On 2nd thought, maybe I’ve just been reading too many masculine-spectrum books in a row. First Bear Bergman’s Butch is a Noun, and I just finished Max Valerio’s The Testosterone Files.
Expect interviews with both authors in the next month or so.
Paris Review?!
Oh, the sobbing and wailing and gnashing of teeth! Literary hoaxsters awash on The Strand… except that that’s not the way it goes, is it? Instead, James Frey gets more time on Oprah and wait, is that Laura Albert on the cover of Paris Review? Oh, it is! It is!
You want queer memoirists, real ones? Here’s a short list, literary world. I can pretty much guarandamntee that none of these books got the publicity they should have while you were frothing about JT LeRoy (the person Laura Albert pretended to be).
There’s Max Wolf Valerio’s memoir of transition, The Testosterone Files, and Jamison Green’s Becoming a Visible Man, and Matt Kailey’s Just Add Hormones. S. Bear Bergman’s Butch is a Noun is a great memoir of life in the butch lane.
There’s life as a queer girl from Michelle Tea in Rent Girl, Alison Smith’s Name All the Animals, and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
Then there’s just about anything by Patrick Califia.
Shoot, you want MTF memoirs? Take She’s Not There, or, for the more sexual side of things, Richard Novic’s tale of his part-time life as a woman, Alice in Genderland.
(Oh, right. There’s me, too.)
Dark Odyssey #5
We almost didn’t go to Dark Odyssey this year for a variety of reasons, but as it turns out, femme tops top everyone: Tristan told me we had to, so we did. When we were leaving, and I was getting really choked up and was sad to be going, I knew I wouldn’t ever think of not going again. What Tristan and Greg and all the many perverted presenters, staff, and attendees create on a campgrounds – nearly out of nothing – is really singular, in my experience.
There were plenty of familiar faces missing this year – some in the middle of new book publicity, others dealing with personal stuff or health concerns, and many, many people were missed. But people stepped in to fill the gaps, and it was as if Betty and I had an omen of what a good DO it would be when we found ourselves, the first night that we got in, talking to one of the staffers we’d just met about Neil Gaiman.
Betty read Stephen King’s IT the whole time we were there, and I’ll let her blog about how meaningful she found that book this time around.
Continue reading “Dark Odyssey #5”
Lamda Lit Award Winners 2006
& The winners are…
Transgender/GenderQueer
Choir Boy by Charlie Anders (Soft Skull Press)
Continue reading “Lamda Lit Award Winners 2006”
Lambda Literary Award Finalists 2006
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)
Oh. My. God.
A pure moment of unadulterated teenaged glee, here, but: Adam Ant has written his autobiography. A couple of years ago when he was first really struggling with manic-depression he got a “1%” tattoo on his body somewhere – yes, I’d like to know where – because 1% of the world’s population suffers with mental illness of some kind.
And I thought he rocked then.
But this just thrills me; in a sense it’s been a book I’ve been waiting for my whole life, or at least since I was 13 or so. I still have dreams about finding Ants stuff I don’t own, and there’s precious little out there that I don’t. And now, this, as a grown-up; it’s even better than the time he was on Northern Exposure, which was my favorite show at the time, & a little surreal, for my favorite person/hero to be on what was my favorite show. Like the kind of dream you have when you’re 16 & your life sucks.
(& by god, but look at his face! i think he’s the most perfectly formed person who ever lived, i swear it.)
Queer Awareness @ Columbia U.
Since October 11th is Coming Out Day, the whole of the month has become Queer Awareness Month, and as it turns out, Columbia University will be hosting a bunch of events – and I’ll be speaking on Monday, October 9th, as one of them.
You can always find my upcoming appearances on my author website, of course.
Literary Menstrual Hut
This recent article by Michelle Tea in the SF Bay Guardian made me laugh, since I’m being published by Seal Press as well – and I can’t say the words “menstrual hut” ever crossed my mind.
But “literary” did. As did “trans friendly.” My experience with Seal so far has been stellar, to be honest, and I feel much as I did when I decided not to work for most straight male clients when I do my freelance bookkeeping (which I should write more about one of these days): it’s just such a pleasure to work with a bunch of kick-ass women.
Moreso, I just wanted to point out how hip Seal has been about publishing interesting trans books, like The Testosterone Files, Nobody Passes (edited by Mattilda), She’s Such a Geek (edited by Charlie Anders & her partner), Julia Serano‘s upcoming manifesto, and my book. In a nutshell, Seal’s trans titles are becoming a Who’s Who of the 30-something trans generation, no? And you’ll notice, too, that these feminists include both FTM and MTF narratives in their trans collection, just as they should.
Two New Book Reviews
I added two new book reviews to this site today, both about books I read this summer and was providing blurbs for. Neither are out yet, but they both have links on amazon.com now, so I thought I’d add them to my list of gender/trans books.
- S. Bear Bergman’s Butch Is A Noun thread.
- Virginia Erhardt’s Head Over Heels thread.
I’ve also put them in our Reader’s Chair Forum so that those who want to discuss them can do so (obviously, that might take a while, but I’ll try to remember to bump both threads when they do actually come out).
Five Questions With… Kate Bornstein
Kate Bornstein is an author, playwright and performance artist. Her latest book, Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws, came out last month. Kate’s published works include the books Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us; My Gender Workbook; and the cyber-romance-action novel, Nearly Roadkill, written with co-author Caitlin Sullivan. Kate’s plays and performance pieces include Strangers in Paradox, Hidden: A Gender, The Opposite Sex Is Neither, Virtually Yours, and y2kate: gender virus 2000. It was both a pleasure and an honor to get to speak with her.
1. I love that you mention in Hello, Cruel World how trans folk are separating themselves into “male” and “female” by using terms like MTF and the like, because I’ve noticed that those of us who are hot for trans folk seem to like the transness, not the ‘target gender’ (or really even the ‘birth gender’) alone. It’s the chaser’s dirty secret. Do you think trans people will start to enjoy being trans, sexually or otherwise?
There are lots of un-named, unclaimed desires that are free from the male/female gender system. Desire for sex with oneself is a sexual orientation in itself, and you can be any gender or no gender in order to have that desire. My former partner felt the most important component for his desire was that his partner be the same gender as him. When he was a woman, he was with women; when he was gender-exploring he was with someone who was also gender-exploring; now that he’s a man he’s with men. I think what you’ve got is an as-yet-un-named sexual orientation: the desire for sex and romance with someone who’s neither male nor female.
Give your desire for transness a name. Then, speak your desire loudly, and proudly and seductively. I think if people hear that, that you’d like them the way they are, they’d be more encouraged to live that place of neither/nor.
As to using terms like MTF/FTM – yeah, I’ve been complaining about that for years. In this new book, I’m just a little less patient about it. It’s amusing and humiliating to admit it, but I still work hard to pass in public. I’m an old fart, and that’s still important to me. Out in the world, I pass to avoid the shame and the danger. But intimately with friends, community, or our lovers? The not-passing is the dance of love. No need for male or female, what luxury!
1b. But I seem to upset some transsexual people when I recognize that Betty’s masculinity turns me on – even if it’s in addition to my being turned on by her femininity.
Upset them! When you go beyond either/or, people think you’re a radical, that you’re less safe because you’re less predictable. Speaking or writing down the truth of your desire unlocks the political and moral shackles of desire.