Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Finalists for the 2005 Lambda Literary Awards (alphabetical by category):
Transgender/GenderQueer
Choir Boy by Charlie Anders (Soft Skull Press)
In a Queer Time and Place by Judith Halberstam (NYU Press)
Deliver Me from Nowhere by Tennessee Jones (Soft Skull Press)
Just Add Hormones by Matt Kailey (Beacon Press)
The Riddle of Gender by Deborah Rudacille (Pantheon)
A) Four jobs I have had in my life:
baker’s assistant, writing tutor, NYPIRG canvasser, professional assistant
B) 4 movies I would watch over and over:
Raiders of the Lost Ark, A Room With a View, Sherlock Jr., and the last one I’m leaving blank because I really don’t like movies very much.
C) Three places I have lived:
Brooklyn, NY – Manhattan, NY – San Francisco, CA
D) Four TV shows I love to watch:
The Twilight Zone, House, Gilmore Girls, Frasier
E) Four places I have been on vacation
Paris & London, Singapore, Burma, New Orleans
F) Favorite foods:
stuffed cabbage, chocolate cake, spaghetti (in nearly any form, but especially in white clam sauce, cinnamon toast
G) Four websites you visit daily
wiki, amazon, the animal rescue site, myfooddiary.com
H) Four places I would like to be right now:
Mandalay, the house we went to this past Labor Day weekend, in bed, Hawaii
I’m excited to announce that I’m going to be speaking at Purdue University @ Calumet this coming October 27th. The talk will be about ‘Trans Identities and Cultural Politics’ and is part of an ongoing Diversity Advocacy series they’ve been doing. There’s more information on their website, but I do hope those of you who are anything close to Indiana will be able to make it! I’d love to see some familiar faces, of course.
I’m planning on traveling through Chicago, of course, so if there’s a group in/near the city that’d like to have me come speak, let me know.
Well, Caprice tagged me, so here are my bookish answers:
1. One book that changed your life? The Diamond in the Window, by Jane Langton. It’s a pre-teen book, maybe YA (Young Adult) about two poor kids who live in a crazy house in Concord, Massachusetts, and whose aunt gives piano lessons to awful children while the banker is always trying to repossess. But the story is about a poem the kids find which is a transcendental dream poem, and leads them through a series of dreams. There’s one about mirrors that shaped how I thought about my own life and choices.
2. One book you have read more than once? The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Yes, I do read books about grown-ups, but they’re not the ones with the deepest meanings to me. I re-read Narnia every few years, as a kind of refresher course.
3. One book you would want on a desert island? Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. It’s a good combination of simple and complex that would keep me occupied. (Favorite story: went into a bookstore for a copy and couldn’t find it, asked the staff. Staff person says, “Oh you mean Les Mis, like the musical?” Oy.)
4. One book that made you laugh? Butch Is A Noun, forthcoming from S. Bear Bergman. There are bits in it that made me laugh out loud on the subway, & Betty even let me read it to her outloud some, which is pretty much verboten when it comes to gender books. Though sometimes I read Judith Butler outloud to make her laugh, but in a very different way.
5. One book that made you cry? More kids books, but more recent: His Dark Materials. The scene where she is separated from her familiar is almost too painful.
6. One book you wish had been written? I have to do this one historically, because otherwise I think, “Well if you’d like to see a book written, write it!” So, instead, The New Academia Series: Volume I: Accessible Prose (published c. 1982 or so).
7. One book you wish had never been written? Get your sticks and stones, kids: The Bible.
8. One book you are currently reading? Betty gave me a copy of a book called Dragon Wing and so far it’s entertaining. It’s certainly a nice break from the umpteen gender books I was reading as research.
9. One book you have been meaning to read? A book called The Trouser People, about Burma.
10. Now tag five people: JW, Maurice, Kathy, Donna, and John R. If any of them actually get back to me, I’ll post them here. (But feel free to use the comments section, folks! That’s what it’s there for!)
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.
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* 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.
Ariadne Kane has been doing transgender outreach longer than many of us have been walking – since 1972. She was on The Phil Donahue Show in 1980 and probably gave some of the people reading this a glimpse that they weren’t alone in being trans. Somewhere in there she came up with the idea of Fantasia Fair, as well.
< Ariadne Kane
1. Since you were the person who ‘invented’ Fantasia Fair, how did it come about? What did it take to put on the first couple of them? How has it changed in the ensuing years?
