Tag: Africa

Posted on

& She’s Not Alone

In addition to Nancy Pelosi breaking “the marble ceiling” for women in US government, there are a few other women who were recently elected to history-making positions:

  • May Eljeribi was elected in late December to lead Tunisia’s Progressive Democratic Party, the principal opposition party in the North African country. She is the first woman party leader in Tunisia.
  • In Iran, Mehrnoush Najafi, a lawyer, women’s rights activist, and blogger, recently won a seat in the Hamedan City Council Elections.
  • Finally, in the United Arab Emirates, one woman was elected to office in the country’s first ever national election. Amal Abdullah al-Kubaissi, an architect, was elected to serve on the Federal National Council.
Posted on

Wear White Tomorrow

from Amnesty International:

The Sudanese government and the government-sponsored Janjawid militia have used rape, forced displacement, abductions and mass murder as weapons of war for more than three years. Darfuri rebel groups have also committed serious human rights violations against civilians. Women and children are often driven from their homes with few or no possessions and continue to be in danger in refugee and displaced persons camps and settlements.

On December 10th, thousands of activists from more than two dozen countries will stand up for the rights of women and girls in Darfur. We hope you’ll stand with us and write in white. Wear white, a global color of mourning, in solidarity with Darfuri survivors of sexual violence and write letters calling for an end to rape as a weapon of war in Darfur:

http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7219332210661857438353065

Now is a crucial time for action on Darfur: funding for African Union peacekeepers in Darfur (AMIS) runs out at the end of December. Until the United Nations arrives, AMIS is the only available force that stands between Darfuri civilians and deadly violence.

Many of you have sent messages and placed calls to your Senators, urging them to help ensure the safety of civilians in Darfur. We are sincerely grateful for that. We hope you’ll continue to stand with us and write in white on December 10th:

http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7219332310661857438353065

You can help put an end to the ongoing violence against women and girls in Darfur. Thanks again for everything you do.

Sincerely,
Naoma Nagahawatte
Stop Violence Against Women in Darfur Project
Amnesty International USA

Posted on

This Bitch Has a Name

An interesting essay in The Washington Post by Lonnae O’Neal Parker, about her experience as an African-American woman who once loved HipHop but doesn’t anymore – for the sake of her daughters.

My daughter can’t know that hip-hop and I have loved harder and fallen out further than I have with any man I’ve ever known.
That my decision to end our love affair had come only after years of disappointment and punishing abuse. After I could no longer nod my head to the misogyny or keep time to the vapid materialism of another rap song. After I could no longer sacrifice my self-esteem or that of my two daughters on an altar of dope beats and tight rhymes.

Posted on

Ah, Long Island.

ABC news did a story not long ago about a Long Island real estate company that seems to be showing African-American folks where they’re “allowed” to live, and the reporter mentioned that Nassau County is the third most-segregated suburb in the country.
I used to amaze people from NYC that I went to high school with exactly one African-American, and that was in a class of 800. But as a woman they interviewed for the story said, “That’s Long Island. There are black towns and white towns. Everyone knows that.”

Posted on

Belligerent Old Ladies?

I had a bad dream about an elephant a couple of weeks ago.* I’ve had a couple of dreams in a row about not being able to keep animals safe (another one involving a calico cat), if anyone feels the need to be Freud – and after this one I woke up haunted by the idea of unhappy, angry elephants. I’ve always liked elephants – they’re peaceful, smart, social, familial. They talk to each other, and they’re otherwise playful and peaceful, even in the most extraordinary circumstances. As a way of purging my bad dream, I started wondering if there was anything I could do, and I came upon www.elephants.com, which is the website of The Elephant Sanctuary.
The Sanctuary takes in old circus elephants. It can only take females (because males don’t socialize with others), but it gives them free range, good food, and a safe warm place to sleep. Plus, friends – the other elephants, dogs and cats, their caretakers.
Elephants occasionally get labeled “dangerous” like Topsy did – usually when they have the good sense to smack down a mean trainer or two – and Winkie was one of the ones who did. At upwards of 7000 lbs., “aggressive” can mean “fatal” in an elephant. But since she’s retired, she’s been entirely peaceful, with no signs of aggressive behavior. There was just something about her story that speaks to me, so I thought I’d share it.
They keep blogs of the doings at the Sanctuary – both African & Asian – and it can be pretty heart-warming reading. I just really love the idea of these formerly cramped, chained-to-a-post, performing animals laying around, taking baths, eating berries, and occasionally chasing dogs (a game for both the dogs and the elephants, apparently). Like there’s some justice in the world, sometimes, for at least a lucky few.
_______
* The dream was a result of my having discovered the sad and unjust execution of Topsy the Elephant. Please don’t read the story at all if you’re fond of elephants, REALLY. I’m warning you. Her story has haunted me for three years, since I first read about the memorial to her at Coney Island. The short, leaving-out-the-gruesome-details part of the story is: badly-treated performing elephant kills three men and is electrocuted by the famous Edison, who was trying to prove that his form of eletricity was safer.

