Tag: Asia

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Fear of Flying

Okay, so those of you who know me know I hate flying, & haven’t flown in a couple of years. Interestingly, perhaps, the last time I flew was also to Denver Airport, for Betty’s family reunion, which was maybe summer 2005 (since the incident is in She’s Not the Man I Married, so I knew it was before I wrote the book in the first half of 2006).

& Really, I did incredibly well considering. I took some new anti-anxiety drugs my doctor prescribed, & they helped a ton; I nearly almost enjoyed the trip out there.

BUT, on the way back, there was a thunderstorm between us & Laguardia. & Getting through it wasn’t the bad part; the bad part is that they needed more time between landings when it’s raining so hard.

Do we had to go into a holding pattern above the airport, flew in circles, through turbulence, for an hour, pitching & tossing & UGH.

I vomited & vomited & vomited. & Sweated. & Shook.

I can’t even think about how it would have been without the anti-anxiety meds.

But otherwise it was a lovely trip, and we met some really great people, all of which I’ll blog about in the upcoming days: I have the lovely luxury of being home five full days before we leave for Fantasia Fair early Thursday morning.

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Check In

i’ve had some time to be on the boards this weekend, despite the insanity around what’s going on in Burma & with ENDA – both of which occupied a lot of my time – and it’s nice to get a visit in.

teaching has kept me really busy, as has the commute. it’s really a full day that goes to travel: i leave here 1pm for my 2pm train, & i don’t get to Andover until about 8 PM. it’s a little shorter on the return, on Thursday, mostly because the train schedules work a little better.

& yes, as many people have predicted: i love teaching. love it. i asked on the first day if (1) any of them had ever thought about their gender, and (2) if any of them identified as feminists, and got no hands on either. that, plus the class being at 8am, were tall odds, i thought. but aside from the fact that i have to be prepared to frontload the class for the first half-hour while they’re all waking up, we’ve had interesting conversations about whether feminism is valid & what radfems mean when they say all sex is rape & about why most professional cooks are male.

september has gone by really quickly as a result, what with teaching & DO for a week & getting the details for the upcoming trip to CO & applying for a NYFA grant. i feel like i wake up & work on my to-do list & at some point i get on a train & find myself on a green, catholic college campus for a few days, kind of like it’s a dream, & then i’m home again & hanging out with betty & the kittoi until i get on a train again.

but i do enjoy the train time, even if i sometimes dread it the night before. i read a lot. i write some. i grade papers, even. or i just watch the world go by.

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Please Sign

Monks have already been beaten and several people have been killed. Please sign this petition to get the UN Security Council to help protect them, to enable them to peacably assemble, as they have done for the past few weeks.

They are raiding the monasteries and cutting off contact with the rest of the world:

“The big missing piece of the puzzle is what is going on in the minds of the senior leadership,” said Thant Myint-U, a former United Nations official who is the author of a book on Myanmar, formerly Burma, called River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma. “Nothing that they have said in the last 20 years would suggest that they will back down,” he said.

(Get his book if you want more background on what’s going on currently, or if you want to know more about Burma and the 8888 Uprising.)

I’m worried now we won’t hear anymore, or won’t hear much, unless & until the UN gets more involved. It is quite odd to see actual video footage of what’s going on in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) on television. That beautiful huge gold pagoda you may see in the background is Shwedagon Pagoda, and the gold is – the real thing. But the demonstrators have been gathering at the oldest pagoda in Yangon, Sule Pagoda, which is the center of the city.

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Monks Defy Orders

Imagine! Dubya finally said something in public I agree with! Today at the beginning of the UN’s general assembly, President Bush announced tighter sanctions on Burma:

He outlined a tightening of financial sanctions on Myanmar and an extension of a ban on visas of officials “responsible for the most egregious violations of human rights” and their families.

“Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear,” Mr. Bush said. “Basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Forced child labor, human trafficking, and rape are common.”

& In the meantime, the junta (formerly known as SLORC), have pulled soldiers away from where they’ve been fighting the Karen tribesmen for years now. The Karen will, no doubt, take advantage of the situation, as they were the largest ethnic majority to rise up against the military junta in 1988, as well. Interesting for U.S. policy, but one of the objections of the Karen tribe is that they are not allowed to practice their religion because the practice of Buddhism is state-imposed, and a third of them are… Christian.

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Turning Over the Rice Bowl

For six days in a row, young monks in Myanmar (Burma) have protested the treatment of monks by the ruling junta – the same junta who put down the protests / revolution of the early 90s, the same one that keeps human rights leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.

This time, can we please pay attention? Thousands, including monks, lost their lives last time around, & looking at these young men – I worry about them too.

At least some monks were reportedly refusing to accept alms from members of the military, a refusal, known as “turning over the rice bowl,” that amounts to an ad-hoc gesture of excommunication. The A.P. reported that one monk at the head of the procession held a begging bowl upside down as he marched.

I went to Myanmar years ago now, before I knew that human rights activists asked tourists not to come, & the place haunted me with its beauty. The young monks especially. The U.S. needs to back them, absolutely, loudly & with no apologies to the military. I fear we won’t, considering what’s gone on in Tibet, but at least we don’t have to stand up to the Chinese to help this pro-democracy movement, so maybe there’s a chance. Hopefully the UN sessions later this month that promise to address the issue will.

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Santhi Soundarajan

Santhi Soundarajan, a female runner in India who was stripped of her Olympic medal has, perhaps, tried to commit suicide. She ingested pesticide but it’s not clear that she did so in a suicide attempt, and may have taken it for stomach pain. There are more details in an India Times article.