Fan/Fair (the abbreviated version) was conceived of in 1974. It struck me that we could create a dynamic program of activities that were educational, social and practical for all CDs & TSs who were willing to come out from the ‘closets’ of shame, guilt and shyness. I believed that, in a tolerant and open community, they could learn some things about being femme or masculine; get much needed help about comportment and presentation and, have truly educational experience out of the ‘closet’. It was with this guiding premise that Fan/Fair was created. It was with the help and financial backing of 3 members of the Boston Cherrystone ‘T’ Club and myself that Fan/Fair 1 became a reality in 1975.
Needless to say, we learned a lot about the needs and aspirations of the ‘T’ community, including what program elements worked in favor of our Goals for the program. Over the next 3 decades, the Fan/ Fair Steering Committee adopted a template for programming and administration, These included a balanced mix of educational, social and practical modules for the ‘T’ person who wanted to emerge from the ‘closet’ and learn the dynamics leading to personal growth and adaptability in either the feminine or the masculine gender role of choice. This template is still the guiding instrument in the design of every Fair, even today.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Ariadne Kane”
Holly Boswell helped launch the transgender movement with her groundbreaking essay “The Transgender Alternative” in 1990. S/he has been the chief architect of Southern Comfort‘s programs since 1991, and is a regular presenter at several conferences. In 1986 s/he co-founded the Phoenix Trans Support group in Asheville, NC, in ’93 founded the alternative Trans-Spiritual community known as Kindred Spirits, hosts the Bodhi Tree House, and directs the Traveling Medicine Show.
1) Recently our message boards have been discussing the way “transgender” seems to be coming to mean – in the popular/media usage – “transsexual.” As someone who self-identifies as a transgenderist, how do you feel about this new usage?
I reject the usage you describe of the term “transgender” as coming to mean “transsexual” — if indeed that is really happening. That is totally erroneous. “Trans” means to cross: either vestments, gender, or biological sex. All of these categories cross the lines of gender, which is why the word “transgender” has come to be an umbrella term for the entire Trans Community, such as it is gradually formulating itself out of its own amazing diversity. Transsexuality comprises only a small (perhaps 10%) segment of the overall Trans Community, and yet it receives the lion’s share of attention because it is so dramatic and sensational. Please, let us respect our terminologies, as well as the roots of our word meanings, so that we can continue to make sense out of our own personally complex equations, without abandoning our ability to communicate our truth to mainstream culture through a common language.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Holly Boswell”
I know I’m not the only football widow, and I know now – since the publication of My Husband Betty – that I’m not the only ‘worst of both worlds’ widow, either. Oh no. I know there’s Heather, who just sent me a lovely email about her own ‘Betty’ watching the game “in stockings, heels, and a nightie.” But I’d forgotten about playoff season, when there’s more football on than episodes of Law & Order. After yesterday’s screams and howls brought on by the Indiana/Pittsburgh game, Betty decided to try on some clothes a friend gave her while watching today’s game.
It’s like genius-level torture, having a skinny woman in my house trying on new clothes while she watches football and I clean the catboxes.
(She does vaccuum when and where I ask her to, though. I’m trying to figure out how to get her to vaccuum without me asking, next.)
Tomorrow night, one of my favorite actors, Aidan Quinn – of whom I’ve been a fan since way back, since Reckless, in fact, which my friend Julie and I used to watch with teenage lust – has finally gotten his own series, where he plays a minister who has a tendency to talk to Jesus and hits the prescription painkillers a little hard. It’s called The Book of Daniel.
He also has a gay son, a daughter, & an adopted Asian son. And a wife named Judith.
But two networks – one in Indiana and the other in Arkansas – are refusing to air it.
The saddest of it all is that the viewers in Indiana will be forced to watch re-runs of the show Simon Birch, instead, which is too bad, as Aidan Quinn has aged damned well. (I walked right by him in SoHo once, with my friend Brian, who swears I had a spontaneous orgasm as a result. I might have, I don’t know, but I do remember that I couldn’t breathe very well for a while after.)
Thanks to GAY (goodasyou.org) for the story, and thanks to ITL for doing a segment on www.goodasyou.org.
Did I forget to mention that the people who got those two networks to boycott the show haven’t even seen it? Right, they haven’t.
Aidan Quinn, I have to add, also played a gay man dying of AIDS, in the move An Early Frost, from way back in 1985, long before it was fashionable for straight actors to play gay characters.
I can’t even begin to imagine how those families feel – getting the good news last night and today getting the correction.
I find a report of Bush’s condolences about the miners in a Chinese paper – not surprising, really, as coal miners die in China pretty much every month and their deaths go unreported or under-reported.
My condolences to the families, and a wish for freedom from guilt for that one guy who survived.
(If you haven’t worked it out, my grandparents & much of their generation were anthracite miners around the turn of the century.)