Posted on

Identity & Belonging, Continued

As if to encourage me to pick up where I left off, I got an email today from Meg, who is both a talented cartoonist and writer. She’s been looking at resources for writers, and so came upon the Ghettoe of the Womyn Author – as I like to call it. So another aspect of this sense of identity has come to mind – of parsing not just who else decides you belong, but where you yourself decide you do. And whether you want to.
I’ll be honest – for me it’s a case of sour grapes. I was always too white and even middle-class for multi-culti spaces, and the connections I did make working for an African-American author for nearly a decade did me no good whatsoever. Likewise, I wasn’t actually white in the sense of having privilege or connections or time to do internships; like a lot of other poorer folks, I worked my way though college, but because my parents had a house, I didn’t qualify financially.
In a sense, culturally I always felt like the many millions of Americans who make too much money to qualify for Medicare but who don’t have enough money to get decent insurance: between pillar and post.
I didn’t get the perks of being a ‘woman author’ as a result – it’s not like there are a ton of grants & scholarships out there for women writers, anyway, as the people who might fund such things are often – ba rump bump! – women authors and not making a ton of money themselves (cf. A Room of One’s Own, of course). But being “just an author” is somewhat impossible, too – as in class after class, I watched guys of relative competence get more attention from professors then my fellow women writers did, and people who had more money and privilege who were able to afford even the time to write, and who Knew the Right People.
(My favorite story, told by a professor of mine, was from when he was deciding whether or not to do his PhD, as he was writing reviews for Vogue and doing alright, starting to make a name for himself. And at parties he’d talk to other freelance journalists, trying to find out if they were making a living writing, and they’d always cough into their hands, and quietly say, “I have a little something” which he finally parsed to mean trust fund. He got his PhD.)
That is, the system is biased against you, but doing anything about that bias – tosses you into the ghetto. And I imagine it’s similar with being an LGBT writer, or an African American writer, or – etc. Luckily some identities become fashionable, as an Hispanic writer friend of mine has since found out. But unfortunately, despite the paucity of women journalists, humorists, & the like, there is nothing fashionable about being a women author anymore. I’m not sure there ever was; after all, we did invent the form, so theoretically, the writer’s trade has been a woman’s all along.
So while I understand the urge to be only an author, and not a woman-author, I’m afraid that’s not possible. What I suggested to Meg and what I suggest to any woman author is to make a trip to Chicago’s Women & Children First bookstore, where she can – probabably for the first time in her life – be in a bookstore full of books by women, and see one dinky little shelf labelled “Books by Male Authors.”
Then laugh, & get back to work.

