Tag: blog stuff

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Pride Rant

A great rant about Pride by Joe.My.God, which he wrote back in 2005 after watching a NYC Pride Parade:

Because even if Pride doesn’t change many minds in the outside world, it’s our PARTY, darlings. It’s our Christmas, our New Year’s, our Carnival. It’s the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street and blow each other air kisses. And wish each other “Happy Pride!” Saying “Happy Pride!” is really just a shorter, easier way of saying “Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!”

I’m not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It’s OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our “debauched” celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.

It seemed a great way to end Pride Month.

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Allies, Family & Partners

I wanted to point out a new section of my links/blogroll, which is for allies, family & partners. Right now it’s got Abigail Garner’s Damn Straight, Monica CL’s A Seat on the SOFFA, Annie Rushden’s Gardens in Bloom, COLAGE’S Kids of Trans pages, Jonni P’s Trans Married, and PFLAG’s TNET.

If people know of other partners, allies, or family members who regularly blog on glbT issues, do let me know so I can add them. Please, not just LGB allies; they have to regularly address trans issues and need to be currently blogging with some consistency and some history.

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Blogging for LGBT Families

This year, to blog for LGBT families, I want to highlight the fantastic new work by COLAGE called the Kids of Trans Resource Guide (pdf). I’m not sure if I can express how desperately this guide was needed nor how happy I am to see it published. It includes not just tips for people who are children of trans people – whether they are still children or have become adults – but it also gives great advice to trans people who are parents, as well, including this gem:

“As a parent, remember that your children come first and your transition comes second. Transition is an inherently self-focused process, as you align your body and appearance with your gender identity. The best way to be a responsible parent during transition is to make your children a major priority throughout the process. Sometimes this means that you have to compromise your ideal time frame for your transition in order to keep relationships with your family healthy.”

Shock and revelation! Trans people are parents, children, spouses; they have families, extended families, and can adjust their transition goals to help the people who love them transition around them. How much does that rock? You can also access COLAGE’s Kids of Trans pages on their website.

(cross-posted to Trans Group Blog)

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Testicles to Spare

James Carville recently joked that if Clinton gave Obama one of her testicles, they’d both have two.

har de har har.

That, plus the joke about her “testicular fortitude” – ugh, does a woman running for president have to have balls?

Worse, making a joke about the black candidate having less than two is really ugly – and historically, a pretty loaded thing to say, considering the sexualization of black males, specifically as predators, & the way so many black men who were lynched were also subject to castration or other genital mutilation.

Carville turned into an asshole this campaign season, imho (which started with the whole Bill “Judas” Richardson fracas.) To me, this is unforgivably ignorant of American history and some of the racialized hate we’ve experienced as a nation. There is no excuse for someone as high up as Carville to make this kind of wisecrack. As if gender baiting weren’t bad enough.

Shakesville summarizes why the gendered part of the joke isn’t funny, either:

“From “pansy” to “testicular fortitude”2 to this little outburst, Clinton surrogates have been trying to paint Clinton as a tough, manly man, and Obama as, for lack of a better word, a sissy. This is a line of attack that demeans Obama, demeans Clinton, demeans women, demeans men, demeans anyone who believes that toughness and sensitivity need not be tied directly to gender. I expect more from the Clinton campaign; given the amount of misogyny that Clinton has faced, I’d like to think her campaign would be free of it. But evidently it’s easier to paint Hillary as a man than to argue that women can be tough too; it’s easier to paint Obama as less than a man than to argue that women can be tougher than men. And it’s a shame, because clearly, there are some women tougher than some men. Hillary Clinton may be tougher than Barack Obama. But it isn’t because she’s a guy, and it isn’t because he’s a girl.”

(via Shakesville)

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The Problem of Digby

Many of you have asked about whether I won the “Top Ten Female Bloggers” contest over at WVWV, and in fact I did not. Digby did. and Digby should have; she’s a damn good blogger.

But what’s interesting to me is that she was not known to be female when she started blogging in 2003. Nor in 2004, 2005, & 2006. The many years she was being linked to by the likes of Kos, no one knew she was female.

