hell out of me, like kittens always do.

But today? They are running all over the place & so I’m reminded of that day 12 years ago when I looked down at our hardwood living room floor in Brooklyn and noticed that our kitty boys – who were then about a year & a half – had left footprints while they played.

& That was when we noticed the light coating of ash on the floor.

& Then it all comes back: the smell, god the smell. But the phone calls, & my family gathering on Long Island that following weekend, to look at our wedding photos – we’d just gotten married in July. Walking down the street in Park Slope & a woman stopping to take a call on her cellphone & watching her go ashen & cry & fall to her knees right there on the sidewalk. Finding a day a few months later to shop up on 7th Avenue and running into a funeral for a Rescue One firefighter.

It was a lot of that. It wasn’t a day.

It was months, now years, more than a decade, & yet the shock of it, and the sadness, never goes away.

So today, tears, and kittens who leave no footprints.

 

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Your Own Ethics, or Someone Else’s

The essential issue with a surgery that people get to eliminate or “westernize” the epicanthic fold in their eyelid isn’t dissimilar from too many other arguments about similar surgeries: do you get bigger breasts to fit in, to feel happier, to get ahead? Then what’s wrong with it? If a trans woman gets Facial Feminization Surgery again, so she can fit in, and not to “as trans” as she might otherwise, then what’s wrong with it?

Long ago I decided that unless I were in a similar situation, I couldn’t judge and won’t judge. People make what decisions they do for themselves.

The financial argument – the ‘how dare someone spend that kind of money on vanity?’ kind of critique – also strikes me as a moot point. Every single day people in the industrialized nations spend money on stuff when other people need malaria netting for their beds and clean water.

So where do you end up? I don’t know whether to focus this issue on the marginalization and orientalism that contribute to the kind of discrimination Leo experienced or on the aesthetics and our absurd beauty standards:

The truth is more complicated, if you ask Jiang: “There is a difference between looking more like a white person and looking less like your race,” he believes. “At the highest echelons of beauty, the categories all begin to look the same. We’re all trying to achieve racial transformation, but in a homogenized center ground. My personal view is that there is a white, idealized version of beauty associated more with Western beauty ideals. The argument is whether it’s coincidental or constructed.”

There are two major ways of thinking about it, for feminists: on the one hand, that no one who lives in a culture with all of these intersected oppressions can possibly make a choice out of their own free will (and that a feminist, in rejecting these oppressions, will reject any decision that compromises her ability to resist patriarchy/beauty standards/sexism/etc, OR, that every individual has to make choices based on personal agency and the ability to recognize systemic oppressions and choose to do something to circumvent or resist them.

So which is it? Is he grabbing the bull by the horns or being gored by it?

Personally, I find the epicanthic fold beautiful, and always have.

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Make Your Own Dress

Okay, this is both funny and kinda gorgeous: on Reddit, a bunch of men tried their shorts on in a whole new way, creating an off-the-shoulder slinky ass dress for themselves.

There’s a bunch more. I chose this one because of the well-chosen details that wound up on his arm.

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Another Example of Cool Masculinity

A father of a ‘gender creative’ son – a boy who is feminine – defends his parenting and his wife’s.

My wife also gets a load of emails from people asking where our son’s father is, as though I couldn’t possibly be around and still allow a male son to display female behavior. To those people I say, I’m right here fathering my son. I want to love him, not change him. My son skipping and twirling in a dress isn’t a sign that a strong male figure is missing from his life, to me it’s a sign that a strong male figure is fully vested in his life and committed to protecting him and allowing him to grow into the person who he was created to be.

A parent behaving like a parent. Amazing. What isn’t so amazing is how long these pernicious ideas about the lack of a strong male role model somehow “creates” feminine boys, when in fact, the lack of a strong male role model, in my opinion, tends to create bullies, not their victims.

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A Situation Like This

Here’s a cool piece by Finn Enke of University of Wisconsin, Madison, inspired by Chelsea Manning’s coming out as trans.

I Am a ‘Situation Like This:’ Names, Pronouns, and Learning from Chelsea Manning

As a trans person and educator, I am grateful to Chelsea Manning. She is not the only famous person to come out as trans, nor is she the first military person to do so. But because her coming out coincided with her internationally high-profile trial and her impending incarceration, she has provided an opportunity for institutions and communities to recognize transgender existence. As Socrates observed long ago, learning is often painful because learning requires us to change. Manning is making most of us have to work a little harder, finally.

Here’s what’s close to home for me, as an educator:

Julie is a 23 year-old trans woman trying hard to stay in college; she has dropped out of many classes and can’t use most restrooms on campus. Family, health, and economic factors have thus far made substantive steps toward legal or medical transition inaccessible. Julie’s university lacks a preferred name and pronoun policy, so class rosters list her as Robert. Most days, Julie has to decide whether to ask people to call her Julie and use female pronouns, or to try to quietly pass as the man many assume her to be. Many days, Julie stays home instead.

Tomas is a 35 year-old trans male who medically and legally transitioned ten years ago; his identity documents read male, and his appearance conforms to common expectations about that. However, most students enrolled in his classes at University X assume they will be meeting a female instructor by the name of Tessa. Tomas chose not to legally alter the name (Tessa) that his parents gave him at birth, and most workplaces have honored Tomas’s preferred name. University X is an exception, insisting that only people’s legal names may be used. Tomas will have to come out to his students on the first day of classes, to explain that he is Tomas and is as he appears: a man.

Continue reading “A Situation Like This”

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Me, on Manning

Here’s a short piece I wrote for the Wisconsin Gazette, Wiconsin’s LGBT paper, about Chelsea Manning. I didn’t actually title it, for the record, and I was a little surprised to see the big photo of me, but I’m happy to see it out there.

 

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How To Look At Women

I thought this was great – one dad’s planned conversation with his son the first time he sees his son look at a woman sexually.

There are two views regarding a woman’s dress code that you will be pressured to buy into.  One view will say that women need to dress to get the attention of men.  The other view will say women need to dress to protect men from themselves.  Son, you are better than both of these.  A woman, or any human being, should not have to dress to get your attention.  You should give them the full attention they deserve simply because they are a fellow human being.  On the other side, a woman should not have to feel like she needs to protect you from you.  You need to be in control of you.
Also, this:
Let’s be clear: a woman’s body is not dangerous to you.  Her body will not cause you harm.  It will not make you do stupid things.  If you do stupid things it is because you chose to do stupid things.
Good, no?
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Goldfrapp’s “Annabel”

The scoop from Nowness:

A young, androgynous boy explores his femininity through a hoard of trinkets hidden in the undergrowth in the accompanying video to “Annabel,” a brand new track from Goldfrapp. For their sixth album Tales Of Us, Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory have stepped back from the electronic synth pop with which they made their name. “I like electronic sounds because of the iciness, but I find them quite awkward,” says Goldfrapp. “Acoustic instruments have a warmth and sensuality about them.” Each song on Tales Of Us is named after a different person and the album sees Goldfrapp’s voice—at one moment rich, the next fragile—paired with understated guitar and strings. The intended effect is to allow the characters and narratives to breathe, which is most eloquently achieved in “Annabel,” inspired by Kathleen Winter’s 2010 novel of the same name which follows a hermaphrodite child who is forced into taking on a male identity in 1960s Canada.

Goldfrapp: Annabel on Nowness.com

There’s an interview about the song and the new music, too. It’s not my kind of song, to be honest, but I do love the clip and otherwise love Goldfrapp.