Posted on

The Aggressives

Betty and I got to see a documentary called The Aggressives on Friday night at BAM, which is screening a weekend of the best of NewFest.
“Aggressive” is the term used by women of color, much like the way “butch” is used to describe some lesbian women. (In fact, the only thing the film didn’t do which I would have liked is mention the use of the word, how it came about, how it’s different or perceived as different than butch by the women who use it to describe themselves.) Effectively “aggressive” describes women who are more masculine in both appearance, physique, and attitude. Some of them identify as trans, yet many were also very clear about the fact that they are women and lesbians.
The film told the stories of five different aggressive women over a five-year period. One was Korean, the others of African-American descent. There were interviews with some of their mothers (one of whom seemed hell-bent on insisting her daughter was going through “a phase”); they talked about who they liked to date (lesbians for the most part, though one also dated transwomen, and got fed up with dating them by the film’s end, and wanted a “real girl” for a girlfriend instead); how they experienced their identities, and what it was about them that was masculine, and how they made it work.
Tiffany talked about how, in school, one teacher in particular would ask her nearly every day if she was a boy or a girl, and after Tiffany stated she was a girl, the teacher would continue to say things like, “Tiffany is a funny name for a boy.” Another’s presence in the women’s showers in the military inspired all the women to cover up until she left the room. With the exception of one, most of these women “passed” as male and in most social situations were assumed to be male – and didn’t correct people necessarily – unless it came to “the ladies,” i.e. the women they dated.
Aside from shining a light on a population that’s rarely discussed or even known, the film was moving for both me and Betty. For Betty, of course, because she understood the issues of passing even when you don’t mean to, the sense of being differently gendered. For me, it was difficult to watch sometimes, because my own relationship with my own masculinity still touches on places of pain and rejection. And yet the film was really inspiring – from very young ages, these women talked about realizing they were lesbian and aggressive, and finding the courage to be who they were. (One had a child from the days where she was trying to prove to herself that she was het, so the self-acceptance didn’t come easy, necessarily.) For the most part, they all had difficult lives in terms of family, economics; more than one was abandoned by one parent or the other at a young age, either through departure of the parent or death. Some sold drugs; one was a fashion model and messenger; another went into the military; another came to work in construction – the only female person at her job. I think they all used the phrase “wearing the pants” at one point or another.
What impressed me the most was how their lives – invisible but for this documentary – contained not just the usual problems faced by those gender variant and GLBT, but that they did so along with discrimination, little to no education or opportunity, and uncertain family relationships. Most seemed to find a real home in lesbian spaces and in drag ball culture, instead.
I did talk with the director, Daniel Peddle, afterwards, who said there is a plan to release the film on VHS or DVD; if and when I can get hold of a copy I’ll be happy to make it a “loaner” for people interested in seeing it. If you can find a screening in your area, do go see it.

Posted on

Us Vs. Them

About a decade ago, I went to a forum about the cultural differences & rifts between African-Americans and Caribbean Americans. The first part of the forum was presented by a panel, very intellectual & cross-referenced; the second half was a Q&A, where tempers flared but remained polite. The basic issue was that Caribbean Americans hated being mistaken for African-Americans for various reasons, and the African-Americans hated being mistaken for Caribbean Americans.
I remember sitting there thinking, “My brother would call you all n******.”
But what that forum clarified for me was not the actual experience of Caribbean or African-Americans; it was the stereotypes of both that offended both groups. The Caribbean blacks hated people thinking they were African-American exactly because of what people think of African-Americans (that they’re all on welfare, etc) & vice versa. Some of these prejudices were based on truths or half-truths, like that Caribbean Americans all had AIDS. (At the time, Haitians could not donate blood because of heightened concerns about HIV infection). So you’ve got a group of African-Americans hating the fact that they were mistaken for having HIV, because they believed a lot of Caribbean Americans had AIDS, when of course it wasn’t all Caribbean Americans but only Haitians, and in fact Haitians had a higher incidence of HIV due to things that had nothing to do with their behavior, anyway (it turned out, instead, that it was linked with higher previous infections of TB in the Haitian population). Of course, too, no-one wanted to be mistaken for someone with HIV, either, because HIV had already been demonized as happening to people because of sexual conduct and/or needle drug use.
In effect, you had two groups of people who were both oppressed because of the shared color of their skin who spent an entire evening focusing on what they didn’t have in common instead of fighting the prejudices they faced because of their skin color.
I’ve come to about the same conclusion with the arguments between hsts “transkids” and other transsexuals. (I say “other” and not AGP or “late-transitioning” or “secondary” because I don’t think there are only two types of transsexuals). The hsts set doesn’t want to be told they’re paraphilic because that’s what the Blanchard-Bailey junta says about non-hsts transsexuals. The other transsexuals resent being both forced into a box they don’t fit and being told their motivation is sexual in some way or another.
So you’ve got the hsts set not wanting anyone to think they’re “perverts” or nutjobs because transitioning, for them, is about “practical” issues like social and sexual success in life. On the other hand, you’ve got the rest of the transsexuals – the non-hsts type – who don’t want to be told they’re not really transsexuals, or that they are somehow lesser, less real, secondary, or transitioning for some other than “practical” reasons.
And I have to say, my brother would still call you all “n******.”
Really, a lot of people might see hsts transsexuals as self-hating gay men who can’t deal with the homophobia and misogyny within and without the gay community, and who sidestep those issues by becoming women. A lot of people see the non-hsts transsexuals as deviants, perverts, mentally ill and selfish freaks.
Why it seems reasonable for any group to empower themselves by demonizing another group is foreign to me. Why any group would align themselves with a so-called scientist who has been known to abuse the power of his position in order to sleep with his subjects (even while they complain about the power and access other transsexuals have and use in order to educate the public about transsexualism) is also foreign to me. Why any transsexuals go out of their way to “out,” demonize, or work against another group of transsexuals as some kind of “strategy” is also beyond me.
That each of these self-identified groups has differences, to me, is cause only for each group to watch out for and protect their own. That I understand. If one group is neglecting the needs of a subset of their own population, then it stands to reason that that subset has got to be vocal about what they need – and failing help from the larger group – has got to figure out a way to provide their services to the population that needs it.
Instead, transkids are getting kicked out of their homes while other transsexuals are losing their jobs, and people are online fighting about which group is “right.” Essays are written, emails exchanged, posts added to message boards or newsgroups, and my brother is still calling you all “n******.”
So I’m gonna go listen to Leadbelly. I don’t know where he was from, or where he was raised, but he was one damn great musician, and to me, that’s all that ever matters.
Continue reading “Us Vs. Them”