No, it was when she won an award she accepted in person, in the summer of 2007, that everyone found out she is a woman. If you read some of those comments, the surprise was a little more than “Oh, Digby’s a woman, huh” but people were a little more upset than that by the revelation, which is interesting since she never said she wasn’t a woman; her readers did the assuming, & we all know what assuming means, thanks to that classic moment in The Odd Couple.

As a gendery-y sort, & especially as a writer of a gender-y sort, I find that interesting. I don’t want to admit that maybe George Eliot’s method still works better than being known as a woman, that hiding your gender, if you’re female, lends you more credibility than not.

But I fear that is true, & that Digby’s win perhaps underlines that point. Still & all, she is a fantastic political blogger. I am not in anyway trying to say she isn’t. What I am trying to say is that I’m not sure she would have been recognized if she had been known as female from the outset.

Either way, I think it was damned smart of her, since the likeliness is high that people will diminish or ignore the political opinions of women.

Which is sad in itself, of course, but still true.

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Legal Marriage, Queer Relationship

The NYT did an article about the legal issues when you’re a heterosexual couple and one of you legally changes gender. I’ve been talking about the ramifications of this stuff for so long that I failed to notice for others it might be quite a surprise, and revelatory, but it is.

Interesting comments have come in from Cara at Feministe and a young trans woman who calls herself Critical Thinking Girl. As CTG points out, it is pretty tawdry – the usual before & after photos, etc. – and when she notes:

The tone of this article is clear – Fran is a put-upon woman, with an eccentric husband. The picture they chose is also curious as it has the trans woman in the relationship holding back her wife.

As many of my regular readers already know, one of the things that drives me batshit about the media in general is the way they choose rubes to write about, instead of speaking to activists or advocates who are prepared to deal with media, or who have become allied with LGBTQ people on the issue. For those of you who are interested, here’s a talk I gave at the Law School of Penn State Dickinson last year.

Because honestly, same sex marriage recognition would make life easier for all trans people in relationships – including CTG.

Oh – and to The Times – and everyone else: it’s “transition” not “sex change.”

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How To Be an Ally

Over at Bilerico, “Guest blogger Rev. Ann Fontaine, of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming, keeps the blogs Green Lent and what the tide brings in and writes for Episcopal Cafe. She is the author of Streams of Mercy: a meditative commentary on the Bible.”

Here’s her “Code for Allies”:

  • We listen to those with whom we work without judging the perspectives, experiences, and feelings of the members of the marginalized group, even when the words feel accusatory towards us. These perspectives, experiences and feelings reveal what we do not know about those with whom we seek to become allies.
  • We seek to learn from those with whom we ally in order to educate ourselves and others about the culture and concerns of those with whom we are allied. We examine our fears of “the other. We recognize the interconnectedness of “isms” and other examples of individual and societal prejudice.
  • We understand the commonalities and the differences among the various expressions of prejudice and isolation of groups.
  • We identify and work to change our prejudicial beliefs and actions as well as to change the beliefs and actions of others, both individual and institutional.
  • We build relationships with other discredited, marginalized, oppressed, non-privileged groups.
  • We work for the equalizing and responsible use of power and authority.
  • We advocate for policies and activities that support those affected by injustice.
  • We use appropriate language.
  • We confront inappropriate language.
  • We ask questions rather than assume we know the answer.
  • We take risks.
  • We appreciate the efforts by members of our ally group to point out our mistakes.
  • We combat the harassment, discrimination, and physical assault that marginalized groups experience in our society by speaking out, by our presence and by working to change the systems that continue oppression and give one group privilege over another.
  • We appreciate the risks taken by our allies for their own freedom.
  • We recognize that groups need to work on their own and with others – even when that means we may be left out of the discussion and work.
  • We support other allies.
  • We act as allies with no conditions attached.

Now that’s a plateful, but do go read the whole post.

(via Lena, via Bilerico)

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PFLAG

There was a very recent kerfuffle about a local PFLAG chapter voting for Safe Schools legislation that was not gender identity inclusive. A few people emailed a few people from PFLAG National and they made sure that the local would not support gender identity exclusive language in the bill, and reassured me that PFLAG will only support legislation that is trans inclusive. National will be working with the local to write inclusive language for an upcoming Op-Ed.

PFLAG rocks.

For those of you who don’t know, they also have a special transgender division, called TNET.

(Thanks to Ethan St. Pierre and Diana for bringing my attention to it.)