The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) announced she failed a sex test and implied Santhi had deceived the sporting world by competing as a woman when she was a man, effectively ending her career.

But Santhi, who returned home to live in humiliation, insisted along with her parents and coaches she had done nothing wrong. . .

Seven of the eight women who tested positive for Y chromosomes during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics had AIS. They were allowed to compete.

Because the International Olympics no longer do these tests, exactly in order to prevent this kind of outcome, and The Hindu reports that endocrine test results were probably not in when she was disqualified.

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Forbes’ Top 100 Women

Forbes has just published their list of the Top 100 Most Powerful women. Among them, politicans and CEOs, a couple of Queens (of Jordan, & the UK), a judge (Ginsburg), a few anchors (Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric), and Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, activist and Nobel Peace laureate (who is probably my favorite woman on the list).

Interesting, though, to see “Chairman” so frequently after a name. I guess “Chairperson” just doesn’t trip off the tongue the same way.

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Indian FTMs

An article predominantly about lesbians and FTMs in India (despite the photo of MTFs dancing) appeared in The Hindu, India’s national paper. The West is blamed for intolerant attitudes:

The hostility to alternate sexualities, LesBIT activists say, is a modern phenomenon. Evidence of lesbian, bisexual and transgender relationships can be found in Vedic literature, tantra, Sufi poetry, and in the ancient sculptures o f Konark and Khajuraho. The criminalisation of gay, lesbian and transgender sexuality is, however, a product of the Victorian morality of British colonialism. What is interesting is that while homosexual marriages are today legally recognised in the United Kingdom, they continue to be criminalised in India.

That is, the Hjira may be evidence of a tolerant past, but their existence doesn’t prove a tolerant present.

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Five Questions With… Marilyn Frank

Marilyn Frank has been sharing her story with wives at Fantasia Fair, IFGE and Tri-Ess seminars since 1982. She married her husband Len in 1954 and didn’t learn about the cross dressing until 1964, 10 years and 3 children later. At that time the only information available to her was Virginia Prince’s book The Transvestite and His Wife (now titled The Cross-dresser and His Wife) which she still finds to be one of the best books written.

1) First, Marilyn, I want to thank you on behalf of all the partners out there, for stepping up at a time when most of us weren’t even in high school yet. Without women like you & Peggy Rudd, the struggle to have partners’ issues recognized would be a lot more difficult. So what caused you to do the educating you did?

In the 1970’s I was a volunteer on a crisis intervention hot line in Morris County, NJ. When I became Director, I questioned some of the professionals in the group, who did not know much about cross dressing, but were able to assist me in finding people who did know. During this time we came upon Tri-Ess, and then in 1980 Len read the article in Playboy about Fantasia Fair and in 1981 we spent a few days at the Fair. I had many discussions with Ariadne Kane about the wives’ needs, and this brought Niela Miller to the Fair and that’s where my true education began. Since it had been a very lonely road not only for Len, but for me, I decided I would reach out to help others, so that’s when I started facilitating a wives group at our local Tri-Ess Chapter, which I did for for over 10 years. I also was instrumental in starting the wives’ program at the first IFGE Convention. My philosophy is that every time I help someone, I help myself. It’s true the marriage had its ups and downs where the cross dressing was concerned, but for us it was a small part of our overall marriage. We have always had good communication, enjoy many of the same things and do have a sense of humor (that helps).

Continue reading “Five Questions With… Marilyn Frank”

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If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say…

More occasionally than I’d prefer, I hear MTFs bemoaning the style faux-pas of their fellow trans women. Sometimes it’s the transitioning women commenting on a crossdresser’s appearance, & sometimes it’s the other way around. But you know, style is a very personal form of self-expression, and should be respected as such. A person may intend to look exactly like how they appear, & do not feel any need for anyone’s “help.” That, & you may not know what their reasons are for looking the way they do.

Some of you may know Trankila, who is a regular at events like FanFair & IFGE & who keeps her full beard when she crossdresses. People who don’t know her/her story just think she’s insane or has no sense of style. But the reality is that her wife loves her beard, & happens also to be specifically attracted to cross-gender presentation, Trankila keeps it even when she crossdresses. (Trankila & her wife talk about their experience with Trankila’s gender on an old GenderTalk show.) For the record, there are also women raised female who can grow their own beards, & who do.

Likewise with something like pantyhose: (1) plenty of people wear hose because they’ve say, made a deal with their wives not to shave during the summer or other times (or through the year, depending on the deal they’ve made, and (2) other people use hose to help tuck.

Having a mohawk makes me more suspicious of “style policing,” in general, but also, as a partner advocate, I’ve heard from too many wives who were comfortable with whatever deal they made with their partner, who then comes home from a conference where people told her not to wear necklines that covered her collarbone (which she was doing so as not to shave chest hair her wife loves) or not to wear hose in the spring/early fall (which she was wearing to keep her leg hair because there’s a family BBQ the next week), etc.

& Frankly, I’ve had my own feelings hurt so many times by people insulting what I’m wearing at these MTF conferences/events that I’m thinking of having t-shirts made up that say Being a Catty Bitch Does Not Make One a Woman. Grow yourself some manners, & if you don’t have anything nice to say about someone’s appearance, then STFU. (Okay, that’s not the way our mothers taught us that Golden Rule, but consider it updated for the internet generation.)