Posted on

A Genuine Blog Entry

Maybe it’s fall, or maybe it’s because I spoke with my mother today, or still yet it may be that I’m facing the ‘wrap-up’ of the so-called “tour” for My Husband Betty, but I’ve been somewhat circumspect about the experience of the last (nearly) two years.
[A brief timeline: I started writing MHB in January ’03, saw the reading copies about a year ago, and although the official publication date was Jan ’04, the book started shipping by early December ’03. A full year for writing, printing, & distribution. 2004 was entirely about publicity and outreach.]
I never intended to write non-fiction. I’ve got a couple of unpublished novels tucked away into drawers (along with the requisite rejection letters from agents & editors), so it was kind of a surprise to be offered the chance to write a book at all. And non-fiction? Other than keeping a journal since I was nine years old, and papers for school, I didn’t have much experience. But how could I resist?
Two years later, I have several hundred emails in my inbox – some answered and some not – and I’ve met innumerable people. Some I know only via computer and this wonderful thing our President refers to as “the Internets,” but others I’ve had a chance to meet in person. There have been movers and shakers among them, yes, but I think it’s the quiet CD who comes up to me at a conference and stands in line at a book-signing to tell me how much MHB helped his relationship with his wife that means the most to me. There have been other remarkable stories people have emailed or told me in person: the gay rabbi who got in touch to tell me that upon cleaning up his father’s apt after his death, he’d found pictures there of someone named “Fiona” and only then realized his father was a CD; the septegenarian living in Africa who was first crossdressed by whores in Singapore while he was serving in WWII as a young man. The stories are remarkable – not even because they are fascinating and all preciously singular – but rather because people have come to tell them to me.
I love stories. I love lives lived. I love the great inconsistencies and frustrations and triumphs and even the failures of actual people. And the most incredible – and unexpected – thing about having written a book about crossdressing is to have had people come up to me just to tell me their own.
I joked with my mother today that when I announced I wanted to be a priest at age nine neither of us ever expected that I would be – at least not in such an unusual way. But that’s what I feel like. Whenever a crossdresser comes to me and says “I never believed I was okay until I read your book” what can I say in response except “You are!”? What is that except absolution?
I have days when I am absolutely crushed by how hard it is to get a book published, to get paid as a writer, to live and pay the rent. Other days I’m reminded more clearly: this is what I do, what I should be doing. The cheers of support I get from all of you are at least equal to the disappointment of what it means to live as a writer. But more than the support, it’s the help I’ve been able to give – via the book, or email, or when I go to conferences – that means the most at the end of the day.
You get so many chances to laugh at yourself as a writer, mostly for your own unabashed pretentiousness! This little apologia is what I get to laugh at myself for today: this Preface to the Fourth Printing, as it were. But it is something I have been meaning to say for a long while: thank you.
Helen Boyd